religion doesn't evolve

Marine biologist and former White House science adviser Jeff Schweitzer is not much impressed by speculations about a god gene and the evolution of religion. Nothing here about Higgs-Boson, though. (He's responding in part to Nicholas Wade's new book on the subject.) Thanks for the link, Dean. And oh, btw: the Hitchens response to the Googlers at 33'10" when he's asked about people who feel a need for the communal and other benefits of church membership but don't really believe any of the doctrine, and who seek out "the least obnoxious" faith and take it half-heartedly: "This used to be called the Church of England, or the Unitarians-- of whom Bertrand Russell remarked  that they believe in one god MAXIMUM." Hitch also mentions the late novelist Peter DeVries, who said the movement from poly- to mono-theism is progress, next step being non- or a- or anti-theism altogether. That presumably would be the apotheosis of religious evolution! (And is Hitch's response to Robert Wright.)

First, religion did not evolve through the mechanisms of natural selection. The idea of god perpetuates itself through cultural transmission. Second, atheists as a rule do not claim that religion is "useless" at all, fully recognizing that an appeal to an unseen force had benefits to early human societies unschooled in the sciences. Third, even if the absurd claim were true that religion evolved through natural selection, that would in no way challenge the tenet that god is nothing but a silly myth. The "evolution" of religion would simply mean that perpetuating a ridiculous myth had a selective advantage, nothing more, and would certainly not lend credence to the myth itself...

Religion was born not from some god gene, but of fear of the unknown, of the drive to control the uncontrollable, of the need to have mastery over one's fate in the face of an uncertain world. The first ideas of religion arose not from any awe of nature's wonder and order that would imply an invisible intelligent designer, but rather from concerns for the events of everyday life and how the vast unknown of nature affected daily existence. To allay fears of disease, death, starvation, cold, injury and pain, people fervently hoped that they could solicit the aid of greater powers, hoped deeply that they could somehow control their fate, and trusted that the ugly reality of death did not mean the end. Hope and fear combine powerfully in a frightening world of unknowns to stimulate comforting fantasies and myths about nature's plans.

The human brain is extraordinarily adept at posing questions, but simply abhors the concept of leaving any unanswered. We are unable to accept "I don't know," because we cannot turn off our instinct to see patterns and to discern effect from cause. We demand that there be a pattern, that there be cause and effect, even when none exist. So we make up answers when we don't know. We develop elaborate creation myths, sun gods, rain gods, war gods and gods of the ocean. We believe we can communicate with our gods and influence their behavior, because by doing so we gain some control, impose some order, on the chaotic mysteries of the world. By making up answers to dull the sting of ignorance, we fool ourselves into thinking we explain the world. Religion was our first attempt at physics and astronomy...

Wright vs. Hitchens

Robert Wright (Evolution of God) and Christopher Hitchens (God is not Great) disagree about the future of the God concept, in this netcam debate from Wright's "bloggingheads" site. Neither is at his best, but it will be of interest to some of us in the A&S class.

And speaking of evolution and religion... "According to Nicholas Wade (How Religion Evolved and Why it Endures) religions are machines for manufacturing social solidarity. They bind us into groups. Long ago, codes requiring altruistic behavior, and the gods who enforced them, helped human society expand from families to bands of people who were not necessarily related. We didn’t become religious creatures because we became social; we became social creatures because we became religious. Or, to put it in Darwinian terms, being willing to live and die for their coreligionists gave our ancestors an advantage in the struggle for resources.

Wade holds that natural selection can operate on groups, not just on individuals, a contentious position among evolutionary thinkers. He does not see religion as what Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Lewontin called a spandrel — a happy side effect of evolution (or, if you’re a dyspeptic atheist, an unhappy one). He does not agree with the cognitive anthropologist Pascal Boyer that religion is a byproduct of our overactive brains and their need to attribute meaning and intention to a random world. He doesn’t perceive religious ideas as memes — that is to say, the objects of a strictly cultural or mental process of evolution. He thinks we have a God gene..."

What does he mean, "we"? And what's so great about being bound into a group, when your group is small and exclusive? But that's Robert Wright's point: our groups are expanding, "evolving," becoming more inclusive. But "we" are still killing one another over our different religious commitments. That's Christopher Hitchens' point. They're all correct. So who's right? And who's really dyspeptic?

compassion revisited

A while back I gave Karen Armstrong credit for being right about the centrality of compassion in all creditable spiritual worldviews, religious, secular, and ethical. But I want to be clear: she's not right to credit all historical religions with actually practicing and defending (as opposed to just preaching) compassion and tolerance themselves. They don't all do even that. Ophelia Benson, as usual, is blunt about this. Here she's quoting (and skewering) Robert Wright, whose Evolution of God is on our reading list in "Atheism & Spirituality":

All the great religions have shown time and again that they're capable of tolerance and civility when their adherents don't feel threatened or disrespected.

Bullshit. All the great religions have shown time and again that when they have unquestioned power, they use it, and they don't use it for tolerance and civility, they use it for social control and for their own protection and well-being. Robert Wright should take a few minutes to ponder the tolerance and civility of the Irish Catholic church.

OK, point granted: compassion is still a goal and an ideal, not an institutional value to be found and consistently cherished in the church-centered mainstream. I agree. But Karen's still right to urge the pursuit of that goal. No reason why atheists shouldn't be happy to endorse it too.

Give Ms. Armstrong partial credit, and please sign her charter. It's not disloyal, Randians, to live for the sake of one another as well as for ourselves.

"grand bargain"

Robert Wright is adamantly not an atheist, he told Colbert. Apparently he's a Jamesian accommodationist instead. Wright's "most emailed" piece in today's Times implicitly poses the Rodney King question: Can't we just all get along? Wright's essay concludes:

"William James said that religious belief is 'the belief that there is an unseen order, and that our supreme good lies in harmoniously adjusting ourselves thereto.' Science has its own version of the unseen order, the laws of nature. In principle, the two kinds of order can themselves be put into harmony — and in that adjustment, too, may lie a supreme good."

Evolution of God

Robert Wright's Evolution of God looks to be a candidate text for our Spring course, "Atheism and Spirituality." Reviews have been glowing. Unfortunately, Wright himself was less than scintillating in conversation with Colbert last night. (The McKibben appearance, btw, was on Monday's show.)