MacNeill: Is Religion Adaptive?
by JoyCornell lecturer in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Allen MacNeill has announced another summer course, this one entitled Evolution and Religion: Is Religion Adaptive? It looks to be fairly interesting, and of course has PZ all atither. Because the idea has been explored a little bit here in the thread Hard-Wired for God: Take 2, let me list below the 6 requirements for qualification as an evolutionary adaptation that MacNeill offers:
1. The trait should be found in most (but not necessarily all) of the individual members of a particular species.
2. The trait 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 (the good ol' bell curve).
3. It should be possible to identify specific anatomical/biochemical/physiological structures that produce the specified function.
4. It should be possible to identify a specific genetic basis for the characteristic.
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 who do not.
6. It should in principle be amenable to "functional analysis" - it should be possible to answer the question "what is it for?"
Some of these questions have no clear answer at this point in time, but asking them is a good first step. I do note that criteria #5 asserts a preconceived notion, though it merely reflects the ideology from which MacNeill plans to approach the subject. And on this particular qualification I'd hope at least one student in the class brings up the issue of how well these Darwinian-colored glasses actually apply to human beings.
MacNeill does point to Amish and Catholic birth rates to support his position that religious beliefs lead to reproductive advantage, while completely ignoring both Catholicism's celibate elements (more than just priests) and the commitment to complete non-reproduction of various sects (Shakers, for instance) as well as non-religious reproductive practices of societies for whom war itself serves as the impetus (Sparta, for instance). Not to mention the fact that even well before civilization began with powerful city-states and most humans lived in manageable tribal societies, birth control was one of the most regularly dispensed services of those 'religious' functionaries known as "healers." And that the practice of infanticide is as ancient as humanity, and the fact that it's a notable proclivity in civilization for the wealthiest, 'fittest' members of society to produce the fewest offspring. And…
At any rate, it should be a fun class for Cornell students, so I look forward to reports on it in MacNeill's blog and perhaps some of the students.
March 26th, 2007 at 11:55 am
I think #3 will be the difficult requirement to fulfill, unless McNeill simply stops at saying that "the brain" is the "anatomical/biochemical/physiological" structure that produces religion. Attempts to reduce mind/consciousness phenomenon to biochemical reactions ultimately fail.
Of course that didn't stop Darwin from thinking that his dog had a rudimentary form of religion. I suppose his hypothesis would have been that modern religion is just highly evolved "barking at the wind".
Comment by chunkdz — March 26, 2007 @ 11:55 am
March 26th, 2007 at 12:15 pm
I like the way that Allen offers courses like this one and the one offered last summer. What I like even more is that it appears he allows students to explore their own thoughts about these matters and to draw their own conclusions, rather than trying to coerce them with the prof's ideology.
Comment by bj — March 26, 2007 @ 12:15 pm
March 26th, 2007 at 12:20 pm
Hi, chunkdz. I think only requirements #1 and #2 are 'easy', while all the others are arguable to a serious degree. Which will no doubt make for some charged back and forth. MacNeill is obviously approaching the subject from within the materialistic, NDS paradigm. Which he no doubt has to do to salvage his credentials from his erstwhile 'peers' expected savage attacks, while still maintaining the appearance of an open mind.
#3 does have some support (as mentioned in the Hard-Wired thread) from neuroscience (as neurosurgery) findings that both the brow and crown 'chakras' do represent specific areas of the brain which when stimulated result in experiences of ESP and OOB. And while the neuros claim that this 'hard-wiring' somehow proves that the experiences their stimulation elicits in the individual don't really exist, sooner or later they're bound to figure out that this ridiculous assertion negates everything they think they know about brains and their hard-wiring.
#4 is potentially demonstrable, if one assumes that brain hard-wiring is genetically determined. I've mentioned my problems with #5, and #6 looks to be an appeal to Evo-Psych, that much-maligned branch of biology that sees monsters under every bed and in all closets. There should be as many opinions on this one as there are students in the class.
Comment by Joy — March 26, 2007 @ 12:20 pm
March 26th, 2007 at 12:39 pm
Hello Joy,
I am confused! Title of the course vs his 6 points.
Comment by inunison — March 26, 2007 @ 12:39 pm
March 26th, 2007 at 12:47 pm
…and looking at the required texts, this doesn't look like fair overview of "…historical perspective, controversies about the cultural, philosophical, and scientific implications of evolutionary biology." Seems to me like a one sided approach.
Comment by inunison — March 26, 2007 @ 12:47 pm
March 26th, 2007 at 1:09 pm
inunison:
Not surprising, considering MacNeill's title. Judging from last summer's course, though, he will allow some lively discussion. He must of course approach the subject from an NDS perspective. I'll be interested to see how many of his students buy it wholesale.
Comment by Joy — March 26, 2007 @ 1:09 pm
March 26th, 2007 at 2:20 pm
Religion might well be adaptive.
Perhaps humans were intelligently designed to host religious belief both as a biologically advantageous trait, and as a conducive-to-understanding-truth trait (these are logically distinct—-see below).
Plantinga and others have developed this idea in a philosophically rigorous way, indeed arguing that theistic belief counts as an epistemologically basic belief—a default state of human belief systems. Which would explain, for example, why atheism has generally been a minority belief-system that has had to work hard to overcome the default state.
However, MacNeill's proposed view has in this context, I suspect, the subtext that if one can show that religion is adaptive, then we can dismiss religion's claims to truth. And of course this is as silly as, for example, sugggesting that if we can show that holding the belief that 2+2=4 is adaptive, then we can dismiss claims by people holding that belief that it is a true belief.
All such natural selection arguments for the origin of religion are, in other words, irrelevant to the truth status of religion.
Any claims to the contrary commit the genetic fallacy.
Comment by stunney — March 26, 2007 @ 2:20 pm
March 26th, 2007 at 2:30 pm
Here's an interview with Plantinga on the subject of theism as a properly basic belief.
Here's the formal argument.
Comment by stunney — March 26, 2007 @ 2:30 pm
March 26th, 2007 at 2:40 pm
Besides being BS, this one is creepy. I remember in the 80's when the gay community got all euphoric when a team of scientists declared that they had identified the "Gay" gene. Wow, was the collective response…so it's not a choice, there's nothing wrong with us. Not long after, another team found findings that disavowed the first team's findings. And research stopped, or at least vanished from the public spectrum.
And for good reason. Can you imagine what would have happened to the gay community if doctors had warned prospective parents that their incubating offspring was likely to be a homosexual?
I know that this is a little off topic, but if I were a student in his class, I'd be on him like a vise over number 3, and call him out, demanding him to explain what such knowledge would be good for, and how would it be made useful.
Comment by AnaxagorasRules — March 26, 2007 @ 2:40 pm
March 26th, 2007 at 2:47 pm
I don't know the MacNeill is stating that he believes that all these qualifications have been met or demonstated. He's setting criteria. I think a few are jumping their metaphysical guns.
