Did Evolution Cause Religion?

[florduh]

I'm pretty new here, so I hope this hasn't been covered already.

 

There are a lot of thoughtful, intelligent and educated people here. I would like to get your thoughts on the theory that mankind's proclivity for all things spiritual and mystical evolved of necessity. As human intelligence became aware of mortality, as we banded together in societies for economy and safety, we came to realize that we and our families and companions would die. To contemplate one's own death is something other animals don't endure. Theory is that in order to cope with this, we developed a sense that there must be something more than this life. Apparently to this day, people need to believe in a life after death despite the lack of evidence for such a concept. Could we be pre-wired for magical thinking as a result of an evolutionary defense mechanism?

 

- Chris

[Ouroboros]

I do think so. Maybe over time we can learn how to live without it and overcome it, but not sure how.

[Kenny]

I'm pretty new here, so I hope this hasn't been covered already.

 

There are a lot of thoughtful, intelligent and educated people here. I would like to get your thoughts on the theory that mankind's proclivity for all things spiritual and mystical evolved of necessity. As human intelligence became aware of mortality, as we banded together in societies for economy and safety, we came to realize that we and our families and companions would die. To contemplate one's own death is something other animals don't endure. Theory is that in order to cope with this, we developed a sense that there must be something more than this life. Apparently to this day, people need to believe in a life after death despite the lack of evidence for such a concept. Could we be pre-wired for magical thinking as a result of an evolutionary defense mechanism?

 

- Chris

 

I don't believe I fit in the intelligent or educated category, but I'm a thoughtful sucker, so here I go. Good topic, by the way, Chris.

 

I think we, as humans, were very aware of our mortality from the get-go seeing as how we were very active participants in the food chain! Early man had a lot of time on his hands, too. It's one thing to be out hunting and gathering, but it's quite another to be in the cave for days at a time, ya know? People really haven't changed THAT much over time in that we all basically want and need the same things. So I'd have to concur that we are, indeed, hard wired for certain behaviors. Our minds, from the earliest of time, have been capable of both necessity and fantasy, I think. Part of our very nature is to be curious, to ask questions and to demand answers for them. I think from the very beginning, man realized that he was living in a pretty amazing world and in many ways, just like today, there were more questions than answers. With that said, it's easy for me to imagine how fabricated explanations, superstitions, gods and things of that sort were conceived. I think it was probably fairly innocent back in the days of yore... too bad it has turned into what it has.

[The-Captain]

Sure

[MathGeek]

I agree. Humankind seems to be hardwired for religious belief and it may take an act of evolution to redo the wiring. Even more so, I think that belief can lead us a species to act like the less complex mammalian predecessors we've come from. I'm not an expert, but from the empirical evidence I've witnessed, it appears that when religious belief is challenged or even repressed, it can lead to some pretty damning consequences of its own. Religious impulse is a natural phenomena that must be checked with a long, flexible leash in my opinion. If given too long a leash, it can create havoc that ruins the happiness of human life and the normal functioning of any secular bureaucracy. If given too short a leash, it will pull and pull and pull until the leash breaks and it will run wild and free more so than it did when the leash was shortened. Using this metaphor as a formalized philosophical framework, many bright-minded (ironically religious) philosophers and statesmen came up with the concepts of "religious freedom" and "seperation of church and state". These simple checks have kept religion (at least in America) at bay for a long time and it was successful.

 

In the meantime, I don't foresee religion bowing out from the public stage anytime soon. Since intelligent design is a big deal at state school board meetings and in the national press, there is something to be said about the idea of "pervasive influence". Also, Edward Tabash believes that it WILL take a full century or longer to make atheism an awarely accepted thought system in this country, which is unlikely if the status quo on non-religious exclusion remains intact.

 

Those are my brain droppings on this subject. I hope they don't emit such a foul-smelling odor.

[par4dcourse]

We look at the heavens and are in awe, and we know at least partially how it works. Early man, knowing little about physics and such must have assumed a supernatural creator.

A gawd gene has been tenatively identified in the human geome, and neurologists think they have isolated a part of the brain that causes that "spooky" feeling at times. Science is getting closer all the time.

[Vigile]

We have evolved the propensity to look for patterns in things. This ability has been useful for survival. We are able to recognize faces. Feeding habits of game, etc... But, this ability has its flaws and humans find patterns where none exist. We see bunnies in the clouds and Jesus in our nachos. We notice that sometimes when we dance it soon rains afterward. We tend to forget the times when it doesn't. We begin to develop rituals based on our readings of these patterns and before you know it, religion is born.

