Is God in Our Genes?
It seems that we have something like a sweet tooth for religion. And the question is why. Why are we so eager for the particular rituals and the particular behaviors … why do they appeal to us so much? … Our sweet tooth for religions is one of the most important and influential factors in the world today. If we don’t understand it, we’re cruising to trouble in this 21st century.
Daniel Dennett on Open Source
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Is this… [AgonysMuse / Flickr]
…in our DNA? [King Coyote / Flickr]
Philosopher Daniel Dennett — a proud atheist in the mold of zoologist Richard Dawkins — wants to understand why religion has such a powerful hold on people. And as a believer in the gospel of Darwin, he looks to evolution to explain why our minds and our culture are gripped by God.
So this hour we want to ask — and try to answer, from a variety of perspectives — are we hardwired (i.e., did we evolve) to believe in God? If so, does that prove that God exists? Or doesn’t exist? If we do have a kind of “God gene,” why did our minds evolve that way? Did belief in the supernatural confer some kind of adaptive advantage? At the individual level? At the group level? Or is belief in God a specific byproduct of our brain’s more general ability to make imaginative leaps? Or did God guide our evolution and, in doing so, make it easy for us to have faith?
What questions do you have?
Daniel Dennett
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Professor of philosophy, Tufts University
Director, Center for Cognitive Studies, Tufts University
Author, Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon
Michael Murray
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Professor of philosophy, Franklin and Marshall College
Co-editor, Philosophy of Religion: The Big Questions
David Sloan Wilson
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Evolutionary biologist, SUNY Binghamton
Author, Darwin’s Cathedral: Evolution, Religion, and the Nature of Society
Jeffrey Schloss
- Evolutionary biologist, Westmont College
Gawain de Leeuw
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Episcopal priest
Blogger, The Salty Vicar
02:32
It seems that we have something like a sweet tooth for religion. And the question is why. Why are we so eager for the particular rituals and the particular behaviors … why do they appeal to us so much? … Our sweet tooth for religions is one of the most important and influential factors in the world today. If we don’t understand it, we’re cruising to trouble in this 21st century.
Daniel Dennett on Open Source
14:53
Whenever there’s something we don’t understand, we think, ‘who’s there, and what do you want?’ … Anything we don’t understand, we treat it as an agent. … What this does is it fills our head with a population of basically imaginary agents - leprechauns and goblins and imps and gods - and then there’s a sort of population explosion of those … and the ones that are unforgettable tend to have interesting features. … And then, what happened was, we domesticated them. We took those wild ideas and we domesticated them. Then we start trying to bend them to our purposes. And organized religions are the domesticated varieties of the original wild religions that were just for themselves.
Daniel Dennett on Open Source
21:23
There have been plenty of people throughout the theological traditions in the West … who have hypothesized that religious belief is something that is, indeed, innate in human beings. For Calvin, it was something that springs from what he called the Divine Sense. For Augustine, it was an innate idea. … It seems to me this is just another way of hypothesizing that there’s some kind of innate mechanism, in this case now explained in a certain way by appeal to adaptation and natural selection, that explains why we have these beliefs. So, maybe it’s just an articulation of something that’s been around for a very long time.
Michael Murray on Open Source
31:30
The chief difference between between democracy and religions is that, really, every organized religion has one adaptation which is dangerous, and that is that it gives people the excuse to abandon reason. It actually makes a virtue out of abandoning reason and playing the faith card when the facts start going against you.
Daniel Dennett on Open Source
38:31
We might come up with a wholly adequate evolutionary explanation for the origin of capacities to develop certain beliefs - scientific, mathematical, or religious … The origin of that capacity, though, doesn’t say, necessarily, anything about the origin of specific beliefs, nor does it say anything about the truth or falsity of specific beliefs.
Jeffrey Schloss on Open Source
44:49
By the time you get to organized religions … we begin to move towards the idea that whenever anything good happens, God is to be thanked for that … whenever anything bad happens, don’t blame God! God works in mysterious ways. Whatever we do, we don’t blame God. That very idea, that there’s this bias … is, I think, a tell-tale adaptation of organized religion. It’s an example of the phenomenon I describe as belief in belief. And thats profoundly … anti-scientific.
Daniel Dennett on Open Source
50:07
Religious behavior is so much a part of humanity that what will happen is that people will create different sorts of religion. I can imagine that we would form rituals and practices that might not refer to an afterlife. That’s possible. But religion will always be a part of humanity.
Gawain de Leeuw on Open Source
- Chris’s Post-Game Analysis
- I’m still with the spirit of Psalm 42: As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so my soul thirsteth for the living God. We live with the longing every day of our lives, doubtless for a good reason. And we’ll understand it better by and by. The comment thread — in its depth, breadth, variety, good humored energy and seriouness — could be called inspirational. Maybe even inspired.
March 22nd, 2006 at 7:13 pm
I have commented on this issue before. Myself, I lean toward the idea that religion is a byproduct of various cognitive biases. But, we have to distinguish various aspects of religion, that is, basal supernaturalism vs. institutionalized religion. Functionalist/adaptive explanations are aimed toward the latter, but the cognitive byproduct is more relevant for the former. Many of your questions are more pointed when you clarify what you mean by religion: it seems ridiculous to assert that we have a “Christianity gene,” but one can posit functionalist reasons why Christians outbred pagans in the Roman Empire (as Rod Stark has). Similarly, it seems rather dicey to posit a functionalist/adaptive reason why we see “faces in clouds” (agency detection hyperactivity) since it seems likely that this emerges as a more generalized pattern recognition system we evolved for other reasons.
In specific response to your questions: are we hardwired to believe in God? I think the majority of humans do have a cognitive bias toward supernaturalism, but there is variation, and some people probably don’t have a tendency toward accept supernatural explanations (I think I’m one). But none of this speaks to the question of whether God exists outside of the context of your other axioms. If you are an unbeliever this shows how religion is just a natural phenomenon, if you are a believer it might show that God inscribed in your mind (via Design) a program for His belief.
March 22nd, 2006 at 8:26 pm
I do not think there would be a ‘god gene’, so much as a ’sceptic gene’.
March 22nd, 2006 at 9:00 pm
We could be hardwired to believe in God but that does not necessarily mean that God exists. It proves nothing. The concept of God exists. That we know. “Does God exist through us (only)?” is another way to ask the question.
Can we know if God exists?
Perhaps we are wired to look for cause and effect in order to survive. This leads to existential questions and gods/God or the concept of gods/God. That might answer the question why id our minds evolve that way.
Belief in gods or God confers calm in the face of fear and anxiety from the forces of nature (including animals and other humans). If a mind is calm, not fearful, there is advantage; one can think more clearly, intelligently. This would also work well on the group level.
March 22nd, 2006 at 9:06 pm
“So this hour we want to ask — and try to answer, from a variety of perspectives — are we hardwired (i.e., did we evolve) to believe in God?”
This is a reasonable and legitimate statement of the question. However, and I am sincerely trying to avoid pedantic games here, the question does assume a preconditioned framework and model based upon what can be described as a rationalist, scientific worldview. To illustrate, one may ask “Why did God(s) hardwire us?” “Why does Maya reveal a darwinan model or quantum mechanics, etc?” There are many other flavors and combinations. And I’m not trying to irritate. Moreover, I’d rather put this out there without giving in to my preconditioning, but that may not be possible.
The reason I’m pointing this out: proponents of a scientific worldview and a spiritual worldview often (not always) end up talking past each other because the underlying assumptions and frameworks are fairly distant and vastly different. The discussions that ensue rarely close the gap. Perhaps it can’t be closed. I honestly don’t know.
Are our questions worldview-sensitive as to the answers that are found? Does context create the answer for: Why does a person(s) adopt the beliefs they adopt? How do they change over time? How do they become more brittle over time? Can they become more flexible? What is the role of internal/external factors. Etc. I believe there used to be legitimate discussions about angels.
If memory serves, I think James Burke has described this process as something akin to wandering around a dark house with a flashlight. You tend to find what the tool illuminates. It doesn’t mean you won’t be able to find interesting things. But, you may never be able to see the whole enchilada. Which is not to suspend the effort, it’s to try to cool the discourse.
