…and this is a 
No, really, I doubt that religion is adaptive
Category: Religion
Posted on: March 25, 2007 6:46 PM, by PZ Myers
That Allen MacNeill fella is crazy brave — after trying to approach Intelligent Design seriously as a course subject, now he's going to teach another controversial summer seminar on whether religion is adaptive. I think where the previous course ran off the rails was in the too-respectful attempt to encourage the participation of the Cornell IDEA club — he basically ended up aiding and abetting a gang of ignorant ideologues, and that's also the way it got spun in the media, to the creationists' advantage. I agree that it's a good idea to engage the counter-culture warriors who are pushing the unscientific glop on the public, but we can't begin with the premise that ID creationism has some validity; that's doing the work of the Discovery Institute. Discussion of evolution has to begin with the scientific foundation of modern evolutionary biology, and if anyone wants to wiggle in with their alternatives, they need to do the hard work of providing evidence, first.
I also have to disagree with one of the premises of his course description. After explaining the ubiquity of religious belief, it's variation, and the existence of people who have no use for religion, he says:
To an evolutionary biologist, such pan-specificity combined with continuous variation strongly suggests that one is dealing with an evolutionary adaptation.
No, it most definitely does not.
I have noticed a lot of students wandering around with these white rectangular objects with cables hooked up to their ears. I've also discovered by personal experience with a teenager that these objects are quite precious to their owners, and are practically revered. Yet there are also some students who don't care at all for them. Do evolutionary biologists look at the iPod and say "A-ha! There is an evolutionary adaptation"? Probably not. Evolutionary psychologists might, but we already know they're nuts.
I think instead that we ought to determine if there is a hereditary component before talking about its likelihood of having an evolutionary function. Since we see that whole cultures can rapidly, within a few generations, shed much of their religious baggage; since religion seems to be largely a product of indoctrination rather than a built-in product of the brain; and since individuals can exhibit reversals from religiosity to atheism and vice versa within their lifetime, I remain unconvinced that there exists any kind of direct biological predilection for religion. The frequency of a phenomenon is not an indicator of its adaptive value, nor do variations reinforce that notion.
For another example, people in the US largely speak English, with a subset that speak Spanish, and a few other languages represented in scattered groups. That does not mean we should talk about English as an adaptive product of evolution. Language, definitely—there's clearly a heritable biological element to that ability. Similarly, religion may easily be a consequence of a universal trait like curiosity (we want answers to questions, religion provides them, so it spreads—even if the answers are all wrong) or empathy (we are social animals, we like community activities, religion hijacks that communal urge), but religion itself is but one replaceable instance, an epiphenomenon that too many people mistake for the actual substrate of the behavior.
Comments
PZ - nice straw man with that iPod example. Just keeping us on our toes, sorta like Dembski, I guess.
On a more serious note, I'd recommend reading Religion Explained, by Pascal Boyer. It contains some thought-provoking arguments about how a lot of pan-cultural aspects of religion (spirits and ghosts, for example) fit into various neurologically-coded inference systems that do have adaptive value, and which would be heritable. Religion is not necessarily adaptive, although it certainly can be argued that some of the social aspects could be adaptive.
I'm plowing my way through a copy; it is tough sledding for my ancient synapses. You'd probably read it more quickly
Posted by: Albatrossity | March 25, 2007 7:02 PM
The iPod example isn't a straw man -- it shows that ubiquity+variation is not sufficient cause to expect an adaptive explanation.
Posted by: PZ Myers | March 25, 2007 7:06 PM
BTW, on their blog The Design Paradigm, they cut off posting to their topic Does Darwinism predict anything? after only 3 days. I guess it wasn't going the way they wanted it to.
Posted by: ivy privy | March 25, 2007 7:17 PM
Yeah, except for the fact that iPods are (at least not yet) pan-culturally ubiquitous. And they don't (at least not yet) reproduce by themselves.
Look, I don't really want to argue about your analogy. I would be interested in your take on the ideas in Boyer's book.
Posted by: Albatrossity | March 25, 2007 7:17 PM
If the ubiquity of religion is an evolutionary adaptation of humans, is the ubiquity of fleas, then, an evolutionary adaptation of dogs?
Posted by: Charles Stores | March 25, 2007 7:17 PM
I Agree with you PZ This is my Life in Two worlds.
The religious world is kept together by continuous reading of the scripture,church services, group fellowship and prayer with others of the faith.. It is necessary to continually reinforce ones beliefs otherwise one is likely to backslide.
The non religious scientific world consists of understanding that the world is the result of natural phenomena with no supernatural intervention.It is actually difficult to comprehend and also requires constant study to keep one on track.It is much easier to believe that 'God did it' and without a reasonable understanding of molecular biology,genetics evolutionary biology and paleontology one can easily believe in ID or whatever.
I have had the benefit of living in both worlds being born into a very religious family but being rather idle didn't much go for studying the bible, which in any case didn't make any sense to me, though I enjoyed the fellowship. However with the inevitable backsliding through my studies of biology genetics biochemistry, micro-biology and ecology long before any of my lecturers knew anything of the DNA molecule and its implications. It almost seems they knew nothing of Darwin or evolution because they never mentioned it.This in the 1950's and I'm closing in on eighty. Only later did I with great effort learn about DNA with a smattering of Molecular biology that I managed to come to grips with, though I am sure I now understand more than most people. I studied evolution through the help of many writers adding to the knowledge I already had, so that now everything is understood in the light of evolution and it makes sense. But with my 'evolution' I wondered why my very intelligent friends, accountants and lawyers, didn't move on with me. Now people like Richard Dawkins are helping me to understand this very strange phenomenon.
Posted by: T | March 25, 2007 7:27 PM
Which of these elements have to be present for something to be religion?
1. Manicheanism: History is defined by a struggle between the saved / enlightened / good on the one hand and the damned / benighted / evil on the other.
2. Millenarianism: The bad, sinful, despoiled world / system will be destroyed and replaced by a perfect one.
3. Magical thinking: Wanting things to happen can make them happen. (prayer, sorcery, The Secret...)
4. Anthro-telos: The cosmos was created for a purpose and humanity has a role in the fulfillment of that purpose.
5. Anthropomorphic deity: There exists a deity who cares about humanity and has humanlike emotions such as jealousy, anger, and mercy.
