Dawkins on a Darwinian approach to religion

[chrisberez]

Richard Dawkins has a great article in the current Free Inquiry about why something as useless and even harmful as religion has survived in our species:

If I have done my softening up work well, you will already have completed the argument about child brains and religion. Natural selection builds child brains with a tendency to believe whatever their parents and tribal elders tell them. And this very quality automatically makes them vulnerable to infection by mind viruses. For excellent survival reasons, child brains need to trust parents and trust elders whom their parents tell them to trust. An automatic consequence is that the “truster” has no way of distinguishing good advice from bad. The child cannot tell that “If you swim in the river you’ll be eaten by crocodiles” is good advice but “If you don’t sacrifice a goat at the time of the full moon, the crops will fail” is bad advice. They both sound the same. Both are advice from a trusted source, and both are delivered with a solemn earnestness that commands respect and demands obedience.

There's a great deal more to the article, which can be read

here, (http://www.secularhumanism.org/library/fi/dawkins_24_5.htm) and I highly recommend checking it out. I happen to agree with Dawkins and his "religion as a virus" position, and I think this article does well in further illustrating and explaining that analogy through the lens of natural selection. Anyone else agree? Disagree?

I should note that I chose to post this in science because the emphasis in the article is memes and natural selection. I figured the Religion section was more for theism, and that since the purpose of this thread is to focus on a purely Darwinian interpretation I should post it here. If my judgment was misguided in this regard, I apologize. I leave it up to the moderators to discide.

[Batman Jr.]

Dawkins sounds like he's on the right track with that. This same inborn desire to believe established authority figures can probably also be found causative of the uncontested rises of corrupt governments throughout history.

[CBL4]

If there is a "god center" in the human brain and if it is a result of natural selection, then Dawkins provides a likely explanation.

However, I am always skeptical of assigning complex human behavior an evolutionary cause. How much of human behavior is cultural vs. innate? If a behavior is innate, is a spandrel or was it selected for?

Stating that a specific human behavior as a result of evolution has always seemed like a "just so" story to me. They are perfectly reasonable, logical ideas with virtually no supporting evidence. I am sure there are lots of evolutionary derived bahaviors but I have no idea which behaviors are cultural or spandrels or selected for.

Having said that, the human behavior of believing an authority seems to be one of the most likely to be selected for. If we throw in a little cultural evolution (e.g. priests like power), then this is a good possibility for the universality of religion.

CBL

[mummymonkey]

Is there a catchy word for a mind virus? Mirus or whatever?

[Whyatt]

I think the word your lucking for is "meme" to rhyme with "gene". I define it as a unit of information that can be transfered between minds. hence the song "happy birthday" is a meme and larger things like religion can be considered a meme or memeplex.

The term was invented by Dawkins in "the selfish gene" and expanded on in a number of great books if people want to read more including:

"The Meme Machine" by susan blackmore. (I really enjoyed this)

And i think they turn up in Daniel Dennetts "COnsiousness explained" and "Darwins Dangerous Idea" but I haven't read far enough into them yet to tell. But there still very good from what i've read.

P.S Its also explains why memepool.com is called memepool :) !

[mummymonkey]

No, I know what a meme is. I'm talking about this mind virus idea. It would be a type of destructive, parasitic meme.

[jimlintott]

However, I am always skeptical of assigning complex human behavior an evolutionary cause.

I am always skeptical when anyone tries to do anything else.

Many living things have 'complex' behaviour. Get rid of the word complex. Humans aren't that special. Our behaviour revolves around food, sex and shelter, the simple survival of our species. Humans are just as mundane as any other living thing. Evolution explains it all very nicely.

I'm am certainly open to seeing evidence for other explanations.

[Dymanic]

Originally posted by CBL4

Stating that a specific human behavior as a result of evolution has always seemed like a "just so" story to me. They are perfectly reasonable, logical ideas with virtually no supporting evidence.
A valid complaint. As a working hypothesis, the Darwinian framework is similar to: "Where there's smoke, there's fire".

There is an amazing amount of distance between genome and behavior. DNA codes for proteins. Assemble enough of the right proteins in a certain order and you get a system which will respond to certain external stimuli in a reasonably predictable manner. But 'behavior' is less meaningful outside the context of the environment of the organism doing the behaving; the same complex combination of muscle and nerve tissue that (in a fish) produces the behavior 'swimming', produce a much different 'behavior' if the fish is taken out of the water.

I cannot agree with jimlintott's statement:

"Get rid of the word complex. Humans aren't that special."