Comment by bj — March 26, 2007 @ 2:47 pm
March 26th, 2007 at 3:16 pm
#3 is a problem because the criteria requires a "belief" to be quantified in biochemical terms. This is way different than quantifying a sensory experience (out-of-body), or a sexual tendency.
Is there a region of the brain that can be stimulated to "turn on" religion? Is there a drug that stimulates/inhibits belief in God?
Comment by chunkdz — March 26, 2007 @ 3:16 pm
March 26th, 2007 at 3:18 pm
stunney:
I'd take issue with the semantic sleight-of-mind per "religious belief," by acknowledging the sociological (and political) functions of religion. They served as relational cement, tribal identity, educational institution, health care provider and ritual passage sanction for individuals. These functions expanded as civilization expanded - becoming corrupt and fomenting divisions along the way. I think religion is the sociological artifact of the natural faculty.
This is a situation MacNeill doesn't specify in qualification #6, but suggests. Perhaps he plans to invoke Evo-Psych Anazi tales to explain the sociopolitical construct we call "religion" *as* the supposed genetic capacity for "religious experience" (formalized to "religious beliefs").
Thanks for the links!
Comment by Joy — March 26, 2007 @ 3:18 pm
March 26th, 2007 at 3:29 pm
Joy, do you not think arithemetical beliefs serve social functions too—such as promoting the development of education, commerce, and technology?
Nobody in their right might mind would say arithmetical beliefs are 'really' false because they help with, say, banking.
Comment by stunney — March 26, 2007 @ 3:29 pm
March 26th, 2007 at 3:43 pm
I can't resist posting this quote from Plantinga's formal argument to which I linked earlier. Just substitute 'MacNeill' for 'Marx' or 'Freud':
Comment by stunney — March 26, 2007 @ 3:43 pm
March 26th, 2007 at 3:58 pm
AnaxagorasRules:
This issue is already out in the larger world for all 'abnormal' people. Note the debates that bubble up when a deaf couple chooses to have a deaf child, or a dwarf couple chooses to have a dwarf child. This is all in line with the aims of the 'New Eugenics', but I don't know that society's got any legitimate interest in a trait such as sexual preference. It's not like there's a shortage of people, and quite a few heterosexual couples don't have children for reasons of their own. If control of population growth is social policy, then the existence of non-reproducing citizens (any sex, any reason) is a non-issue.
stunney:
I'm not saying religious beliefs are false because religions serve social functions. Religious beliefs are formalized usually by exceptional human beings translating their strong personal experience of the divine into more general understandings of the divine (often through the device of stories). Usually the experience is related in terms of the relationship between the human and the divine.
Religions are groups of believers-in the formal stories who gain adherents and power in their respective societies, and exercise it just like other sociopolitical power is exercised. Until it loses its grip on governments (the people get fed up with corruptions and abuses), at which point it tends to splinter and regroup toward something closer to its original tribal functions.
I don't know how MacNeill is going to address qualification #6. If he plans Anazi tales, students will be exposed to the fallacy you mention. I wonder how many of them will call him on it?
Comment by Joy — March 26, 2007 @ 3:58 pm
March 26th, 2007 at 3:59 pm
I think I have to agree that #3 specifically shows a Neo-Darwinian Theory bias. On the other hand, however, my first impression of Mc Neill, from what I read concerning the course that he taught last year, is that while he has a strong personal bias, he also is open minded to discussion of alternative viewpoints. In this day and age that should be considered commendable.
The problem that I have with any kind of psychology based on NDT is that it presumes that consciousness, which of course would, include religious consciousness, has been almost completely explained by physiology and neurology. I think that kind of crass reductionism has been almost completely refuted by David Chalmers in his book, The Conscious Mind, which I read again over the weekend. I wonder if Allen Mc Neill is familiar with Chalmers work. I know he has stopped by a TT before. Maybe he'll pay us another visit.
Because, my own still-being-developed model is an integrative one (our mental experience is a combination brain function + consciousness, with consciousness having a distinct irreducible ontology) in theory I have no problem with the concept that at least some of our religious, moral and spiritual tendencies are hardwired. The problem I have is with those who think that because we have correlated some experience "˜x' with some brain function "˜y' that somehow that explains everything that needs to be explained about human consciousness or religious experience. Those people, including no doubt Allen Mc Neill, IMO have yet to make their case.
Comment by JOHN_A_DESIGNER — March 26, 2007 @ 3:59 pm
March 26th, 2007 at 5:05 pm
Excuse me, but wouldn't religion just have to have a difference in procreation rate in order to be adaptive? Let's avoid rigidly fixing it to one evolutionary context, when the idea of directionless adaptation is a feature is judged advantageous or not by application to its environment. It is the environment that gives it function.
But it really doesn't matter, if there is no God and no guiding Spirit and even so much as no abstract Lawgiver, then religious expression is either a result of adaptation or something that has not hindered the survival of the human beast (we *have* survived) or a seemingly useless form not tested against the environment yet…or even more an adaptive form that the subject does not even know how it is aided by it. Just as the eye-bud creatures did not need to think "Hey, it's a great thing we have eyebuds, I can sense light that way!" in order for eyebuds to be advantageous.
Thus, it is not necessary for any aspect of human behavior to be proven effective in order to lend advantage to the species. Eyebuds have pretty much kept their functions, and not become, say storage pods, only increased in their ability to analyze light. So the eyes are not particularly adaptive, but are so useful that they retain a rather fixed form. Eyes weren't deemed effective by the evolutionary subject before they fixed their relative form, thus religion does not have to show an adaptive behavior in order to be an adaptation.
We so often like to break from the box of ourselves as a subject of evolution, even while trying to consider ourselves as a subject of evolution. An anti-teleological stance should have it that one particular adaptation, ie the brain, does not have the final authority on what is adaptation. It is the survival of the species which does, not the contents of that adaptation. However we believe certain things about the brain.
Comment by Axeman — March 26, 2007 @ 5:05 pm
March 26th, 2007 at 5:10 pm
Hi, Joy,
Control of population growth as social policy wasn't what I had in mind, which is another creepy subject in and of itself. The implications I see here were not only with regard to sexual preferences. What raised my hackles was the implications for diversity in general.
Comment by AnaxagorasRules — March 26, 2007 @ 5:10 pm
March 26th, 2007 at 5:28 pm
AR:
And that is the issue for all members of what would - or just might - be considered eradicable minorities by virtue of their very existence. And while I have no problem with the availability of genetic testing to find out if your baby has Downs or cystic fibrosis or anencephaly or any one of lots of other conditions a couple may choose to avoid for serious considerations that are none of our business, the New Eugenics is all about "Designer Babies." Where one group's aesthetics about what sex, height, body type, hair texture and color, skin color, musical or athletic talent, etc. get to determine who gets born and who doesn't.
There are (they tell us) genes for obesity, cancer, various talents and abilities, bad teeth, male pattern baldness, eczema, psoriasis, ulcers, ADD and bedwetting (et al.). This can get very ridiculous very fast, so I don't see much real-life danger around the corner. Especially not in a country where tens of millions of citizens (including children and pregnant women) have no access to health care at all.
