# Is believing in God evolutionarily advantageous? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [August 31, 2010, 2:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-believing-in-god-evolutionarily-advantageous/552131 "2010-08-31T14:34:11Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2010, 3:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-believing-in-god-evolutionarily-advantageous/552131/81 "2010-09-01T15:52:32Z")
> [@Inbred\_Mm\_domesticus](#): > > Here is [Daly and Wilson’s discussion of evolutionary psychology and behavior patterns associated with homicide](http://psych.mcmaster.ca/dalywilson/chapter5.pdf). It’s not the primary research but it covers their application of mainly kin selection to homicidal human behavior patterns. They specify their falsifiable predictions based in theory and summarize the data that tested these hypotheses. Simple science. That cite is 14 pages long. Can you summarize the salient points? What is the hypothesis they make, and how is it falsifiable? ---
**Author:** ![ITR\_champion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c67d28/32.png) [@ITR\_champion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ITR_champion)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2010, 9:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-believing-in-god-evolutionarily-advantageous/552131/82 "2010-09-01T21:41:17Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > Germany was quite Christian, acting the way Christians typically do when they can. The Nazis were extremely proud of the fact that they had rejected Christianity, as [as these quotes will show](http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1699/was-hitler-a-christian): 'National Socialism and Christianity are irreconcilable." - Martin Bormann “One is either a Christian or a German. You can’t be both.” - Hermann Rauschning “We have no sort of use for a fairy story invented by the Jews.” - Adolf Hitler More relevant than any quote is the simple fact of the Nazis’ mass extermination of a large number of Christians. (See links in [this thread.](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=526767)) And the fact that the Nazis banned Bible study from schools. And so forth. How exactly does all this fit with your claim that “Germany was quite Christian”? > [@](#): > > Mass murdering Jews is as Christian as it gets. Cite, please? > [@](#): > > As for Communism, Communism is just another religion, Communism appeals to a divine agency? I’m afraid I’m going to need a cite for that. I’d someone gotten the impression that communist big wigs like Marx, Lenin, and Mao were all strongly opposed to religion. Oh, wait, [they](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:LgW0t5zIXWwJ:www.angelfire.com/or/sociologyshop/marxrel.html+Marx+Religion&hl=en&client=firefox-a&gl=us&strip=0) [were](http://sfr-21.org/lenin-religion.html). Good day. ---
**Author:** ![Cisco](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ccd318/32.png) [@Cisco](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cisco)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2010, 9:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-believing-in-god-evolutionarily-advantageous/552131/83 "2010-09-01T21:59:35Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > As for Communism, Communism is just another religion, and acts like one. I’m an atheist\* and I’m dead sick of hearing this dumbass meme. If you feel like you have to cling to some sort of “atheist unity” (and I sure as hell don’t), then own up to it. If you don’t feel that way, then why are you making excuses for it? Communism is an economic system. It’s as much a religion as capitalism or socialism or bartering. Speaking of acting religious, though . . . you might want to sneak a peak in a mirror sometime, Der Trihs. \*Though I guess it depends on how you define “atheist”, I’m certainly not a theist, and I don’t believe in the supernatural, so I think most people would call me an atheist. ---
**Author:** ![ITR\_champion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c67d28/32.png) [@ITR\_champion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ITR_champion)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2010, 10:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-believing-in-god-evolutionarily-advantageous/552131/84 "2010-09-01T22:02:56Z")
> [@Sage\_Rat](#): > > Look at pack animals, like wolves. If one of the follower wolves challenges the lead wolf, that’s seen as an act of antagonism. The pack can’t survive the hardships of the world if it’s split between leaders, so the challenger either has to become the leader, die, or leave the group. True, but watching wolves tells us nothing about humans. > [@](#): > > Within a human pack, rather than duking it out with fisticuffs, it’s more likely that the chief will send the challenger out on a particularly dangerous hunt, devise some sort of crime to charge the guy with and have him killed, or simply kill him straight out. I’m not saying that this happens every time. Some chiefs might be more accepting or diplomatic about