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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Marc Hauser, as many know, is a prominent psychologist at Harvard who is well known for research into primate cognition and the evolution of morality. Many may also know that he has been accused of research misconduct in a very public (and one-sided) way. It has truly been unfortunate not only for the people involved, [...]
Tags:due process·ethics·evolution of morality·evolutionary psychology·Harvard·Kafkaesque·Marc Hauser·morality·morality without religion·morals·Nicholas Wade·primate cognition·prosocial behavior·research misconduct
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 [...]
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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
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 [...]
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 [...]