Comment by Joy — March 26, 2007 @ 5:28 pm
March 26th, 2007 at 5:41 pm
Hi, Joy,
Yes, they're just baby bugs right now. Better to use the Raid on the immediate threats.
Comment by AnaxagorasRules — March 26, 2007 @ 5:41 pm
March 26th, 2007 at 6:31 pm
AR:
There is a significant difference between reproductive choice and imposed eugenic policies. I don't think people with homosexual tendencies are in any serious danger of being "bred-out" of humanity at the present time or in the present sociopolitical reality.
Thus I do not consider the possibility that homosexuality may be genetically influenced to be a good reason to restrict any woman's reproductive choices or to restrict scientific study of the human genome. As I said, late-term abortion and infanticide are legitimate social/governmental interests (the protection of children).
Comment by Joy — March 26, 2007 @ 6:31 pm
March 26th, 2007 at 7:17 pm
Could someone explain how an adaptive response affecting one species yields to a variety of religions that are radically different from each other? If the answer is the differences correlate to differing environmental pressures then what is the evidence?
Comment by Bradford — March 26, 2007 @ 7:17 pm
March 26th, 2007 at 8:19 pm
Hi, Joy,
And as I said, they're just little baby bugs right now anway. Little creatures trying to crack out of their eggs, with no guarantee of success.
Comment by AnaxagorasRules — March 26, 2007 @ 8:19 pm
March 26th, 2007 at 8:28 pm
Regarding number 3, maybe the problem is with the word
religion. Religion is way too detailed and broad. Finding areas of the brain that contribute to spiritual experience seems like a real possibility to me, and far from negating the reality behind those experiences, it seems if anything confirmatory. I would assume that we have evolved to perceive reality, not to misperceive it.
Comment by onething — March 26, 2007 @ 8:28 pm
March 26th, 2007 at 8:33 pm
Given you recognise this, it's interesting that you keep equating the New Eugenics movement with the latter, when in fact almost all of the people falling under that umbrella are actually advocating the former.
Comment by Mesk — March 26, 2007 @ 8:33 pm
March 26th, 2007 at 8:58 pm
Mesk:
I am automatically highly suspicious of anything deliberately self-styled as "Eugenics." I think you'd find that most people are, for the simple fact that it got such a bad name during the first half of the 20th century (and into the '80s in this state). The temptation is to become coercive. Anything that tempting in the hands of politicians is a danger - and one elite's targets will tend to change when a different elite gains power. This is the way of things human.
A woman's choices are between her and her insurance company, or her and her doctor if she can pay out-of-pocket. Up to the issue of child protection, which is a legitimate social interest. If I want a test for Down's Syndrome or CF or take birth control pills or get sterilized, it's nobody's business. Certainly not the business of some self-styled 'New Eugenics' buff.
The passing reproductive fads of a handful of elites have never been known to much affect humanity's gene pool. Most humans don't need wealth and clever doctors or even Viagra to accomplish reproduction, and most of 'em don't have access to a doctor before or after. I'm not worried, but I am vigilant.
Comment by Joy — March 26, 2007 @ 8:58 pm
March 26th, 2007 at 9:35 pm
Greetings, folks:
First, let me thank you all for your comments. In general, I have found you folks considerably more tolerant (and a lot less vituperative) than some of the potty-mouths over at PT. I got into academics because I admired the Socratic ideal, in which we treat each other as a community of scholars with a common goal: following the logic of argument and evidence to wherever it leads. That's what I'm hoping will happen this summer.
As to some of the reservations expressed above, let me say right off that we will NOT be arguing about whether any particular religion is "true" or not. I believe very strongly that the answer to this question is not in any way within the province of the empirical sciences, and will therefore try as hard as I can to steer our in-class discussion away from this particular line of inquiry.
Furthermore, and in line with the spirit of the previous ground-rule, what we will be considering is the evolution of the capacity for religious experience (including, but not limited to, religious beliefs), and once again not any particular religion per se. I intend to present the class with this analogy: that the capacity for religious experience is like the capacity for language. That is, the capacity is innate, but the actual language one learns is exactly that: learned.
Indeed, this analogy goes deeper, because as evolutionary linguists have discovered (following Chompsky's lead) is that all languages share a "universal grammar," the structure of which is apparently wired into the human central nervous system. If this were not the case, it would probably be impossible to actually translate from one language to another. Since we can do this, there must be some deep commonalities between them, which go beyond surface differences (and also probably constrain them to some degree).
The same appears to be the case for religions; although they vary widely from culture to culture (and indeed, from person to person), they all have some commonalities, which comparative anthropologists have taken some pains to delineate. Pascal Boyer's book, Religion Explained is probably the best introduction to these concepts, and so we will probably begin by reading his book and discussing the criteria that he uses to identify and analyze religious experiences and practices.
As to my biases, I am the first to admit that I have them. I think everyone does, and that to not lay them on the table right in the beginning is not only disingenuous, it is downright dishonest. Ernst Mayr expressed this idea best: he said that he always made his arguments as clearly and as forcefully as possible, with as few qualifications and amendments as honesty allowed, so that both the people who agreed with him and (especially) those who disagreed with him would know exactly where he stood and what to agree with and what to attack. That's my goal as well.
And so, as I have explained at my blog and on others, I am strongly leaning toward the "capacity for religion as direct adaptation" hypothesis. The other two hypotheses are the "epiphenomenon" and "mind virus" hypotheses, as exemplified by the writings of Pascal Boyer and Richard Dawkins, respectively. Having argued about the distinctions between these three hypotheses elsewhere, let me say now that it may be that all three play a part in producing the human capacity for religious experience (which includes belief and practice). Scott Atran has already argued for combining the "adaptation" and "epiphenomenon" hypotheses, and I think that a reasonably strong argument can also be made for the "brain modules that predispose us toward particular kinds of mind viruses" hypothesis, which of course combines #2 and #3.
Finally, to those who just can't stop arguing for the "my religion is TRUE and therefore any other explanation is FALSE by definition" position, let me say that taking that position in my class this summer would get you massively ignored. As I have repeatedly stressed to my students in both my introductory biology courses and my evolution courses, the natural sciences are not about TRUTH, especially TRUTH BY DEFINITION. Science is about our best guess as to how the universe works, based on the evidence we have so far, and that a scientific theory is simply an hypothesis that has not yet been shown to be false based on empirical evidence.
Yes, there are other ways to argue about aspects of reality, such as whether 2 + 2 = 4, but mathematics (and ethics, logic, metaphysics, and a lot of other topics of dispute among academics) are NOT empirical sciences (indeed, I refer to them as non-empirical sciences in my courses) and therefore outside the scope of my course.