Posted by: Colugo | March 25, 2007 7:29 PM
Yes! Unleash your Inner-Gould, PZ!
Posted by: Dave Carlson | March 25, 2007 7:34 PM
Belief and Biology, Robert Sapolsky's talk to the Freedom From Religion Foundation, is very interesting.
I don't see why the Ipod example counts against adaptivity, in fact the example of language rather suggests the reverse. If it's plausible that a talent for language is innate (even though speaking a particular language is not), why is it not also plausible that an inclination towards buying the latest in-group-sanctified object of desire is also innate (even though a lust for white headphones is not)? Ditto a tendency towards magical thinking (as contrasted with belief in a specific doctrine).
Posted by: Jeremy Henty | March 25, 2007 7:45 PM
For one thing, religion almost certainly is too late to be considered to be "adaptive" simply because of its near-ubiquity in cultures. Does it exist more than 100,000 years ago? At least we don't know that it does, nor even that it exists 50,000 years ago, even if slightly later cave paintings are often interpreted as "religious".
Far too many biologists look at a "feature" and suppose that it exists for a "function". They don't ask what religion actually is. That is, they don't ask how primates lacking definite knowledge about the world (except for a very few basic functions and observations) even could know the world, except "spiritually". Early humans had to think of things in terms of their own functions and capabilities, and they also encountered much that would provoke "spiritual awe". "Primitive religions" appear to be due to not much more than these factors (as socially developed), so that this "religion" is primarily a linguistic manipulation of the basic "knowing" of the world by a primate who was profoundly ignorant of said world (quite contrary to Gonzalez's ramblings about how we're suited to knowing our world--see The Privileged Planet).
As such, religion is merely a bastardization of the "spirituality" with which we humans had to meet the world originally. I say that because I do think that such a basic "spirituality" can have value on its own, with little value to the individual (and much value to anachronistic groups) when religions co-opt this native "spirituality". Even to understand religion itself requires that we recognize how the human psyche was taken over by powers who knew how to twist the psyche to their own purposes.
There's no doubt that religion has had adaptive value to social groups who wanted to control other humans, yes, but that's about as far as I'd go with that. So it is true that civilization probably does rest at least in part on the control and reduction of the native "spirituality" which is actually just our means of understanding the world prior to science, however there is absolutely no reason to think that even that function is anything more than an anachronistic division of the world into barbarian and "us" (perhaps necessary for Greeks to survive, not very conducive to the prevention of nuclear annihilation today).
The naive assumption that the "spiritual psyche" exists for religion is about as pig-ignorant and contrary to science as the belief that our ability to detect patterns ought to lead us to the belief that life was designed. Of course it is important to understand how religion came out of evolutionarily adapted traits, however MacNeill only begs the question of evolutionary processes if he assumes that the apparent consequent of religion was actually the "goal" of our "spiritual" understandings of "nature".
The "spiritual" psyche almost certainly is the result of tens of millions of years of evolution, while religion is probably at most 100,000 years of social misconstrual of the psyche into an ever-shifting domination of our "natural spirituality". Religion is what represses the individual's "spiritual" understanding of the world, and if it is very important to cultural evolution, almost certainly it is unimportant to understanding biological evolution.
What is more, there is no obvious reason why all "religions" belong within a single category. MacNeill is mistaking a linguistic convenience, a broad lumping together of greatly varying cultural phenomena which we call "religion", as if it necessarily designated one single phenomenon (yes, there are shared features--doesn't mean that they're the same sort of phenomenon in fact).
A religion based upon a book may well be considered a different phenomenon from an animistic and evolving cultural tradition by which certain peoples know their worlds. If you're going to discuss the two together, you had better investigate and explain why they're legitimately discussed together, rather than simply assuming that they're the same basic phenomenon based upon some overly simplistic English words.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/35s39o
Posted by: Glen Davidson | March 25, 2007 7:46 PM
I would like to make the point the religions clearly change over time. Although religions tend to claim along with infallibility and self evident truth, eternal unchanging beliefs, in fact within a matter of decades (certainly faster than many evolutionary changes) they change dramatically. Of course referring to them as evolving (beyond the irony) is metaphorical. So called Cultural evolution not the same as physical evolution.
Posted by: marc sobel | March 25, 2007 7:50 PM
Religion spreads and evolves exactly like a virus. Humans speak different languages. Religion, by and large, cannot pass the language barrier.
Maybe humans speak different languages for the evolutionary reason of protecting language speakers from the potentially harmful effects of their neighbors religions. If everyone spoke the same language, then a religious idea that evolved to spread fast and was destructive to it's host would wipe out humanity.
Posted by: TomK | March 25, 2007 7:56 PM
Kp t p PZ. Mk sr y shw n rspct fr yr ppnnts.
Ths wll nsr tht thy dn't vr rspct y, nd mk t hghly nlkly tht thy wll cm rnd t yr pnt f vw.
f crs, thts nt th pnt, s t? Th pnt S t nslt nd hrt, bcs t mks p fr dspntmnts n lf.
Rght, PZ?
Posted by: Galstone | March 25, 2007 7:56 PM
I think the question is not correctly formulated. "Religion" is without a doubt on the list of human universals. This does not mean that if you find one culture without religion, you take it off that list. This is not how it works.
Being a "universal" is not the same thing as being an adaptation, and I essentially agree with PZ's arguments in this regard (and yes, to an evolutionary psychologist ... well, who cares what they think so let's not even go there... )
But this does not mean that there is nothing to be learned about this trait ... religion as a common behavior ... from an evolutionary perspective.
One of the problems, by the way, in this discussion is linking "adaptation" with some kind of value judgment ... this is why people either really want to or really don't want to see something like religion, or something like racism, as adaptive or as an adaptation.
I personally think there is an evolutionary "explanation" for religion. My own version of this is nothing I would put forward as anything like a certainty, I've just got a few ideas on it. I don't want to close down the idea of discussing religion as a phenomenon that can be understood in a broad evolutionary framework. This is not to say that there is some straight forward fitness value to religious behavior. In fact, I would put religious behavior as not one thing, but a collection of effects that arise from various aspects of human kinship behavior and other aspects of social behavior. Certainly, there can be no heritable component in the sense that there is a gene or set of genes that ultimately cause the development of a religious brain.
