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 [...]
Entries Tagged as 'David Sloan Wilson'
Non-Religious Chimpanzees Cooperate and War for Territory
June 28th, 2010 · No Comments · Cultural Evolution of Religion, Ecology of Religion, Economy and Religion, Evolution and Selection, History of Religions, Hunter-Gatherers and Religion, Neolithic Religions, Power and Religion, Religion as Evolutionary Adaptation, Religion as Evolutionary Byproduct, Shamans and Shamanism
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
“Religion Functions to Sustain the Moral Order” — Starkly Wrong
April 29th, 2010 · 2 Comments · Axial Age Religions, Cultural Evolution of Religion, History of Religions, Morality and Religion, Religion as Evolutionary Adaptation, Shamans and 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 [...]
Tags:David Sloan Wilson·Edward Tylor·Frans de Waal·Marc Hauser·Matt Rossano·morality·morals·Nicholas Wade·Rodney Stark·shamanism
Religion as Evolved Adaptation — The Fallacy of Backwards Projection
April 11th, 2010 · 2 Comments · Archaeology and Religion, Religion as 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 [...]
“Were We Born to Believe?”
April 10th, 2010 · 1 Comment · Cognition and Religion, Religion as Evolutionary Adaptation, Religion as 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 [...]
Tags:David Sloan Wilson·Nikos Kazantzakis·Richard Dawkins·The Last Temptation of Christ
Orthodox Judaism and Group Level Selection
February 18th, 2010 · No Comments · Religion as 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 [...]
Why “Religion as Evolutionary Adaptation”?
February 11th, 2010 · No Comments · Religion as Evolutionary Adaptation
Because supernatural beliefs giving rise to religion are nearly universal among humans, many researchers suspect — with considerable justification — that the propensity to harbor such beliefs and adhere to religions is the product of evolution and natural selection. Researchers disagree, however, on whether the cognitive architecture supporting supernaturalism and religion was itself selected for [...]