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 [...]
Tags:Darwinian monism·David Sloan Wilson·dualism·EO Wilson·Ernst Haeckel·Hegel·Kant·metaphysics·metatheory·monism·Neil deGrasse Tyson·Nietzsche·Niles Holt·science as religion·systematization·theory of everything·unified theory
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 [...]
Tags:analogy·Armin Geertz·atheism·biological evolution·Breaking the Spell·cultural evolution·Daniel Dennett·Daniel Hart·Darwinian monism·David Sloan Wilson·E.O. Wilson·Leon Wieseltier·memes·meta-theory·metaphor·skepticism·Snark·The God Genome·theory of everything
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
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 [...]
Tags:altruism·baboons·chimpanzees·cohesion·competition·cooperation·David Sloan Wilson·ecology·evolution of religion·foraging unit·group agonism·group level selection·group size·hominids·hominins·hunter-gatherers·inclusive fitness·intergroup competition·Joseph Bulbulia·kinship·language·Matt Rossano·Nicholas Wade·Paleolithic·primates·Richard Sosis·ritual·technology·tools
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 [...]
Tags:Adaptation and Natural Selection·Darwin's Cathedral·David Sloan Wilson·gene level selection·George Williams·group level selection·Matt Rossano·multilevel selection·neolithic·Nicholas Wade·Paleolithic·Richard Dawkins·Stephen Jay Gould·the evolution of religion·The Faith Instinct·The Selfish Gene
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 [...]
Tags:aggression·Blackfoot·Cheyenne·chimpanzees·chimps·city-states·cohesion·Comanche·cooperation·Cree·Crow·David Sloan Wilson·ecology·Egypt·Flathead·foragers·Gros Ventre·group level selection·Kibale National Park·kinship·Kiowa·Lakota·Levant·Matt Rossano·Mesopotamia·Nicholas Wade·Plains Indians·power·religion·religious warfare·Sarsi·shamans·Shoshoni·territoriality·The Faith Instinct·war
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 [...]
Tags:David Sloan Wilson·Edward Tylor·Frans de Waal·Marc Hauser·Matt Rossano·morality·morals·Nicholas Wade·Rodney Stark·shamanism
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 [...]
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 [...]
Tags:David Sloan Wilson·Nikos Kazantzakis·Richard Dawkins·The Last Temptation of Christ
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 [...]
