Over the past decade there has been a sea change in the way we assess moral reasoning, judgment, and behavior. The old view, developed and championed largely by introspective philosophers, was that people actually reason about choices before making decisions that have moral or ethical impacts. While some decisions are in fact made this way, [...]
Tags:ethics·evolution of morals·innate morality·intuitive morality·John Rawls·Jonathan Haidt·Kant·moral judgment·moral psychology·moral reasoning·prosociality
For the holidays I’d like to share this with my theist friends who see hominin evolution progressively unfolding as one adaptation after another, all culminating in the transcendent and numinous splendor of modern humanity:
To tell stories about a world in which all the organic parts are at an adaptive optimum is typical of attempts to [...]
Tags:Davydd Greenwood·Dominic Johnson·Evolutionary Adaptation·evolutionary design·evolutionary storytelling·evolutionary theism·Matt Rossano·Michael Blume·Panglossian·Simon Conway Morris·Templeton Foundation
No one who has ever kept rats as pets (as I have) will be surprised by a study that appeared in yesterday’s Science and is getting major media coverage. In “Empathy and Pro-Social Behavior in Rats,” the authors report:
Whereas human pro-social behavior is often driven by empathic concern for another, it is unclear whether [...]
Tags:altruism·cooperation·group size·Inbal Ben-Ami Bartal·Jean Decety·non-human primates·Peggy Mason·primates·prosocial behavior·rats·reciprocal altruism·religion as evolved adaptation
What is the meaning of this dubious concatenation? I’m not sure but am sure that it should be bracketed with scare quotes at all times.
I first became aware of “theological anthropology” while browsing the Evolution of Religion website, which is a Templeton funded project devoted to finding God’s plan in evolution. Here is the announcement [...]
Tags:creationism·Dominic Johnson·intelligent design·Templeton Foundation·theistic evolution·theological anthropology
While browsing at my local bookstore yesterday and looking for a diversionary read, I serendipitously discovered The Ordeal of the Longhouse: The Peoples of the Iroquois League in the Era of European Colonization (1992) by Daniel Richter. Although I’m only halfway through, it seems to be the book for those interested in a comprehensive history [...]
Tags:Cayuga·competition·Daniel Richter·Deganawidah·evolutionary theists·Great League of Peace and Power·Hiawatha·intergroup·Iroquois·Mohawk·Oneida·Onondoga·prosocial·Seneca·The Ordeal of the Longhouse·warfare
At the conclusion of Elaine Pagels’ lecture on the Book of Revelation, the first question someone asked her was why does religion persist? Pagels answered: “I think because this is about emotion. This isn’t conceptual. People who talk about it as if it matters whether you believe in God or not, have got [...]
Tags:attachment·Elaine Pagels·emotions·fear·Future of An Illusion·Revelation·Robert Fuller·separation anxiety·Sigmund Freud·Spirituality in the Flesh
If I understand my Catholic friends and scholars correctly, God created the cosmos, earth, and life. This God sparked the original organism and designed an evolutionary process that has resulted in endless forms most beautiful and wonderful. But of all these forms, one stands out and one was the goal from the beginning: humans. When [...]
Tags:adaptation·Catholic·Christian·creationism·design·evolutionary theism·Gobekli Tepe·God·intelligent design·John Haught·Klaus Schmidt·Matt Rossano·Michael Blume·Panglossian Paradigm·Simon Conway Morris·teleology·theology
Over the past decade several books and articles have appeared which purport to explain the “evolution of religion” as an adaptation, usually invoking group level selection as the source. These explanations nearly always depend on the fallacious assumption that if something evolved, it must be have been selected and therefore is adaptive. These explanations also [...]
Tags:accident·adaptation·byproduct·Charles Darwin·confirmation bias·design·evolutionary psychology·fitness·group level selection·hypothesis·Matt Rossano·methodology·Michael Ghiselin·natural selection·Panglossian·pleiotropy·storytelling·testing·theory
In Ars Poetica (“The Art of Poetry”), the great Roman lyricist Horace counsels against using gods to resolve thorny plots. The deus ex machina is simply too tidy and unbelievable. When gods swoop in to save the day, the mundane becomes sacred. Metaphysics to the rescue.
I was reminded of Horace’s enduring wisdom by two recent [...]
Tags:altruism·Andrew Delton·Ars Poetica·collective action·cooperation·deus ex machina·ethnolinguistic·free riders·generosity·group level selection·Horace·John Tooby·kinship·Leda Cosmides·Max Krasnow·prosociality·punishment·reciprocity·Robert Boyd·Sarah Mathew·Turkana·warfare
In the inaugural issue of Religion, Brain & Behavior, Jeffrey Schloss and Michael Murray examine the idea that belief in supernatural agents is adaptive because these agents are punishers: supernatural policeman if you will. This policing can have two effects. First, belief in supernatural punishment can enhance within group cooperation. Second, it can reduce cheating [...]
Tags:ancestral environment·Azim Shariff·cheating·cooperation enhancement·essentialism·free riders·Friedrich Nietzsche·functionalism·game theory·Genealogy of Morals·Jeffrey Schloss·Jesse Bering·Lee Cronk·Mario Brandhorst·Michael Murray·morals·neolithic·Paleolithic·punishment avoidance·supernatural punishment·supernatural surveillance