rebellious attitudes, but over the course of thousands of generations there will be some amount of evolutionary pressure towards a default setting of taking what the big boss says as inviolate – particularly where there doesn’t seem to be any useful purpose in arguing with him. I can’t recall ever seeing any evidence that primitive human societies functioned this way. I readily admit that my knowledge in this field is limited. However, I have studied examples such as the Indian tribes of the Pacific Northwest. It was absolutely not true that there was a “big boss” who maintained power by violence. Rather, men competed with each other to prove themselves generous and friendly. The only primitive societies I know of that match your descriptions are in Far Side cartoons. > [@](#): > > There’s evidence to make it (or something similar) seem likely, yes: > > [List of cognitive biases - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases) > > We know that cognitive biases are true, as shown by testing on human subjects. First of all, I’m going to assume that when you said “we know cognitive biases are true”, you actually meant “we know that cognitive biases exist.” But do they? How many of the nearly 100 biases listed there can you actually name a study for? And how did those studies determine that the behavior they observed was actually a result of the bias they imagined? And if all humans have a bunch of cognitive biases, then why should I trust the researchers who are doing those studies? After all, that list you gave me includes: **Experimenter’s bias** the tendency for experimenters to believe, certify, and publish data that agree with their expectations for the outcome of an experiment, and to disbelieve, discard, or downgrade the corresponding weightings for data that appear to conflict with those expectations. **Confirmation bias** the tendency to search for or interpret information in a way that confirms one’s preconceptions. **Focusing effect** the tendency to place too much importance on one aspect of an event. **Availability cascade** a self-reinforcing process in which a collective belief gains more and more plausibility through its increasing repetition in public discourse. Any of those or a dozen others could cause researchers to erroneously believe in a cognitive bias that did not actually exist. > [@](#): > > If we then take Occam’s Razor to the two options: > > 1. Some chain of cognitive biases resulted in poor reasoning. > 2. Invisible, intangible, otherworldly creatures injected themselves into the minds of humanity via unknowable means for non-obvious purposes, leaving no other clear evidence of their existence than vague feelings in human beings – a creature already shown to suffer cognitive biases and poor reasoning. If human beings are “already shown to suffer cognitive biases and poor reasoning”, then why should I take the word of you (a human being) that these are the only two options and are accurately described. But, in any case, I was specifically asking about the scenario you presented in post 27, and nothing in this post seems to have anything to do with confirming that scenario. So back to my original question: can you give me any evidence that said scenario has ever actually occurred? ---
**Author:** ![GHO57](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/df788c/32.png) [@GHO57](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GHO57)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2010, 10:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-believing-in-god-evolutionarily-advantageous/552131/85 "2010-09-01T22:49:13Z")
> [@Cisco](#): > > > [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > > > As for Communism, Communism is just another religion, and acts like one. > > I’m an atheist\* and I’m dead sick of hearing this dumbass meme. If you feel like you have to cling to some sort of “atheist unity” (and I sure as hell don’t), then own up to it. If you don’t feel that way, then why are you making excuses for it? Communism is an economic system. It’s as much a religion as capitalism or socialism or bartering. Exactly like bartering…with the exception of [iconography](http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Socialist_realism), [cognitive dissonance](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism#Repercussions), a [holy book](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Das_Kapital), a [reliquary](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenin's_Mausoleum)for worshipers, [symbolism](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/56/Hammer_sickle_clean.png)… Deification of leaders (“A tailor laying aside his needle stuck it into a newspaper on the wall so it wouldn’t get lost and happened to stick it in the eye of a portrait of Kaganovich [a member of the Soviet Politburo]. A customer observed this. Article 58, ten years (terrorism). A saleswoman accepting merchandise from a forwarder noted it down on a sheet of newspaper. There was no other paper. The number of pieces of soap happened to fall on the forehead of Comrade Stalin. Article 58, ten