Can evolutionary theorists ever make sense of religion?

[rug]

A new theory disregards the dominant evolutionary story, and explores instead religion's origins in playtime and ritual

Mark Vernon guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 19 October 2011 10.04 EDT

The currently dominant evolutionary story for the origin of religions might be called the "byproduct theory". It goes something like this.

The human brain evolved a series of cognitive modules, a bit like a smartphone downloading applications. One was good for locomotion, another seeing, another empathy, and so on. However, different modules could interfere with one another, called "domain violation" in the literature. The app for locomotion might overrun the app for empathy and, as a result, the hapless owner of that brain might discern a spirit shifting in the rustling trees, because the branches sway a little like limbs moving. The anthropologist Pascal Boyer calls such interpretations "minimally counterintuitive". They can't be too random or they wouldn't grip your imagination. But, clearly, they are not rational. Religion is, therefore, a cognitive mistake. It might once have delivered adaptive advantages: swaying branches could indicate a stalking predator, and so you'd be saved if you fled, even if you believed the threat was a ghost. But rational individuals such as, say, evolutionary theorists now see religious beliefs for what they really are.

Given that this is the story that often does the rounds, it is striking that Robert Bellah's new book, Religion in Human Evolution has no time for it whatsoever. Literally. Look up "Boyer" in the index and you are led to a footnote. "I have found particularly unhelpful those who think of the mind as composed of modules and of religion as explained by a module for supernatural beings," Bellah remarks. They have a "tendency toward speculative theorizing and lack of insight into religion as actually lived". In short, the story is neither convincing when it comes to cognition, nor when it comes to describing religious practice.

Bellah's judgment matters because he is a venerable sociologist of religion who takes evolution seriously: it can be revealing about the nature of religion, he insists, though only if you are talking about religions as they actually exist. So what goes wrong?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2011/oct/19/evolutionary-theorists-religion

[Name removed]

1. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[rug]

3. Are you having another interior monologue?

[mike_c]

2. it's an interesting discussion...

...and one that fascinates me, but as a biologist I often find fault with the anthropological/sociological notion that we must deal with "religion as actually lived" or with "convincing" religious practice. Those are consequences of whatever nervous system phenomena give rise to religious interpretations for perceptions-- they're not the causes themselves, nor is there any a priori reason to expect a rational relationship between the causes and the outcomes, as much as we want to think such rationality into existence (nor is there any reason to expect there WON'T be a rational connection between the evolution of the mechanisms of cognition and religious interpretations of perception, if you see what I mean).

All behavior is subject to natural selection on the phenotypes that produce the behavior, including selection of alternative nervous system network topographies and the activity thresholds of neurons and network segments. Of course, folks who suffer from religious delusions are the first to reject the notion that their beliefs are driven by intrinsic things like the evolution of their species' nervous system rather than by extrinsic factors like omnipotent supernatural beings. Makes it hard to actually have the intellectual discourse that might find answers.

[rug]

4. If religion is an ideology, I don't think a neurological explanation is sufficient.

I have yet to read this book but it appears he's using human interactions as well to explain what is frequently described as a biologicaaly internal function.

[mike_c]

5. EVERYTHING animals do has a neurological basis....

Everything. If you know it, think it, believe it, perceive it, act upon it, or just worry about it, what else but your nervous system do you think is performing those actions? And everything that our nervous systems do is subject to natural selection. Everything.

[rug]

6. And how does that electrical charge convert into an ideology?

Particularly one shared by millions of humans.

[mike_c]

7. I wish I could answer that question...

...but there's some comfort in knowing that no one else can answer it yet, either. Yet. But the obvious corollary is that there would be no ideology at all without that chemo-electric potential, so the simple fact that we don't understanding it doesn't mean that it isn't the thing that drives our conceptualization. In fact, there's nothing else that can, unless one resorts to supernatural explanations.

There's lots of work being done on this problem at lots of levels, all the way from the mechanistic folks studying membrane channels in axons to the folks theorizing about the evolution of cultural memes. We'll get there, eventually. The journey is just as important as the objective.

[Humanist_Activist]

13. It doesn't, insteads its the interaction of trillions of small electrical charges between billions..

of neurons that create new connections and even destroy old ones continuously that lead to things such as conversion to new ideologies. Everything we do is tied to our biology and our environment. Our brains are literally us as individuals. Our genes(and hormones) do influence this organ, and so does our environment, sometimes in radical ways. They can even overcome each other.

We have packaged within us as infants the mental tools to survive, they are sometimes even surprisingly complicated, but aren't learned behaviors. Pattern recognition, particularly of faces and voices, but also other things, is one of the first of these that babies build upon through cognitive development(for example, in learning language). Others only kick in when certain conditions are met, for example, sexual attraction and sex drive, or maternal/fraternal instinct.

The fact is that it isn't AN electrical charge that causes anything, it is instead a culmination of many different things that cause humans to do everything and believe everything we do. Converting to an ideology would be a classic example of this, you would have to learn about and understand the concepts of the ideology, obviously your neurons would reconfigure themselves to reflect this. This includes creating memories in the brain and changing the cognitive processes involved in the ideology. It could reroute things to emphasize more cerebral or more emotive portions of the brain, depending on what idea you are adopting.

The brain is a very complicated organ, and while most of it remains enigmatic, there is no reason to suspect that anything more is required to adopt ideologies, no matter how popular they are.

[edhopper]

16. Memes

[Sam1]

14. I Think that what you have described

is a necessary condition but not a sufficient condition. Now for a question? Is everything that the nervous system does the result of natural selection or is the nervous system itself the result of natural selection?

[fegi052li]

8. +100. Excellent post

[Jim__]

9. Make sense? My guess is yes.

Can they ever know the actual origins? That's a lot less likely. We're pretty much limited to speculations as to what may have happened. I don't believe there is any way to test any evolutionary theory about the origin of religion.

If we can reach a good understanding of consciousness, and any interplay between consciousness and genetics, that may give us a better understanding than evolutionary speculations.

[rrneck]

10. Intetesting stuff.

We have air conditioning and ice in our Scotch because we cooperate.

It feels good to cooperate because there is an evolutionary advantage in cooperation.

Any shared practice that fosters emotional synchronicity offers a survival advantage for that group by encouraging cooperation.

For most of human history religion is what groups used to promote cohesion and sacrifice for the group.

[trotsky]

11. ...

"For most of human history religion is what groups used to promote cohesion and sacrifice for the group."

Religion, and beer. But we know beer is superior because:

10. No one will kill you for not drinking Beer.

9. Beer doesn't tell you how to have sex.

8. Beer has never caused a major war.

7. They don't force Beer on minors who can't think for themselves.

6. When you have a Beer, you don't knock on people's doors trying to give it away.

5. Nobody's ever been burned at the stake, hanged, or tortured over his brand of Beer.

4. You don't have to wait 2000+ years for a second Beer.

3. There are laws saying Beer labels can't lie to you.

2. You can prove you have a Beer.

1. If you've devoted your life to Beer, there are groups to help you stop.

[rrneck]

12. LO! So stipulated! nt

[laconicsax]

15. They figured out the platypus, so yeah. n/t

[edhopper]

17. Yes

There are a few theories about the origin of religion. There are similar theories about music and art. Part of the evolved brain's structure, or a side effect of the brain's evolution? Like evolution itself, none of them rely on a supernatural agent imposing itself on people.