Finally, I sort of think science and religion focus on completely different qualitative questions. There is some overlap. Both have informed each other. I’m not sure why there is not more mutual respect. I suspect these fields need each other like two competitive siblings.
and now, “Waiting for jazzman, nikos, et al.” I am very much looking forward to the discussion and discourse. Best to all.
March 22nd, 2006 at 10:02 pm
I do not think there would be a ‘god gene’, so much as a ’sceptic gene’.
hm
that’s like saying that there is a homosexual gene and not a heterosexual gene.
Belief in gods or God confers calm in the face of fear and anxiety from the forces of nature (including animals and other humans).
this sort of introspective musing doesn’t get us far. after all, suicide attacks (muslim and shinto, for example) and mother-theresa-like-behavior are motivated by belief in god too, are these ‘beneficial’?
However, and I am sincerely trying to avoid pedantic games here, the question does assume a preconditioned framework and model based upon what can be described as a rationalist, scientific worldview.
well yes, dan dennett is looking for a naturalistic answer. myself, i tend to think that the naturalistic answer is all there is re: religion, but that doesn’t imply that that’s the only answer. some cognitive scientists who study religion from a naturalistic perspective themselves believe in a supernatural god. it isn’t so much as talking past each other as your second point: to some extent is a qualitative difference in what you are exploring. of course, some religionists (”fundamentalists”) challenge science on its own grown and attempt to formulate a deductive counter-paradigm (creationism, intelligent design, etc.).
March 23rd, 2006 at 12:55 am
“Is god in our genes?”"
Does it matter?
The better questions to my mind, “How can we learn to respectfully co-exist with 6 billion different perceptions of what this existence is about?”
Unless, we’re expecting to use genetic engineering to rid ourselves of the burden of spirituality. WOnder what the world would be like then. Or, we could engineer in the spiritual gene, especially the non-inquisitive, narrow minded one. Now, there’s a vision to strive for.
Sarcasm aside, what is the purpose of this exercise? What do we hope to achieve that might lead to more peace on the planet? I ask with an open mind. I’m sure that I’m missing something.
March 23rd, 2006 at 1:02 am
First, the politesse:
Thank you ROS for this show, which I have been anticipating for weeks like a kid on his way to Dairy Queen.
Second, the whining: giving us a mere one-day ‘warm up’ is cruel and unusual punishment!
So unfair!
Right. Enough petty whining. Nobody likes or respects whining.
I vigorously recommend to everyone Daniel Dennett’s Breaking the Spell http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/067003472X/002-7919812-6315255?v=glance&n=283155 (after linking, scroll down to see reviews).
It is easily the single most illuminating book I have ever read on the topic of religion and its appeal to the human mind.
I will however include a ‘disclaimer’ critique in my next post – but for only one relatively minor quibble.
This post, however, I originally worked up weeks ago, but must now conclude in unanticipated haste. Forgive, please, any inconsistencies or other flaws.
I hope Mr. Dennett will address the substance of this inquiry on the show. It would be best, however, since the premise of this inquiry is unconventional, if he read the whole of this post before Brendan or Chris poses the question, which I’ll frame as a title:
Would evolutionary theory be better received if science’s explanatory metaphors weren’t legacies of ancient notions of theistic agency?
Would it not be more effective and appealing if science used organic (or even musical or astronomical) metaphors instead: because machines are the opposite of life?
Having read Darwin’s Dangerous Idea, I am aware of Mr. Dennett’s enthusiasm for the descriptiveness of ‘evolutionary engineering’. Yet this metaphoric choice wasn’t made by Mr. Dennett, but by the scientists, like Charles Darwin, of the Industrial Revolution era, and furthered by their followers. (For those unaware of the way metaphor underpins even the most ordinary language, please see Lakoff & Johnson’s Metaphors We Live By http://www.powells.com/biblio/2-0226468011-0 ) Moreover and worse, this metaphoric language is a second-generation hand-me-down from the Biblical story of Genesis, wherein ‘God created life from clay’ – like a potter – a primitive form of ‘engineering’.
Machines require outside assembly of constructed parts; life is entirely different: it is a ‘parthenogenetic’ environmental transformation – it grows in essence by osmosis: absorbing material energy from without to create, sustain, and replicate itself.
It is, in a word, organic. Indeed, it seems much more ‘magical’ than ‘machine-like’.
Evolutionary science’s mechanistic paradigms reduce us all to pistons, lifters, flywheels, and cogs in a ‘godless’ and ‘soulless’ universal machine – and a machine with no apparent purpose. Is it any wonder people abandon belief in evolutionary theory in favor of religion’s unverifiable but millennia-old reassurances and moral castigations?
Mechanistic metaphors are the worst choice for explaining the inner alchemy and environmentally transformative magic of life.
To pretend otherwise is not merely a legacy of too damn much orthodoxy, but of an inexcusable failure of imagination.
You might as well compare a lawn mower to a horse, just because both seem to ‘graze’.
How much more palatable might lay-people find state-of-the-art evolutionary theory were it explained via organic (or even musical or astronomical) metaphors?
How many more or fewer ‘Intelligent Design’ battles would we have to fight if we stopped insulting everyone’s intelligence through the implication that we’re nothing but walking chemical soups of mechanistic impulses? And is this not the most glaring example of Daniel Dennett’s ‘greedy reductionism’? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greedy_reductionism
Human intuition knows better: it rejects such dehumanizing metaphors. Yet we all suffer accidental consequences when those who reject insulting science retreat into the beckoning ‘memetic’ arms of superstition-based belief systems.
As in: “Science reduces me to a reactive machine inside a walking sack of chemical-water. But Jesus doesn’t.�
Reason can and should easily win this tug-of-war, but it needs a serious upgrade in the building blocks of its arguments. Evolutionary science ought to elevate and celebrate life, not insult it by framing it within an obsolescing Industrial-Revolution paradigm that implicates it as impulsive, reactive, and stupid.
That’s how the robber barons of 19th century industry thought of their laborers, for cryin’ out loud.
I can anticipate at least one possible reaction to this: “Any attempt to replace the long-established mechanistic paradigm with an organic one runs the risk of seeming ‘spiritual’ and therefore will jeopardize its scientific credibility� but this would be a red-herring argument – and another example of orthodox unimaginativeness.
Public acceptance of evolutionary theory would almost surely increase from an organically reinvigorated—and inherently more accurate—scientific explanation of life; and, Daniel Dennett’s hopes to illuminate the gulf of credibility between the scientific worldview and the religious would benefit profoundly and perhaps permanently were such a paradigm shift to occur.
Moreover, he is possibly the single most qualified thinker to take on the task.
Dennett is an already established philosophic voice among scientific circles – he has the necessary credibility.
His inventive comparison of religion to music in ‘Breaking the Spell’ demonstrates his intellectual depth and diversity.
And should a revision of paradigm from the mechanistic to the organic prove overly awkward because the metaphor is too close in nature to the concepts compared, perhaps he could at the very least exchange the mechanistic for the musical!
We’d lose those insufferably degrading machines in favor of angelic choirs and orchestras.
Who, pray-tell, could argue with that?
* * *
This is a brief appendix, including examples of alternative metaphors. Please forgive my inclusion of material I’ve posted in other threads:
1. It’s worth arguing that ongoing belief in the Biblical God is intuitive – that is, it’s founded on one’s trust in the input from one’s senses.
To the writers of the Bible, the universe was bounded by blue skies above, which at night shone with random sparkles that earned, via the human propensity for pattern-making, organized constellation-names.
Similarly, these writers knew, apocryphally perhaps, of volcanoes, and so were able to conceive of an under-world boundary that eventually evolved into the Christian concept of Hell.
This universe was bounded elsewhere by lands reputedly peopled by incomprehensible races and fantastical creatures. And to the west lay the Sea.
Such a universe – that sliver of the world perceptible to human senses and embellished only by rumor, legend, and superstition – can easily be explained as the Creation of a Father-Potter-God like Yahweh.
In a world wherein ‘religious authorities’ (who can’t objectively prove their contact with a god, and so simply prey on people’s credulity) deny the validity of effectively proven science, the credulous of the modern world can fall back onto the ‘small universe’ gleaned through one’s senses – which intuitively jibes with the teachings of ancient religions.
