I'm in the process of reading Nicholas Wade's "Before the Dawn: Recovering the Lost History of Our Ancestors". This is a very interesting and enjoyable book that examines the evolution of humans and human society using the results of recent research in genetics to inform the large body of research in traditional anthropology.
Today I happened to read his section on "The Evolution of Religion", and I don't completely agree with its central premise. He poses the question of when religion first evolved. He hypothesizes that it co-evolved with language, "because language can be used to deceive, and religion is a safeguard against deception."
First, I don't think this argument is logically sound. Religion requires language in order to be transmitted from one person to another. As such, it is as vulnerable to deception as any other language-based aspect of culture. In fact, because religion is based on unfalsifiable ideas (I refuse to call them "facts"), then it is itself a deception. Second, history is full of examples of "pious frauds", people who lie in order to support their religious beliefs. Any number of religious artifacts have been proven to be frauds, but religious leaders continue to claim they are authentic just to support the religious belief they represent. Thus, to claim that religion protects society from deception is provably false. Therefore, religious belief would not be selected for for this reason.
This is not to say that religion could not have an evolutionary basis. A secondary claim that Wade makes is that religious belief helps to form an exclusive community of believers. If religious observance requires sufficient expenditure of time and resources, then having a religious community can help to exclude outsiders who do not know the rituals and thus may not be trustworthy. Also, those who do not participate in the religious obligations and are thus "freeloaders" on society may also be excluded and will not receive other benefits of participation, such as business opportunities, access to mates ("don't marry outside the religion"), or support in times of crisis.
In "The Greatest Show on Earth", Richard Dawkins discusses the concept of Evolutionarily Stable Strategies (ESS). He uses the concept of game theory to give examples of how a population can be divided into individuals demonstrating different types of behaviors where the relative proportions of each type of individual is stable across generations. In the case of religion, as described by Wade, there could be an ESS where a certain percentage of the population is religious and a complementary percentage is not. The fact that this is a stable strategy might be sufficient for religion to be selected for. In a small, otherwise homogeneous community, the likely ESS is to have a majority be religious. There are already evolutionary advantages to having group cohesion. Religion can provide that cohesion and could thus prosper.
This idea would also explain why religions like Islam can prosper in fairly homogenous cultures like you find in the Middle East, but they have more difficulty gaining traction in more heterogeneous cultures. Dividing the population into different sub-populations of belief systems or philosophies is not as stable (in terms of an ESS) as having a single majority religion.
The fact that religion can be found in every culture is proof that it must have been selected for at some point in our evolution and continued to confer sufficient advantage that it wasn't selected against. However, as our culture becomes more diverse, and we have other philosophical and political means of encouraging social cohesion, we have less need for religion (or any particular religion) to serve that role. Also, as our scientific knowledge of the world grows, the mere fact that religions are based on ideas that are not true gives greater reason for them to be rejected in favor of positive philosophical belief systems that are based on our existing and evolving knowledge of reality. I disagree with Wade's claim that religion originally evolved to safeguard against deception. However, perhaps we are now witnessing the evolution of skepticism and humanism as a safeguard from the deception of religion.
12 comments:
I pretty much agree with your analysis, and am kind of mystified by the "safeguard against deception" theory. I might have to read part of the book for additional context, but it doesn't make much sense from a superficial perspective. I tend to agree that religion evolved as a way to create community, and in so provide a safeguard against enemies, such as those that might like to eradicate your ethnic population. Belief in prophets and deities kind of helps inspire the population to action and to give them a sense that they can survive and have purpose. It can also provide some inspiration to go forth and multiple, take better care of your kids, etc., etc. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.
I really like reading your blog, it helps me to understand your point of view. I will admit, however, that I still don't understand how or when you began to think this way. Please know I do not ever judge you because of your beliefs, as I know you would never do the same to me. All I know is I love you and miss you. HOWEVER, this post, well written as always, was really hard for me to read and understand. I even had to turn the TV on mute so I could concentrate! hahahaha. SO, here's my idea for your next blog... write about the same thing, but put it in terms I understand. You know, like "people started believing in religion so they would have something to feel good about"... "TV Evangelists and authors who promise your life will be changed forever if you only send thm $100 for this CD are nothing but jerks"... "now that people are starting to believe only in science and facts, religion may start to wane, because even though they are praying to their gods, the earth still seems to be going to crap". Did I get the general concept? Much love from your silly younger sis!
I realize that this post was more academic than some of my others. I wanted to tie together some of the things I've read recently. I'll try to mix up the styles some. It's mostly going to depend on how I'm thinking of a subject at the time.
On the subject of how I got to my current view, well, I think that's the subject of a future post... :)
I find it credible that several years ago, I would have had the appropriate intellect to comprehend the statements and theories that were provided in your recent manifest. However, as I am not provided with adequate intellectual conversation on a frequent basis, I find that my intellect has become somewhat diminished in certain capacities. (Just sayin')
The Indian perception of religion is not deception, but more a case of live and let live. The hindu dharma is basically a way of life and co-existence with nature. There is no co-ercion. U simply try to understand the social rules of mankind without bias. Our religious texts do not ask u to follow any religion or form of worship as such. It only teaches the way to live life and respect all lives.
Hi Geeth,
Let me clarify my point. I don't think that most religions are based on intentionally trying to deceive people. My point was that since they are all based on supernatural claims, and supernatural things don't actually exist, then there is a deception at their core. The people who created the religion may thought that supernatural things existed, and were therefore not trying to deceive. However, we can see now that there is no evidence that supernatural things exist, and can thus see that the central supernatural belief is not true.
Supernatural is defined as "Attributed to a power that seems to violate or go beyond natural forces."
Would you agree that the statement "Everything has a beginning" can't be true and therefore goes beyond natural forces?
No, I wouldn't agree with that statement. To the best of our current knowledge time and space all began with the Big Bang. There was nothing before that, and since time didn't exist before that, there is actually no such thing as "before the Big Bang".
So everything has a beginning. There is nothing that has been here forever, because the universe has only existed for a finite amount of time, and time didn't exist before the universe existed.
What was in space before the big bang? And since everything has a beginning, where does space start? And whats on the other side of the starting point?
There was nothing "in space" before the big bang, because space itself did not exist. The Big Bang wasn't like a big black hole surrounded by infinite empty space (like the universe is now). It was all of space and time compressed into a single point. So there was no space to have something in it.
And by "everything has a beginning", I assumed Kenny meant a beginning in time. As far as space is concerned, the universe is infinite. There is no beginning or end point. There is no middle. But that doesn't violate any natural law. There's nothing supernatural about it.
Does that answer your question?
This is fun!! It is like the egg and chicken story, never ending! Science will never know what happened b4 the big bang! Have u read the book by Dr.Brian Weiss-Many lives, many masters? Maybe u could have a look. A different insight, maybe! Till then, the argument continues..........!!
Just to be completely honest about this (and I know this is going to result in some "see, I told you" comments :) ), we don't actually know for certain that there was nothing before the Big Bang. It's possible there was another universe before ours that collapsed into a singularity and then re-expanded into our universe. Because of the uncertainty principle, no information about that previous universe would be passed to us. So we can never know what it was like. However, from the information I can find, it would still be the case that time and space as we know it started with the Big Bang.
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