Indeed, if we could manage one whole generation without religion, that would be the end of it as we know it. It may re-emerge in various forms here and there (it almost certainly would). So would a lot of other "universals." But children grown in isolation would, I think, have a low probability of thinking it up!
Posted by: Greg Laden | March 25, 2007 8:03 PM
I disagree with PZ here. I believe Religion was selected for as an earlier version of human thought to try and see order in the world, and share that order with the next generation. Just because religions are often stupid and maladaptive in this modern world does not mean they did not have an adaptive origin at one time..
Posted by: Lago | March 25, 2007 8:16 PM
The point of the language example is being misconstrued. It's a complaint with the people who argue that religion is adaptive; I'm saying it's comparable to saying English is adaptive. It misses the point that what's significant is some much more general, broader property -- language, or in religion's case, a collection of things like pattern recognition, empathy, or social reinforcement. Stating your premise as a search for the adaptive qualities of religion is simply asking the wrong question.
Posted by: PZ Myers | March 25, 2007 8:23 PM
There's a problem of conflation that plagues these discussions (well, at least one conflation. Maybe more). And to examine the issues rationally, one has to pick them apart.
To wit: superstition vs. religion.
The word 'superstition' has a bad connotation, but setting that aside, it means a "belief in things not seen". If you're going to try to understand universal human behavior, and possible evolutionary pecursors/consequences of belief, it's superstition you need to look at.
Religion, on the other hand, is "organized superstition", and is best understood as a parasitic meme that feeds off of superstition.
Posted by: Grumpy Physicist | March 25, 2007 8:24 PM
Lago: What is the adaptive value of understanding order and passing that on? How does that get selected for?
PZ: I agree, but I would add and underscore kin relationships.
Kinship systems function in ways that require inclusion, reference to, power relations regarding, and mating systems organized in reference to individuals who are not actually part of the immediate kinship system (ancestors). Some of these ancestors never really existed. Human kinship systems are distinct from chimpanzee systems, for example, because we regard as relatives blood kin that we have never met, while chimps almost never do (they are treated indiscriminately during the chimp "wars" for example).
A natural extension of, and potential tool to use in connection with, this kinship behavior includes spooky stuff like spirits.
(The distinction between fairies and gods is vague!)
Posted by: Greg Laden | March 25, 2007 8:34 PM
Yes -- there's a whole bunch of stuff that coagulates into this unpleasant mess called religion.
Better questions would be "what are the heritable properties of the human brain that contribute to complex social behaviors?" and "How do cultural epiphenomena like religion coopt these properties?"
Posted by: PZ Myers | March 25, 2007 8:46 PM
MacNeill wrote: To an evolutionary biologist, such pan-specificity combined with continuous variation strongly suggests that one is dealing with an evolutionary adaptation.
Huh? IIRC, MacNeill has been quite critical of panadaptationism. And now he goes around and blithely applies it to religion. Or is he talking about some general evolutionary biologist types and not himself?
Posted by: windy | March 25, 2007 8:50 PM
Does it exist more than 100,000 years ago?
The Tan Tan and Bhereket Ram finds indicate that it did.
That is, they don't ask how primates lacking definite knowledge about the world (except for a very few basic functions and observations) even could know the world, except "spiritually".
Eh? They would know the world through their senses. Unless you define "spiritually" usefully, it is also gibberish.
I would put religious behavior as not one thing, but a collection of effects that arise from various aspects of human kinship behavior and other aspects of social behavior.
I'll go along with that. Emergent behaviour.
Posted by: Graculus | March 25, 2007 8:51 PM
I'm not sure that I agree, but it kind of depends on how literally you expect to read the term "evolution". If you're talking about evolution as a biological process, then fair enough; I'm not even going to try to comment on that.
But otherwise, if you're meaning "evolve" in a much less literal sense to mean the adaptation and selection of concepts (or products, as in your iPod example) which can trace their origins back through a succession of related predecessors, then I don't honestly think the idea can be dismissed at all.
Posted by: Millimeter Wave | March 25, 2007 8:52 PM
If all you have is a hammer, you will treat everything like a nail. If all you have is a symbolic brain, you will treat everything like a symbol. Thus, we should not be surprised to find that most human behavior is "emergent."
(This is probably not limited to humans, that would be an assumption worth investigating but not worth relying on).
By the way, it has been argued that there is proto religious behavior (whatever that is) in chimps. It is implied, for instance, at the end of the film "The New Chimpanzees." Male chimps are vigorously displaying at a waterfall. The music is intense (added later, I assume). Jane Goodall's voice is inspiring. She speaks of the waterfall " ... always coming, always going, never the same from moment to moment..." and stuff like that.
It actually is not too difficult to make the transition in one's mind from the chimps displaying at the waterfall to, say, a bunch of holy rollers speaking in tongues and getting off on snakes.
Posted by: Greg Laden | March 25, 2007 8:55 PM
@PZ(#16):
Aren't you attacking a straw man? Has anyone really argued that holding a particular religious belief is adaptive? I've read a fair amount of this stuff and never seen anyone suggesting anything so silly. They generally agree with you when you say:
Careful! That's what Dennett says. You wouldn't want to be caught agreeing with him, would you? ;-)
The really interesting question is where do things like "belief in things unseen" fall in this distinction: are they like Ipod headphones or pattern recognition?
Posted by: Jeremy Henty | March 25, 2007 8:57 PM
There's no doubt that organized religion has helped some to survive. For some, it creates a social framework that may lead to spouses, jobs, removing destructive personal habits, emotional well-being, etc. In ancient societies, it may have been absolutely necessary to partake in religious ceremonies, to avoid being an outcast. But if religion is "adaptive", then so are schools, clubs, and corporations, political parties, and almost any social organization, since they can have similar effects. More complex adaptive things may actually be going on, and religion is just one way to package them.
The "social" aspect of religion is obviously vital. If it was just the "spirituality", they wouldn't have any need for organized religion, or weekly meetings. People would satisfy "spiritual" needs on their own, via meditation or whatever. But I don't see too much adaptive value to that.