Is it any wonder that simpler, fundamentalist explanations of human purpose retain their popularity?
The Bible’s ‘God in Heaven’ (apparently located somewhere above the Holy Land) is of a very much smaller scale than appropriate to the universe’s infinitely stretching network of indestructibly immortal energy.
The universe perceptible by telescopes, microscopes, and their radio- and electron- using offspring, is a very different animal.
This universe requires not belief in a potter-God (who in books like ‘Judges’, by the way, tells his favored people to slay, conquer, and enslave others), but in something much more appropriate and rational.
This universe deserves a less mechanistic, and therefore more intuitively comprehensible and appealing paradigm:
What if ‘Natural Laws’ were understood instead as ‘natural’ or ‘universal customs’ – behavioral consistencies that stem not from an (implied) authorial lawgiver but are simply the predictable operative patterns of universal forces such as the gravitational, the electromagnetic, and the (twinned) nuclear?
Doesn’t science, in its seemingly eternal skirmishes with religion, shoot itself in the foot by retaining the implication of a ‘lawgiver’ when instead it could just as easily substitute the notion of ‘custom’ – which carries no such implication of author or arbiter?
Remember: science doesn’t need to sway scientists, but the lay-folk whose tax-monies fund science!
Make it convincing, dammit!
2. Other descriptive metaphoric possibilities that spring to mind might involve explaining evolution’s ‘neutral accidents’, ‘happy accidents’, and ‘fatal accidents’ as ‘melody’, ‘harmony’, and ‘dissonance’ – although I don’t much expect this off-the-cuff notion to pass scrutiny. (I, after all, am not the professional thinker!)
Next, from Jonathan Marks’s What It Means To Be 98% Chimpanzee:
‘The mitochondrion, a subcellular organelle universally known in biology textbooks as “the powerhouse of the cell�, generates metabolic energy for the physiological processes of life.’ (pg.33)
‘Powerhouse’ is straight out of the Industrial Revolution lexicon.
Here’s a small, imperfectly thought-out set of alternative metaphoric descriptive possibilities:
From astronomy: ‘the sun of the cell’
From music (1): ‘the drums of the cell’
From music (2): ‘the (orchestral) conductor of the cell’
From life: the ‘muscle of the cell’
Or ‘the musculature of the cell’
Or ‘the legs of a cell’
Each of these points to the primacy and function of the mitochondrion, while not reducing-by-implication its subject (life) to constructed or engineered machinery.
I know with utter certainty this much: if I’m ‘engineered’, then I expect a manufacturer’s recall any minute now.
Life forms are far too idiosyncratically individual to be ‘engineered’. We are ‘evolved’: accidental experiments of a planet busily using sunlight to recombine its elements into self-aware entities.
Not ‘artifacts’.
Moreover, I do not ‘have’ a body. I am this body.
My body is not the house (or car!) of my consciousness. If anything, my consciousness is my body’s ‘mitochondrion’.
And the sooner science begins rectifying its inadequate descriptive choices, the sooner we – the whole of humanity – can reasonably evaluate the inappropriate implications and destructive biases of religion.
March 23rd, 2006 at 1:18 am
My father was an atheist and my mother is a Christian. Does that mean I got my religion gene from my mother?
And I did get the religion gene if there is one. In my lifetime I have committed myself to and practiced three different religions not counting peripheral involvement in other religions. I was raised as a Disciple of Christ, have been a founding member of a Pagan Goddess Circle for over 20 years and I am now a Buddhist.
What I am thinking about regarding this OS thread is how and why I became a Buddhist. It was not a sudden conversion. I’d been interested in Buddhism ever since I read Alan Watts in High School. I’d been going to meditations and teachings at a Buddhist center for years. I’d never felt the need to make it official. But I took refuge, the ritual of actually becoming a Buddhist, shortly after Bush invaded Iraq, not at all what I expected I would do.
I thought if/when we invaded Iraq I would go down to Seattle and stop traffic or hurl red paint on the steps of the Federal building and stage a die-in. One way or another I expected to fly into action. Instead, I laid on my bed… or my floor… listening to the news in utter despair. The next opportunity I had, I took refuge in the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha. A wise lama took a snip of my hair and gave me a Buddhist name. Looking at it now in light of the question, are we hardwired for religious engagement, I am examining my own process. I’d tried really hard to stop the war before it started so I was tired. I was depressed. Not only did I feel a desire to be comforted by the teachings and by belonging to a group of likeminded people but I also felt a real need to commit myself to something beyond immediate dilemmas, embrace the insecurities and examine life in a meaningful way. I needed to sit quietly and watch my breath.
I think I am hardwired for religion. I’m not so sure about anybody else.
March 23rd, 2006 at 1:35 am
Sarcasm aside, what is the purpose of this exercise? What do we hope to achieve that might lead to more peace on the planet? I ask with an open mind. I’m sure that I’m missing something.
to know? isn’t that enough? though seriously, scott atran, who works in this paradigm in regards to religion has spoken of terrorism and how we might approach it taking into account human cognition and social psychology. before you can build a bridge you have to know something about engineering. before you can embark on a program of social engineering you should know something about society.
and btw, this isn’t sacracism: Or, we could engineer in the spiritual gene, especially the non-inquisitive, narrow minded one. Now, there’s a vision to strive for. it is a caricature of the research program which doesn’t reflect any reality, though it does make for good one-liners to those who haven’t bothered to read dan’s book.
March 23rd, 2006 at 1:41 am
My father was an atheist and my mother is a Christian. Does that mean I got my religion gene from my mother?
talking about a “religion gene” is as accurate as talking about a “height gene.” “religion” is a complex trait, and it is can be better though of as a normal distribution, with most people in the middle tapering off at the extremes, the zealous and the secular. as such it is likely the outcome of a confluence genes, environment and the interaction between the two. a particular genetic background might predispose you to certain outcomes, but expectation is not inevitability. religion is, to use genetic lingo, a quantitative trait, and so it is governed by statistical laws, not deterministic ones.
let’s get past the overly simple cut-outs, makes for great one-line rhetorical questions, but it allows us to evade the deeply textured aspects of the question on hand.
March 23rd, 2006 at 1:45 am
also, i will be frank and contend that getting many (most) religious people to approach their process of belief as a natural phenomenon is as likely as god creating a rock he can not lift: religious people imbue deeply personal ontological significance to what they believe and why they believe. this isn’t normal evo-psych at work here, this is not an exploration of banal universals, it is entering into territory which has motivated people to kill….
March 23rd, 2006 at 1:53 am
Nikos: regarding music. I wish I could remeber who said, “Nietche killed God. Duke Ellington brought God back to life”.
March 23rd, 2006 at 1:55 am
Despite the thought-provoking excellence and counter-conventional brilliance of Daniel Dennett’s Breaking The Spell, and, as a fellow atheist (at least by Judeo-Christian-Islamic norms) I urge Mr. Dennett to revise and exclude from future prints and editions his thoughts on page 21:
“I am a bright. My essay ‘The Bright Stuff’, in the New York Times, July 12, 2003, drew attention to the efforts of some agnostics, atheists, and other adherents of naturalism to coin a new term for us nonbelievers, and the large positive response to this essay, helped persuade me to write this book. There was also a negative response, largely objecting to the term that had been chosen (not by me): bright, which seemed to imply that others were dim or stupid. But the term, modeled on the highly successful hijacking of the ordinary word ‘gay’ by homosexuals, does not have to have that implication. Those who are not gays are not necessarily glum, they’re straight. Those who are not bright are not necessarily dim. They might like to choose a name for themselves. Since, unlike us brights, they believe in the supernatural, perhaps they would like to call themselves supers. It’s a nice word with positive connotations, like gay, and bright, and straight. Some people would not willingly associate with somebody who was openly gay, and others would not willingly read a book by someone who was openly bright…�
Sadly, this is utter self-sabotage. Despite protestations to the contrary, it is profoundly condescending.
The putative parallel between ‘gay’ and ‘bright’ is bogus. ‘Gay’, in its original meaning, was an emotional condition available to any and all. Homosexual identification with this word is not insulting to anyone else. (Harmlessly amusing, at worst.)