I hope this helps clarify what we will be doing this summer (and, more importantly to some people, what we will NOT be doing). I welcome any comments, suggestions, and especially criticisms, as long as they are presented in the spirit of collegiality with which I run my courses. If you want to cuss and call people names and avoid making arguments, especially on the basis of evidence and reason, there are lots of other places (such as Panda's thumb and Uncommon Descent) where you can do that. If you do so, I will not respond to you in any way, and hope that the rest of those who still respect the principles of free and open inquiry will do the same.
In other words, people who use the F word and people who use fart noises in an attempt to make logical arguments are wasting everyone's time…especially mine.
–Allen
*********************************
Allen D. MacNeill, Senior Lecturer
The Biology Learning Skills Center
G-24 Stimson Hall, Cornell University
Ithaca, New York 14853
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phone: 607-255-3357 (Allen's office)
email: adm6@cornell.edu
website: http://evolutionlist.blogspot....
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"I had at last got a theory by which to work"
-The Autobiography of Charles Darwin
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Comment by Allen_MacNeill — March 26, 2007 @ 9:35 pm
March 26th, 2007 at 9:47 pm
stunney:
I don't think MacNeill or anyone else would argue that the adaptivity of religion affects its claims to truth directly. But it does work against arguments like the one you made the other day to the effect that "six billion believers can't be wrong". Yes, they can, if that's how their brains are structured.
Here's a radical idea to try on for size: truth is determined by the survival of ideas more than any predetermined objective reality. Our brains produce a representation of the universe that is oriented towards the survival of ourselves and our ideas. The ones that survive winnowing are the true ones.
The implications of this are that in the long run, religion might be true by virtue of it being adaptive. Maybe atheistic cultures all die off because they don't have good models for sin or free will, and it drives them mad. Maybe their science gets too powerful and they kill themselves off, while the more religious cultures don't get to the point of inventing thermonuclear weapons. (Imagine this natural selection happening over the space of all possible civilizations, or over many different planets, lets say). This is sort of the theist version of anthropic cosmology — all surviving cultures will be theistic.
Comment by mtraven — March 26, 2007 @ 9:47 pm
March 26th, 2007 at 10:17 pm
Alan Mac_Neill:
In earlier years I spent some time professionally translating and interpreting different languages into English. I also familiarized myself with specific aptitudes needed to excel in that field as well as cognitive function associated with specific brain location. I'm not convinced you have an analogous phenomenon to a "religious capacity." The latter appears to be a function of our capacity to logically reason which runs counter to a current popular meme associating religion with more irrational emotional responses.
Our capacity to learn languages is linked to aptitides corresponding to two senses- hearing and sight. The ability to retain sensory data is an indicator of linguistic aptitude. Nothing really surprising but it contrasts with the way we learn religious precepts. Religious precepts are conceptually different. What one really needs in order to provide convincing data for an adaptive response paradigm is show how cognitive functions related to abstract conceptualization are particular to religious concepts and not part of a more general capacity for abstract reason.
Comment by Bradford — March 26, 2007 @ 10:17 pm
March 26th, 2007 at 10:48 pm
Bradford wrote:
"What one really needs in order to provide convincing data for an adaptive response paradigm is show how cognitive functions related to abstract conceptualization are particular to religious concepts and not part of a more general capacity for abstract reason."
Thank you for a very concise and constructive suggestion. I think that Boyer has shown precisely that religious beliefs and practices are, indeed, at least partially specific to relgion and not simply the result of a concatenation of other general capacities. That's why we'll be reading his book first. Scott Atran and David Sloan Wilson have proposed an alternative hypothesis: that the mental and sensory/motor processes that constitute religious behavior and cognition are themselves adaptive, rather than simply epiphenomena/pleiotropies of other adaptations.
Personally, I side with Atran and Wilson, but I'm willing to be convinced otherwise. Maybe that will happen this summer…
Comment by Allen_MacNeill — March 26, 2007 @ 10:48 pm
March 26th, 2007 at 11:07 pm
Greetings, Joy:
Let me just say that, having just finished reading "Hard-Wired for God, Take 2" (and having read and agreed with most of your comments on environmentalism in general and global warming in particular), I find your viewpoint both refreshing and intriguing. Coming from my own tradition in the natural sciences, I would say that what the Hindu/Yogic traditions have discovered as "chakras" are essentially the same things that cognitive and evolutionary psychologists have discovered as "modules" and "evolved psychological mechanisms." Indeed, if such things exist (and, on the basis of my reading of the literature, they do), then we should not be surprised if two independent traditions find chakras/modules doing essentially the same things and located in the same places in the CNS.
And so, I will go out on a limb and suggest that you, like me, believe that we are indeed "hard-wired" for religious experiences. I think that this hard-wiring is the result of the expression of genes via sensory/nervous/motor systems and modified by interactions with the environment, all of which have the effect of increasing our relative reproductive success over time - they are adaptation, in other words. You may express these ideas in different ways, but I think we are talking about the same underlying tendencies.
Where we may differ is where we think the underlying tendencies come from. I think they have evolved by natural selection, primarily in the context of intra-group cohesion versus inter-group competition, in which chronic/episodic warfare has had the single largest effect on differential reproductive success. But that's just one hypothesis, and I'm willing to entertain others (that's what my summer seminar will be all about).
–Allen
Comment by Allen_MacNeill — March 26, 2007 @ 11:07 pm
March 26th, 2007 at 11:20 pm
Allen,
I'm a little suprised by the question. Since over 70% of the world population is religious and offers such a powerful cultural force it would seem that from the Darwinian perspective the survival benefits should be obvious. Of course, as you say, this does not mean religioius sentiment is true, but how could it have found such a prominent place if it was not selected?
Comment by Steve Petermann — March 26, 2007 @ 11:20 pm
March 26th, 2007 at 11:28 pm
Steve:
My sentiments exactly. I think it would actually be harder to find evidence against the hypothesis that the capacity for religion is an evolutionary adaptation, rather than for it, especially if you conflate the "direct adaptation" and "epiphenomenon" hypotheses (which are, after all, both evolutionary arguments).
Comment by Allen_MacNeill — March 26, 2007 @ 11:28 pm
March 26th, 2007 at 11:49 pm
Allen,
Of course, this is coming from a Darwinian perspective. Another perspective is that religious sentiment comes from a universal existential issue that all sentient beings face. While religious sentiment may have adaptive advantages, that may be because hominids intuit a deeper level to reality that they want to tap into which provides an ultimate sense of meaing and purpose for their lives. Darwinian theory only provides, at most, a proximate meaing.
If it is so obvious from the Darwinian perspective, why the course?
Comment by Steve Petermann — March 26, 2007 @ 11:49 pm
March 26th, 2007 at 11:54 pm
Alan_MacNeil,
Concerning the analogy between the capacity for language and the capacity for religious beliefs: Our capacity for language involves physical components. Since we do have vocal chords and hearing apparatus, it doesn't take a great leap of faith to think that we were supposed to have a capacity for language. For what other reason would we have evolved these physical parts?
Regarding the capacity for religious beliefs, are you saying that we evolved in such a way that we are supposed to have religious beliefs? By comparing our capacity for language to a capacity for religious belief, aren't you implying that religious belief itself is non-trivial and necessary?
