1. Comment #432195 by WilliamSatire on November 16, 2009 at 3:44 pm

I think people are hard wired for superstition, and religion is just the daddy of superstition. I remember as a kid being convinced if I went to sleep facing one wall, I'd have nightmares, but not if I went to sleep facing the other wall. That was a minor superstition completely and utterly thought up without any outside influence. Critical thinking takes constant effort. I think it's an uphill struggle. Some are better at it than others. Genetics? Maybe...

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2. Comment #432196 by esuther on November 16, 2009 at 3:44 pm

For atheists, it is not a particularly welcome thought that religion evolved because it conferred essential benefits on early human societies and their successors. If religion is a lifebelt, it is hard to portray it as useless.

Not necessarily. There are many behaviors that have a survival benefit in the wild (or in primitive societies) but are destructive in the context of high-density industrial civilization, such as the male urge to mate widely and with multiple females, the assertion of male dominance through force, female marriage and sexual activity at the onset of menstruation, etc. What was good for societies squatting around a campfire and trying to devise ways to survive in hostile nature is not necessarily good for us, now. Rarely, in fact.

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3. Comment #432198 by tieInterceptor on November 16, 2009 at 3:59 pm

religion evolved because it conferred essential benefits on early human societies and their successors. If religion is a lifebelt, it is hard to portray it as useless.

"In dark ages people are best guided by religion, as in a pitch-black night a blind man is the best guide; he knows the roads and paths better than a man who can see. When daylight comes, however, it is foolish to use blind, old men as guides."
Heinrich Heine

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4. Comment #432200 by esuther on November 16, 2009 at 4:01 pm

Okay, I read the whole thing, and was just as bothered by the concluding sentence:

If religion is seen as a means of generating social cohesion, it is a society and its leaders that put that cohesion to good or bad ends.

Religion most definitely is/was a means of social cohesion. So also were skin color and language. But 'social cohesion' means tribalism and it's post-industrial form is nationalism. In the modern world, when international cooperation for resources and safety is critical, any form of tribalism, for any reason, is destructive. That "urge to cohesion" must be at all costs done away with if the globe is going to make it through the next millennium.

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5. Comment #432201 by keddaw on November 16, 2009 at 4:04 pm

7,000 B.C.

Some mistake surely, I thought the world was only 6,000 years old...

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6. Comment #432205 by irate_atheist on November 16, 2009 at 4:14 pm

"For atheists, it is not a particularly welcome thought that religion evolved because it conferred essential benefits on early human societies and their successors."

It is purely a matter for academic study, not something I or anyone else here - I'd wager - will be getting their knickers in a twist over. My word, a hypothesis, supported by some evidence. How distraught I am.

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7. Comment #432207 by Jos Gibbons on November 16, 2009 at 4:15 pm

Wade acting as if the evolution or even existence of a god gene has been observed reveals he doesn’t understand that adaptive complexity can be explained also in memetic terms, which is probably why he takes minuscule astronomical advances the ancient Egyptians would have considered unimpressive in a 15-century period as evidence that religion is beneficial. But let’s suppose it is. What then? Wade reveals further failure on his part to understand distinctions between different things:

For atheists, it is not a particularly welcome thought that religion evolved because it conferred essential benefits on early human societies and their successors. If religion is a lifebelt, it is hard to portray it as useless. For believers, it may seem threatening to think that the mind has been shaped to believe in gods, since the actual existence of the divine may then seem less likely.

The atheist-believer distinction is over whether God exists, not what happens when people believe he does. Neither atheists nor believers have shown much sign of being moved by the concerns Wade raises. Just out of curiosity, what opinions does he think are OK in the light of these “discoveries”? As it happens he goes on to suggest people’s beliefs aren’t so challenged by all this after all (wow!), but even his reasons for that are illogical:

What evolution has done is to endow people with a genetic predisposition to learn the religion of their community, just as they are predisposed to learn its language. With both religion and language, it is culture, not genetics, that then supplies the content of what is learned.