Arrogating a time-honored metaphor for ‘intelligent’ is entirely different. ‘Bright’ isn’t a variable human condition: it implies a superior intellect. ‘Intelligence’ is not a condition considered available to any and all. It is associated (rightly or wrongly) with elites.
It implies that those who choose millennia-old traditional belief in the supernatural are something less than intelligent: it attempts to expropriate ‘intelligence’, intellect, and enlightenment to the irreligious.
Using it as an identifying label for secularists discredits all secularists – including me – and I, for one, am not at all pleased by this.
I am in fact insulted and angry that one of the thinkers who champions my cause – and who does so with peerless skill – is so isolated in his ivory tower and surrounded by sycophantic pupils that the profound damage done by this arrogance is lost on him.
Please, Mr. Dennett: if you must choose a pop-culture name for the non-theistic like you and me, please choose something different.
And quickly.
Your wonderful, insightful, and potentially revolutionary book will otherwise likely fail to make the difference you surely hoped it might.
It deserves better. And so does the enlightened view of the world and nature we both wish to promulgate.
March 23rd, 2006 at 2:02 am
“getting many (most) religious people to approach their process of belief as a natural phenomenon is as likely as god creating a rock he can not lift”
Pagan religions are entierly based on natural phenomina.
March 23rd, 2006 at 2:04 am
Plus of course this idea that God is a “he” is relativly recent.
March 23rd, 2006 at 2:22 am
Peggy Sue: Alan Watts (who I’d make an honorary Guttersnipe if I could) was the philosopher who, in my less than articulate youth, provided the explanations I needed for my inarticulate discontent with the silly Western-Biblical ‘universe-is-an-artifact’ paradigm.
The guy is commonly dismissed as a ‘popularizer’ of Eastern thought (which is true) but he was also a genius of metaphoric explanation – and I’m not so sure that his personal takes on his subjects weren’t improvements in very many important ways.
Alan Watts rocks. Just as hard and good now as he did while alive.
March 23rd, 2006 at 2:32 am
Pagan religions are entierly based on natural phenomina.
two words: dumb generalization. why? “pagan” is a complementary term, it doesn’t define a set of doctrines, it is a negative of what the abrahamic religions are (the christians named the pagans pagans [’rustic’ from pagani], the pagan philosophers for example called themselves ‘hellenists’ in the 4th century). in other words, paganism includes the entire sample space of beliefs that excludes the small constrained region of judeo-christian-islamic monotheism (conventionally understood).
Plus of course this idea that God is a “he� is relativly recent.
at attempt at profundity by using “quotes”? what is this? read a book like theological correctness you will note that “offline” conceptions of god(s) are very different than the air-fairy formulas propounded by theologians. the cognitive model that people have of god(s) is pretty straightforward, a personal agent + plus some superhuman counterintuitive “powers.” a personal agent can have a sex, we don’t need to posit that moses or someone in the court of rehoboam in jerusalem. this isn’t rocket science, it is an extrapolation of human intuitions constrained and biased by our cognitive architecture.
* john polkinghorne, anglican priest and physicist, has written a few books where he argues in fact that the supernatural non-materialist aspects of christianity are interpolations into the materialist-natural religion of the hebrews by a pagan-philosophical matrix. i don’t buy the either|or aspect of these arguments, but it shows how worthless these generalizations can be. religions aren’t platonic ideals, they are statisical distributions, and words can muddle far more than they clarify when not used judicioulsy.
March 23rd, 2006 at 2:34 am
some interesting stuff:
A Comprehensive Theory of Religious Cognition.
March 23rd, 2006 at 2:41 am
razib: ‘dumb’ is pejorative. Enough so to be hostile.
I like your stuff. A lot. Please carefully consider your possible, (unintentional?) truculence. I’ve got ambitions to discuss the implications of this thread’s topic with you, but please don’t paint us into a corner.
For a decade and a half, I too considered myself a ‘pagan’ – not a ‘country-dweller’ – but a nature-reverencer. (NOT WORSHIPPER — that’s a monotheistic conceit, I think.
Give me time to type up a thoughtful reply, and thank you already for all the great stuff you’ve contributed – not only here but elsewhere, and in spades.
March 23rd, 2006 at 2:42 am
if you guys like dan dennett’s book, here’s some other good stuff:
religion explained, pascal boyer.
in gods we trust, scott atran.
why would anyone believe in god, just l. barrett.
theological incorrectness, d. jason slone.
mind
and religion, harvey whitehouse.
, d.s. slone.
a theory of religion, rod stark.
best
March 23rd, 2006 at 2:48 am
yeah, sorry about the word dumb
it’s late. i’ll jump in tomorrow if i have time. if i can’t comment, shout out to dan dennett!
nikos, for the record, i’m a nominalist in regards to most religious terms and definitions. i don’t think they really “exist” as useful reifications even. but, we are fooled into thinking that they are real categories because people will kill over them. see the homoiousios vs. homoousios controversy for what i mean: i don’t think the two really mean anything, i think they are word games, but people were willing to kill others over it, so we might as well give words their due.
March 23rd, 2006 at 3:24 am
ok…before i go to sleep…i will outline something real quick to explain where i’m coming from, because i think my comments were be more intelligible if i don’t back to this thread tomorrow.
‘religion’ is a diffuse and very slippery term. it isn’t a platonic ideal that exists somewhere, it is within the heads of human beings. there are multiple dimension of religion.
1) the cognitive/basal level.
2) the social/ritualistic level.
3) the mystical level.
4) the theological level.
a generalization for one does not apply to another. for example, i think a lot of the conversations we have are biased toward #4. we talk about ‘monotheism,’ ‘monism,’ ‘pantheism,’ ‘panentheism,’ ‘the trinity.’ what does this mean? i hold that most theology consists of word-games which exhibit the form but not substance of deductive inference. i don’t think terms like ‘the trinity’ really means anything aside from a creed, because cognitive scientists have shown that #1 is what people really “believe” in a deep level, and regardless of whether you aver monistic pantheism or dualistic trinitarianism the mental model you have god(s) is basically the same. that doesn’t mean that people won’t kill each other over outward markers and confessions, but hey, that’s just human.
when it comes to human variation i think #3 really kicks in, though many humans are mystical, a small minority are highly mystical. neurotheology is exploring this aspect of religion.
but mysticism is not the sum totality of religion. there are plenty of people in category #2, where they are ’sunday epsicopalians,’ for whom religion is a social exercise that greases the wheels of the establishment.
these categories are not exclusive, rather, they nest into each other. #1 is normative and found in all societies. this is where biological evolution might offer insights. #2 is a higher level of complexity, but tends to be found in almost all groups. this is where group selection and what not might kick in (though i’m skeptical of group selection, see richerson and boyd’s recent work). #3 might be found in most medium-to-large societies, but lacking in a prominent fashion in small groups because only a small minority of humans are true mystics who command charismatic followings and small groups do not always harbor this kind of individual. #4 tends to be found in ‘complex’ societies with literate intellectual classes.
distinguishing between these aspects of ‘religion’ are crucial, i think, to clear and progressive discourse. as a younger atheist i mistakenly believed that #4 was the summum bonum of religion, i learned how to refute all the inductive and deductive ‘proofs’ of god. only later one did i realize that there was something ‘missing’ in my conception of the minds of other human beings. a lot of mental processes are ‘under the hood’ and unelucidated, and fall into category #1. i’m not a group oriented person, so #2 never had much appeal, and #3 is only something i feel the faintest whiff of (a trait which i think i share with most humans).
March 23rd, 2006 at 3:31 am
Razib: I fully understand the ‘lateness’ complication! It’s true for me right now, too, which seems to be adding up to a morning finish for my post.
Let me try this much at least: the show as teased above is at least slightly, if not wholly, misunderstood so far by the bloggers.
Dennett’s book only in passing considers anything like a ‘god-gene’: it examines the possibility that ‘religion’ is subject to ‘natural selection’ – via the usefulness of its dogma to the believers or proselytizers – as is genetic ‘DNA information.’
My take (having read the thing) is yes.
Emphatically yes.