While it is true that evolutionary success is measured the same way for the individual human as for any other organism, the equipment employed (the human brain) is by far the most complex physical structure in the known universe. Modern human society, as an extension of that, creates an environment far too dynamic for evolution to keep pace with. This means that, behaviorally, the average human will be a 'fish out of water' much of the time.

Dawkins speaks of "some sort of analogue of" Darwinian natural selection operating on memes at another level -- the substrate being human minds and the various external information storage devices they rely on. Memes have various 'traits' which make them more or less likely to get replicated -- truth value, ease of recall, ease of pronunciation, compactness, association with other memes, etc. The rules are the same. What counts is the survival value of the meme; survival of the vehicle is secondary to that.

[CBL4]

Orignally posted by jimlintott
Many living things have 'complex' behaviour. Get rid of the word complex. Humans aren't that special. Our behaviour revolves around food, sex and shelter, the simple survival of our species. Humans are just as mundane as any other living thing. Evolution explains it all very nicely.
I totally agree that some, perhaps most, human behavior has been selected for but I do not know about any specific behavior. For example, humans can read and write but this could not have been selected for until quite recently. Perhaps this is a spandrel. Perhaps the ability to read and write is related to the ability to throw a boomerang. I have no idea. (BTW, I think I got this example from one of Dawkins book but I could be mistaken.)

]Orignally posted by jimlintott
I'm am certainly open to seeing evidence for other explanations.
I am open to seeing evidence for an evolutionary evidence and other explanations. I have read about evolutionary psychology in magazines (e.g. Skeptic) and books (e.g. Moral Animal by Robert Wright). The general concept seems sound. I just have not read any evidence about any specific behavior. If you have, please let me know.

Originally post by Dymanic
Modern human society, as an extension of that, creates an environment far too dynamic for evolution to keep pace with. This means that, behaviorally, the average human will be a 'fish out of water' much of the time.
I think that the human brain has evolved to be flexible enough to handle the dynamism that you mention. To extend your metaphor, a baby's brains can adjust to the lack of water. The learning power and pattern matching is incredible.

CBL

[Jeff Corey]

Originally posted by CBL4
If ...However, I am always skeptical of assigning complex human behavior an evolutionary cause. How much of human behavior is cultural vs. innate? If a behavior is innate, is a spandrel or was it selected for?

Stating that a specific human behavior as a result of evolution has always seemed like a "just so" story to me. They are perfectly reasonable, logical ideas with virtually no supporting evidence. I am sure there are lots of evolutionary derived bahaviors but I have no idea which behaviors are cultural or spandrels or selected for.CBL

I tend to agree, Wilson was the pioneer in sociobiological "just so stories", especially after kipling,
But what do you mean by "spandrel" in this context? If you're building an arch or a stair, I understand the term. But not here.

[CBL4]

Originally posted by Jeff Corey
But what do you mean by "spandrel" in this context? If you're building an arch or a stair, I understand the term. But not here.
"Another usage of the word spandrel was popularized by Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Lewontin in the paper "The Spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian Paradigm: A Critique of the Adaptationist Programme". In the context of evolution, a spandrel is a metaphor for characteristics that are or were originally side effects and not true adaptations to the environment. They are analogous to misbugs in hacker jargon. "
Spandrel Definition (http://www.free-definition.com/Spandrel.html)

Sorry it was not clear.

CBL

[Dymanic]

Originally posted by CBL4

I totally agree that some, perhaps most, human behavior has been selected for but...

...I think that the human brain has evolved to be flexible enough to handle the dynamism that you mention.
If we speak of 'a behavior' as having been 'selected for', we seem to be implicitly arguing against flexibility -- at least with regard to that behavior. Any application of such a behavior to environmental stimuli which were absent in the ancestral environment would be essentially undefined with regard to that behavior's function. Humans have inherited many simple-function behaviors (if I poke a stick at your eye, you blink just like any other critter would, etc). But the most interesting human behaviors are most likely composites of behaviors; the indivdual components are legacies of ancient environments, modified as necessary (and as time has allowed). We tend to look at the overall effect and call that 'a behavior'. The flexibility seems to be a product of the different ways such composites may be constructed, and the singular capability the human brain has for exitory (and especially inhibitory) self-regulation.

[Jeff Corey]

Glad you pointed that out. I thought you meant"Spaniels".
No body expects the Spandrel Acquisition.
So a spandrel is a metaphor for an ornamental archetectual feature?

[Dymanic]

Originally posted by Jeff Corey

So a spandrel is a metaphor for an ornamental archetectual feature?Yes. Ornamented because it was there; the creation of such a space was an unavoidable consequence of building a structure with arches, and somebody decided to make it look nice. Gould suggested that evolution may occasionally co-opt an analagous feature for some purpose (at which point it ceases to be a proper spandrel). Not everyone in evolutionary biology agrees on whether it is a particularly useful concept.