The difference he is overlooking is that religions are true, false, conflicting etc. in ways languages or not, since religious have core tenets, whereas languages are conventions. Geography is OK for how you conjugate your verbs, but not for what you think happens when you die.

It is easier to see from hunter-gatherer societies how religion may have conferred compelling advantages in the struggle for survival.

Not when your arguments sound group-selectionist; those don’t work. Yet again, Wade responds to a problem with what he is saying with something that again is confused:

The idea that natural selection can favor groups, instead of acting directly on individuals, is highly controversial. Though Darwin proposed the idea, the traditional view among biologists is that selection on individuals would stamp out altruistic behavior (the altruists who spent time helping others would leave fewer children of their own) far faster than group-level selection could favor it.

Darwin was an individual-selectionist, a point which separated him from almost all his contemporaries.

But group selection has recently gained two powerful champions, the biologists David Sloan Wilson and Edward O. Wilson, who argued that two special circumstances in recent human evolution would have given group selection much more of an edge than usual. One is the highly egalitarian nature of hunter-gatherer societies, which makes everyone behave alike and gives individual altruists a better chance of passing on their genes. The other is intense warfare between groups, which enhances group-level selection in favor of community-benefiting behaviors such as altruism and religion.

But an individual mutant who slacks off in these contexts will benefit, so the model, if Wade is fairly representing its postulates, won’t work.

A propensity to learn the religion of one’s community became so firmly implanted in the human neural circuitry, according to this new view, that religion was retained when hunter-gatherers, starting from 15,000 years ago, began to settle in fixed communities.

That view is not new, nor is its failure to become the scientific consensus.

Religion was also harnessed to vital practical tasks such as agriculture

All the religion people like Wade typically analyse (mostly Abrahamic) came long after the ancient Egyptians developed irrigation. While they were a polytheist people, religion clearly helped them no more with their agriculture than it did with their eclipse-prediction, their building of the pyramids, their body-preservation methods or their advanced mathematics.

any religions bear traces of the spring and autumn festivals that helped get crops planted and harvested at the right time. Passover once marked the beginning of the barley festival; Easter, linked to the date of Passover, is a spring festival.

But we know historically that this is because religions co-opted agriculture/climate-inspired festivals, not the other way round. December 25 was first celebrated as the time of the Winter Solstice (which it was before the calendar slipped), only for innumerable deities’ birthdays to be alleged as that date.

Could the evolutionary perspective on religion become the basis for some kind of detente between religion and science? Biologists and many atheists have a lot of respect for evolution and its workings, and if they regarded religious behavior as an evolved instinct they might see religion more favorably, or at least recognize its constructive roles. Religion is often blamed for its spectacular excesses, whether in promoting persecution or warfare, but gets less credit for its staple function of patching up the moral fabric of society. But perhaps it doesn’t deserve either blame or credit. If religion is seen as a means of generating social cohesion, it is a society and its leaders that put that cohesion to good or bad ends.

(1) A science-religion detente would require that religious beliefs be scientifically respectable, not that science know why religion exists; it knows why many bad things (including many failures of human reasoning) exist, but that doesn’t make them OK.
(2) Adaptations are not necessarily viewed as favourable; indeed, since all adaptations are a product of evolutionary conflict, our opinions on them are decidedly ambivalent. Who do you root for – quick gazelle or quick cheetah? As it happens, most for the former (until cubs start to starve) – but the point is, not for both. Rape, in the form of a stable polymorphism, is an adaptation in many animal species, possibly including us – but this has not caused us to come to terms with it, even though more sexual reproduction is the very definition of what drives our evolution. Note how warfare between human groups is integral to Wade’s preferred excuse for its existence. Another common hypothesis is that the bigotry which blocked interfaith marriages minimised the spread of disease. None of these ideas need be judged flattering by anyone who appals poor interpersonal relations.
(3) To say that religion’s staple function is patching up society’s ethics is ludicrous before we have any evidence it even contributes to ethical behaviour. Literally every statistic on the subject fails to give this conclusion; indeed, most go the other way. Many advocates of religion have responded to these statistics by being more critical of their coreligionists.

