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
Several months ago I became aware of the “Evolution of Religion” project, which maintains a website here. I did not find it particularly interesting because it was immediately apparent that the project was designed to prove a particular point. We need look no further than the project’s subtitle to ascertain the a priori commitment that [...]
Tags:a priori assumptions·agenda·atheism·benefits·bias·confirmation bias·conflict of interest·costs·evolution of religion·Evolution of Religion Project·John Templeton Foundation·maladaptive·metaphysics·methodology·The Adaptive Logic of Religious Beliefs and Behaviour
In evolutionary biology, few issues have caused more debate than altruism or what appears to be altruism. It is generally accepted that selection operates on individual organisms and that these organisms are selfishly interested in their own survival and reproduction. Another way of stating this is that individual organisms are interested solely in passing along [...]
Tags:altruism·archetypal·Carl Jung·cooperation·coyote·culture hero·David Sloan Wilson·E.O. Wilson·Elliot Sober·Franz Boas·George Price·George Williams·group level selection·inclusive fitness·Jerry Coyne·John Maynard Smith·Kantian·kin selection·kindness·Mac Linscott Ricketts·metaphysics·Michael Carroll·multilevel selection·mythology·Native Americans·Oren Harman·Paul Radin·reciprocal altruism·Richard Dawkins·Robert Trivers·selfish genes·selfishness·The Price of Altruism·Trickster·unit of selection·William Hamilton
Humans everywhere are inveterate storytellers. Because storytelling, in the form of narrative, is found in all cultures and is structurally similar — with agents and action linked together by causation — there is excellent reason to think this ability is the result of intense selection pressure and is not simply a byproduct of other cognitive [...]
Tags:adaptation·agency detection·ancestral environment·archetypes·byproduct·causal attribution·causation·cause·correlation·David Hume·effect·folklore·Immanuel Kant·information·language·Michelle Scalise Sugiyama·narration·narrative·social information·stories·storytelling·tales·theory of mind
There are a number of scholars who claim that “religion” evolved as an adaptation. What kind of adaptation? A group level adaptation. The story usually goes like this: at some unknown time during the middle or upper Paleolithic, certain groups of hominins developed proto-religious beliefs. These beliefs supposedly caused group members to dance, sing, and [...]
Tags:affinity·Barry Hewlett·Brian Wood·Claude Levi-Straus·cohesion·consanguinity·cooperation·extended kinship·fictive kinship·foragers·Frank Marlowe·group agonism·group competition·group level selection·group size·inclusive fitness·James Eder·Kim Hill·kinship·language·Lewis Henry Morgan·Magdalena Hurtado·prosocial·proto-religion·residence patterns·residential bands·Robert Walker·social structure·Thomas Headland·tools
Anyone who has watched an episode of “I Survived: Beyond and Back” on the Biography Channel knows that accounts of near death experiences mesmerize the public. They also drive ratings. The typical “I Survived” vignette features someone whose heart has stopped beating and is considered “clinically dead.”
Because everyone who appears on the show is very [...]
Tags:Biography Channel·body·brain death·clinical death·dissociation·dreaming·drug use·dualism·fasting·folk psychology·I Survived·J. Allan Cheyne·ketamine·Leanne Wilkins·lesions·mind·NDE·near death experiences·NMDA receptor antagonist·OBE·Olaf Blanke·out of body autoscopy·out of body experiences·out of body feeling·pan-human neurology·psychotropic·R. Saxe·rave·ravers·schizophrenia·sensory integration·shamans·soul flights·temporo-parietal junction·theory of mind·Todd Girard·trance dance·visions
In a recent post on group level selection and the evolution of religion, I observed that if we assume such selection was operating on human groups during the Paleolithic, three factors play a major role in determining which groups come out on top. These three factors are: (1) group size, (2) technology, and (3) language. [...]
Tags:altruism·art·behavioral modernity·cooperation·differential fitness·evolution of religion·group agonism·group competition·group level selection·group size·intergroup conflict·language·modern human behavior·ornamentation·Paleolithic·proto-religion·reproduction·Richard Klein·ritual·survival·symbolic thinking·technology·The Human Career·Upper Paleolithic
For evolutionary scholars of supernaturalism and religion, Scientology is the gift that keeps on giving. It is almost as if the purpose of Scientology is to prove that the human brain-mind is wired in such a way that belief in the supernatural is virtually assured — all it takes is some kind of cultural prime [...]
Tags:credulity·David Miscavige·Elspeth Reeve·evolutionary biology·L. Ron Hubbard·neurobiology·origin myth·origin story·Paul Haggis·Scientology·Sea Org·Teegeeack·thetans·Tom Cruise·wired for belief·Xenu
In a few days Jesse Bering’s new book, The Belief Instinct, will be published in the United States. It has already been published in the UK as The God Instinct. The title change seems a bit odd and the opposite of what one might have expected. Something like ninety percent of Americans believe in God, [...]
Tags:anthropomorphism·autism·cognitive illusion·Faces in the Clouds·Jesse Bering·neolithic·Paleolithic·shamanisms·Stewart Guthrie·The Belief Instinct·The God Instinct·theory of mind
In his paper purporting to show that a beneficial, baby-making “religion gene” will sweep through a population and eventually make everyone religious, Robert Rowthorn ignores this inconvenient fact: nearly everyone in the world is already religious. Here is how it breaks down:
Because fifty percent of the “Non-Religious” group is theistic but not “religious,” we can [...]
Tags:alleles·atheists·belief gene·believers·brain·brain gene·demography·dual inheritance·faith gene·fertility·fixation·human universal·materialists·neurology·religion gene·Robert Rowthorn·selective sweep·supernaturalism·unbelievers·world religiosity