So, the question isn’t so much whether people are ‘genetically prone’ to religion, but whether religion as a concept and in practice offers enough value to people to evolve like life does: into appropriate niches.
Again: yes. It does. Like a parasite!
It’s really a matter of personal taste and choice whether you think this ‘memetic parasite’ healthfully symbiotic or deleteriously malignant.
Read the book and think it out for yourselves!
I’ve got much more to say on this, but it’ll be a miracle if it comes before morning.
Night, all!
March 23rd, 2006 at 3:32 am
ok, one last thing, i think the thought of historians of religion like mircea eliade tends to seep into any discussion of religion as an analytic exercise (the tendency to dance around words as if they are what matters is part of this). i think that’s problematic because scholars like eliade fundamentally rejected the naturalistic/reductionistic paradigm.
March 23rd, 2006 at 3:36 am
the usefulness of its dogma
semantics! i don’t think anything like “dogma” existed prior to the rise of pan-ethnic states. i think “dogma” simply represents verbal “face paint,” a way to identify co-citizens. dogma is not what is parasitizing the mind…supernaturalism is, and that is far more diffuse than a narrow dogma. ultimately, i think that supernaturalism does not need dogma because it is so natural.
March 23rd, 2006 at 3:40 am
razib: Hokaaaay…. my comment, “Pagan religions are entierly based on natural phenomina” was certainly a generalization but no more a generalization than…. your comment….
“getting many (most) religious people to approach their process of belief as a natural phenomenon is as likely as god creating a rock he can not lift�
and certainly not any dumber.
March 23rd, 2006 at 3:45 am
razib: your 3:36 AM says to me: “tell him to read the book! What he’s talking about is in there!”
So, I’m tellin’ ya.
It’s in there. Read it and tell me what you think.
I suspect you’ll like it.
March 23rd, 2006 at 3:48 am
and by the way…
My father was an atheist and my mother is a Christian. Does that mean I got my religion gene from my mother?
that was a joke…. sheesh
March 23rd, 2006 at 4:20 am
was certainly a generalization but no more a generalization than….
semantics, but you said “entirely” and i said “many (most).” “entirely” implies a platonic ideal or an absolute truth, “many (most”) implies an inductive/probabilistic assertion. whether one assertion or the other was dumber is a matter of opinion.
nikos, yeah, i’ve read some of it. haven’t had time to finish….
March 23rd, 2006 at 4:27 am
re: adaptiveness and fitness. here is my attitude toward religion, at least stipulating religion #1, i suspect that there is no first order fitness benefit. eg., “religion brings calm, calm people are more fit.” or, “religion mitigates fear of death, and so people are less on edge, so more fit.” i don’t think religious belief arises to satisfy any tightly focused existential unease which has negative adaptive impact. rather, i suspect that religion is as natural a byproduct of a well oiled mind as heat is a byproduct of a powerful engine. the cognitive architecture implied by an optimal human mind is easily and naturally parasitized by religious beliefs. it isn’t a premeditated design feature, but the laws of cognitive neuroscience might make its ubiquity inevitable.
March 23rd, 2006 at 8:20 am
Allison says: “Is god in our genes? Does it matter? The better questions to my mind, “How can we learn to respectfully co-exist with 6 billion different perceptions of what this existence is about?�
Perhaps if we, at least those of us working on this level, understand the basics underlying the 6 million or so different perceptions, those variations will seem less important than the similarities. There will be more understanding and more compassion. Consequently the walls we erect will perhaps crumble.
In other words I think this is an attempt at not only self-understanding, but understanding and making sense of the bigger whole of the world ( and universe) around us. We are able avoid each other less and less.
This too is about survival– survival of the planet and life as we know it.
That’s why I think we pick away at this.
Thanks for the question.
Razib- I am not sure I understand you. My idea is that religion does indeed “mitigate fear of death” and so people are more calm, more able to think clearly and thus more fit. The problem arises when religion becomes so ornate and entrenched and part of the social fabric that it cannot acommodate reason, especially science. Then it works against survival.
The Dalai Lama is well aware of this.
March 23rd, 2006 at 8:51 am
frag that “bright” stuff.
we’re transhumanists.
but that likely has worse connotations than “brights”.
“human beings are not souls or spirits but evolved biological beings genetically programmed to survive, reproduce, and self-destruct.”–Young, designer evolution
religion evolved as a selective advantage.
when we defeat aging and death, will there still be religion?
March 23rd, 2006 at 8:59 am
and, of course god is in the genes. like Sir Richard says, religion is parasitic on our natural coding for altruism, kinship promotion, species promotion, care of children, generousity.
we are programmed to readily believe in the supernatural for a variety of reasons that increase fitness, like Atran and Boyer say.
It is easier to believe, than to not believe.
March 23rd, 2006 at 9:06 am
Ok. I completely totally sincerely disavow anything remotely religious: the whole deal. Start to finish. I’m not an atheist; that would put me on the spectrum. We’re simply the symbol-makers. god is a word symbol. It’s not a metaphor, it’s just a symbol like any other word, for what we don’t have answers about. Sooner or later there will be answers.
Once, while I was seeing a Jungian analyst I had a dream in which she invited me to a party at her house. At the party I ran into four other friends and we decided to do a comedy skit, like burlesque. But we started laughing at our own jokes and the dream turned into a shreiking, gasping laughing fit where you’re laughing so hard you can’t breath. On and on, gasping hilarity. I was loving it and then it gor better, way WAY better. Suddenly we all merged into each other and everything else and there was only this overwhelmingly pleasurable silvery one-ness. Think orgasm forever but perfectly still with no body times a thousand. Oh oh it was like nothing else. But almost as soon as I got there it started to break up. Not back to the dream but back in my bed awake. I was gasping for breath and the bed was bouncing against the wall. I HAD been laughing that hard and probably had stopped breathing.
Ever since Ithat night I’ve been convinced that my rapture–and everyone else’s–is a brain state produced by oxygen deprivation. Like orgasm, it’s an inbred reward for doing something necessary but unpleasant; childbirth and dying.
When I told my analyst she lit up with an elfin grin and observed; “You know, I’ve always wondered why the Buddhist monks are so jolly, always ready to laugh. I think you just answered my question.
It’s all just word symbols, in this case signifying nothing. So simple, it’s nothing.
March 23rd, 2006 at 9:07 am
and razib, i think you could argue that there is a first order fitness benefit on reproduction rate, or number of children per family, for all religions.
hmmm…didn’t we just talk about that at gnxp?
March 23rd, 2006 at 9:33 am
I would suggest a good read of any of Joseph Campbells books. It’s my worthless opinion that back in the old days when we were living on a more immediate tribal level, religion was an important part of the tribe. The belief system they had contained all the rules and standards they used to interact with each other and established the boundaries they all lived within. Everything outside those boundaries was other. Of course the god, or gods, they believed in was their god. Look at the old testament. The jews were god’s chosen peoiple. Of course they were, who is going to have a god that is for the other guys. They had a religious leader who was the interpreter and receiver of messages from god. I think a god or religion was useful at that level.
As life has gotten more complicated and the world filled with more complex thinkers, like those on this sight, religion and thinking about god became more complicated. Madison avenue, 1600 Pennskyvania avenue, found god quite useful, They’ve taken a belief in god and an obiedience to god and converted it to their own purposes. Tie god to your polotical party or product and people will feel an obligation, sometimes a moral obligation to side with you.
Bush and company understand these principles and this war is, in part, based on those principles. The evil empires are the others ridding the world of them is our god given task. They are a threat to our way of life and very existance. When delivering this message it aleays helps to throw in a healthy dose of biblical sounding words.
On an individual level I think the idea of a god is comforting to some people. It gives them some way of managing the chaos and helplessness they feel.
March 23rd, 2006 at 10:16 am
Take a look at some of the names we have come up with - Allah, Yahweh, Jehovah, The Holy Trinity, Igzi’abihier, Jah , Ngai, Niskam, Ishvara, Brahman, Baquan , Anami, Purush, Radha, Swami, Radha, Ekam, Bahá, Ahura Mazda, Kisaski
It goes on and on and on, this site explores them.
http://www.lowchensaustralia.com/names/gods.htm
March 23rd, 2006 at 10:49 am
If we are “wired” for this, the crazy configuration of our livewires adds up to something shocking indeed! pun intended.