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8. Comment #432210 by Eshto on November 16, 2009 at 4:20 pm

Agree with irate_atheist, if a "God gene" (whatever that means) evolved, then it evolved.

I would have no trouble accepting that religion might have conferred a survival advantage in some ways. But esuther said exactly what I think already: What was good for primitive tribes isn't necessarily good for modern industrialized civilizations. In our modern global village, religion just seems to breed division, intolerance and violence.

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9. Comment #432214 by rod-the-farmer on November 16, 2009 at 4:27 pm

What evolution has done is to endow people with a genetic predisposition to learn the religion of their community, just as they are predisposed to learn its language. With both religion and language, it is culture, not genetics, that then supplies the content of what is learned.

Hah. So evolution favours those who develop a religion, especially during the transition from hunter-gatherers to a more urban lifestyle ?

Give me a break. Note that each geography develops a different religion. If they had all independently developed the same religion, that could certainly be considered as proof of a single god. But they didn't. Each is unique, and some have/had multiple gods. I am not counting the three Abrahamic versions, as they come from the same area, and almost identical roots. And at least one of them has multiple gods.

What this seems to prove beyond a doubt is that religion is man-made. I think it is going to be tough to argue against this. And so, if some aspects of religious life bestow benefits on the community that invented that religion, that is nice, but has no relevance when the validity of the belief system is challenged.

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10. Comment #432218 by Ignorant Amos on November 16, 2009 at 4:40 pm

For atheists, it is not a particularly welcome thought that religion evolved because it conferred essential benefits on early human societies and their successors. If religion is a lifebelt, it is hard to portray it as useless.

Only until one learns to swim in the "clear thinking oasis"....no lifebelt required.

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11. Comment #432221 by Mr Blue Sky on November 16, 2009 at 4:47 pm

I think the article was a poorly disguised bit of marketing for his book and says very little about a so called god gene.

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12. Comment #432227 by zengardener on November 16, 2009 at 5:03 pm

Biologists and many atheists have a lot of respect for evolution and its workings, and if they regarded religious behavior as an evolved instinct they might see religion more favorably, or at least recognize its constructive roles.

Actually, I don't always like it when my emotions are triggered and I start to get very angry.

You know the feeling.
Everything turns red, and you want to smash someone's face. Your blood boils, your face turns red, you can feel your heart thumping in your chest. You get tunnel vision, all the periphery fades out, and the sound drops off.

I understand the fight or flight response. I know why it evolved. I grok the biological processes.

But I don't see it more "favorably" when it crops up at inappropriate times, like when my 4 your old son punches me in the balls while I'm sleeping.

8-P

breathe...breathe...slowly count to ten...breathe..."it's gonna be o.k."...
"Son, don't do that. You hurt daddy."

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13. Comment #432230 by Colwyn Abernathy on November 16, 2009 at 5:09 pm

For atheists, it is not a particularly welcome thought that religion evolved because it conferred essential benefits on early human societies and their successors. If religion is a lifebelt, it is hard to portray it as useless.

Uhhh...no. Whether religion is USEFUL or not does not denote its TRUTH. Literature and stories are useful for communicating ideas and information, therefore Harry Potter is real.

Do us a lemon, please. As an atheist I understand the historical efficacy of religion. That does not make said religion TRUE. Big difference. I would argue that such religion is no longer useful, as we have better, more accurate ways of assessing what is true.

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14. Comment #432234 by Quiddam on November 16, 2009 at 5:18 pm

For atheists, it is not a particularly welcome thought that religion evolved because it conferred essential benefits on early human societies and their successors. If religion is a lifebelt, it is hard to portray it as useless.

Libido evolved because it conferred essential benefits on early human societies where mortality was high. As intelligent animals we can see that there are downsides to unlimited population growth and STDs and so we use contraception so that we can enjoy sex without the harmful consequences.

At least those of us who are not Catholics

So the challenge is how can we keep the benefical social aspects of religions (marking life's milestones, caring for all members of society) while losing the harmful ones of delusion, arbitrary authority, reliance on ancient mythology etc?

