Hallelujah! Sin, Sex and Sermons!

[Jerome23]

MODS: This really should be in SCIENCE - can you move it for me, pretty please? If oyu read it you will see why!

OK, enough whining from me about RD.net. Only way to move on is to move on I guess. I'm tied up tonight in medieval history: the revolt of 1173 in the Angevin Empire, but I wanted to talk about RELIGION. Yep, religion. And yes I think this is the right section

I don't intend to try to make you believe: far from it. You can assume for the sake of this post that all religions are utterly untrue if you like - works just fine. What I am interested in, and I meant for a very long time to post about it on RD.net but never got round to it, is how do religions work at a biological level?

I am sure many of you have seen Dennett's ideas on hyper-sensitive entity detectors, and all the other evo-psych theories that purport to explain religious belief and religion as a cultural phenomena. I'm going to go beyond Dawkins own ideas instead, and try a sociobiology based argument - I know, terribly unfashionable these days - what if we look at religion in terms of adaptive advantage, and cultures adapting to maximise reproductive success? Dawkins himself has as far as i know never done this; perhaps because it may to his eyes seem to somehow legitimise religion, not as true, but as 'useful' : a viable evolutionary strategy, or culture as a Very Extended Phenotype.

Have I gone nuts? I don't think so. If I am correct then religions must be heavily involved with issues of reproduction, genetic transmission, control of habitats (territory) and laws and beliefs that in some way influence those factors. And oyu know what? They are! It seems so blindingly obvious to me that I find it hard to believe that no one is talking about it, or even discussing the possibility.

I don't have time at the moment to explain my ideas properly - my tea is on the table - but let me make few idea
!. Crucially, large parts of the religion (as opposed to the theology) must be concerned with reproductive strategies; sex, sexuality, and childbearing
2. Different habitats will require different survival strategies for optimum reproductive success: we there fore might expect different religions, offering contrasting viewpoints on sex.
3. Different religions will predominate in different climatic and technological environments, as suited to purpose (for example in a very harsh environment, where random death claims many children before maturity, many kids will be favoured. In more secure environments, few well nurtured children will be favoured.)
4. Reproductive success equals military might in regions where conflict is common, before technology outweighs weight of numbers. So early religions may well emphasize childbearing as a duty.
5. If some theories of acceptance of gay individuals are correct, we might see some people removed from the reproductive pool simply to allow them to help nurture others? (celibates). This will be directly related to locally prevailing economics though?
6. In non-Welfare State societies, religious organisations (and possibly self reliance on libertarian lines) will be stronger. I think this is a key realisation.

Above all, I think we might expect to relate child mortality, poverty, and technological success to WHICH religions might predominate, given that they offer variant survival strategies.

I may be talking complete rot, but iut should be vERY easy to check with data freely available on the web?

Just a thought. Maybe I have gone mad Too much playing my boardgame...

j x

[Xamonas Chegwé]

Jerome,

I think it fits fine in this forum, since it touches on religion AND science - philosophy makes as much sense as anything.

[Equivokate]

*Perfect* considering the state my soul is in *sin bring it on, sex bring it on and as much of my God/Church etc as He knows I can handle!!!*

[Mr.Samsa]

J...philosophy makes as much sense as anything.

Now that's a lie...

@Jerome: Before I go into too much detail, you seem to be using evo psych and sociobiology as separate terms - am I reading this wrong or is there some distinction between the two that I'm missing?

And with regards to the rest of your post, I think it's extremely important to define what you mean by religion. In the most basic sense, I think religion can be categorised as 1) an individual experience, and 2) a societal institution. The former describes things like pattern recognition, superstition, cognitive biases, brain functioning etc, whereas the latter refers to the system of rules which exploit these individual characteristics.

So whilst societal rules and groups may prove beneficial to the members of that religion through some kind of sexual selection, or even "successful" rules to live your life by, I think it's important to note that there are specific cognitive biases that the religious are prone to (or rather, these biases are shaped in specific ways by the societal rules of the religion).

[Surendra Darathy]

If I am correct then religions must be heavily involved with issues of reproduction, genetic transmission, control of habitats (territory) and laws and beliefs that in some way influence those factors. And oyu know what? They are! It seems so blindingly obvious to me that I find it hard to believe that no one is talking about it, or even discussing the possibility.

I'll tell you why I think no one is talking about it. They've all heard my spiel about the tautology encapsulated in these theories about the "utility" of either of the two features toward which Mr. Samsa points us.

Back at the late, lamented RD.net, Big Brother was the past master on glossing functionalism. Maybe functionalism can only be a gloss. Never mind. Having a word (and nothing more) for something never gets one very far, IMO.

So let's dig into the remark of yours I quoted and see whether intoning the word "utility" or the word "functional" actually produces any utility or function. Of course, eventually we will get round to "obviousnessness", which is that feature of ideas that qualifies them without argument. Not.

Naturally, this will lead us to inspect the "utility" of "explanations" for situations that are the way they are. You know, the old prize in the bottom of the crackerjack box thingy. Suppose you do "account" for the popularity of religion? So what?

You still have to account (in a dispassionate way, one would hope) for the sheer inefficiency of dragging all that baggage around with one. It comes at the price of also having to be the premier predator on the planet, "though we're all doing our best to deny it". Every form of refuge has its price.

[Oldskeptic]

@ Jerome

I think that it is naive to think that religion in general is an adaptation to promote optimum reproduction levels for humans living in different environments. Especially if you are trying to say that it is somehow an extended phenotype caused by natural selection. It is my impression that in most cases religions adapt to cultures not the other way around. Or in other cases culture and religion cannot be separated.

What humans evolved to do was have as many children as a woman could have a descent chance of raising each to some level of self-sufficiency; such as being able to walk and keep up with the group. There were no religious or even cultural rules involved.

Natural selection had taken care of it. When a child could survive without having to be carried around everywhere it was put down and completely weaned. After which the woman would become fertile again and soon after that pregnant again.

The early agricultural revolution probably put an end to this if it allowed a woman to put down a child sooner that 4 years or so. Family size would have grown simply because a women could have children spaced closer together. But I see no indication that this would be culturally based let alone religion based.

If you want to assert that religion is an adaptive trait that regulates reproduction then I think that you need to present a few examples that show where religion came first and reproductive behavior came after without other influences than religion.

There is a difference between religion be able to adapt to changing culture and religion being an adaptive trait.