Imagine no religion. . . ?

December 22, 2015 • 7:30 am

There are those who say that the world would be exactly as bad off without religion as it is now, i.e., John Lennon was simply wrong. These miscreants apparently include reader and cartoonist Pliny the in Between, who on his/her website Evolving Perspectives, imagines such a world. The cartoon is called “If religion disappeared tomorrow“:

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I know which side I’d be on. On the other hand, unlike some religionists, I have no desire to kill anyone who likes or owns dogs!

 

76 thoughts on “Imagine no religion. . . ?”

    2. “Except rock fans or sports fans or beer fans aren’t given a morality to accompany their fandom, nor the promise of Heaven or threat of hell. That makes them far less likely to indulge in violence.”
      (Posted Dec22, 2015 at 11:41 am. Reply by WEIT under comment #2)

      So, do you really mean that without a morality people are less likely to indulge in violence. This rather implies morality is an ogre that causes violence. Even if reworded more accurately as:”Without opposing religious moral codes people are less likely to kill each other” that’s still a sweeping statement, -but this form at least allows us peace-loving atheists to have “a morality”. Does either form construe morality correctly? Morality is a blanket term covering interpersonal/intergroup and/or person v. person/group v. group behaviour. Even “Da Roolz” is a form of morality defining interpersonal behaviour on this site. Every sports arena is certainly subject to its particular set of “rules”, all of those rules most definitely obeying the basic behavioural moral, indifferently callous, code of Evolution: namely “To each according to his ability and environment”. If Evolution is True then Evolution’s “rules”, it could be said, are to “blame” for all behaviour, -human and other.

      Predatory life requires some understanding of cause/effect, i.e. some “explanation” for what is sensorially perceived -humans more than any. Is the difference between religion, philosophy and science the quality and quantity of the empirical evidence they use? They are all methods of “explaining” externality as observed via our sensory inputs: all in their way and time “useful”. They are a continuum naturally progressing from primitively ignorant superstitions through (with increasing degrees of phenomenal certainty) to established (but never “absolute”) scientific “Facts/Laws”. Like any continuum that has been given names for its different regions there will always arise problems of those regions’ boundaries and definitions. That the earlier forms precede the later is undeniable. No scientific “facts” have ever sprung fully-formed into existence.

      Religion provides “explanation” requiring very little or no empirical evidence.
      Philosophy provides “explanation” requiring some empirical evidence merging into
      Science which provides “explanation” proportionately reliable to its available empirical evidence.
      And until science “explains” everything completely (and will that ever happen?) there’s always a need and room for the human imagination and hubris to fill the gaps with questionably founded, yet arguably possible, hypotheses.

    4. The original New Yorker cartoon and this one seem to express quite different sentiments. The New Yorker one illustrates the absurdity of fighting wars over versions of god that are scarcely distinguishable from one another. The Pliny cartoon suggests that without religion, people will kill each other on the same scale by replacing religious fervor with some other kind – a claim of which I am highly dubious.

      1. Agree. Both cartoons are subtly pro-religion. The one from the New Yorker says “religious people who fight each other don’t realize that all religions are interpretations of the same God.” Religion isn’t responsible for violence, people are. Evolving Perspectives has a similar theme. Don’t hold religion responsible for violence because people would find something else just as arbitrary to fight about.

        Though when I think about it the absurdity of dog-people and cat-people going to war might be a subtle attempt to make the opposite point. So from one angle “If religion disappeared tomorrow” looks like a duck — but if I switch perspectives it looks like a rabbit! Cool.

        2. But if they are pro-religion, which they are, they are, at best, arbitrarily justified in making this argument.

          For all practical purposes there are an infinite number of ‘us-them groups’ that could take sides with the possible intention of harm for the other side.

          Rolling Stones vs. Justin Bieber
          Hefeweizen vs. Reisling
          Many Worlds Interpretation vs. Causalists
          etc.

          We are human. We are all capable of harming one another so any two groups can never preclude violence as an outcome even if it is incredibly unlikely; it is still possible.

          1. Except rock fans or sports fans or beer fans aren’t given a morality to accompany their fandom, nor the promise of Heaven or threat of hell. That makes them far less likely to indulge in violence.

          3. Yes, that’s because the fate of their immortal souls does not hinge on the outcome for rock fans and beer fans and sports fans (well, except for Red Sox fans vs. Yankees fans, perhaps).

        3. I cannot speak to the intent of the New Yorker artist, but my panel is in no way an endorsement of, or an apologetic for, religion.