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15. Comment #432235 by clunkclickeverytrip on November 16, 2009 at 5:19 pm

Religion is a tenacious fucking virus, so in that sense it has "evolved".

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16. Comment #432238 by Colwyn Abernathy on November 16, 2009 at 5:21 pm

clunk,

Religion is a tenacious fucking virus, so in that sense it has "evolved".

Well, memetically speaking, anyway. It's evolved in order to preserve itself by "infecting" the minds of those exposed to it. Even the infection alone isn't enough for it to propagate. It requires a whole meme-complex of mind games in order to cement itself in the mind of its host. It really is fascinating from a psychological standpoint.

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17. Comment #432239 by vega on November 16, 2009 at 5:23 pm

Religion was about as beneficial for 'social cohesion' as fascism was to the development of the German autobahn system.

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18. Comment #432245 by ClintBurky on November 16, 2009 at 5:28 pm

Well, Just to nit pick...

I like everything except this phrase "but gets less credit for its staple function of patching up the moral fabric of society". But the journalist does go on to say it's not necessarily the case. Then again, religion back then may have been a form of moral superiority.

Good article though

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19. Comment #432248 by Nunbeliever on November 16, 2009 at 5:35 pm

I HATE the idea of a "god gene" as one gene would be responsible for the highly complex behaviour of religion...

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20. Comment #432251 by toomanytribbles on November 16, 2009 at 5:38 pm

the properties of an organism are not beneficial or detrimental in a vacuum all by themselves, but in the context of the environment in which they are functioning.

it is possible that what may have once benefited humanity in its vast evolutionary prehistory -- if it truly did so -- has, in the latest few thousand years, become a disadvantage.

i suspect religion -- any unreasonable mode of thought -- given our present technology and abilities for widespread destruction, is a clear liability.

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21. Comment #432253 by Nunbeliever on November 16, 2009 at 5:47 pm

For fear of divine punishment, people followed rules of self-restraint toward members of the community.

I do not like when people treat religion as a homogenous phenomenon. It has only been possible to separate religion from actual understanding of the world since the dawn of scientifical reasoning. The early religions weren't religions in the modern sense. They were all there was. A composition of the total knowledge of a specific community. Hence, the notion that religion per se has an specific evolutionary benefit is the same as saying that knowledge has a evolutionary benefit. It is only with hindsight we can distinguise rituals from actual knowledge.

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22. Comment #432255 by amuck on November 16, 2009 at 5:53 pm

For atheists, it is not a particularly welcome thought that religion evolved because it conferred essential benefits on early human societies and their successors.

I don't see why an atheist would find this unwelcome, if this is where the evidence leads.

As pointed out above, there are a variety of human behaviours, such as xenophobia, genocide, rape that may have conferred an advantage to primitive human cultures but are detrimental in modern human society.

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23. Comment #432258 by blakjack on November 16, 2009 at 6:02 pm

I bought some Evo-stick adhesive recently with the imaginative name: “Sticks like Sh*t” – yes that really is what it is called. (And it does what it says on the tin!)

“Sticks like Sh*t” would be a very appropriate name for religion that just won’t go away despite all the logical arguments.

Jack

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24. Comment #432265 by Lucas on November 16, 2009 at 6:26 pm

The record begins with a simple dancing floor, the arena for the communal religious dances held by hunter-gatherers in about 7,000 B.C.

Okay, but that still puts us roughly 43,000 years from the beginning of behavioral modernity, right? I'd like to know what religion was like during that period, though I doubt we can know. It is not however much of a stretch to assume that the same tribal structures existed or that such religions just repeated the same pattern.

For atheists, it is not a particularly welcome thought that religion evolved because it conferred essential benefits on early human societies and their successors. If religion is a lifebelt, it is hard to portray it as useless.

What? Why would you say that? Of course religion is an evolved behavior, but it is one that many of us have now grown out of, just like our appendices. We more than welcome the idea. Of course religion had a purpose and use, but we don't need it anymore. That's the problem. It causes more harm than good now that we are not small pockets of humanity far from each other struggling to survive. Our population and social structures are now threatened by tribal thinking and behavior.