Posted by: jeff | March 25, 2007 9:27 PM
Actually, squirrelly is what comes to my mind. :-)
MacNeill seems to go a long way to be provocative, but I think I have seen him discussing his underlying idea before, on his blog and elsewhere: "the specific context within which the capacity for religious experience has evolved is warfare".
I guess he will have to discuss the order of business here, religion vs warfare, with another evolutionist, Dawkins. And in all fairness, he not only claims it will be a discussion, he has as required text "The God Delusion". Probably not so common in courses yet, and again rather provocative.
I don't like his idea any more than when he opened himself up to become an authority reference for the ID movement. But this he should explore. And at least this time his course will be about science.
Whether religion is an epiphenomenon or not, I believe Greg is on to something, the other side of the coin as it may be.
There are other persistent facts that may or may not be "universals", like the fact that women own about 5 % of the global capital (IIRC, UN figures), that would likely have a hard time reappear if a couple of generations get used to the opposite.
Not that the contingency helps us to make the transition to a better state, but it is nice to have the hope it may be a stable change. While slavery isn't eradicated due to activities like sex trade and child labor, it isn't nearly as ubiquitous as in earlier history, in spite of that 'the market' is still there.
So when people object to the idea that religion could possibly follow the same path towards extinction, I always have the feeling they make a special plea based on no specific evidence. As so often with this topic. :-(
Posted by: Torbjörn Larsson | March 25, 2007 9:34 PM
I think if we are considering religion/spirituality and evolution then we need to consider an evolutionary significant time span. If this is significantly longer than a few thousand years, then whatever effects may have happened would be dominated by primitive religions, not the sort of modern world-religions we are most familar with today.
So presumably these religions most resemble Shamanism. Shamans often regulate important functions, such as what to plant when, and often are associated with primative usually herbal medicine. I suspect these Shamans probably learned some societially useful crafts, such as how to tell what time of year it is, and what sorts of plants are useful for treating illnesses. So they likely had societal benefits.
Could they also have individual benefits in the Darwinian sense, of improving the prospects for the Shaman's -or his close relatives genes? That question just might still be answerable by anthroploigists, or do too few uncontaminated humans now exist? Certainly one thing that has struck in my mind regarding evolution, is power-hungry behavior. It was discovered that an alarming fraction
(I think around 1%) of Orientals have the same Y chromosome -attrituted to Gengis Khan. So it seems that behavior which leads to a no-holds barred grab for power, while most likely leading to the premature death of the individual, may confer such high (Darwinian) fitness via the few winners as to be adaptive. So perhaps Shamanism -or at least the ability to become the Shaman might be highly adaptive.
Posted by: bigTom | March 25, 2007 9:35 PM
Religion does not have to be a genetically-based evolved module in order to: a) undergo replication, b) be subject to selection, or c) be potentially adaptive.
The question is, adaptive to what?
Some argue that religion is only adaptive to itself and is maladaptive to its hosts; in other words, it is a parasitic meme (mind virus).
But some variants of religion can be adaptive for their host populations. Especially if they enhance mass mobilization, and hence promote the formation, maintenance, and spread of host populations. Hence, it can promote the maintenance and spread of the host populations genes and other associated replicators - which need not have anything to do with religion itself nor specific faiths.
See the literature on dual inheritance, behavioral ecology, multilevel selection, inheritance systems.
Posted by: Colugo | March 25, 2007 9:44 PM
I think that the predisposition to think religiously and the predisposition to think scientifically are both present in the evolved human brain.
Protoreligion and protoscience, for instance, both result in invention of the lunar calendar, presumably for both astronomical and menstrual reasons.
This continued in the European calendar revisions for calculating Easter.
See, for example, neolithic lunar calendars carved in bone, and more mysteriously abstract:
http://www.research.att.com/~njas/sequences/?q=a100000&sort=0&fmt=0&language=english&go=Search
"... the oldest known mathematical object [made by humans]. The bone owes its name to the site where it was discovered. Ishango is in the Congo, 15 km from of the Equator, on the bank of the Edward lake. This large African lake, one of the sources of the Nile, is 77 km long and 42 km wide. The area is close to the Virunga National Park and the Congo-Uganda border." - Brussels Museum for Natural Sciences.
And no more jokes about menstruation and mensuration. Period.
Posted by: Jonathan Vos Post | March 25, 2007 9:45 PM
Hmm. What specific evidence indicates that these painted venus figurines were used in a religious context instead of being mere art or idols? (Art with n*u*d*e females seems to be popular in many cultures, btw. ;-) [Note: n*u*d*e is a dirty word on scienceblogs. Sigh!]
Posted by: Torbjörn Larsson | March 25, 2007 10:03 PM
Hello, everyone; I was out of town and didn't know the new summer course had hit the airwaves until this PM.
Despite my many attempts to be as clear as possible, it seems that I have failed. I am not asking if "religion" is adaptive, and certainly not if any particular religion is adaptive. On the contrary, what we will be considering this summer is whether or not the capacity for religious experience (i.e. what goes on in the human nervous system when one has a "religious experience") is adaptive.
To piggyback on PZ's analogy, it should be clear that the capacity for language is highly adaptive, but any particular language is entirely learned. I believe that the capacity for religious experience is exactly the same, and that will be my stated position in our seminar the summer.
And yes, pan-specificity is one of the criteria one looks for if one is interested in finding adaptations - notice, however, I said "finding" not "verifying" if something is, in fact an adaptation. As George Williams pointed out back in 1966, the concept of "adaptation" is an "onerous" one, and requires several levels of verification.