          3. Yes, I see that. Given your other work, it would be surprising if it was.

            But I’m so used to hearing every criticism of religious violence answered with “no, violence is human, we’d just fight about something else” that I read that into the dog-and-cat fight.

  3. Although John Lennon wrote a lovely song, I’m having my doubts about his thesis. Yesterday I watched this film about the casualties in WWII that seems to make religion a minor actor overall. In any event it does give perspective on our own times which is described as the ‘Long Peace’.

    1. It’s my hypothesis, which I call the “Humans are assholes hypothesis” or “the misanthropic principle” that there would still be wars and crime, it’s just that there would be less of them or they wouldn’t last as long (religion has a way of prolonging things).

      1. That reminds me of the book Atrocitology by Matthew White (I think – memory is such a capricious thing) that documented the “100 worst things humans have done to each other”, even listing in the appendices breakdowns of each atrocity according to, say, main goal or motivation. Religion featured in there as just one main goal among others, and if I remember correctly was far from the main one. Evidence for the “misanthropic principle”, I should think, give or take the fact that the atrocities are record-busters and thus technically a collection of extreme outliers.

        Given also the Darwinian causes of conflict, I think the “misanthropic principle” is definitely the way to bet.

      2. You don’t think humans could work themselves up into a good thirty years’ worth of war over cat/dog or rabbit/duck? … yeah, me neither.

        (The “misanthropic principle” — that’s good; Imma hafta steal that one.)

        1. I’m not sure re: 30 years war. I like to think, perhaps in an ethnocentric way, that we in the West would know better. I can’t see Europe fighting with the US for 30 years, for example even now and the US is still pretty religious. When I think about modern wars, religion seems just to make things worse…perhaps resettlement of people displaced by famine, drought, etc would go better if people, often ethnically identical, had no religion to separate them.

          Religion, at the personal level, also seems to be the great divider. When you hear of people getting married, they can be culturally different as long as their religion is the same.

    2. One less major contributing factor, but holding that ridding the world of religion would be the end of violent conflicts around the world is untenable. But it does seem to me that the results would be beneficial enough that it is a goal worth pursuing.

      Actually, I don’t think getting rid of religion is realistic or even necessary to gain the benefits we think would be gained. Just reducing it to a curiosity that the large majority of people don’t have much interest in. Like the Scandinavian countries, New Zealand, etc., only a bit more so.

      1. I would even argue that middle of the road protestants and many Catholics in the U.S. care far, far more about what to wear on Sunday and who’s going to drive the youth group to the ski lodge, than promoting their eternal soul. I think people are culturally religious first, then, if pressed by a survey question, might opt for a strict scriptural approach they were supposed to learn in Sunday School.

    3. Patriotism is often a major actor in modern wars — and what’s the best and easiest way to make loyalty to country unquestionable? Connect it to God and the ideal of a Perfect Society.

      The Soviet Union and China had to model their propaganda heavily on religion, with its saints and sinners and leaders who could do no wrong. The State demanded worshipful obedience to dogma and authority.

      While this is often used by the religious to make the argument that “without God man worships himself (or the State)” I think it only highlights the insidious problems with religion itself. Does anyone seriously believe that IF any Communist leader HAD declared himself a mouthpiece of God and instrument of His power, then things would have been so much better?

      Only if they’re writing a Sunday School conversion story. In real life theocracies are not known for their gracious acknowledgment that they might be wrong and a commitment to modern progress. Modern progress involves having fewer theocracies, more debate.

      Religion removes rational checks and balances with a grand flourish and a bow, proud of doing so and slapping the label of “Humility” over the whole disgusting mess. There would no doubt be wars without religion, sure — but adding faith into the mix makes them far more intractable. One does not question God or compromise with the Devil.

      1. Yesterday evening during a discussion with a friend, he was relating an article he had read in which the author used the term “Islamism.” Trying to get a feel for the author’s position from the beginning instead of waiting to hear about the article, I asked my friend to explain what the author meant by the term. Did he mean the politicization of Islam, I asked? He answered, “Yes, but even more, the weaponization of Islam.”

        A very appropriate construction, the weaponization of a religion. I wish I had thought of that.

      2. I agree. Religion and religious attitudes of authoritarianism, etc. are often mixed in different proportions in wars across the centuries. Mao was a Demagogue verging on Demigod. The film makes clear though, that it was not the wars directly pitting one religion against another with few mitigating circumstances that led to the highest number of deaths. Probably the best examples of purely religious wars are the wars in Europe involving reform efforts within Christianity. Also, the crusades. But these are shown to be minor in destructiveness compared to WWII, which had complex causes.