Comment by AnaxagorasRules — March 26, 2007 @ 11:54 pm
March 26th, 2007 at 11:57 pm
The main reason for the course is to get together with a small group of people and try to figure out which of the three hypotheses has the most support, both in terms of logical construction and empirical evidence. I think it's still an open question whether the capacity for religious experience is itself adaptive, or whether it simply "piggybacks" on some other adaptation(s), as suggested by Boyer.
I find that the process of arguing these things out with a group of committed people who disagree passionately (but politely) is the best way to come to clarity on questions like this one.
I guess I read too many Socratic dialogs when I was of an impressionable age…
Comment by Allen_MacNeill — March 26, 2007 @ 11:57 pm
March 26th, 2007 at 11:58 pm
Hmm, I don't see how this follows. Suppose there are aliens. Are you saying that it would be flat-out impossible to translate their language into ours, or vice versa, even if they were referring to the same things we were? Such a conclusion seems outright absurd. Surely we could in principle, with enough work, infer the meanings of their symbols based on how they used them.
This isn't to deny that languages have some degree of similar underlying structure, but it seems fairly obvious that the principle reason one language can be translated into another is that even though the words are different in different languages, and usually the language structure too, the meanings - the things being referred to and described - are the same. Isn't it just obvious that the reason we can find out, for instance, that "sakana" translates to "fish" because both actually refer to fish?
Maybe I'm reading you wrong, but it seems like your assumptions are leading you to an untenable position of having to deny the distinction between words with their meanings, or perhaps even of denying that there really are any meanings.
Comment by Deuce — March 26, 2007 @ 11:58 pm
March 26th, 2007 at 11:59 pm
Is my last post (addressed to Joy) in the moderation queue, or has it been lost? Please let me know so I can re-post it if necessary.
Comment by Mesk — March 26, 2007 @ 11:59 pm
March 27th, 2007 at 12:09 am
Deuce:
Chomsky's "deep grammar" hypothesis is based on the observation that all human languages share certain characteristics, which makes translation between them possible. While it is the case that, for example, an alien race that communicated using binary code might be possible, I am not convinced that all possible languages would work this way. For example, in Orson Scott Card's Xenocide, an alien race that communicates entirely via pheromones is postulated. I honestly don't think that we could translate such a language directly into any human language, since the latter all include nouns and verbs (or clumps of phonemes that function as nouns and verbs), but pheromones don't (indeed, can't).
So yes, words do indeed have meanings, and that's what are interconvertable when one translates from one language into another. However, some meanings are so different that they aren't mappable onto each other, and hence aren't translatable.
In the same way, I think Atran and Boyer have made a strong argument for the same kind of underlying "grammar" of religious experience, including such things as supernatural entities with the characteristics of desembodied intentionality, omniscience (of a sort), ability to read thoughts, etc. Indeed, if there were no "universals" in religions, they would be totally unintelligible to non-believers, and hence proselytizing would be literally impossible.
Comment by Allen_MacNeill — March 27, 2007 @ 12:09 am
March 27th, 2007 at 12:19 am
It's worth bearing in mind that the vast majority of religious people throughout history and around the world adopted their beliefs for reasons that had absolutely nothing to do with logic or reason. There were religious beliefs long before there was theology; and even today, most religious people have never heard of Augustine, Aquinas or their non-Christian equivalents. Instead, the vast majority of believers adopt their religion because it is the religion of their parents and of their society, and because engaging in religious activities provide a variety of psychological and social benefits.
There's a common fallacy that runs that the sophisticated logic of modern theology falsifies the notion that religion has an irrational basis. It's easy to imagine this when you are one of the minority of believers who have attempted to justify your beliefs through logic and reason. But this does not explain the vast majority of believers who have never contemplated the notion that their beliefs might be wrong or their rituals pointless; they simply believe. The bulk of religious belief across time and space has nothing to do with "our capacity to logically reason".
Philosophers like Atran and Boyer aren't interested in debating theological fineries with the tiny nub of theologians and thinkers that hangs off the side of the unreflective mass of believers. Quite reasonably, they're interested in what motivates the religious majority; and this motivation is rarely rational.
Comment by Mesk — March 27, 2007 @ 12:19 am
March 27th, 2007 at 12:26 am
Alan_MacNeill:
The underlying grammer concept appears equivalent to a description of an underlying order linking common denominators that can be true of many fields. For example, the capcity to generate and grasp differing forms of music has underlying grammer in the form of pitch, timbre, rhythm and tonal memory. There is great variation in them but collectively they form universals common to widely different forms of music. A case can be made for many other fields of study. If there are identifiable underlying universals and varied logical linkings constituting varietal forms you then have what- the basis for an adaptation concept?
Comment by Bradford — March 27, 2007 @ 12:26 am
March 27th, 2007 at 12:46 am
Mesk:
I do not think your description is historically accurate. Logic and reason permeate most religious concepts. That does not mean they are correct. Most are incorrect IMO. However they are not irrational. For example, origin stories are a religious universal. There is causality intrinsic to origins. Animals do not dwell on abstract notions of causality but humans do. Morality is another religious universal. What could be more abstract and intellectual than the justification of moral behavioral codes? Sure you can reply that something as simple as an emotional response to having one's club taken away and a consequent rule against stealing are not great intellectual achievements but underlying issues of right and wrong are inherently rational and their exposition and justification entails generous use of logic. You do not have to read Aquinas to have a grasp for these things.
Having spent much time with devout believers and those who were raised in a religious culture but are not religious I say that very few people have not given thought to beliefs. Many reject beliefs because they have analyzed them or their implications. Others are religious in form only because of similar analysis and rejection. Among believers doubts and thoughts about religious precepts are very common. Rationality pervades attention to religion- both positive and negative.
Comment by Bradford — March 27, 2007 @ 12:46 am
March 27th, 2007 at 12:48 am
Bradford asked:
"If there are identifiable underlying universals and varied logical linkings constituting varietal forms you then have what- the basis for an adaptation concept?"
Yes, indeed! I have just finished preparing the outlines for a series of 36 lectures on evolutionary psychology for The Teaching Company, and this is indeed one of the main arguments I make in the lecture series. Included in that series is a lecture entitled "Toward and Evolutionary Aesthetics" in which I discuss art, dance, literature/story-telling, and music (among other human activities) as being the visible expressions of a set of underlying pan-specific evolutionary adaptations. If you would like to read the outline, I'd be happy to forward you a copy; just send me an email: adm6{atsign}cornell{dot}edu.
Comment by Allen_MacNeill — March 27, 2007 @ 12:48 am
March 27th, 2007 at 12:58 am
Alan_MacNeill:
I need details specific to answering my concern of how we correlate human activities to adaptations. I do not see (nor would I expect to in a forum like this) the layering and linkage of physical and intellectual aptitudes to adaptations. One commenter brought up an interesting point in mentioning vocal chords. We use them to communicate language and to sing. A primary adaptation can confer secondary utility. The secondary advantage would not necessarily be a product of adaptation even if it was derived from a primary event that was.