[Jeff Corey]

Originally posted by Dymanic
Yes. Ornamented because it was there; the creation of such a space was an unavoidable consequence of building a structure with arches, and somebody decided to make it look nice. Gould suggested that evolution may occasionally co-opt an analagous feature for some purpose (at which point it ceases to be a proper spandrel). Not everyone in evolutionary biology agrees on whether it is a particularly useful concept.
I should hope so. What archetect decided it was "ornamental"?
That opens up a large sack of annelids, don't it?
I'd say "just happened" like way back when our larynx was not as useful as today.
Metaphors are the sesspits of scientific explanation, as are similies, like analogies.
You only get people confused when they only know what the original is.

[CBL4]

If we speak of 'a behavior' as having been 'selected for', we seem to be implicitly arguing against flexibility -- at least with regard to that behavior.
I think I am just restating your views with a different slant.

I once read a book about the immune system. It argued that because pathogens mutate rapidly, an effective immune system would have to be able to handle new diseases as well as old ones. Therefore, organism evolved a flexible immune system which at first glance appears to have evolved for diseases that have never existed.

I think the human brain has evolved flexibility to similarly be able to handle rapidly changing cultural environments. We appear to have evolved for specific behaviors but often it is just our flexibility.

Having said that, I have read of surprisingly complex behaviors in animals that appear to have a simple genetic origin. I am sure that humans have evolved similar behavioral genes.

I am skeptical about any specific behavior not the whole concept of genetically evolved behavior.

CBL

[Dymanic]

Originally posted by Jeff Corey

I should hope so. What archetect decided it was "ornamental"?
That opens up a large sack of annelids, don't it?It does. It's interesting that with just a little shift in perspective *hey presto* you have something where before you had nothing. (Maybe).
Metaphors are the sesspits of scientific explanation, as are similies, like analogies.Unfortunately, the very fabric of our language is woven warp and woof with metaphor; without at least a sprinkling, it would be hard to shine any light on anything. Avoiding mixed metaphor is probably the best we could hope for.

[Robin]

The trouble with Dawkins' thinking on these matters is he lets his preconceptions get in the way, he has much to say about killing and dying for religion when in fact if you were to get 1000 believers together you probably wouldn't even find one that was prepared to kill for their religion and not many that were seriously prepared to die for it.

So why not found a theory on the majority rather than the minority? You will find the religious life of most believers is essentially a social one from which they derive a lot of benefit.

I suspect that if you were to test this theory you wouldn't find that a random sample of believers were any more inclined to follow authority figures than a random sample of non-believers.

Incidentally, I keep hearing memes discussed as though it were hard science. Does anybody have any examples of rigorous scientific testing of the theory?

[FireGarden]

Robin
So why not found a theory on the majority rather than the minority?
I thought that was what he was trying to do.

Read his 'moth to a flame' example again.
He argues that maybe religion is a similar 'useful behaviour gone wrong' example. And then goes on to give himself as an example of a child that believed what it was told by authority. So he's actually arguing that the cause of religion is also present in the non-religious - let alone the extremely religious.
I suspect that if you were to test this theory you wouldn't find that a random sample of believers were any more inclined to follow authority figures than a random sample of non-believers
Do you disagree that children tend to accept everything their parents say as 'gospel' thruth?

Maybe the undeclared barb in his argument is that some people do not grow up. In any case, I don't think that he actually claimed that atheists do not obey authority.

[Dymanic]

Originally posted by Robin

The trouble with Dawkins' thinking on these matters is he lets his preconceptions get in the way
And zooming out, we get: "The trouble with human thinking in general is that preconceptions tend to get in the way."

Much of what we know is by association. The details of human memory management remain mostly a mystery, but one thing that does appear clear is that it depends heavily on associative networks. We learn new concepts by mapping them to others with which we are already familiar, and make reasonable guesses about unfamiliar phenomena by analogy. It is this creative use of analogy that gives human thought its tremendous learning power and flexibility. Unfortunately, such a method often produces inaccurate results, like concluding that bats are more closely related to birds than to beavers.

Incidentally, I keep hearing memes discussed as though it were hard science. Does anybody have any examples of rigorous scientific testing of the theory?I think 'as though' is the key phrase there. The basic idea is no different from that underlying physical evolution; differential success among imperfect replicators. I'm not sure if you'd call it 'hard science', but linguistics probably has the most carefully documented data about memes.