Genealogy of Religion

Exploring the Origins, History and Future of Religion

Entries Tagged as 'David Sloan Wilson'

Haeckel’s Mystical Monism

November 12th, 2011 · 3 Comments · Definitions

A place for everything and everything in its place. This is not just a mantra for those with obsessive tendencies. It also describes the drive that some have toward a system: a unified theory of everything.
Before the Enlightenment, there was no need for such a theory. God served this purpose and everything was explained by [...]

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Smashing Daniel Dennett’s Spell

September 7th, 2011 · 19 Comments · Cognition, Cultural Evolution, Evolution, Methodology, Philosophy

Several years ago I read Daniel Dennett’s Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon (2006). It wasn’t easy. This is not because Dennett’s ideas and arguments are difficult (they aren’t). It is because I don’t care for Dennett’s style. While I can overlook stylistic deficiencies if the substance is solid, in this case I [...]

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Tricksters, Selfishness & Altruism

April 16th, 2011 · 4 Comments · Evolution, Evolutionary Byproduct, Hunter-Gatherers, Philosophy

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 [...]

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Group Level Selection? The Non-Evolution of Religion

January 16th, 2011 · 15 Comments · Evolution, Evolutionary Adaptation, Evolutionary Byproduct, History, Ritual

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, which are rarely if ever specified, somehow gave [...]

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Contra Group Level Selection — George Williams (RIP)

September 19th, 2010 · No Comments · Cultural Evolution, Definitions, Evolutionary Adaptation, Evolutionary Byproduct, History, Neolithic

As Nicholas Wade reports, the prominent evolutionary theorist George Williams recently died.  It is somehow fitting that Wade, who tells group level selection stories about the evolution of religion in his book The Faith Instinct: How Religion Evolved & Why It Endures, should write Williams’ obituary.  Although Williams’ interests were broad, he is best known [...]

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Non-Religious Chimpanzees Cooperate and War for Territory

June 28th, 2010 · No Comments · Cultural Evolution, Ecology, Economy, Evolution, Evolutionary Adaptation, Evolutionary Byproduct, History, Hunter-Gatherers, Neolithic, Power, Shamanism

There have been many articles over the past week reporting that an unusually large group (150 members) of chimpanzees in Kibale National Park, Uganda has been engaging in systematic territorial expansion by attacking and killing neighboring groups.  The Nature article notes that this is “cooperative behavior” and then quotes from the New York Times story:
These [...]

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“Religion Functions to Sustain the Moral Order” — Starkly Wrong

April 29th, 2010 · 2 Comments · Axial Age, Cultural Evolution, Evolutionary Adaptation, History, Morality, Shamanism

Many of the recent books and articles about the evolutionary origins of religion claim that natural selection targeted “moral” behaviors and that these behaviors coalesced into “religion.”  This is a story told primarily by group level selectionists (who have the bad habit of confusing biological evolution with something they call “cultural evolution”) and evolutionary psychologists [...]

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Religion as Evolved Adaptation — The Fallacy of Backwards Projection

April 11th, 2010 · 3 Comments · Archaeology, Evolutionary Adaptation

As I noted in yesterday’s post, Richard Dawkins calls David Sloan Wilson’s theory of religious evolution “perverse.”  As you may recall, Sloan Wilson believes that religion originated as an adaptation giving some groups advantages over others.  These supposed advantages arise from Sloan Wilson’s belief that religious groups are more cohesive, moral, and prosocial than non-religious [...]

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“Were We Born to Believe?”

April 10th, 2010 · 1 Comment · Cognition, Evolutionary Adaptation, Evolutionary Byproduct

Over at the Telegraph, Matthew Taylor reviews Philip Pullman’s new novel, The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ.  Based on Taylor’s description, the novel appears to be a thinly-veiled attack on Christianity.  Yawn.  If you want to read a good novel that interrogates Christianity and complicates its dogma, I suggest Nikos Kazantzakis’ The Last [...]

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Orthodox Judaism and Group Level Selection

February 18th, 2010 · No Comments · Evolutionary Adaptation

In Darwin’s Cathedral: Evolution, Religion, and the Nature of Society, the anthropologist David Sloan Wilson argues that group level selection can, at least in part, account for the origins of religion.  According to this theory, selection favors individuals who are members of tightly knit and cohesive groups.  As Wilson sees things, such groups are most [...]

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