The approach that I have taken on this question is that, to qualify as a genuine evolutionary adaptation, a characteristic should ideally satisfy the following six criteria:
(1) It should be found in most (but not necessarily all) of the individual members of a particular species (or, to be more precise, a particular taxon)
(2) Despite being pan-specific, it should also exhibit what Darwin and R.A. Fisher called "continuous variation;" that is, it should exhibit a range of expression approximating a normal distribution (as in, for example, bill size in Galapagos finches), from individuals that express it to an extraordinary degree to individuals who hardly express it at all (with the majority somewhere in the middle)
(3) It should be possible to identify specific anatomical/biochemical/physiological structures that produce the specified function
(4) It should also be possible to identify a specific genetic basis for the characteristic; this genetic basis need not consist of a single gene, however (and indeed may consist of an entire hierarchy of interacting genes)
(5) Since adaptations are the result of natural (and/or sexual) selection, then it should also be possible to show that individuals having the characteristic have relatively higher reproductive success, compared to individuals that do not (or who do not express the characteristic as strongly)
Notice that in none of these have I mentioned the "ultimate" criterion:
(6) It should in principle be amenible to "functional analysis;" that is, it should be possible to answer the question "what is it for?"
That's because I believe (a la G. C. Williams and in keeping with the spirit of Gould and Lewontin's "spandrels" concept) that this criterion can only be inferred once one has verified the others, and only then with the greatest reluctance. To jump to this conclusion first is to become fatally seduced by teleology.
Furthermore, as I clearly stated in the course description, there are at least three different ways that the capacity for religious experience could qualify vis-a-vis the foregoing criteria:
(A) The capacity for religious experience could be directly adaptive in-and-of-itself (this is my position)
(B) The capacity for religious experience could be an epiphenomenon of another adaptation, such as "agency detection" (this is Pascal Boyer's position, and basically the "standard model" in the field today)
(C) The capacity for religious experience could be entirely parasitic, a kind of "mind virus" that exploits other adaptations but is neither directly adaptive nor an epiphenomenon of another adaptation (this is Richard Dawkins's position)
For myself, I believe that the capacity for religious experience qualifies as an adaptation on the basis of all seven of the criteria listed above:
(1) Pan-specificity: As Donald Brown and others have pointed out, there is no culture in the ethnographic record that does not include people who have this capacity
(2) Continuous variation: As PZ himself admits, he entirely lacks this capacity, but admits that there are many people who do; he thinks that those people are deluded, but I think that they are no more deluded than people who speak Yiddish in the midst of a dominant culture that speaks German are deluded
(3) Structural correlation: As D'Aquili & Newberg (among a growing cadre of researchers) have found, there are specific brain regions correlated with the capacity for religious experience
(4) Underlying genes: As Dean Hamer and his colleagues have discovered, there are also specific genes correlated with this capacity (the principle one being VMAT2, a gene that produces a protein that regulates the packaging of catecholamines in the CNS, especially dopamine and seratonin)
(5) Reproductive success: this one is trivial, as anyone can find examples of populations in which the capacity for religious experience has fitness consequences (check out the relative reproductive rate of the Amish, for example, or Catholics...but skip the priesthood ;-)
(6)Function: to put my hypothesis as concisely as possible, here is "MacNeill's Law":
Religion facilitate warfare, which facilitates religion.
There may, of course, be other functional explanations; that's why we're getting together this summer to talk about them.
For more on all of this, please check out my blog at:
http://evolutionlist.blogspot.com/2007/03/evolution-and-religion-is-religion.html
There are other posts relating to this topic in the archives, but if I list more than one here, the spam filter will deny posting this.
--Allen
P.S. As for courage, I don't think it takes that to do what I'm doing; I'm just having a blast! Curiosity may eventually kill this cat, but if so, I'll still have seven lives left after this summer is over...
*********************************
Allen D. MacNeill, Senior Lecturer
The Biology Learning Skills Center
G-24 Stimson Hall, Cornell University
Ithaca, New York 14853
*********************************
phone: 607-255-3357 (Allen's office)
email: adm6@cornell.edu
website: http://evolutionlist.blogspot.com/
*********************************
"I had at last got a theory by which to work"
-The Autobiography of Charles Darwin
*********************************
Posted by: Allen D. MacNeill | March 25, 2007 10:21 PM
To elaborate on my previous comment: These features are not required for religion to be potentially adaptive for host populations (the question of whether any of these are features of religion aside):
1) non-decomposability into other faculties (sociability, curiosity, empathy, anthropomorphic bias, binary thinking etc.), 2) genetic heritability, 3) status as an evolved cognitive module, 4) great antiquity, 5) universality, 6) adaptiveness in all of its specific manifestations, 7) adaptiveness in all contexts, 8) guaranteed future persistence.
Posted by: Colugo | March 25, 2007 10:22 PM
I keep thinking about the Andeman islanders. Being near the epicenter of the great earthquake, it was widely assumed that they were completly wiped out the the tsunami. It turns out their creation myths told them that when the earth shakes -run as far from the Ocean as possible. Unlike their modern neighbors in Indonesia, none of them were lost to the tsunami.
Posted by: bigTom | March 25, 2007 10:22 PM
Forgive me, but I seem to be missing something. The ipod analogy seems to me very dubious. I think that it's obvious that the extent of its universality is due to the globalization of information (advertising). If it were not for the internet and TV, stuff like that won't be universal at all. It would be very interesting if modern societies developed their own ipods individually, without any information from outside.
Maybe music itself would be a better analogy. In fact, I believe the ipod owners prize their ipods because of the music that's contained in them, rather than the ipod itself. They only prize the ipod to the extent of the sacrifice required to obtain it ($300 is a lot for students), but that would be the same as any other $300 piece of anything.
By the way, I don't know if you're giving the free flow of information (especially scientific advances) its due credit. I mean, that's mostly the reason why countries have become mostly secular and atheistic, and it's only happened since information is free to run, and only in those countries with most freedom of information. Even about half a century ago it would have been very difficult for a regular person to become an atheist, let alone whole societies.
So I think that the fact that people still persist on religion, and especially the fact that people re-convert to religion, as a possible indication of superstition and religious belief being in us. It's just our instincts and emotions clashing with reason one more time. Of course I don't have much evidence, but it seems like a reasonable assumption, as so seems yours.
Posted by: andyo | March 25, 2007 10:24 PM
The idea that there is a predisposition to think scientifically would be a rather novel thought, wouldn't it? Science as a successful activity is young. And most often one sees scientists complain that it is hard work and wisely note that "common sense" has nothing to do with its results.
Now, while these early tally sticks were interesting, I think it mostly merely points to our ability to count, as well as the calendar does. The later, as most early astronomy, also seems to attest to our ability to look for patterns.