 

It's not just primative man that has done this either. Every day people believe that prayers are answered because they give less value to the false positives and see patterns exist where there are none. So, yeah, ironically, evolution created religion.

[Grandpa Harley]

I've long posited that it arose partially by accident and then got nailed home by us performing selective breeding on our selves... If you look at Christianity now, their enemy worse than Islam is who - The Atheist. Same as it ever was... In Islam, the 'peoples of the book' (that is believers) are to be respected if not liked. Someone in another religious meme could be converted... The guy at the back of the group who says, but I've not seen a god anywhere... is the one the Powers that Be would pretty quickly kill, or sling out. Pariah status quickly means that your genes don't move on to the next generation...

[Antlerman]

Apparently to this day, people need to believe in a life after death despite the lack of evidence for such a concept. Could we be pre-wired for magical thinking as a result of an evolutionary defense mechanism?

 

- Chris

I'm quickly breaking my word to not participate here for a time for myself, but I was happy to see this post from someone asking a question at the heart of much of my thinking. Quick answer, yes. I strongly believe we are hard-wired for "religious" thinking (expanding beyond the idea of an afterlife). Here's some of my earlier thoughts about it from about a year ago now you might find interesting: http://www.ex-christian.net/index.php?show...c=15020&hl=

 

Along with that was this one thread further back that touches on something you said above and might have some thoughts throughout it you might enjoy: http://www.ex-christian.net/index.php?show...c=13153&hl=

 

It's all a matter of how we frame perceptions in which language, and what it's purpose is for. Does empiricism answer everything that is considered truth for humans, or do we speak and think using signs? Enough of my thoughts for now. Just wanted to share those links.

[florduh]

Apparently to this day, people need to believe in a life after death despite the lack of evidence for such a concept. Could we be pre-wired for magical thinking as a result of an evolutionary defense mechanism?

 

- Chris

I'm quickly breaking my word to not participate here for a time for myself, but I was happy to see this post from someone asking a question at the heart of much of my thinking. Quick answer, yes. I strongly believe we are hard-wired for "religious" thinking (expanding beyond the idea of an afterlife). Here's some of my earlier thoughts about it from about a year ago now you might find interesting: http://www.ex-christian.net/index.php?show...c=15020&hl=

 

Along with that was this one thread further back that touches on something you said above and might have some thoughts throughout it you might enjoy: http://www.ex-christian.net/index.php?show...c=13153&hl=

 

It's all a matter of how we frame perceptions in which language, and what it's purpose is for. Does empiricism answer everything that is considered truth for humans, or do we speak and think using signs? Enough of my thoughts for now. Just wanted to share those links.

 

 

Thanks for the links. You're covering (very well) lots of stuff I enjoy contemplating. Gotta keep the grey matter busy!

 

- Chris

[dr_funkenstein]

Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon by Daniel Dennett.

[Hammurabi]

First off, I don't think you meant the question exactly as it reads, but I'm going to go ahead and answer it as if you did, just to get it out of the way.

 

"Did Evolution Cause Religion?"

 

There are two ways to see this question. In the literal sense, the answer is "Of course it did." Evolution created us and we created evolution, therefore evolution caused religion. This is just like saying evolution caused the internet, or caused cheese pizza, hardly a question worth asking and most certainly not the question you were trying to ask.

 

The other way to see this question is: In a world governed by evolution, was religion inevitable? The answer here is "Of course not." There are lots of ways to imagine a world that evolved that had no religon, and it is possible to imaine a world where intelligent life evolved that never evolved religon. Again the answer is obvious, and clearly you didn't want your question interpreted this way.

 

I know that I might come across as a bit of an ass for going through the trouble of answering questions you really didn't ask, but I just feel it is important to "define the playing field" as it were and throw out any misinterpretations right off the bat.

 

Now onto the question that you actually asked: Did biological evolution give man a predisposition towards religion? Are we hard-wired for religion? My answer is, probably not, kindof.... I know it's not a definitive answer, so let me explain.

 

Let me take a quick second again to define the way I am going to be using the word "religion." If we define religion, simply, as a set of beliefs about the cause and purpose of the world around us, then we are back to the literal interpretation of your question. We evolved an ability to observe the world, and with those observations came speculation on its operation. Even if we add that the cause and purpose must be supernatural, we are still saying "Of course" because to someone who knows nothing about the universe, any explaination is a supernatural one. If we could go back in time and explain evolution to early man, they would find it at least as magical to them as anything they had thought up. Even if we define religion as something more specific, like a set of beliefs and rituals that people partake in to explain and influence the world, we are still stuck saying "Of course" because early man may not have known enough about agriculture to know that sacrivicing a goat wasn't going to make their crops grow better, but he also didn't know enough about agriculture to know that letting the body decompose in the field would make his crops grow better. It is easy for us to look back at primitive man and distinguish what was unnessicary ritual and what was essential habit but they didn't know the difference, and more so they had no way of knowing the difference..