My alltime favorite God has to be George Burns.
BTW, the above names came from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God
March 23rd, 2006 at 11:10 am
razib: and btw, this isn’t sacracism: “Or, we could engineer in the spiritual gene, especially the non-inquisitive, narrow minded one. Now, there’s a vision to strive for”. it is a caricature of the research program which doesn’t reflect any reality, though it does make for good one-liners to those who haven’t bothered to read dan’s book.
Oh, I must admit that I have not read the book and there was not enough lead in to this for me even peruse it. I was being sarcastic. Didn’t realize there was some program that I might be misrepresenting. My apologies if I was disrespectful.
March 23rd, 2006 at 11:31 am
A book called: “The Masks of God”, also explored the many faces and names of god, gods. One thing I admired about Joseph Campbell , is he sought out the commonality of people, their myths and religions. He showed me that when you refine us down to our basics we have more in common than not, belief systems included. Perhaps if we looked in that direction we could begin to understand and accept other ways of seeing things.
March 23rd, 2006 at 11:34 am
Does God belive Daniel Dennet?
March 23rd, 2006 at 11:34 am
Razib: re: adaptiveness and fitness. …. i suspect that religion is as natural a byproduct of a well oiled mind as heat is a byproduct of a powerful engine. the cognitive architecture implied by an optimal human mind is easily and naturally parasitized by religious beliefs. it isn’t a premeditated design feature, but the laws of cognitive neuroscience might make its ubiquity inevitable.
I’m trying to understand what you’re getting at. The metaphor above doesn’t work for me. Heat is a by-product but does not “parasitize” the engine. Why do you consider the mind parasitized (meaning, the the religious belief is a parasite on the mind?) by religious belief? Parasite has negative connotation- parasites are usually a destructive force to the host. While I can see the destructive force of religion in human history, I think what is not recorded in history is the beneficial force that a vast majority of individuals experience. I don’t think religion is parasitizing, I think self-serving people parasitize other people, using fear to push for religious beliefs that are not truly spiritual. It is fear, not religion that creates the destructivity.
And since you parse out 4 different aspects of religious belief (that I prefer to call spirituality, but hey, just more semantics), are you referring to all 4 aspects when you speak of parasitizing?
March 23rd, 2006 at 11:34 am
OK, I admit it. I,m dim. Dimmer than a 40 Watt bulb in a Walmart warehouse. And so those brights got me confused. Can’t figure out all of the comotion, you know. I mean, I can tell you, we dims don’t take this nearly as seriously as those brights seem to think. Well, not as seriously as we should, anyway. Ask any pastor. True, not true? Genetic, or not? Heck if I know. Anyway, it’s time for lunch.
March 23rd, 2006 at 11:55 am
Raymond, I agree with you about one thing. Some of the “brights” seem to just dismiss some of the “dims” comments by ignoring them. They breeze right on by and hope the lessers will go away and quit interrupting them. Not everybody was lucky enough to have the fine education President Bush and some of our loftier neighbors here have. I, for one, would like to apologize for getting in the way.
March 23rd, 2006 at 11:58 am
Babu- you dream is reminiscent of an LSD trip. Life-altering because you lose your individuality, your ego. They call this an “out of body experience” where you become one with ALL, but unless you have actually had it, it really means little. Good description though, very good.
March 23rd, 2006 at 12:16 pm
Assuming we believe the bible is inspired of God…the bible says “…that it does not belong to man even to direct his own step.” (Jer. 10:23) To be successful, truly happy we have to rely on the one who made us.
March 23rd, 2006 at 12:20 pm
Aha, babu, the lack of oxygen, now I understand. They say the lack of oxygen kills brain cells.
March 23rd, 2006 at 12:30 pm
Another pubradio show, “The Infinite Mind”, also addressed this “are we hard-wired for ‘God’?” question last fall…there was a real interesting interview with Dr. Michael Persinger, who managed to duplicate the sensation of a divine presence nearby using a electrostatic helmet.
There’s a realaudio link here, Persinger’s interview is about 34:00 into the show.
http://www.lcmedia.com/mind406.htm
March 23rd, 2006 at 1:00 pm
I’m willing to put money on my speculation that it’s all, including god, oxygen deprivation or the like. Maybe acid grabs or eats the O2 molecules. And meditation definitely lowers breathing; its a part of the practice. Oxygen scarcity.
If there’s any religious hard-wiring, this is it. Lack of air. We interpret it as divine when it’s just divinely pleasant.
March 23rd, 2006 at 1:19 pm
O2 deprivation may be the key or the trigger, but I don’t know if it’s the whole story. We can’t be discovering anything here- there must be some research on this, or there should be.
What about whirling dervishes? Are they get O2 deprived as they whirl?
Do mountain climbers have a religious/God experience as they climb to the higher elevations?
The latter may not produce a relgious experience.
Something else must kick in, like an individual’s need or desire. ( Je ne sais quoi)
March 23rd, 2006 at 1:21 pm
babu: “And meditation definitely lowers breathing; its a part of the practice. Oxygen scarcity”.
Are you sure? I always thought I was getting more oxygen when meditating because when I’m paying attention to my breath it is slower and each breath is longer and deeper. (is that why my knees hurt and I’m not experiencing orgasmic bliss?)
March 23rd, 2006 at 1:31 pm
What is the sound of one hand clapping Babu. Go beyond reason. Reason, when isolated, can be a dangerous toy.
March 23rd, 2006 at 1:55 pm
Here’s another thought: If oxygen IS the trigger, think about what we’re doing to the global oxygen supply with air pollution. ACID rain?
We’re poisoning ourselves and having an out of body experience at the same time. Poison rapture.
Oh m’gawd. Try this. What if the rise of air pollution is causing the rise in fundamentalism and terrorism? They’re telling the martyrs they go directly to heaven. I wonder if there’s an appreciable degeneration in air quality around all those oi- producing facilities in the Middle East?
Where are the highest densities of air pollutin in the U.S.? Wouldn’t I love to see if there’s a correlation between per capita fundamentalists and say
March 23rd, 2006 at 1:57 pm
Babu I just reread your earlier comments. You wrote: “Suddenly we all merged into each other and everything else and there was this overwhelmingly pleasurable silvery one-ness.” That has to be one of the most perfect descriptions of losing your illusion of seperateness and blending back into the oneness that some would call GOD. When you are in REM sleep your body is almost in suspended animation. Your respiration and heart beat slow to the level of just keeping your physical self alive, leaving your spiritual self free to go back into the world it knew before it came here. Your reasonablr mind isn’t receiving much oxygen at this point. Thank you for sharing your wonderful experience with GOD.
March 23rd, 2006 at 1:58 pm
SUV’s and Hummers?
That’s oil-producing facilities, above.
March 23rd, 2006 at 1:58 pm
Here is a link to a neuroscience article on meditation.
Long-term meditators self-induce high-amplitude gamma synchrony during mental practice
http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/101/46/16369
March 23rd, 2006 at 2:01 pm
Peggysue: I think you need a few giggles to get you on your way. I propose we all bring lots of jokes to our ROS meetup in Anacortes on May 7th.
March 23rd, 2006 at 2:05 pm
Babu is a hindi term for father, it’s also another name for God. Are we just being tested here? Is Babu just Buddha disguised as a jester.
March 23rd, 2006 at 2:24 pm
I had seen a summary of that very interesting research previously. Scanning it, there’s no mention of chemistry; it’s all hertz and waves. I’d like to know what the behavior of brain oxygen levels is associated with each of the states?
March 23rd, 2006 at 2:32 pm
Come to Anacortes WA on May 7th and find out.
Nikos and peggysue and I are having a meetup. We set the date and time yesterday in the Convergence thread. It’s a funny read, actually.
March 23rd, 2006 at 2:35 pm
ok, finished breaking the spell this morning. good review of the literature, though i suggest that people really interested still reading atran or boyer (i don’t know if i recommend stark as much, the guy has too much attitude, while d.s. wilson is kind of hot-air in my opinion).
March 23rd, 2006 at 2:35 pm
Gee serious lee I think “father is ignoring us. I’ll just practise my deep breathing and try to communicate with her on the astral plane.
