Ok so I really didnt read too much of the paper, a few paragraphs.
In sum, religion, as an interwoven complex of rituals, be- liefs, and norms, plausibly arises from a combination of (1) the mnemonic power of counterintuitive representations, (2) our evolved willingness to put faith on culturally acquired beliefs rooted in the commitment-inducing power of devotions and rituals, and (3) the selective effect on particular cultural com- plexes created by competition among societies and institutions. None of these evolved for religion per se.
Are you misinterpreting that these are independent factors? You read the study, not me. It does seem less likely when you argue that three independent variables somehow all gave rise to religious thinking as an adaptation.
I think culture is a secondary source of information that can be observed in many mammals and avians (primary being dna) but with humans you see a truly elaborate culture that is pretty much on equal footing with dna as a critical source of information we rely on as a s is our great adaptation as a species and the better we are at culture the more success we will have competing against other humans, generally.
So what is culture? It is language. It is the skill sets we are trained in. And it is a set of moral or ethical rules that help us make make decisions about how to interact with other members of a society. In a highly interdependent society where one individual’s decisions have consequences for all other members of the society, the groundrules of behavior must be established.
But how to communicate all that information? Perhaps approximations of reality are much more efficient to accurate depictions. So we have archtypes and fables and symbols. And we sort many objects and behaviors in to categories of binary opposites, so we have concepts like good and evil ( see claude levi-strauss).
Would it be useful to view reality in 50 shades of gray? The answer seems to be no. Does this mean we sometimes miscategorize things to our own detriment? Probably, but not enough for it to be worth it to stop sorting the world in such binary terms. So I feel much of our religious behavior is result of this interpretation of reality, and it is likely the result of underlying neurological structures involving storage and “logic”.
Science ostensibly is the method thru which we build a more accurate description of reality, rather than our somewhat gross but efficient religious intuition of it. But human beings are involved in it so the mission to pursue a purely factual understanding of systems is often failed. And when it comes to stuff like quantum, or the big bang, there simply isnt good data, so humans fill in the gaps with less than factual guesses.
There’s no reason to think that science isn’t a spandrel btw. We arent here to comprehend the universe. We’re here to make babies and not get killed before we do so. Science is just icing unless it helps us survive. Its not clear that it will continue to do so.
Its clear to me we all have religiously predisposed minds since theres no instance of a society that has not historically believed in god or supernatural forces. I believe religious/cultural complexes co-evolve with genetic sub-populations. I believe that relgions are heavily selecting for certain behavior traits and a great example of this is, you guessed it , the jews.
Its a bit of a non-sequitur to all of that, but perhaps Jaynes’ theory of the bicameral mind is relavant to the discussion. I dont really accept his theory totally but I think something has profoundly changed in the way we experience consciousness over the last few million years and part of that must be connected to religion.
I don't think there is any kind of formal factor analysis being done here. Evolutionary psychology is kind of like that. It's such a soft science that there's no real way to know whether these varied independently with religious belief, or not. Like you, I'd highly doubt it. We might be able to speculate about which of the factors had the highest explanatory power.
The authors speculate that each of the factors themselves evolved independently where it concerns the cognitive processes, i.e. the mnemonic properties of supernatural concepts and our tendency to increase commitment from cultural displays that are costly. But the evolution of religious belief is said to have relied on the confluence of them all.
But religion itself is a complex of different beliefs. For example, we might say some culture was religious if it believed in an afterlife, but perhaps not some grand creator deity. They might still have adorned the dead and engaged in elaborate burial rituals.
Let me ask you this:
If both science and religion are spandrels, what can you trust as truth?
You state the following as though it is solid truth:
Science is just icing unless it helps us survive
But, if science was what convinced you the above was true, where does your confidence that it is finally come to rest? It could be accused of begging the question.
But the evolution of religious belief is said to have relied on the confluence of them all.
I just dont distinguish culture from religion. We all have religious thinking i.e. our perception of reality is inaccurate, sorted into binary opposites, heavily based on symbols, not particularly “rational” . Maybe involving gods or spirits, maybe not. Secular atheists have any number of irrational magical beliefs.
displays that are costly.
This makes me think of sex! A lot of what we think of as civilization is just a bag of tricks developed by men to bag more babes. As with many other species, human males have some costly displays that dont always seem to be utilitarian. Showy behavior is often a demonstration of health and prosperity. I dont know why this wouldnt extend to religious behavior.