 

We need to have a more specific definition of religion, but now we run the risk of moving into the "Of course not" category. If we define religion as "Judiasim" or "Islam" we are now too specific and we know there is no reason to believe that Islam HAD to evolve, it just did. We can easily imagine a world evolving where there was no christianity or paganism, and we can just as easily imagine a world where all those things did arise, but in a radically different evolutionary setting.

 

There must be a transition point where religion is so vague that it is inevitable, to a religion so specific that it is unconceivable. We obvioulsy didn't evolve to be christians, but we obviously did evolve to investigate our world and infer patterns and explainations. There is a way to resolve this quandry, but it isn't biological evolution.

 

To summarize: Evolution did cause religion in a vague, unimportant sense, but evolution didn't cause religion is any specific, important sense. However, we know that all specific religions have their origin in vague religious-ness. To put it another way, we never evolved to drive cars, but we evolved all sorts of skills and abilities for different purposes that get repurposed when we drive. Biological evolution didn't cause driving just like it didn't cause religion. Religion simply hijacked brain functions that we had developed for other purposed and twisted them towards it's own replication, unfortunately for us. After this primitive proto-religion came on board, it evolved with us, adjusting to our greater understanding of the world and constantly replicating itself until it became the specific, well defined religions we know today. The amount of time this took was too short for us to be hard-wired to be religious, it was religion that adapted to us. We are hard-wired to be inquisitive, and speculative, and to seek a sense of community, and to accept the wisdom of our elders (especially when we are young). Religion lives in fertile ground, and an adaptive weed, but it is not a permenant part of the landscape, at least not yet.

 

Sorry for being so verbose, just my $0.02

[florduh]

First off, I don't think you meant the question exactly as it reads, but I'm going to go ahead and answer it as if you did, just to get it out of the way.

 

"Did Evolution Cause Religion?"

 

There are two ways to see this question. In the literal sense, the answer is "Of course it did." Evolution created us and we created evolution, therefore evolution caused religion. This is just like saying evolution caused the internet, or caused cheese pizza, hardly a question worth asking and most certainly not the question you were trying to ask.

 

The other way to see this question is: In a world governed by evolution, was religion inevitable? The answer here is "Of course not." There are lots of ways to imagine a world that evolved that had no religon, and it is possible to imaine a world where intelligent life evolved that never evolved religon. Again the answer is obvious, and clearly you didn't want your question interpreted this way.

 

I know that I might come across as a bit of an ass for going through the trouble of answering questions you really didn't ask, but I just feel it is important to "define the playing field" as it were and throw out any misinterpretations right off the bat.

 

Now onto the question that you actually asked: Did biological evolution give man a predisposition towards religion? Are we hard-wired for religion? My answer is, probably not, kindof.... I know it's not a definitive answer, so let me explain.

 

Let me take a quick second again to define the way I am going to be using the word "religion." If we define religion, simply, as a set of beliefs about the cause and purpose of the world around us, then we are back to the literal interpretation of your question. We evolved an ability to observe the world, and with those observations came speculation on its operation. Even if we add that the cause and purpose must be supernatural, we are still saying "Of course" because to someone who knows nothing about the universe, any explaination is a supernatural one. If we could go back in time and explain evolution to early man, they would find it at least as magical to them as anything they had thought up. Even if we define religion as something more specific, like a set of beliefs and rituals that people partake in to explain and influence the world, we are still stuck saying "Of course" because early man may not have known enough about agriculture to know that sacrivicing a goat wasn't going to make their crops grow better, but he also didn't know enough about agriculture to know that letting the body decompose in the field would make his crops grow better. It is easy for us to look back at primitive man and distinguish what was unnessicary ritual and what was essential habit but they didn't know the difference, and more so they had no way of knowing the difference..

 

We need to have a more specific definition of religion, but now we run the risk of moving into the "Of course not" category. If we define religion as "Judiasim" or "Islam" we are now too specific and we know there is no reason to believe that Islam HAD to evolve, it just did. We can easily imagine a world evolving where there was no christianity or paganism, and we can just as easily imagine a world where all those things did arise, but in a radically different evolutionary setting.