March 23rd, 2006 at 2:38 pm
My idea is that religion does indeed “mitigate fear of death� and so people are more calm, more able to think clearly and thus more fit. The problem arises when religion becomes so ornate and entrenched and part of the social fabric that it cannot acommodate reason, especially science. Then it works against survival.
assume it does “mitigate fear of death,” does that make you less cautious, ergo, decreasing your fitness? that is, you are calm in the face of situations that should trigger your flight-or-fight response. do i believe this? no, my point is that you can make any story fit from introspection on this level.
the second point is that prior to the rise of zoroastrianism it does not seem like the afterlife of most religions was something to look forward to. hades is not elysium.
the last point is that fitness is a net equation. it might have positive benefits x, but if it has negative implications y, and y + x is less than 0, well, it shouldn’t spread, should it?
March 23rd, 2006 at 2:41 pm
We all talk about God (capitalized) as if He (caps again) were some old dude with a beard sitting on a throne (Zeus?). God is not in our genes. God is us. We created him. Just ask Joseph Campbell. All the rest is just mental masturbation.
How’s your life? How ya livin’? Now that’s real. If only science had a voice people understood within context of their everyday lives. It does somewhere but is rarely expressed.
Where’s the convergence of good science and good literature? That I would like to read.
March 23rd, 2006 at 2:54 pm
and razib, i think you could argue that there is a first order fitness benefit on reproduction rate, or number of children per family, for all religions.
hmmm…didn’t we just talk about that at gnxp?
religions like lamaism and medieval roman catholicism did fine though they encouraged celibacy on their practitioners. one could appeal to a form of group selection, but i’m skeptical. i don’t think modern situation applies to the past, and context matters. intergroup variation doesn’t tell us much, but, assuming the axiom that more-religion=more-reproduction, one would wonder why the (relatively) religious nations of southern europe are so much less fecund vis-a-vis scandinavia. social context matters. now, the more pointed point is that does intragroup variance in reproduction correlate with religiosity? today, yes, i would argue it does. but if frequency dependent selection is in play than it need not.
the short of it would be that i suggest caution on interpreting religion #1 (basal cognitive biases toward supernaturalism) as being fitness enhancing. i think the fitness detracting aspects of secularism are correlates, not causative.
March 23rd, 2006 at 2:54 pm
Since I’ve got the book in my lap (and am rereading it with unaccustomed haste) I think it would be constructive to our conversation here to quote Dennett’s chapter summaries:
Chapter 1:
Religions are among the most powerful natural phenomena on the planet, and we need to understand them better if we are to make informed and just political decisions. Although there are risks and discomforts involved, we should brace ourselves and set aside our traditional reluctance to investigate religious phenomena scientifically so that we can come to understand how and why religions inspire such devotion, and figure our how we should deal with them all in the twenty-first century.
Chapter 2 (premise): There are obstacles confronting scientific study of religion, and there are misgivings that need to be addressed. A preliminary exploration shows that it sis both possible and advisable for us to turn to our strongest investigative light on religion.
Chapter 2 (conclusion): Religion is not out of bounds to science, in spite of propaganda to the contrary from a variety of sources. Moreover, scientific is needed to inform our most momentous political decisions. There is risk and even pain involved, but it would be irresponsible to use that as an excuse for ignorance.
Chapter 3 (premise): If we want to know why we value the things we love, we need to delve into the evolutionary history of the planet, uncovering the forces and constraints that have generated the glorious array of things we treasure. Religion is not exempt from this survey, and we can sketch out a variety of promising avenues for further research, while coming to understand how we can achieve a perspective on our own inquires that all can share, regardless of their different creeds.
Chapter 3 (conclusion): Everything we value—from sugar to sex to money to music and love and religion—we value for reasons. Lying behind, and distinct from, our reasons are evolutionary reasons, free-floating rationales that have been endorsed by natural selection.
Chapter 4 (premise): Like all animal brains, human brains have evolved to deal with the specific problems of the environments in which they must operate. The social and linguistic environment that coevolved with human brains gives human beings powers that folk religions apparently evolved to handle. The apparent extravagances of religious practices can be accounted for in the austere terms of evolutionary biology.
Chapter 4 (conclusion): Extrapolating back to human prehistory with the aid of biological thinking, we can surmise how folk religions emerged without conscious and deliberate design, just as languages emerged, by interdependent processes of biological and cultural evolution. At the root of human beliefs in gods lies and instinct on a hair trigger: the disposition to attribute agency—beliefs and desires and other mental states—to anything complicated that moves.
Chapter 5 (premise): The false alarms generated by our overactive disposition to look for agents wherever the action is are the irritants around which the pearls of religion grow. Only the best, most mind-friendly variants propagate, by meeting—or seeming to meet—deep psychological and physical needs, and then these are further refined by the incessant pruning of selection processes.
Chapter 5 (conclusion): The obvious expensiveness of folk religion, a challenge to biology, can be accounted for by hypotheses that are not yet confirmed but testable. Probably the excess population of imaginary agents generated by the HADD yielded candidates to press into service as decision aids, in divination, or as shaman’s accomplices, in health maintenance, for instance. These co-opted or exapted mental constructs were then subjected to extensive design revision under the selective pressure for reproductive prowess.
Chapter 6 (premise): As human culture grew and people became more reflective, folk religion became transformed into organized religion; the free-floating rationales of the earlier designs were supplemented and sometimes replaced by carefully crafted reasons as religions became domesticated.
Chapter 6 (conclusion): The transmission of religion has been attended by voluminous revision, often deliberate and foresighted, as people became stewards of the ideas that had entered them, domesticating them. Secrecy, deception, and systematic invulnerability to disconfirmation are some of the features that have emerged, and these have been designed by processes that were sensitive to new answers to the cui bono? question, as the stewards’ motives entered the process.
Chapter 7 (premise): Why do people join groups? Is this simply a rational decision on their part, or are there relatively mindless forces of group selection at work? Though there is much to be said in favor of both of these proposals, they do not exhaust the plausible models that attempt to explain our readiness to form lasting allegiances.
Chapter 7 (conclusion): The human proclivity for groupishness is less calculated and prudential than it appears in some economic models, but also more complicated than the evolved herding instinct of some animals. What complicates the picture is human language and culture, and the perspective of memes permits us to comprehend how the phenomena of human allegiance are influenced by a mixture of free-floating and well-tethered rationales. We can make progress by acknowledging that submission to a religion need not be cast as a deliberate economic decision, while also recognizing the analytical and predictive power of perspective that views religions as designed systems competing in a dynamic marketplace for adherents with different needs and tastes.
Chapter 8 (premise): The stewardship of religious ideas creates a powerful phenomenon: belief in belief, which radically transforms the content of the underlying beliefs, making rational investigation of them difficult if not impossible.
Chapter 8 (conclusion): The belief that belief in God is so important that it must not be subjected to the risks of disconfirmation or serious criticism has led the devout to “save� their beliefs by making them incomprehensible even to themselves. The result is that even the professors don’t really know what they are professing. This makes the goal of either proving or disproving God’s existence a quixotic quest—but also for that reason not very important.
Chapter 9 (premise): The important question is whether religions deserve the continued protection of their adherents. Many people love their religion more than anything else in life. Do their religions deserve this adoration?
Chapter 9 (conclusion): Before we can ask the question of whether religion is, all things considered, a good thing, we must fist work through several protective barriers, such as the love barrier, the academic territoriality barrier, and the loyalty-to-God barrier. Then we can calmly consider the pros and cons of religious allegiance, looking first at the question, Is religion good for people? And the evidence to date on that question is mixed. It does seem t provide some health benefits, for instance, but it is too early to say whether there are other, better ways of delivering these benefits, and too early to say if the side effect outweigh the benefits.
Chapter 10 (premise): The more important question, finally, is whether religion is the foundation of morality. Do we get the content of morality from religion, or is it an irreplaceable infrastructure for organizing moral action, or does it provide moral or spiritual strength? Many think the answers are obvious and positive, but these are questions that need to be re-examined in the light of what we have learned.