If both science and religion are spandrels, what can you trust as truth?
If we are working from the perspective of a true evolutionist, finding the cold hard truth of existence or the universe or whatever is unimportant. It is useful to learn how things work if that knowledge helps you to survive. So curious monkeys (usually) have an adaptive advantage over the dull ones. Curious monkeys can cure covid for example. But comprehending cosmogony is (so far) a spandrel of such abilities.
But, if science was what convinced you the above was true, where does your confidence that it is finally come to rest? It could be accused of begging the question.
It is an ironic situation that by rejecting certain religious beliefs as truth and trying to examine them from an evolutionary (scientific) paradigm, I have come to the conclusion that humans probably function better relying on religious beliefs than trying to incorporate purely scientific beliefs into every mode of our life. Atheists tend to reject sorting behaviors into taboo and sacred, which leads to cultural chaos, corruption , and exploitation. Moral relativism is not a good bit of software to run on human brains.
So maybe I had to become an atheist to see how religion actually works within evolution. But it may in fact be a penalty in terms of my survival. Traditionally religious people are usually better able to endure hardships, risk death for the good of the group, and perhaps more honest, more likely to follow the rules?
Who knows? Atheist societies will have to compete against religious ones for supremacy.
Technically I think atheists perform the same logic errors as theists because their brain is just as irrational. But since they reject a lot of the religious abstract concepts and behavior norms of established religions, there is a lot of cultural (moral ) chaos.
People mistakenly think “organized” religion is the problem because it imposes a “tyrannical” or “arbitrary” moral regime that doesnt have an obvious scientific basis, but they miss the point that the whole purpose of religion(in an evolutionary paradigm) is only to organize society under a common regime.
Moral relativism is not a good bit of software to run on human brains.
This is kind of the angle that I'm trying to approach from.
Why? Why is it not a good bit of software?
You established just a bit earlier in your comment...
our perception of reality is inaccurate, sorted into binary opposites, heavily based on symbols, not particularly “rational” . Maybe involving gods or spirits, maybe not. Secular atheists have any number of irrational magical beliefs.
..something that is relative.
So doesn't the implication that moral relativism is bad suggest that there is, in fact, something like a moral truth? Something which causes man to endure in the universe amidst complexity?
It is useful to learn how things work if that knowledge helps you to survive.
The question we are trying to approach is 'What is true?'. We've moved from the principle that we are here to survive for survival's sake to admitting that certain kinds of knowledge cause things to survive 'better'. If survival is our first principle, then are we entitled to call such knowledge truth?
Or is everything relative? - which you've said is not good to believe. But perhaps you think reality actually is relative and that the danger comes from having a true belief about reality. So the survivability comes from our false belief that things AREN'T relative. Do you see the problem? Why couldn't it just be true that things aren't relative?
Think about the nature of belief with me for a moment. We'd think, from purely evolutionary terms, that belief would evolve to cause us to think certain things in terms of our explanations of reality, and if survival is all that counts, then the beliefs that promote survival ought to be truer. Fire is hot. Ice is cold. If I try to murder my rival, he will try to murder me! Men have penises, and girls have vaginas. We tend to believe things which are true.
We think that these things would be true in any possible world like our own, that is, that fire would burn us (or any sufficiently hot thing would burn us). It becomes senseless to call this a relative truth, or worse yet, a false belief that just serves us usefully. If the fact that fire burns us isn't true, then you've at least established one truth - that relativism is true. Yet if relativism is true, you've also established that belief in it would hurt survival - therefore a true belief would hurt us. This is a contradiction. It makes no sense.
My point is this. There is a circularity in your views about the falsehood of religious belief.
Our beliefs about fire, and about snakes and lightning are true. They help us to survive. Yet, you are convinced that just because religious belief is prevalent and just because it helps us survive, that they still aren't true.
Why? If survival is the only principle, then the only way to construe true belief would be that which best helps people survive. You insist that relativism is dangerous, and also that false beliefs can have survival utility. Then that means that ALL KINDS OF FALSE BELIEFS could have survival utility, and yet, we see a dramatic convergence of religious belief onto a relatively small set of enduring facts which are similar across disparate cultures with no temporal communication.
Why would you assume, then, that these are false and irrational? Or that they don't point to something true? What is/are your reason/s? To just say that, "Oh, well humans have all kinds of symbols and irrational beliefs," just begs the question, the very same question begged by the authors of that paper.
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