Comment by Bradford — March 27, 2007 @ 12:58 am
March 27th, 2007 at 1:20 am
Western Christianity has a long tradition of theological reasoning, such that almost all concepts in Christianity come with much intellectual baggage attached - if you are cognisant of that baggage. But most people aren't. Most people accept their religious concepts for two major reasons: (1) they make sense at some intuitive level; and (2) that's just what they've been taught.
When you see a religious concept, it is indeed permeated with logic, at least to some extent. But that's not true for most believers.
In this conversation, I want you to bear in mind that when I talk about the average believer, I'm not talking about the average white American Christian who frequents internet forums devoted to archaic topics. I'm talking about the average human being. At this point in time, I guess the average human being is probably a dirt-poor farmer plowing a field in China or India. In a broader historical sense, the average human being is probably a hunter-gatherer living a semi-nomadic existence in a small group of 50 to 100 people. I'm talking about the religious beliefs of this person. That said, the same basic concepts - that is, generally unreflective acceptance of the religious beliefs of those around you - apply even to many (if not most) people in "enlightened" modern churches as well.
Thank you - morality is a perfect analogy. As Socrates found, asking people on the street to justify their moral beliefs can lead to unpleasant consequences, and not a whole lot of rational response. Most people simply know what is right or wrong "in their gut". That feeling can shift if sufficient numbers of their otherwise like-minded neighbours express contrary opinions, but at its core most people's moral beliefs are profoundly emotive and non-rational.
Don't believe me? Stop someone on the street and ask whether they believe that abortion is wrong. Then ask them why they believe that. Nine times out of ten, the answer will not be a coherent, rational statement justifying their beliefs; it will be a simple, visceral, emotive answer.
Most people think with their gut, not their head, most of the time. That's true for morality, and it's true for religion.
You're making the enormous mistake of assuming that the religious people you mingle with represent "typical" believers. They don't, I can assure you. They almost certainly represent a tiny slice of humanity, a miniscule and abnormally highly educated and privileged proportion of religious believers. Go talk to a yak herder on the Tibetan steppes, or a !Kung hunter-gatherer in the Kalahari, about their religious beliefs, and tell me how much time they've spent contemplating the theological minutiae of their religious beliefs.
But even among your enlightened friends and church-mates, I can guarantee that most beliefs are not rationally justified. It's no coincidence that people who go to the same church tend to hold similar beliefs on all sorts of matters that are quite different from those of the people from the church down the road. The difference isn't that one church attracts more logical people than the other; it's that most beliefs are adopted due to group-think and internalised biases rather than reflective thought.
Comment by Mesk — March 27, 2007 @ 1:20 am
March 27th, 2007 at 1:48 am
Hi, Bradford,
To be consistent, I think that any long standing tradition that was derived from language would also have to be considered as adaptive. In the Darwinian theory, there should not be any gaps or discontinuity. The problem, taking singing as an example, is that singing is not only a targeted use of language. It also uses other, lateral derivations that themselves were derived from language…counting for one thing, and religion itself. Song in antiquity, in Western culture, has it roots in the chorus that sang to the god during the greek festivals.
In society, there is very little that cannot be shown to have language at its generative base. And there are many disciplines that are interdependent…to the point where it is getting difficult to not see the interweavings.
Comment by AnaxagorasRules — March 27, 2007 @ 1:48 am
March 27th, 2007 at 2:09 am
Me:
What I really meant to say was something along the lines of "any long standing tradition that had language in the sequence that led to its development would also have to be considered as adaptive".
Comment by AnaxagorasRules — March 27, 2007 @ 2:09 am
March 27th, 2007 at 2:58 am
Hi Mesk,
I've gone through the moderation queue, but there was no comments from either you or any other posters. So if someone else hasn't already approved it, I'm afraid you'll have to re-type it.
Comment by Krauze — March 27, 2007 @ 2:58 am
March 27th, 2007 at 3:14 am
Krauze,
That's interesting… I've now tried to post the same text twice, and both times it's made all the right noises, but the comment simply hasn't appeared. Fortunately I've got the comment saved off-line, so I can post it again later - but I think stunney has had the same thing happen recently, and for anyone who doesn't routinely save their posts this would be pretty annoying. Maybe Guts could track down the issue?
Comment by Mesk — March 27, 2007 @ 3:14 am
March 27th, 2007 at 3:45 am
mtraven wrote:
I made no such argument.
What you're referring to was basically a statement of sociological fact—most people do find theism more intuitively plausible than atheistic materialism——-followed by, not an argument, but merely a suggestion that regarding that many people as being stupid when it comes to religious belief may indicate that atheists are maybe missing something, rather than being smarter than most. Notice the word 'may'. It's hardly an apodictic claim that theism is true because billions of people are theists. Which is how you mis-characterized it.
So, why the blatant mis-characterization?
On the other hand, if billions of people tell me there's such a thing as electricity, and I adamantly believe there's no such thing and that it can all be explained by a combination of phlogiston, tiny, tiny fairies, and the ghosts of the dead, you'd be the first to point to the overwhelming number of electricity believers as being a prima facie reason for me to seriously consider whether I may be missing something, and am possibly not as smart as I think am.
Btw, I don't know if you saw this post or not. Or this one
I have been convalescing, which gave me lots of free time to participate, but I will soon have less of that, and I was away from my computer for much of today. I'd also like to catch up on reading the posts in certain threads and digesting them All this to say that I expect to be posting less frequently.
Btw2, I don't understand how the moderation system at TT works. How does it work?
Comment by stunney — March 27, 2007 @ 3:45 am
March 27th, 2007 at 7:02 am
Mesk wrote:
You say more of the same in a subsequent post.
Forget religion for a moment.
How many people holding a given scientific belief are able to rationally justify it?
I accost a young Valley Girl, who's, like, totally, you know, a believer in the existence of, like, electricity. I ask her, "Hey, do you believe in electricity? And she's like, I guess, like totally. Why? Define electricity and recite Maxwell's equations. And she goes—huh? Who's Maxwell—like, is he on TV or something?.
Ask an Indian villager if he believes that the bags of fertilizer which he's received from an international aid agency will help to produce higher crop yields. He says he does, though he's never used them before. Why do you believe that, you ask—explain the relevant biochemistry. He has never heard of biochemistry. He has no idea how the fertilizer works. He just takes it on faith, because he thinks the aid folks are kind, though he'd never encountered them before–this is their first visit to that particular village.
Ask a cab driver in Joizey to justify his belief, which he has just alluded to using the sentences, "Man, am I glad to see you. I've been waiting for a fare since the friggin Big Bang!", that there really was a Big Bang. "I saw a guy on TV once—wossisname, Sagan, I think. He explained it all, but there'll be another Big Bang before I'm able to explain it to you, mister." You get in the cab and ask him to take you to Christchurch. He actually takes you to St Patrick's. You say, "Hey, this isn't Christchurch—this is St Patrick's!" The cabbie replies, "Listen mister, if He's in town, this is where He'll be.":wink:
How many people believe in the existence of atoms? What percentage of them could rationally justify that belief?