Which btw the rather loose modern interpretations of diverse artifacts points to as well. Most of the links to the Ishango bone was outdated, but the Wikipedia article had a rather "overly enthusiastic view" (as another site said about a mathematicians analysis of the bone). Any article facilely mentioning prime numbers in artifacts is bound to raise a red flag in a skeptical reader.
Posted by: Torbjörn Larsson | March 25, 2007 10:25 PM
I was asked: "Lago: What is the adaptive value of understanding order and passing that on? How does that get selected for?"
When you are dealing with changing worlds, being able to adapt fast helps. Most mammals can evolve fast with simple variations in teeth while birds can do much the same as selective results in beak morphology increase chances of survival. Behavior on an "Pure" instinctual level does not evolve near as fast as learnt behavior can. By learning through trail and error, and then being able to teach what has been learned, a group can adapt much quicker to environmental change, and by way of doing so, out compete the competition.
How does this get selected for? Well, the ability to make correlations, that is seen in many animals to some degree (usually relatively small) can be selected for. The genes used to develop the brain in such a way that allow for increases associations would be to a selective advantage here, and this is just what we humans do. We not only can hear a can opener, and think "Food!", but can see patterns, and associate them with sounds, and then those sounds with ideas and so on. We do not need to ask, "why do I know that sharpening this stick, increases the ability for it to kill that animal?", we just need to know that association, by way of learning can tell us we increase our chance of eating if we remember these associations.
In short, early associations do not need make sense, just need to be able to help us survive. Having selection for an emotional response between these association would help cement these associations and help stimulate us into reacting to young, or others conflicting with them, as seeing a child picking up a bug or plant we have associated with sickness. If we then see a child "breaking the rules" we respond, and the child now can be selected for by how well he responds to being told not to pick that plant up...
Posted by: Lago | March 25, 2007 10:33 PM
MacNeil lists three distinct models for the evolutionary explanation of religious belief. My bet is all three are right. In favor of Boyer, the mechanisms behind simple superstitions seem to be a misfiring of quite useful pattern-recognition systems and not much more. In favor of Dawkins, the religions that currently dominate have many features that seem designed to keep people believing independently of whether or not the claims are true, and the virus model fits this very well. However, the extraordinary human tendency to believe strange things seems to go far beyond what can be explained by either of those two models. This fact, combined with the frequent sucess of religious institutions as instuments of social cohesion, leads me to think that part of the reasons we have religion is that false beliefs, under the right circumstances, are very effective at motivating action that will promote survival.
Posted by: Chris Hallquist | March 25, 2007 10:58 PM
Actually, PZ, I think your post and comments clearly demonstrate why religion *is* adaptive (or at least clearly point the way toward the adaptive behavior of which it may well be a substrate). It's precisely what raises my hackles most about religion (and about your posts re religion vs. atheism and many of the comments on those posts). Very simply, it's "us" vs. "them."
Anything that tends to identify one more closely with a group - a group that might come to one's aid in time of danger, that might assist with various tasks of daily life - seems likely to enhance chances of survival and finding mates beyond what might be expected if one goes it alone. Saying proudly to one's like-minded fellows, "I am Christian/Jewish/Muslim/Buddhist/Atheist - I am one of *you*, not one of those Atheist/Buddhist/Muslim/Jewish/Christian fools!" - is an act for which analogues might well be found in the behavior of evolutionary predecessors.
Posted by: Jud | March 25, 2007 11:14 PM
"The idea that there is a predisposition to think scientifically would be a rather novel thought, wouldn't it?"
I don't know. Is this novel? Although I have taught the History of Science to hundreds of adult students, I do not pretend to be an expert. Although my on-line chronology of the development of Math and Science and Literature is many megabytes of text, it is mostly derived from secondary references, and not a scholarly research in and of itself.
http://magicdragon.com/UltimateSF/timeline.html
I still think it plausible (not proven) that "there is a predisposition to think scientifically..." I am also biased by my Science Fiction professionalism, where the notion is widely held that "a predisposition to think scientifically" evolves in many taxa throughout the cosmos, and is very strongly selected at the interstellar scale. That is, the species that do not evolves the ability to think scientifically are less likely to design and build and use starships, and thus do not particpate in "directed panspermia." That's my most speculative argument., Let's try the more conventional.
In the MacNeill framework:
(1) Pan-specificity: As Donald Brown and others have pointed out, there is no culture in the ethnographic record that does not include people who have some capacity for counting, plane geometry, abstract cause-and-effect reasoning, so far as I know.
(2) Continuous variation: At one extreme stand Leonardo da Vinci, Isaac Newton, Ramanujan, Terry Tao, Euler, Gauss, Erdos, non Neumann, and their astonishing like; at the other, those suffering clinical Dyscalculia, many of whom I've helped in emedial Math classes, and those meta-studied by my wife who can't do elementary Physics, in part because of bad teachers and wrong textbooks, but google also the Science article "Observation is Insufficient for Determination that the Surface of Still Water is Invariantly Horizontal" [I think that was the title, it is at least close];
(3) Structural correlation: there seem to be specific brain structures for syntactic, causal, and mathematical experience, that underlie the ability to think scientifically;
(4) Underlying genes: weakness in theory: I do not know of specific genes associated with Math or Science as such, or, for that matter, Chess and Music, where there are also multigenerational world-class families and the ability to do world-class work while still a child; nor have such genes been ruled out; this may or may not relate to genetic correlates to autism, schizophrenia, language ability;
(5) Reproductive success: several papers in past decade asserting that Men do science to get the babes; worked for me, but that's another story;
(6)Function: to put my hypothesis as concisely as possible, here is "Post's Law of Science Evolution": "a neurological predisposition to think scientifically leds to technology for peaceful, abstract, economic, and warfare advantages, which lead to the development and spread of civilized populations, which lead to a neurological predisposition to think scientifically."
I've never stated this before, so I apologize if the concept is poorly articulated. Please attack it, that I may learn.
Posted by: Jonathan Vos Post | March 25, 2007 11:24 PM
Think it through, people. Some of you are almost getting it. If I were to argue that there was selection for human use of the iPod, you'd all disagree and tell me no, the interesting phenomenon here is music, and why people like that...the iPod is just a transient and superficial device for playing music.
