A new book, The Prehistory of Compassion, is generating a fair amount of press coverage. The title has a familiar ring to it and seemingly riffs Steven Mithen’s The Prehistory of the Mind. I would not be surprised if this is the case, given that Mithen and the authors are UK archaeologists with Cambridge connections. [...]
Tags:altruism·anthropoids·Antonio Damasio·autism·autistics·Brandon Keim·collaboration·compassion·cooperation·empathy·Eocene·evolution of emotions·feelings·group level selection·invisible agents·Jennifer Viegas·non-physical beings·Penny Spikins·Steven Mithen·The Prehistory of Compassion·The Prehistory of the Mind·World Vision
As I noted in A Tale of Two Religion Scholars, Dr. Michael Blume’s research (which you can find at Homo religious) shows that religious groups out-reproduce their secular counterparts. The data are solid and correspond to the commandments of most religions: “Be fruitful and multiply.”
Given that religious people make more babies than secular people, Blume [...]
Tags:agnosticism·atheism·carrying capacity·confirmation bias·Darwin·extended lactation·fertility·fitness benefits·Freud·group level selection·group size·ideological causation·infanticide·John Hawks·Marx·Michael Blume·Nietzsche·Paleolithic shamanism·religious·reproduction·Rodney Stark·secular·secularism
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
Sooner or later any serious student or historian of religion will encounter Jonathan Z. Smith, he of the infamous quip — “there is no data for religion. Religion is solely the creation of the scholar’s study.” A curious statement indeed coming from one of the most prominent historians of religion, whose entire career and oeuvre [...]
Tags:classification schemes·costly signaling·essentializing·F. Max Muller·group level selection·Imagining Religion: From Bablyon to Jonestown·increased fertility·Jonathan Z. Smith·moral glue·multilinear evolution·religious cartography·religious classification·religious history·religious phylogeny·religious taxonomy·ritual signaling·science of religion·social cohesion·unilinear evolution
Over at Discover, Razib Khan has reviewed Oren Harman’s new book The Price of Altruism: George Price and the Search for the Origins of Kindness. It is fantastic review and I encourage you to read it. Price was many things, including a theoretical evolutionary biologist with considerable mathematical skills. As Razib explains:
George Price’s aim was [...]
Tags:altruism·cooperation·dove·evolution of religion·evolutionary theory·Fisher's theorem of natural selection·George Price·goodness·group level selection·group level selectionists·hawk·inclusive fitness·morphs·Oren Harman·Paleolithic·Razib Khan·Richard Dawkins·The Price of Altruism
In a previous post, Religious Wars and Nationalism, I discussed two factors that play a major role in group cohesion. The first factor, which played a dominant role for the majority of human evolution, was extended and fictive kinship. This is what primarily held groups together during the Paleolithic. After the Neolithic Revolution, another factor [...]
Tags:Benedict Anderson·Blood Sacrifice and the Nation: Revisiting Civil Religion·Carolyn Marvin·Civil Religion·David Ingle·Durkheim·group cohesion·group identity·group level selection·guardians of faith·high priests·hymnals·Imagined Communities·kinship·liturgy·nationalism·Neolithic Revolution·Paleolithic·patriotism·patriots·religion·religiosity·religious violence·ritual leaders·ritual objects·Robert Bellah·sacred places·sacred texts·saints·temples·totemism·totems
Most anthropologists date the appearance of anatomically modern Homo sapiens to approximately 150,000 years ago. It was at about this time that the skeletal structure of Homo becomes indistinguishable from modern humans. This does not mean, however, that human evolution simply stopped; evolution encompasses changes not only to skeletal structures but also to brain chemistry, [...]
Tags:accelerated human evolution·anatomically modern Homo sapiens·cultural imprinting·cultural patterning·earliest organized religions·fertility selection·group level selection·John Hawks·Neolithic Revolution·recent adaptations·recent human evolution
In this classic video, Kirk Cameron explains — in all seriousness — how God perfectly and exquisitely designed the banana for human use and consumption:
Although the banana’s functional and optimal design features may not cause nightmares for those who understand that bananas evolved like all other plants and were domesticated (i.e., selected) by humans, they [...]
Tags:adaptationist programme·adaptationists·atheists·banana·bananas·creation·design·Dr. Pangloss·Eden·functionalism·group level selection·group level selectionists·Homo antecessor·Homo heidelbergensis·Kirk Cameron·morals·Paleolithic religion·Panglossian Paradigm·paradise·prosocial·rituals·spandrels
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
I recently found an excellent blog, Homo religiosus — The Natural History of Religion, written by the German scholar Dr. Michael Blume. After I linked to his blog, Michael came over here for some reading. He also had a question, which I answered, and he responded. The issue we are discussing — higher fertility rates [...]
Tags:adaptive assumptions·cultural evolution·earliest religions·fertility·group level selection·Homo religiosus·hunter-gatherers·Michael Blume·Neolithic Revolution·Panglossian Paradigm·religion as adaptation·religion as byproduct·reproductive fitness·Richard Lewontin·Sarah Hrdy·shamanisms·shamans·spandrels·Stephen Jay Gould