Duh.

And the Vespasian quote is actually, "Væ, puto deus fio," which was recorded by Cassius Dio and has been translated as, "Damn. I am already becoming a god!" That sounds a lot better.

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25. Comment #432271 by Buerggiste on November 16, 2009 at 6:44 pm

“Religion has the hallmarks of an evolved behavior, meaning that it exists because it was favored by natural selection. It is universal because it was wired into our neural circuitry before the ancestral human population dispersed from its African homeland.” - What? Some supernatural entities need natural selection? I agree with you religions need to evolve to adapt to new environment to survive but without the hard currency from the gullible flocks they are nothing. Contending that we were pre-program/hard wired to be superstitious without worthy evidence is worst than farting in a crowded elevator.

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26. Comment #432272 by InfuriatedSciTeacher on November 16, 2009 at 6:45 pm

17. Comment #432239 by vega on November 16, 2009 at 5:23 pm

Religion was about as beneficial for 'social cohesion' as fascism was to the development of the German autobahn system.

I'd give it that, actually, for in-group activites. It's between-group activities, or what happens when tribe A runs into tribe B, that demonstrate where religion becomes problematic. It'd be a whole lot less obnoxious if there were only one of them, in terms of violence caused. Probably a whole lot more obnoxious in terms of social control, so who knows on that one...
My point, in short, is that creating a hierarchy and reason to sacrifice to the group does benefit the group, so on a small level religion could have fostered social cohesion. Useful != true, however.

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27. Comment #432274 by mlgatheist on November 16, 2009 at 6:56 pm

The ancestral human population of 50,000 years ago, to judge from living hunter-gatherers, would have lived in small, egalitarian groups without chiefs or headmen.

.

I watched a documentary the other day about “modern” hunter-gatherers in the Amazon and in Indonesia and they had leaders that kept the tribes together and when problems arose would be the arbiter on who was right and what was necessary to correct the problem. In one of the Amazon tribes it was a shaman who was also the village story teller and who told the village how things have “always” been and will continue to be. In another they had both a shaman and a village leader. It was the same with the tribes in Indonesia. One had both and one just had the shaman.

Many, if not all, of our cousin primates seem to have a leader (or dominating sub-group) to keep the entire group in line. Any individual that will not “toe the line” is either killed or banished.

Religion served them as an invisible government.

I would say that the religious leader (story teller) would not be invisible. If proven wrong too many times would also stop being the leader as well.

It bound people together, committing them to put their community’s needs ahead of their own self-interest. For fear of divine punishment, people followed rules of self-restraint toward members of the community.

I would like to see verifiable evidence that this would be more affected that just having a tribal leader who could have you beaten, killed, or banished.

Religion also emboldened them to give their lives in battle against outsiders. Groups fortified by religious belief would have prevailed over those that lacked it,

I would, again, like to see verifiable evidence to support this. The thought that if you lose the battle it would mean death, torture, and / or enslavement should be sufficient motive to be just as “fortified” as the believer.

It would appear to me that the people who came up with this hypothesis appear to want to believe that it is not only “hard-wired” into us, but that it benefited us. I would think that seeing our living primate cousins doing so well without religion would also mean that it would not have been required for us to survive either.

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28. Comment #432283 by debaser71 on November 16, 2009 at 7:25 pm

overly simplistic trash imo

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29. Comment #432287 by God fearing Atheist on November 16, 2009 at 7:38 pm

Religion has the hallmarks of an evolved behavior, meaning that it exists because it was favored by natural selection.

It might have given evolutionary benefit in the same way as sickle-cell anaemia.

Now we have anti-maleria drugs its a disability.

The question is whether religion is of evolutionary benefit in modern society.

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30. Comment #432293 by Toering on November 16, 2009 at 7:52 pm

I would dare to say that Religion was mans first Abstract Invention.

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31. Comment #432299 by prolibertas on November 16, 2009 at 8:09 pm

AC Grayling's article could be a nice rebuttal to all this.

