Someone forgot to tell a group of 15-month-old infants they are flawed and that without proper (religious or moral) instruction, they will be unfair and selfish. Rather than being born this way, they appear to have been born another way: with built-in expectations of fairness and a willingness to share. These are the conclusions reached [...]
Tags:altruism·cooperation·infants·Jessica Sommerville·Marco Schmidt·moral faculty·moral sense·morals·prosocial·sharing
While browsing at my local bookstore yesterday and looking for a diversionary read, I serendipitously discovered The Ordeal of the Longhouse: The Peoples of the Iroquois League in the Era of European Colonization (1992) by Daniel Richter. Although I’m only halfway through, it seems to be the book for those interested in a comprehensive history [...]
Tags:Cayuga·competition·Daniel Richter·Deganawidah·evolutionary theists·Great League of Peace and Power·Hiawatha·intergroup·Iroquois·Mohawk·Oneida·Onondoga·prosocial·Seneca·The Ordeal of the Longhouse·warfare
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 supposedly caused group members to dance, sing, and [...]
Tags:affinity·Barry Hewlett·Brian Wood·Claude Levi-Straus·cohesion·consanguinity·cooperation·extended kinship·fictive kinship·foragers·Frank Marlowe·group agonism·group competition·group level selection·group size·inclusive fitness·James Eder·Kim Hill·kinship·language·Lewis Henry Morgan·Magdalena Hurtado·prosocial·proto-religion·residence patterns·residential bands·Robert Walker·social structure·Thomas Headland·tools
Yet another study has appeared, this one in The Proceedings of the Royal Society, which supposedly shows that religious primes can increase prosocial behavior:
Recent evidence indicates that priming participants with religious concepts promotes prosocial sharing behaviour. In the present study, we investigated whether religious priming also promotes the costly punishment of unfair behaviour. A total [...]
Tags:Charles Efferson·cooperation·costly punishment·deities·Ernst Fehr·fairness·Harvey Whitehouse·morals·neolithic·prosocial·punishment·religious primes·Ryan McKay·spirits·supernatural watchers·surveillance·Wrath of God
Over at The Stone, the primatologist Frans de Waal asks whether we can act “morally” without being “religious.” I quote-bracket these terms because they are not without complication, and we should be careful about using them in the context of such discussions. Regardless, de Waal poses some questions for which we have historical answers. For [...]
Tags:altruistic·Bart Ehrman·chimpanzees·Christianity·ethics·ethnohistory·evolution of morality·Frans de Waal·implicit ethics·Islam·Judaism·Misquoting Jesus·monotheism·Morals Without God·Native Americans·norms·polytheism·primates·primatologist·prosocial·religions of the book·right conduct
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
According to a Pew Forum poll from 2007, 57% of Americans think it is necessary to believe in God to be moral. Research, however, does not support the belief that religious people are more “moral” than non-religious people. As Mark Chaves (2010:5) recently noted:
Decades of psychological research looking for behavioral consequences in intrinsic religiosity has [...]