years.” (Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago, vol. 2, p. 293.)) Extended to the belief in the [infallibility](http://www.nevanews.com/index.php?id_article=25§ion=13) of said leaders… …Just saying…it’s not much of a stretch to call it a religion, take a look at [these](http://laist.com/attachments/laist_dara/stalin.jpg) two [pictures](http://www.rainbowcastle.org/ascension.jpg). Admittedly it would be more appropriate to call religions a subset of comprehensive belief systems, of which Communism definitely is one… Functionally they’re really not all that different, and you gotta admit, “it’s a religion” is a helluva lot easier than explaining how adherence to a certain doctrine influences the person’s behavior and contrasting that with Communism; you’d assume religious people understand religious behavior and can draw the inference themselves. …Sorry for the hijack. ---
**Author:** ![Cisco](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ccd318/32.png) [@Cisco](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cisco)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2010, 12:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-believing-in-god-evolutionarily-advantageous/552131/86 "2010-09-02T00:06:26Z")
> [@GHO57](#): > > Exactly like bartering…with the exception of [iconography](http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Socialist_realism), [cognitive dissonance](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism#Repercussions), a [holy book](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Das_Kapital), a [reliquary](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenin's_Mausoleum)for worshipers, [symbolism](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/56/Hammer_sickle_clean.png)… > > Deification of leaders (“A tailor laying aside his needle stuck it into a newspaper on the wall so it wouldn’t get lost and happened to stick it in the eye of a portrait of Kaganovich [a member of the Soviet Politburo]. A customer observed this. Article 58, ten years (terrorism). A saleswoman accepting merchandise from a forwarder noted it down on a sheet of newspaper. There was no other paper. The number of pieces of soap happened to fall on the forehead of Comrade Stalin. Article 58, ten years.” (Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago, vol. 2, p. 293.)) > > Extended to the belief in the [infallibility](http://www.nevanews.com/index.php?id_article=25§ion=13) of said leaders… > > …Just saying…it’s not much of a stretch to call it a religion, take a look at [these](http://laist.com/attachments/laist_dara/stalin.jpg) two [pictures](http://www.rainbowcastle.org/ascension.jpg). Admittedly it would be more appropriate to call religions a subset of comprehensive belief systems, of which Communism definitely is one… Functionally they’re really not all that different, and you gotta admit, “it’s a religion” is a helluva lot easier than explaining how adherence to a certain doctrine influences the person’s behavior and contrasting that with Communism; you’d assume religious people understand religious behavior and can draw the inference themselves. > > …Sorry for the hijack. Surely this post is a joke. Unless you’re saying Capitalism is a religion, too. You could not possibly be saying that we don’t have [a holy book](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wealth_of_Nations), [cognitive dissonance](http://www.purselipsquarejaw.org/b-w_living.jpg), [shrines](http://classicist.blogs.com/weblog/images/Lincoln_Memorial.jpg), and [deification of leaders](http://www.learnnc.org/lp/media/uploads/2007/09/apotheosis_of_washington.jpg), by the same standards as the ones you listed. ---
**Author:** ![Malthus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/85f322/32.png) [@Malthus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malthus)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2010, 2:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-believing-in-god-evolutionarily-advantageous/552131/87 "2010-09-02T14:07:17Z")
Seems to me that the issue of whether or not Communism is a “religion” is totally irrelevant. Communism, the ethos of the modern capitalist nation-state, religion - all are ways people have of understanding and ordering their relations with the persons around them, it is true; any of these can take on the characteristics of a “True Belief” in the manner described by Eric Hoffer, also true; and there are clearly relevant differences between them as well. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2010, 9:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-believing-in-god-evolutionarily-advantageous/552131/88 "2010-09-02T21:25:40Z")
The totalitarian regimes in the USSR, China and North Korea are/were, in many respects, like a religion. But their economic system of communism was just one part of the whole package. Communism, itself, is an economic system, and calling it a religion is ridiculous. It’s economics. Bad economics, but still economics. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-believing-in-god-evolutionarily-advantageous/552131.md?page=4)