I'd say, religion may be in all societies, but so is irreligion, even if it's suppressed. If there is anything that is actually 'universal' in all humans, it is fear: fear of death, fear of the unknown, fear of powerlessness. Naturally, every society will have some who deal with those fears simply by pretending that they are illusions (the religious), and others who instead face those fears head on and look for real answers to dealing with them.

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32. Comment #432311 by righton on November 16, 2009 at 9:03 pm

"For atheists, it is not a particularly welcome thought that religion evolved because it conferred essential benefits on early human societies and their successors. If religion is a lifebelt, it is hard to portray it as useless."


Seems like Wade is being deliberatley antagonistic. Faulty logic anyway.

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33. Comment #432312 by galaieva on November 16, 2009 at 9:15 pm

káldy benedek

read read read don't JUST spend your evenings changing nappies :)

ist that fine? :)

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34. Comment #432348 by hiraethog on November 17, 2009 at 12:01 am

Well I think it is a good article. You don't have to believe in a supernatural God to realise that religion is part of the meme/gene matrix. We Humans have moved beyond our biological roots. We can see the future, we study ethics, and morality. We place value on things and this is part of the reason why value systems such as religions will always exist. Science is not great at answering questions of morality and value.

It is also rather arrogant of some commentators to suggest that just because we live in an educated urban society then religion is no longer appropriate.

As the article demonstrates, science can play a valuable role in understanding the evolution of religion.

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35. Comment #432367 by j.mills on November 17, 2009 at 12:46 am

Among the many canards and speculations presented as if they were facts:

For fear of divine punishment, people followed rules of self-restraint toward members of the community. Religion also emboldened them to give their lives in battle against outsiders. Groups fortified by religious belief would have prevailed over those that lacked it

Call me simple, but surely those who don't 'give their lives in battle' are more likely to survive and reproduce? Surely those whose strategy was determined by what works rather than by false beliefs would be more likely to prevail? And all that group selection stuff has been rebutted a hundred times.

But the evolutionary perspective on religion does not necessarily threaten the central position of either side... For believers, if one accepts that evolution has shaped the human body, why not the mind too? What evolution has done is to endow people with a genetic predisposition to learn the religion of their community, just as they are predisposed to learn its language. With both religion and language, it is culture, not genetics, that then supplies the content of what is learned.

Why does Wade imagine that any theist would be mollified by this claim? They regard their religion as true, not as one post-modernishly 'legitimate' viewpoint among many available 'metaphors' for reality.

He doesn't get it.

hiraethog says:

Science is not great at answering questions of morality and value.

Science is not about that. It is religions that claim to answer "questions of morality and value", and their answers are spectacularly inadequate. Should we forgive adulterers or stone them?

It is also rather arrogant of some commentators to suggest that just because we live in an educated urban society then religion is no longer appropriate.

I notice you say "arrogant" rather than "wrong", and "appropriate" rather than "tenable". What's arrogant about saying there's no evidence for gods?

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36. Comment #432375 by Koreman on November 17, 2009 at 1:39 am

Off topic, Two year old severely abused witch killed with a stick. She was the daughter of a slave from India. The Hague, Netherlands 2009.
http://bit.ly/3jrIRw

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37. Comment #432404 by Roland_F on November 17, 2009 at 6:46 am

Yes the quest for supernatural explanations (religion) evolved. Maybe even since the Savanna dried up 2 mya so the proto-humans had fewer trees to hide from predators and needed to gang together in the open bush land. This favored and selected the less aggressive more childish, better working together members (because of higher Promine level) of the tribes. So the childish quest for some protector (dead ancestors, deities) is kept into adulthood.

The brain has some ‘interpreter module’ in the left brain hemisphere that tries to make sense of not understood circumstances. This was found out from several split brain patients who gave weird explanations when their right hemisphere input is not know to the left hemisphere but has somehow to make sense out of it. This explanations from the ‘interpreter module’ sound very much like the superstitious explanations from tribes for natural events, like examples from Pascal Boyer (Religion explained) why the termite bitten hut crashed: fancy stories about angry dead ancestors, missing sacrifices to deities and so on are used as explanations. Why are the tribes of the chosen people permanently enslaved and subjugated from foreign powers, well god YHWH is angry because reason x, y, z.