Chapter 10 (conclusion): The widely prevailing opinion that religion is the bulwark of morality is problematic at best. The idea that heavenly reward is what motivates good people is demeaning and unnecessary; the idea that religion at its best gives meaning to life is jeopardized by the hypocrisy trap into which we have fallen; the idea that religious authority grounds our moral judgments is useless in genuine ecumenical exploration; and the presumed relation between spirituality and moral goodness is an illusion.
Chapter 11: The research described in this book is just the beginning. Further research is needed, on both the evolutionary history of religion and on its contemporary phenomena, as they appear to different disciplines. The most pressing questions concern how we should deal with the excesses of religious upbringing and the recruitment of terrorists, but these can only be understood against a backdrop of wider theories of religious conviction and practice. We need to secure our democratic society, the home base for this research, against the subversion of those who would use democracy as a ladder to theocracy and then throw it all away, and we need to spread the knowledge that is the fruit of free inquiry.
Daniel Dennett, Breaking The Spell: Religion As A Natural Phenomenon, Viking; 2006
The devil, of course, lives in the details between all those ‘premises’ and ‘conclusions’. I’m willing, provisionally, to ‘play Dennett’ – but since my understanding of the book is my own idiosyncratic take, I can hardly be trusted to answer questions about the work as Dennett would. (Nevertheless, I appear to be one of the few of us who had read the thing.)
With that (substantial!) caveat in mind: let’s party!
March 23rd, 2006 at 2:56 pm
p.s. the fact that religious expression and zeal exhibits a range and is heritable suggests that its fitness implication isn’t that unambiguous. traits with powerful long term fitness implications get fixed and no variation shows up in the population due to genotype. we know this isn’t true, bouchard’s twin studies suggest a 0.5 heritability for religiosity. in other words, if religiosity and fitness were so strongly correlated atheists would be as rare as people with 3 fingers, and i don’t think that’s the case.
March 23rd, 2006 at 3:03 pm
I’m trying to understand what you’re getting at. The metaphor above doesn’t work for me. Heat is a by-product but does not “parasitize� the engine. Why do you consider the mind parasitized (meaning, the the religious belief is a parasite on the mind?) by religious belief? Parasite has negative connotation- parasites are usually a destructive force to the host. While I can see the destructive force of religion in human history, I think what is not recorded in history is the beneficial force that a vast majority of individuals experience. I don’t think religion is parasitizing, I think self-serving people parasitize other people, using fear to push for religious beliefs that are not truly spiritual. It is fear, not religion that creates the destructivity.
And since you parse out 4 different aspects of religious belief (that I prefer to call spirituality, but hey, just more semantics), are you referring to all 4 aspects when you speak of parasitizing?
my analogy wasn’t apt in that i was addressing different aspects simultaneously.
religion #1, cognitve basal biases works like so, religion:though, work:heat. that is, we have social intelligence and tend to see agency around us. if we subtracted this, we would lack religion because religion needs both of these. but we tend to exhibit “false positives” in detecting agency (design/teleology) where there is none. i hold that this is a byproduct of our mental architecture. we could work in ways to avoid the biases that allow us to see agency where there isn’t (gods where there isn’t), but that might be costly, just as designing engines that dissipate heat well might be. i don’t think that religious beliefs are so costly that modifiers have evolved to fine tune our brain so we don’t enter into the “false positive” problem. evolution is a good enough solution.
re: parasitize, you can use another word. meme for example. same idea. basically, religion is not one thing, but a complex of ideas. these ideas tend to be really good at fitting into the preconceptions of our brain, and so they flourish.
religions 2-4 can fit into this picture, but they are higher-level aspects. functionalism and the idea that certain ideas are more “fit” than others are more relevant here too, though i’m still skeptical of group selection or anything like that, especially in #4.
one thing to remember is that humans seem to be conformist have a tendency to “do what everyone else is doing.” so a lot of the fitness vis-a-vis religion might be a byproduct of the fact that the majority of people are religious, so it increases your mating prospects if you are religion (this is a modified form of runaway selection).
March 23rd, 2006 at 3:09 pm
Isn’t it amazing (& appalling) how you can’t see typos until after you’ve posted?
Chapter 2 (premise) – “preliminary exploration shows that it is both�
Chapter 2 (conclusion) – “Moreover, scientific inquiry is needed to inform�
Chapter 4 (conclusion) – “At the root of human beliefs in gods lies an instinct on a hair trigger�
Chapter 9 (conclusion) – “Before we can ask the question of whether religion is, all things considered, a good thing, we must first work�
& “It does seem to provide�
Apologies to Mr. Dennett and to any and all readers!
March 23rd, 2006 at 3:10 pm
Isn’t it amazing (& appalling) how you can’t see typos until after you’ve posted?
we are all sinners.
and taking a break from seriousness, what’s up with dan dennett and his beard? atheists aren’t supposed to look like prophets out of the hebrew bible…are they?
March 23rd, 2006 at 3:20 pm
Amen, Acuman. Your superior mental acuteness astounds me. Perhaps Babus orgasmic ecperience was a direct result of her mental masturbation? I also agree that things do get a bit lofty around here at times but going to great heights can also lead to oxygen deprevation and just another chance to meet god. Love God
March 23rd, 2006 at 3:26 pm
OK, I’ve outed myself. I admit it, I am God. If you have anything more to say about me please address me directly. Sorry about all the misunderstanding, we’re working on coming up with a website to try and clear up all the misconceptions you poor souls labor under. My advise to all of you is: “Keep it simple stupid.” Now, I want you to all make up and stop associating me with the republican party. I haven’t voted in ages.
March 23rd, 2006 at 3:31 pm
I concur with razib in many areas.
Most explicitly: ‘religiosity’ isn’t genetic.
Yet religions are ‘memetic’ idea clusters that survive within human culture via an extrapolation of the ‘natural selection’ dynamic: if a new religion offers a greater value to a person or population than an old religion – or no religion – people will adopt it. Same goes for change within a religion: whatever tenets, dogma, doctrine, and practices survive scrutiny best will endure. The rest, like ‘witch-doctoring’ fall to history’s wayside.
Once again: ‘God’ isn’t in our genes, nor is religion.
But we are a pattern- and inference-making species, and, until recently, we relied on supernatural explanations for answers about the world beyond the perceptions of our five senses.
Now, instead, we amplify our senses with technological aids and with reason, and religious premises can’t endure the scrutiny. Religion therefore survives via fears of personal oblivion, appeal to supernatural ‘magic’ (like soul salvation), and by fighting science tooth and nail.
This worries me deeply.
The next ‘dark age’ isn’t predestined by nay means, but it sure is likely if religions forcibly curtail or end scientific inquiry.
March 23rd, 2006 at 3:42 pm
I neglected to mention religion’s best ally: social pressure. As in: you must believe as I, your father (or mother or brother or king) believes. Failure to comply will lead to consequences.
March 23rd, 2006 at 3:52 pm
How many of us are aware of the man in Afghanistan facing execution for his repudiation of Islam, and conversion to Christianity?
Now that’s social pressure!
He might escape with his life by a convenient employment of an ‘insanity’ judgment, which adds a delicious layer of Orwellian logic to the entire sordid business.
March 23rd, 2006 at 3:59 pm
Hey Nikos….. it’s a law about typos…. no matter how hard you scour, there are always plenty waiting for you on the other side of the wall that you can no longer change. Personally I like to see other typos-I ‘d hate to be the only one.
Back to business- thanks so much for all the work involved to give us the summaries.
I notice that Joseph Campbell has been mentioned several times on this thread….bravo!
However I’m with Raymond in the dim bulb group.
Razib.. I am out of your league I think but I persist:
“assume it does “mitigate fear of death,â€? does that make you less cautious, ergo, decreasing your fitness? that is, you are calm in the face of situations that should trigger your flight-or-fight response. do i believe this? no, my point is that you can make any story fit from introspection on this level.”
We need our fears to a point. A sustained “fight or flight” reaction leads to mental illness so we do need calming, very much so. There is so much to talk about in this vein but think of post traumatic stress syndrome as one extreme. Think of the victims of natural disasters whose nervous systems have been shocked. What brings them back to normalcy? What calms?
March 23rd, 2006 at 4:00 pm
more interesting reading material (PDF):