I'm saying religion is the same thing. It's the latest human fad for expressing deeper, more fundamental attributes -- focusing on religion actually gets in the way of examining core properties, just as getting hung up on iPod engineering or style would lead you astray.
Another key point: atheists like me are not somehow different in any meaningful way from other people. We almost certainly have the same drives and the same biological imperatives as the religious, but we can wipe away that religious encrustation with no ill effect, no loss of human values or meaning. That alone should tell you that religion is merely one peculiar pattern of expression of the interesting stuff underneath.
Posted by: PZ Myers | March 25, 2007 11:28 PM
Except for the tentacles.
Posted by: Zarquon | March 25, 2007 11:33 PM
PZ wrote:
"It's the latest human fad..."
In that case, it's a fad that has existed in some form for over 40,000 years, as far as we can tell; that's over 2,500 human generations, which is much more than enough to allow for considerable evolutionary change
"...for expressing deeper, more fundamental attributes..."
Such as? Pascal Boyer has identified several in Religion Explained, including the one I think is pivotal: the ability to infer the existence of "agency" - that is, intentionality in entities in one's aurroundings. For example, being able to infer that the cave bear has intentions on your life (i.e. ending it, and making you into lunch) would be at least a moderately fitness-enhancing trait, don't you think? Even more so if the entities in whom you are inferring intentionality are your conspecifics (i.e. the bunch of yahoos from over the next ridge, who want to kill you and kidnap your women).
"...focusing on religion actually gets in the way of examining core properties..."
Which is, of course, why we will be focusing primarily on the capacity for religion this summer. I'm not very interested in particular religions, any more than a linguist might be interested in a particular language when trying to figure out how the capacity for language works.
Clearly, PZ is solidly behind the Dawkins/"mind virus" position (as he all but stated in the title of his post), but to me that position admits that the capacity for religious belief is adaptive. If it weren't, our brains wouldn't work the way they do, and "mind viruses" like wouldn't be as contagious as they clearly are.
In other words, the capacity for religion is essentially an innate capacity for learning a particular set of beliefs, a capacity that is strongly biased in particular ways under particular conditions (hence our ability to correlate particular religions with particular ecological subsistence patterns), and therefore qualifies as an evolutionary adaptation.
The exact details of the religions themselves don't matter at all; indeed, IMHO they're irrelevent. What is relevent is the effects such beliefs have on reproductive success. If they have any at all, then the capacity to formulate and transmit such beliefs is clearly adaptive.
Posted by: Allen MacNeill | March 25, 2007 11:47 PM
No, actually I'm not a big fan of the "mind virus" idea. I'm saying religion is a spandrel.
There are properties of the mind that are useful and may have been selected for, such as being able to infer agency as you mentioned. That's adaptive. That the capability sometimes goes off cockeyed and starts assigning agency to thunder and disease and the seasons is a side-effect, one that gets needlessly amplified into religion.
Posted by: PZ Myers | March 25, 2007 11:54 PM
I'm saying Science is NOT a spandrel.
Posted by: Jonathan Vos Post | March 25, 2007 11:58 PM
As to "thinking scientifically" being adaptive, if you replace the phrase with "thinking rationally" it clearly is. Indeed, being able to infer cause and effect relationships (which is, of course, the core of "scientific" rationality) is and has been essential to human life.
However, I think it's just as likely that this same ability, coupled with the "agency detector" hypothesis of Pascal Boyer and Dan Sperber, is the basis for religious thinking. Cause-and-effect logic only has to "work" - that is, to bring about an adaptive effect - it doesn't have to be "scientific."
For example, let's suppose you live next to a river and you don't want your children to fall in an drown. You can tell them not to go near it, but that's not going to stop a two-year-old...at least it won't stop most of the two-year-olds I know. So you tell them that a demon (named "Jenny Greenteeth" or "the Boogie Man" or "the Kelpie" live in the water and want to eat you alive and if you go too close to the water, she/he/it will reach out and pull you in.
The ability to believe in things like demons can have extraordinary fitness consequences, especially if the demons are the people who live over the next ridge who want to kill you and kidnap your women (and BTW, their women are quite attractive, don't you think? Maybe we should kill ≤i≥them≤/i≥ and kidnap ≤i≥their≤/i≥ women...after all, they aren't The Chosen People and we are, right?)
I think it's actually much more difficult to show any way in which religious beliefs (or, more precisely, the capacity for such beliefs) are ≤i≥not≤/i≥ adaptive (i.e. have fitness consequences, i.e. have effects on differential reproductive success).
Posted by: Allen D. MacNeill | March 26, 2007 12:00 AM
Well, I grew up near a river, and it was far more effective to tell me I could fall in and drown than to tell me that a fictitious monster lived there...especially since I could grow up, discover mom and dad lied to me about the river monster, and then begin to suspect that they also lied when they told me the girls of the forbidden clan had cooties.
The idea that there is an actual evolutionary advantage to being able to consider reasons for behavior isn't controversial to me, at least. What I'm saying, and that is well illustrated by your example, is that religion represents an error, a short circuit, a fallacious side effect of a useful property that only persists because in most cases it doesn't have any immediate deleterious effect. And again, that atheists and religious people all share that same useful core property -- atheists have just scraped off much of the useless mistargeting.
Posted by: PZ Myers | March 26, 2007 12:10 AM
PZ wrote:
"I'm saying religion is a spandrel."
Then in that case you're in favor of Pascal Boyer's "epiphenomenon" hypothesis for the evolution of the capacity for religion.
However, let's consider the "spandrel" idea a little more closely. As Gould and Vrba pointed out in their 1982 paper, a "spandrel" is more precisely defined as an "exaptation" - that is, a characteristic that is not currently adaptative (for whatever reason) but that may become so in the future. I think that a very strong case can be made for the hypothesis that ALL adaptations start out as "exaptations" (i.e. spandrels), and become adaptations when they begin to affect reproductive success. Otherwise, you have to be a teleologist and think that adaptations somehow come into existence being already adaptive, and that violates a basic assumption of scientific naturalism, which I assume both you and I hold.