So humans have evolved the requirement for fancy explanations, desire some protection from big brother (dead ancestor, deities) who is watching you. A market is evolving for shamans, priests and the ilk, who are using these human desire for their own end and inventing new stories as meme to gain power and influence. Rulers all along history records used this human need for supernatural explanations and guidance shameless to gain and stay in their god given power above the suppressed peasants who were brainwashed to endure any hardship in this life in the hope for a better afterlife. And there are these televangelists, new age gurus and church organizations who are eagerly filling their pockets from the gullible flock by satisfying these demand.

Now we life in the 21st century in a very densely populated society and the evolved habits which were once beneficial for survival can not be afforded any longer, like aggression against ‘religious out groups’. Just because it was once beneficial and survived natural selection, it must not be desirable nowadays, like a preference for sweet or oily rich food, is now in a modern well feed society counterproductive for the health.

As there is a demand for an explanation about the *why*, the desire for some spirituality, protection from a higher force etc… despite all the scientific advancements and explanatrions, the question is more how can this demand be fulfilled without all the bad site effects of the well organized rip-off machinery of churches, new age gurus, televangelists. Maybe as often proposed some peaceful Buddhism stripped of superstitious woowoo, as a kind of harmless replacement drug is the answer.

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38. Comment #432415 by Gobby on November 17, 2009 at 8:33 am

I see a couple flaws in this kind of studies. The big one is that they mistake superstition as religion. At the same time, they are treating religion/superstition as exogenous, but in reality, religion is an endogenous variable, which means religion is a meme evolves along with human society, not because religion is beneficial to human society thus it drives evolution.

It is easier to see from hunter-gatherer societies how religion may have conferred compelling advantages in the struggle for survival. Their rituals emphasize not theology but intense communal dancing that may last through the night.

That's not religion at all. It is superstition as a pretense in the arrangement of a society. It is merely a method to arrange/organize the society, not the only one. We can also call it a cultural element, just like many people will get together to see a play or the Olympics in ancient Greek. This kind of social events are beneficial to society, without or without the religious motifs.

To give another example, Chinese are famous for ancestor worship. However, that doesn't mean the Chinese respect their elders due to the practice of ancestor worship; it is the other way around, it is because the society first requires respects for elders, then people make up excuses/myths to justify the practice. At the same time they could not explain death or other natural phenomena effectively, so putting them together, you will have seemingly "religious" social practices. I think this point is rather obvious for anyone who has done some basic social science to see.

Moving on to political science. In the past, most government officials, especially the highest ones, had a dual role in the management of the state and participation in religious matters. Their religious functions were often justifications to their power. Even the Roman consuls, who had the duty to perform omens, were of no exception. The "good" that religions had done would be done anyway if we were to give the officials a secular function only. This will of course weaken their power, but that's another question.

Without proper definition of religion and proper treatment of it as an endogenous variable, I fail to see the study as a scientific one.

PS. I should have noted that religion is superstition, while religion is more organized. The author fails to give any definition at all.

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39. Comment #432422 by Gobby on November 17, 2009 at 9:50 am

hiraethog:

You don't have to believe in a supernatural God to realise that religion is part of the meme/gene matrix. We Humans have moved beyond our biological roots. We can see the future, we study ethics, and morality. We place value on things and this is part of the reason why value systems such as religions will always exist. Science is not great at answering questions of morality and value.

I will say it's a meme but not a gene. It has different implications. As a meme, we can say it is a social construct that we can choose to believe or not to believe. With it as a gene, it means that we are hardwired and there is evolutionary advantage to believe, so we better believe. We cannot see the future, but we can have reasonable prediction based on observations. Moral and values are gathered/learned/created by socializing, it has nothing to do with religion(s). One good evidence is that we have nearly universal moral but not universal religion, and the discrepancy among "moralities" is usually fueled by religion/dogma/bigotry/superstitution etc. It is true that science doesn't answer moral question, but it is way better than religion in an indirect way that it gives us rationality. Knowing why we should not kill is better than just blindly follow the rule. Knowing why gives us spillovers to other questions. In essence, you will have a theory of ethnics with the scientific method instead of dogmatic rules.