Go to Target, or Wal-mart, or the mall, and ask Mexican immigrants if they believe that the sun is more than a million miles away and, if so, what justifies that belief. See how far you get.
Ask a cheese merchant in Sicily if he believes in radioactive substances. Ask him to explain what makes them radioactive, or to justify his belief.
Ask an Australian surfer to explain or justify the ideas of common descent and evolution.
Very few people know any philosophy of science. Very few know the science behind basic microphysical or astronomical concepts.
"Scientists Say So, and Look At My Cellphone, Isn't It Cool What It Can Do?" doesn't cut it as a rational justification of scientific beliefs.
The vast majority believe in science because it works, meaning it meets their needs and goals.
The vast majority believe in religion because it works, meaning it meets their needs and goals. The two main ones being ethics and spirituality, in my opinion.
Religion has long been, and still is, essentially the belief that we live in an objectively morally significant world whose moral character cannot be reduced to or explained away by matter, and which has ultimate importance for our existence as persons.
So it is very tied up with the strong sense that the vast majority of people feel regarding morality, that it is irreducible and objective. More on this idea here.
Now this is key: people do not believe that morality is an illusion. They view it as normative for their lives. Furthermore, they find it very intuitively the case that morality has a transcendent source which, because it's morality—interpersonal norms—that's so sourced, must itself be a personal rather than an impersonal reality. Only thus, they reason, can life have ultimate meaning and purpose.
Would they use words like 'metaphysical', 'transcendent', 'objective', or 'the non-naturalizability of moral and rational normativity'? No, for the most part. But, as a wise man once said, so what?
They wouldn't use words like, 'Chomskyan linguistics', 'recessive gene', 'empirical'or 'methodological paradigm' either.
But it's clear that many are intuiting Kant's argument from morality for God's existence (or similar). Like Kant, they're moved by 'the starry skies above, and the moral law within'.
How on earth can you call that 'irrational', when the same idea, suitably dressed up, was rationally defended by one of the most rational men who ever lived?
This is how people reason:
Mind, Reason, Consciousness, Moral Awareness, the Beautiful Order of Nature Can Best Be Explained By A Mighty Mind Who (Maybe) Cares About Us.
(I throw the 'maybe' in there to cater to believers in deism, which I critique in the second essay—on Flew—here.
Comment by stunney — March 27, 2007 @ 7:02 am
March 27th, 2007 at 7:09 am
Third attempt to post this (yay, it works - bizarrely, I had to post one small part of it and then add the rest in editing, if I tried to post the whole thing it just didn't appear):
I think you'll find that essentially no-one advocating increased reproductive choice self-styles themselves under the banner of eugenics. The "New Eugenics" moniker was coined by their opponents.
This is a silly argument: one could just as easily argue that no birth control should be allowed, lest the government take control of it and start chemically sterilising poor people.
No-one that I know of is advocating that we hand over control of our uteri to the government, and the people labelled by their opponents as the "New Eugenicists" are almost all arguing the exact opposite: that people should be given the freedom to make decisions about their own children's future.
Erm, yes. That's the whole point of the movement towards increased reproductive freedom, including PGD for any genetically-determined trait that parents wish to favour. The idea is that parents should be able to make the decisions about their children, not their neighbours or their government.
I agree. PGD for non-disease traits is a process that will be limited to those who can afford it and are willing to suffer the uncertainties and indignities of IVF, and will have limited impact on the gene pool of the population as a whole. As technologies become cheaper and less invasive they will no doubt be more widely adopted, but it's pretty clear that the vast majority of humans will continue to have babies the good old-fashioned way.
I suspect you'll find that it isn't a "passing fad", however. Once society's elites see the promise of selection for alleles known to increase height, attractiveness and IQ - all traits considerably affected by genetics, and all of which are substantially correlated with financial success - they're unlikely to be in a hurry to relinquish it.
Comment by Mesk — March 27, 2007 @ 7:09 am
March 27th, 2007 at 7:12 am
Mesk:
I'm taking a snippet from what you wrote to illustrtate a point. Mac_Neill's goal is to investigate claims of religion as an adaptive response. The two examples I gave- origin accounts and moral codes- are intended to address the adaptive response within a sub-question related to rationality. It was the formulation of moral codes and origin accounts that was "religious" in nature and needing explanation by MacNeill's group. That formulation is the result of our reasoning capacity and requires the application of logic- even if the outcoming precepts are erroneous.
What you have done is analyze, not the evidence of religious formulations themselves, but rather the reactions of people to them centuries later. Their non-receptivity to the relevant religious concepts may be an indicator of a lack of "religiosity" on their part. The mindless "going along with the rituals without underlying convictions" reaction may indicate a healthy fear of societal reactions to them if they do otherwise. That is a very rational response that may be confusd with an irrational attachment to religion. As you pointed out people tend to do and believe that which they are taught. But that is not the measure of irrationality. After all most people also believe that which they are taught in science classes.
Comment by Bradford — March 27, 2007 @ 7:12 am
March 27th, 2007 at 7:21 am
AnaxagorasRules:
This accounts for my skepticism of an ability to correlate adaptation to specific functions. Music and language are two distinct aptitudes that are expressed with vocal chords. It is easy enough to construct reasons why vocal chords have adaptive advantages but not so easy to explain them in relation to music without assuming their generation as a result of a prior, unrelated adaptive response. If we can cite inherent ambiguity in this instance, why not in others?
Comment by Bradford — March 27, 2007 @ 7:21 am
March 27th, 2007 at 7:56 am
Allen:
I agree that some meanings are not translatable. Jokes are often difficult to translate from one language to another (obvious when one regularly watches subtitled TV shows, as I do), for example because understanding a joke requires some historical knowledge (e.g. about a country's royal family).
However, I don't think the pheromone argument is very compelling. In a sense we, too, have a chemical/electrical language which we use inside our brains. It seems to me there must be a mapping from acoustic words into chemical/electrical signals that are then somehow analyzed by the neural networks in our brains.
Comment by Raevmo — March 27, 2007 @ 7:56 am
March 27th, 2007 at 8:31 am
Mesk suggests that religious belief is irrational in the case of most people. I think he implies a contrast with scientific belief.
I would point out that this stance appears to ignore three important philosophical rejoinders.
The first I've already mentioned above, and that is Plantinga's argument that religious belief may be properly basic for any given person. A small taste excerpted from the linked interview with Varghese:
.
In other words, not all of our beliefs are or even can be the result of rational inference; some beliefs must be epistemically basic or foundational. How does one justify a belief in the reliability of our cognitive equipment? You can't, non-circularly. Memory, sense-perception, belief in other minds, belief in one's own continuing personal identity, belief in the past, belief in the reality of the external world, belief in the reliability of reason itself are foundational. Plantinga goes on to argue that if all these beliefs are rational to hold even though they're basic rather than inferred, why can't belief in God be basic or foundational also, and also not irrational. And he develops a positive case for theistic belief as properly basic for some people in some circumstances.
