Genealogy of Religion

Exploring the Origins, History and Future of Religion

Entries Tagged as 'Evolution and Selection'

Chimp Attacks & Non-Retribution

August 29th, 2010 · No Comments · Classifications of Religion, Evolution and Selection

A recent study in the American Journal of Primatology examined chimp attacks on humans in Guinea, West Africa.  There were not many — only 11 attacks, all non-fatal, between 1995 and 2009.  Because chimps are often subject to human predation and eaten as bushmeat, one might expect that such attacks would be followed by swift [...]

[Read more →]

Tags:·················

Theology of Religions v. History of Religions

August 18th, 2010 · No Comments · Axial Age Religions, Cultural Evolution of Religion, Definitions of Religion, Evolution and Selection, Neolithic Religions, Shamans and Shamanism

Over at HuffPo Religion, a well meaning Matthew Anderson suggests that all American junior-senior high school students should be required to take a minimum of two classes on world religions so as to be exposed to something other than their parents’ religion.  He supposes that these courses would foster tolerance and lead to a more [...]

[Read more →]

Tags:·····················

Sublime Summer Reading

August 17th, 2010 · No Comments · Evolution and Selection, History of Religions

Although summer is nearing an end, there is still time to immerse yourself in a book that captivates and enthralls — the kind of book that rivets your attention for stretches of 8-12 hours.  I just found my end of summer reading: Janet Browne’s splendidly gripping two volume biography of Charles Darwin.
The first volume is [...]

[Read more →]

Tags:······

Evolution as Salvation for Theology? Not So.

August 5th, 2010 · No Comments · Evolution and Selection, History of Religions, Philosophy of Religion, Religion as Evolutionary Adaptation, Religion as Evolutionary Byproduct

In May of this year, John Avise — an evolutionary biologist at UC-Irvine — published an article (“Footprints of  Nonsentient Design Inside the Human Genome“) in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, one of the world’s leading scientific journals.  The article, which attacked Intelligent Design “theory” on the ground that an omnipotent and [...]

[Read more →]

Tags:························

Evolution of Altruism, Group Level Selection, and George Price

July 23rd, 2010 · No Comments · Atheism and Religion, Cultural Evolution of Religion, Evolution and Selection, Religion as Evolutionary Adaptation, Religion as Evolutionary Byproduct

Over at Discover, Razib Khan has reviewed Oren Harman’s new book The Price of Altruism: George Price and the Search for the Origins of Kindness.  It is fantastic review and I encourage you to read it.  Price was many things, including a theoretical evolutionary biologist with considerable mathematical skills.  As Razib explains:
George Price’s aim was [...]

[Read more →]

Tags:·················

The Nature of “Natural”: Foucault and Wittgenstein

July 14th, 2010 · No Comments · Emotions and Religion, Evolution and Selection, Methodology of Religion, Morality and Religion, Power and Religion

In my last two posts (The “Sin” of Sodomy and “Natural Moral Law“), I have been considering the naturalness of sexual physiologies and preferences.  By serendipitous accident, yesterday I read Bob Plant’s (2006) article, “The Confessing Animal in Foucault and Wittgenstein,” in which he observes that these famous philosophers are connected by their shared suspicion [...]

[Read more →]

Tags:·······················

Professor Condemns Homosexuality on Basis of “Natural Moral Law”

July 11th, 2010 · 1 Comment · Axial Age Religions, Ecology of Religion, Evolution and Selection, History of Religions, Hunter-Gatherers and Religion, Morality and Religion, Philosophy of Religion

Over at Pharyngula, PZ Myers discusses the case of a professor — teaching at a public university — who presented his Catholic views, disguised as philosophy, on homosexuality to his students.  One student complained to the administration, calling the professor’s position “hate speech.”  PZ Myers disagrees and calls it “stupid speech.”  Myers then proceeds to [...]

[Read more →]

Tags:·············································

Ancestor Worship: The Epicurean Lucretius

July 10th, 2010 · 1 Comment · Atheism and Religion, Cognition and Religion, Cultural Evolution of Religion, Evolution and Selection, History of Religions, Philosophy of Religion

While doing some background research on the Scottish Enlightenment philosopher David Hume (1711-1776), I discovered that he had been much influenced by Lucretius, who lived in the first century BCE (around the time of Julius Caesar) and published a six-volume treatise titled On the Nature of Things. As if writing philosophy in narrative form were [...]

[Read more →]

Tags:·························

Recent Human Evolution and Religion

July 6th, 2010 · No Comments · Archaeology and Religion, Cognition and Religion, Cultural Evolution of Religion, Evolution and Selection, Religion as Evolutionary Adaptation, Religion as Evolutionary Byproduct

Most anthropologists date the appearance of anatomically modern Homo sapiens to approximately 150,000 years ago.  It was at about this time that the skeletal structure of Homo becomes indistinguishable from modern humans.  This does not mean, however, that human evolution simply stopped; evolution encompasses changes not only to skeletal structures but also to brain chemistry, [...]

[Read more →]

Tags:··········

Perfectly Designed: Bananas and Religion

July 4th, 2010 · No Comments · Archaeology and Religion, Cultural Evolution of Religion, Evolution and Selection, History of Religions, Morality and Religion, Religion as Evolutionary Adaptation, Religion as Evolutionary Byproduct, Ritual and Religion

In this classic video, Kirk Cameron explains — in all seriousness — how God perfectly and exquisitely designed the banana for human use and consumption:

Although the banana’s functional and optimal design features may not cause nightmares for those who understand that bananas evolved like all other plants and were domesticated (i.e., selected) by humans, they [...]

[Read more →]

Tags:·····················