It is also rather arrogant of some commentators to suggest that just because we live in an educated urban society then religion is no longer appropriate.

You have to understand that a learned atheist, unlike theist, will not jump to the conclusion that is it no longer appropriate. We typically follow a couple steps. First, we say it is no longer necessary, because we can explain many things sooner or later with the scientific method. Then religion is no longer appropriate because it is dogmatic; it is morally wrong by advocating its dogmas. Example, we know that condoms are effective against AIDS by science but the catholics church, for its dogma, decided to spread lies about it. It is morally wrong. I wouldn't mind if there is a religion in this world that would just keep its silly beliefs to itself.

As the article demonstrates, science can play a valuable role in understanding the evolution of religion

The article fails to demonstrate that. It is not scientific. Science can analyze and study religion if the definite of religion is a form of social organization/pattern. However, if the definition presumes religion is a necessity or it is a moral good, then the study is not scientific.

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40. Comment #432428 by Logicel on November 17, 2009 at 10:49 am

Gobby: However, if the definition presumes religion is a necessity or it is a moral good, then the study is not scientific.
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Excellent point. And what Wade is doing (his approach certainly is not a rigorous study of religions) is his own brand of accommodation and peace-making between theists and atheists. There are some who just have to speak for both sides and present a solution as if honest and vigorous debate is somehow a problem.

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41. Comment #432469 by godless moai on November 17, 2009 at 3:51 pm

I enjoyed reading "Evolution Man, Or, How I Ate My Father" by Roy Lewis on the subject. A quick read, nothing scientific, but good to start wondering about the origins of a few human development, including religion.
favourite quote: "back to the trees!"

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42. Comment #432521 by eoliphan on November 17, 2009 at 6:14 pm

The little "For atheists.." dig is ridiculous. I don't know of too many atheists who deny/discount the evolutionary origins of religion. I think the point is that perhaps, like the appendix, we can do without it.

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43. Comment #433094 by Michael Gray on November 19, 2009 at 4:09 am

...religious behavior has occurred in societies at every stage of development and in every region of the world.

Except for the Hi'aiti'ihi tribe of Brazil, of course. (Commonly known by outsiders as the Pirahã)

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44. Comment #433107 by PsyPro on November 19, 2009 at 6:49 am

I usually like Nicholas Wade's musings, but this one is just silly. What evidence does he have about *all* societies being religious? We hear of this claim all the time, but what does it mean? For many past social groups, it wasn't religion but their science, how they explained things. It was their physics, their social science, their psychological science. But religion? How so? By what definition? And, his only claim to a genetic/evolutionary basis is this alleged ubiquity through time. It is a solution in search of a falsely-evinced question. Possibly, yet another example of somebody besides Ruse angling for the Templeton prize.

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45. Comment #433109 by PsyPro on November 19, 2009 at 7:18 am

I think I have Wade figured out: People have believed/ held to be true stupid/wrong things as long as there has been a recorded history. Let us, says Wade, call those beliefs/held to be true statements that are now known (thought?) to be wrong religion. Hence, we have always had religion. But so what? That is just calling ignorance, attempts at explanation in advance of information and understanding religion. How is that helpful? I agree with Wade that all sorts of otherwise inexplicable social things *may* have evolutionary explanations, but none of those are uniquely *religious* except in this sense of all nonsense beliefs in the past are *religious* beliefs.

To the contrary, I think a more compelling case can be made for religion (muslim, roman catholic, pick your latest faddism) as being relatively modern, akin to fascism and other totalitarian movements of the last few millennia. They have NO connection to the beliefs of past peoples struggling to understand the world they faced, except in so far as they reflect the same social struggles, in which case they are not religious, just social.

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