But in that case, any "spandrel" (i.e. "exaptation") immediately becomes an adaptation when it has fitness consequences. So, the real question becomes (and this is the question we will be considering in depth this summer)
Does the capacity for religious experience have fitness consquences, and/or has it had fitness consequences in the past?
And I believe that the answer is not only "yes," but that the ecological context in which such a capacity is most likely to have had fitness consequences is inter-group competition...i.e. warfare.
Here's what I wrote about it in Evolution & Cognition 10:1 (July 2004), pp. 43-60:
"Here is where the capacity for religious experience is crucial. By making possible the belief that a supernatural entity knows the outcome of all actions and can influence such outcomes, that one's "self" (i.e., "soul") is not tied to one's physical body, and that if one is killed in battle, one's essential self (i.e., soul) will go to a better "place" (e.g., heaven, valhalla, etc.) the capacity for religious experience can tip the balance toward participation in warfare.
"By doing so, the capacity for religious belief not only makes it possible for individuals to do what they might not otherwise be motivated to do, it also tends to tip the balance toward victory on the part of the religiously devout participant. This is because success in battle, and success in war, hinges on commitment: the more committed a military force is in battle, the more likely it is to win, all other things being equal. When two groups of approximately equal strength meet in battle, it is the group in which the individuals are more committed to victory (and less inhibited by the fear of injury or death) that is more likely to prevail."
Posted by: Allen D. MacNeill | March 26, 2007 12:13 AM
Also, please note that I am absolutely NOT arguing for the superior rationality of religion over science, or even common sense. Far from it: I think that scientific rationality was and is the greatest boon to our species in all of our immensely long evolutionary history.
However, that's completely irrelevant to the question of whether or not the capacity for religious experience was once adaptive. I think it was (although it very well may not be now), and that explains why we have brain regions that light up when people meditate and/or pray, and why there are genes (VMAT2 is the first known example) that are correlated with the tendency to have religious experiences and beliefs.
Indeed, let me take this a little further: I think that the capacity for religious experience is an evolutionary adaptation that was once adaptive but is now either neutral or maladaptive...and I'm leaning toward the latter. But, that has no bearing at all on the kind of evidence that would verify or falsify that hypothesis. That evidence is rapidly being collected, analyzed, and reported right now (check out the list of references in Daniel Dennett's new book Breaking the Spell if you want a detailed list) and that's what we're going to be discussing this summer.
Posted by: Allen D. MacNeill | March 26, 2007 12:23 AM
And BTW, citing the fact that YOU grew up near a river and didn't need Jenny Greenteeth to keep you from going near it seems suspiciously like anecdotal evidence to me. The fact that it didn't work with you is far less a commentary on the effectiveness of such beliefs in general, and far more a commentary on your own, particular life experiences, which I might add, did not include living next to a river in the fourth century, when virtually everybody believed in beings like Jenny Greenteeth.
Indeed, the fact that a huge number of people have the ability to believe in things like demons is a strong prima facie argument that the human mind is predisposed to believing in such things, isn't it? Either that predisposition is an epiphenomenon of some other capacity or it has fitness consequences in and of itself. That's what we are going to be discussing this summer. I'm pretty strongly convinced that it's an adaptation, but I may change my mind, if someone makes a convincing argument (supported by convincing evidence) to the contrary.
So far, you have failed to do so, but please keep trying...that's what this is all about, right?
Posted by: Allen D. MacNeill | March 26, 2007 12:29 AM
BTW, if anyone is coming late to this discussion, the seminar course I offerred last summer was my own modest attempt to shred intelligent design theory in the context of a collegial sharing of views. And that's pretty much how it went:
http://www.geocities.com/lclane2/macneill.html
Of course, the other side viewed the outcome a little differently, but their side is rapidly going the way of the dodo anyway, so all in all I think it was a useful exercise. I enjoyed it anyway...
Posted by: Allen D. MacNeill | March 26, 2007 12:34 AM
"a fallacious side effect of a useful property"
Fallacious in the sense of empirical truth value, sure. Fallacious in terms of fitness? That depends. For members of anti-sex castration cults, certainly. But consider the spread of Islam and the spread of Christianity, and the concurrent spread of the genes of their hosts. That has something to do with religiously mandated mass-mobilizing imperatives to spread the faith and multiply the faithful.
Durkheim had the adaptive value of religion figured out a long time ago.
Posted by: Colugo | March 26, 2007 12:54 AM
Hello.
I posted a comment a while ago and I got a message that it was pending administrator's approval. I didn't link anything, I don't know why it got picked for "review".
Is it gonna show up at all?
Thanks.
Posted by: andyo | March 26, 2007 1:32 AM
I linked to your article from The Thinking Blogger Award - A Gift and a Curse
You have been tagged - congratulations.
Posted by: bernie | March 26, 2007 4:46 AM
Picking up on something "TomK" said:
"Religion, by and large, cannot pass the language barrier.
Maybe humans speak different languages for the evolutionary reason of protecting language speakers from the potentially harmful effects of their neighbors religions. If everyone spoke the same language, then a religious idea that evolved to spread fast and was destructive to it's host would wipe out humanity."
Erm, codswallop.
How many languages has the christian bible been translated into?
And why do the islamofascists insist that the "recital" NOT be translated into non-Arabic languages - because then they might lose their control, and/or peole might find out what a load of pig-droppings the whole thing is.
And people speak different languages, because earlier tribes and groups became separated, and languages change with time, though since the invention of widespread printing, the rate ahs slowed enormously, so we can understand almost all of Shakespeare, but not so much of Chaucer, and very little of Beowulf.
Posted by: G. Tingey | March 26, 2007 5:09 AM
Until someone with sufficient expertise in human social behavior over evolutionary timespans joins in this discussion, I fear we're all just talking out our butts. PZ is, as pointed out by Dr. MacNeill, falling back on anecdote and analogy. OTOH, Dr. MacNeill's claims for VMAT2 seem premature and overblown.
This thread has enough opinions - what it needs is more science.
Posted by: Jud | March 26, 2007 7:11 AM
Mr. MacNeill,
I'm sorry, but I don't understand this at all:
Otherwise, you have to be a teleologist and think that adaptations somehow come into existence being already adaptive, and that vi