The two other rejoinders are famous and both stem from Hume. They call into question the rationality of induction, and of belief in causation, both of which are, of course, central to science, and it's a problem that continues to bedevil the best, most rational minds in the world.
Hume is often cited in debates about religion, morality, and personal identity. He is less often cited in debates about science; but he was in fact an equal opportunity skeptic who undermined (and continues to undermine) any simplistic faith in the rationality of science.
Comment by stunney — March 27, 2007 @ 8:31 am
March 27th, 2007 at 8:40 am
I don't see why this is unless language is being conflated with the things represented by language. Why couldn't some pheremones be used to symbolize objects (nouns), actions (verbs), and properties (adjectives), etc? And if they can't, then in what sense is it even a language?
It seems to me that the most coherent reason for why our languages all share a grammar is that reality consists of things, with properties, that do stuff in various ways, and our language takes the form it does necessarily, by virtue of the reality we're describing. When we refer to objects we have nouns, we get adjectives by referring to their properties, verbs by referring to the stuff they do, and adverbs by referring to the way they do it, and so forth. It seems to be that the alternative, attributing these things to our nervous system or what have you, forces one into a radical sort of post-modernist constructivism, where we're making up reality with our language rather than discovering it.
Comment by Deuce — March 27, 2007 @ 8:40 am
March 27th, 2007 at 9:53 am
I agree with much of this. In fact I've long argued that most people accept scientific statements for precisely analogous reasons to why they hold religious beliefs: such statements provide apparent explanations of otherwise inexplicable phenomena, are handed down from sources of authority who seem credible, and are accepted by pretty much everyone else around them. The fact that most people don't really understand what scientists (or theologians) are talking about seems to provide no real barrier to acceptance, so long as acceptance is socially acceptable.
The truth of this is nicely illustrated by young-Earth creationism. YECs contentedly agree with scientists in most fields of science; but as soon as science clashes with their strongly-held and socially reinforced religious beliefs they are more than happy to discard it. Their acceptance of science is not based on evidence, but is in fact contingent on the consistency of that science with their social and psychological environment. The same is true for most people, although of course the precise beliefs that will need to be discarded are dependent on their precise social environment.
I think this is another wonderful example of an educated, intelligent religious person inferring semi-sophisticated theology where none exists. It's simply not true that most (or even many) religious people adopt their beliefs due to an intuitive notion that morality entails the existence of God. Rather, they adopt their beliefs in a particular deity, as children, because that is the deity that their parents, friends and extended social group worship. Later, they maintain their belief largely because of the profound social benefits of doing so, and sometimes also because they have had one or two experiences (coincidences, lucky escapes, or even, perversely, tragedies) that seem to them best explained by the existence of a supernatural entity.
Of course we can go back and forth on this all night, since we're both really just stating opinions. I'd like to bring some actual data into this - hopefully tomorrow, if I have time.
Comment by Mesk — March 27, 2007 @ 9:53 am
March 27th, 2007 at 9:58 am
Hopefully it's clear that there was no contrast implied - I see the two situations as quite analogous, with most people accepting both scientific and religious statements based for the same non-rational reasons. Professional scientists and theologians are another matter entirely.
Comment by Mesk — March 27, 2007 @ 9:58 am
March 27th, 2007 at 10:34 am
Comment by inunison — March 27, 2007 @ 10:34 am
March 27th, 2007 at 11:04 am
I think you may be falling into the trap of thinking that humans came up with reason and logic somewhere around the time that Newton kicked off modern science (or to be more charitable, during the time of the ancient Greeks, when formalizing logic became big). Okay, I'm being a bit sarcastic, but you get the idea.
The point is, people believed lots of stuff before the Greeks, before Aquinas, and before modern science. That doesn't mean that their beliefs had "nothing to do with logic or reason". Logic and reason were already around, and if they hadn't been, there wouldn't have been anything for the Greeks to work with.
It's not just religious beliefs that your typical man on the street cannot give you a precise rational formulation for. This is true of beliefs in general, including scientific ones. This doesn't demonstrate anything, however. It's quite possible that even though people may hold a belief (a scientific one, for instance) without being able to provide good reasons, that the belief originated for good reasons from someone else. It may be that they hold the belief because they consider the people they got it from to be trustworthy, which may be a good reason itself. It's also possible (nay, likely) that people may hold a belief for good reasons, but not be able to articulate their reasons on the spot when pressed. To give an example, Yogi Berra, in replying to being asked what time it was, said "You mean now?". Most people would regard this as funny, as do you, most likely. But can you tell me why you find it funny? Do you think most people could, if asked? (Hint: it has something to do with logic)
Finally, nobody can give a complete list of reasons for why they believe anything if pressed enough, because all our beliefs eventually terminate in our basic intuitions about reality. Why, for instance, do you believe that reason is a guide to truth? Of course, it's impossible to give a non question-begging response to that question, because trying to give a reason to believe that it's true that reason is a guide to truth assumes that reason is a guide to truth. But every single belief we have relies on that assumption.
Another example is the belief that people besides yourself are conscious. This is an undoubtedly ancient belief that far predates modern philosophy and science. If you were to ask the typical person why they believe that other people have minds, you'd probably get a similar reaction as you would if you asked them about religion. There are reasons to believe in other minds that can be formalized, but very few people could articulate such formalizations. Does that mean that the belief, for billions of people, is irrational? Wouldn't it be absurd to try to account for the belief that others are conscious, without even putting on the table the possibility that it originates because other people are, in fact, conscious?
Now, this doesn't prove that religious belief is rational, but it does mean that it's irrational to assume from the get-go that religious belief is irrational. There's no easy out that goes "Most people in history can't give rational reasons for their religion, and I'm not religious, therefore religion must be explained by irrational causes". Besides, following the logic of this approach to its conclusion would force us to accept that all our beliefs were irrational. Any honest, reasonable attempt to account for religion must at least have on the table the possibility that it comes about because there's something to it.
Comment by Deuce — March 27, 2007 @ 11:04 am
March 27th, 2007 at 11:21 am
Allen MacNeill:
Thank you, Dr. MacNeill. I claim no special insight into what is or is not big-t 'Truth' per religious traditions or even formalized beliefs. It's just that I've got a rather strong connection ("blended sensation" is what synesthesia means), so I'm guessing maybe I get some crossovers from the more esoteric sensory processing modules too. A way of seeing, in Don Juan's characterization of 'Seeing' as describing all-sense.
Yes, I do think we are hard-wired, and the physical evidence tends to confirm this. But I do think you should be wary of attributions to standard NDS theory when talking exclusively about human beings, because a lot of it simply doesn't apply to human beings. Who have been practicing birth control to limit the size of their families/tribes to something manageable.
Though it is semi-interesting that general population increase has only recently (within the last century and a half or so) come to present extremely serious threats both to our own species' su