 

There must be a transition point where religion is so vague that it is inevitable, to a religion so specific that it is unconceivable. We obvioulsy didn't evolve to be christians, but we obviously did evolve to investigate our world and infer patterns and explainations. There is a way to resolve this quandry, but it isn't biological evolution.

 

To summarize: Evolution did cause religion in a vague, unimportant sense, but evolution didn't cause religion is any specific, important sense. However, we know that all specific religions have their origin in vague religious-ness. To put it another way, we never evolved to drive cars, but we evolved all sorts of skills and abilities for different purposes that get repurposed when we drive. Biological evolution didn't cause driving just like it didn't cause religion. Religion simply hijacked brain functions that we had developed for other purposed and twisted them towards it's own replication, unfortunately for us. After this primitive proto-religion came on board, it evolved with us, adjusting to our greater understanding of the world and constantly replicating itself until it became the specific, well defined religions we know today. The amount of time this took was too short for us to be hard-wired to be religious, it was religion that adapted to us. We are hard-wired to be inquisitive, and speculative, and to seek a sense of community, and to accept the wisdom of our elders (especially when we are young). Religion lives in fertile ground, and an adaptive weed, but it is not a permenant part of the landscape, at least not yet.

 

Sorry for being so verbose, just my $0.02

 

Thanks for your thoughtful reply. Sorry if I wasn't clear in my question. What I'm getting at is that besides inventing a god to bribe for good harvests and hunts, did we humans, as the first animal to have a sense of our own mortality, develop something to counteract that morbid fear. Did we evolve to realize that we would die and then evolve a mechanism to convince us that there is life after death as a coping device? Religion, per se, would be an outgrowth of that defense mechanism.

 

There are lots of thoughtful answers and musings here, and I appreciate the input from everyone.

 

- Chris

[Grandpa Harley]

Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon by Daniel Dennett.

It appears to be a damned fine book... it's in my 'to be read stack'

[The-Captain]

I subscribe more to the thought that religion was created b/c by our ignorance not our evolution, god o' the gaps and all that. A species wide mental coping mechanism seems unlikely. From an optimistic viewpoint most of the last millenium of history could be seen as the growing irrelevance of religion, but such things cannot be easily discarded. The whole meme virus thing applies I think, our knowledge of science and religion's past are our antibodies, and the virus is running out of new converts. Sure a majority of the world is still religous but more people are non-religous now then ever before.

[Amethyst]

I'm pretty new here, so I hope this hasn't been covered already.

 

There are a lot of thoughtful, intelligent and educated people here. I would like to get your thoughts on the theory that mankind's proclivity for all things spiritual and mystical evolved of necessity. As human intelligence became aware of mortality, as we banded together in societies for economy and safety, we came to realize that we and our families and companions would die. To contemplate one's own death is something other animals don't endure. Theory is that in order to cope with this, we developed a sense that there must be something more than this life. Apparently to this day, people need to believe in a life after death despite the lack of evidence for such a concept. Could we be pre-wired for magical thinking as a result of an evolutionary defense mechanism?

 

- Chris

 

I don't think so. Depression is not normal thinking. It is a mental illness. If it were normal thinking and everyone wanted to kill themselves on a regular basis, I could buy it. But people don't. Not to mention, it can be treated by a combination of therapies, and has been for years. There's no need for religion to combat depression. And if it were true, there would be no atheists because we'd have all killed ourselves, something that every fundy wants probably, but isn't going to happen. The church wants people to think that atheists are unhappy because if they do, they'll stay converted out of fear.

 

I think it's a combination of factors. Primitive people being curious and needing something to explain the events around them, so they sat by campfires and made up stories, which grew into religions. People having been raised with the same information for centuries and passing it down to their kids. People being lazy intellectually and not wanting to think outside the box or do research on anything because it's time consuming, and modern culture tries to squeeze as much as possible into the work day -- so when people get home, they just want to vegetate. Our natural tendency to point out patterns -- it's how we, as humans, learn new things. I think in some people this tendency is so great that they attribute every random pattern to supernatural events, when it's really just a random pattern. World leaders using religion as a means of population control throughout history.

[Sexton Blake]

I think the first religions were just attempts to explain things. The "science" of the day. It started off as invisible and unknown spirits which evolved later into men and women who could be influenced by the right actions.

 

Every religion has come from "nothing" and built up a large following of dedicated believers, many willing to kill or die for their religion. Christianity and Islam are just among the latest of these and nothing special.