For the holidays I’d like to share this with my theist friends who see hominin evolution progressively unfolding as one adaptation after another, all culminating in the transcendent and numinous splendor of modern humanity:
To tell stories about a world in which all the organic parts are at an adaptive optimum is typical of attempts to [...]
Tags:Davydd Greenwood·Dominic Johnson·Evolutionary Adaptation·evolutionary design·evolutionary storytelling·evolutionary theism·Matt Rossano·Michael Blume·Panglossian·Simon Conway Morris·Templeton Foundation
If I understand my Catholic friends and scholars correctly, God created the cosmos, earth, and life. This God sparked the original organism and designed an evolutionary process that has resulted in endless forms most beautiful and wonderful. But of all these forms, one stands out and one was the goal from the beginning: humans. When [...]
Tags:adaptation·Catholic·Christian·creationism·design·evolutionary theism·Gobekli Tepe·God·intelligent design·John Haught·Klaus Schmidt·Matt Rossano·Michael Blume·Panglossian Paradigm·Simon Conway Morris·teleology·theology
Over the past decade several books and articles have appeared which purport to explain the “evolution of religion” as an adaptation, usually invoking group level selection as the source. These explanations nearly always depend on the fallacious assumption that if something evolved, it must be have been selected and therefore is adaptive. These explanations also [...]
Tags:accident·adaptation·byproduct·Charles Darwin·confirmation bias·design·evolutionary psychology·fitness·group level selection·hypothesis·Matt Rossano·methodology·Michael Ghiselin·natural selection·Panglossian·pleiotropy·storytelling·testing·theory
A friend recently pointed me to Michael Graziano’s article “Is Spirituality a Byproduct of Evolution?” Because it is posted over at Huff or Fluff-Po, I was immediately skeptical.
Anyone who has perused Fluff-Po’s Religion section knows it is filled scientific sounding metaphysics and countless articles by progressive religionists telling us that their non-progressive counterparts have gotten [...]
Tags:Antonio Damasio·awe·byproduct·emotion·feeling·hierarchy·Matt Rossano·Michael Graziano·neuroscience·ranking·sociality·spirituality
In a recent essay on the cult of David Foster Wallace, Nathan Heller notes that DFW’s mature work deals with the crisis of contemporary pluralism: “how to think intelligently and truthfully about the world when that world is full of intelligent and truthful people who adhere to irreconcilable schools of thought.” While Heller [...]
Tags:Alan Sokal·Catholic·confirmation bias·David Foster Wallace·evolutionary psychologist·fantasy·group level selection·group size·Jesus·language·Matt Rossano·Nathan Heller·natural law·Panglossian·parsimony·pluralism·Pope Benedict·postmodernism·resurrection·science·storytelling·supernatural selection·technology·truth·wish fulfillment
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
Over at HuffPo Religion, Matt Rossano has written a thought provoking piece — which some may find surprising — on the relationship between war and religion. In Why Religion Does Not Equal War, Rossano begins with the common knowledge that religious differences often lead to war, or that religious differences are often used to justify [...]
Tags:aggression·Arabs·Civil Religion·conflict·Cyrus the Great·Darius the Great·Egyptian pharaoh·God & War: An Audit & An Exploration·god-kings·Greek-Persian wars·Greg Austin·group cohesion·Israelis·Jews·kinship·Matt Rossano·Muslims·nationalism·religion·Religious War Audit·religious wars·Thom Oommen·Todd Kranock·war·Why Religion Does Not Equal War·Xerxes the Great
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