  6. These two cartoons depict completely different sentiments, so far as I can tell; the New Yorker cartoon illustrates the foolishness of fighting wars over religious beliefs that are scarcely distinguishable from one another. The Pliny the In Between cartoon says humans will simply find other inane reasons to identify out-groups and go to war. I am not sure the latter circumstance is so certain, or that it would be as deadly as the former.

  7. Yeah, right! Latest update on how religion helps, not:

    “Religion and politics led to social tension and conflict, then and now

    Religion has led to social tension and conflict, not just in today’s society, but dating back to 700 B.C. according to a new study published in Current Anthropology.

    University of Colorado anthropology Professor Arthur A. Joyce and University of Central Florida Associate Professor Sarah Barber found evidence in several Mexican archeological sites that contradict the long-held belief that religion acted to unite early state societies. It often had the opposite effect, the study says. …

    … “It really behooves us to acknowledge religion when considering political processes.” …

    [ http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/12/151221133849.htm ; my bold]

    Reminds me of the iterative theme of the fantasy movie “The Neverending Story”. :-/

    1. Good reference. Not surprising result.

      Reminds me a bit of the Star Wars story, it is not really about the Force but commerce. It’s about people wanting stuff, controlling trade, and social order. Religion (force) gets in the way and causes division.

  8. Depends on what you mean by “no religion”.

    Religion (especially the evils thereof) is pretty clearly the result of irrational tribal instincts. “Us vs. Them” etc.

    So if by “no religion” we mean “get rid of irrational tribal instincts” then yes we’d be better off.

    But if by religion we simply mean no belief in “Gods” per se, people could just as readily latch their irrational tribal instincts onto ideologies & cults of personality.

    You don’t need “gods”, “afterlife”, “spirits”, and the like for people to be willing to kill and die. You just need them to “love” their group identity much more than they love themselves or any other individuals.

    Bottom line the cartoon makes a valid point.

    And it *doesn’t* let religion off the hook — it just reminds us that mindless adherence to an ideology is the real problem.

    Atheism cannot be blamed for Hitler, Staling, Mao, & Pol Pot, but irrational “group think” ideologies can.

  10. I believe that the demise of religion (if it ever happens) will, indeed, lead to less conflict in this world, but I believe the REAL reason would be the adoption of rational thinking practices by a majority of the population, a necessary requirement for the demise of religion in the first place.
    “Secular” conflicts would be reduced, as well, as the cognitive fallacies that are the basis of both cartoons are as ably defused by rational thinking as any of a “religious” nature.
    I’ve been saying for years: “The struggle in this world is not that of ‘good’ v/s ‘evil’; it is the struggle between knowledge and ignorance and its resultant superstitions.

    1. Agreed. Though if we can talk about knowledge being “good,” and I think we can say that, and if we can categorize ignorance as “bad,” and I also think we can say that as well, then the challenge posed of knowledge vs ignorance remains one of good vs evil. 😉

      1. You can label ANYTHING as “good” or “bad” according to your opinion, bias, or prejudice, so to claim a struggle between good and evil continues to maintain it in the muddled realm of subjectivity. It’s a little harder to label “ignorance” (which is a lack of knowledge) as “knowledge”, or vice versa.
        I realized, a long time ago, that everything that I consider “good” that happens in my life is the result, through cause and effect, of all the “good” AND “bad” events that preceded it (of course, the opposite is true, too).

        “Knowledge” itself is not inherently “good”, if you look at it subjectively: if I suddenly acquire the knowledge that I have untreatable, terminal cancer, I would probably not feel that it was a “good” thing- it COULD come under the heading of “good”, however, as I would then know to get my affairs in order, something that might be of great benefit to my family. “Good” and “bad”, it seems, are all mixed up together in everything that happens.

        What’s that old saying? “A little knowledge is a dangerous thing”- the Nazis had the “knowledge” that Zyklon B could quickly, cheaply, and efficiently kill large numbers of people; our weapons manufacturers today are utilizing THEIR knowledge to make it easier and easier to kill and maim.
        Sometimes I wonder, when I read the news (I know SO much more about what’s going on in the world than I used to), whether there’s some truth to that passage from the Wholly Babble: “He who increaseth knowledge, increaseth sorrow.”

        1. Jeffery, we could infer from what you are saying that ignorance is bliss, and I am not sure that is what you meant to say. I think knowledge must be inherently better than ignorance or I don’t know what becomes of us. Whether certain knowledge is not used or ignored, or worse, turned to evil purpose as in some of the examples you mention, is something that transcends knowledge itself, being a use (or non-use) of the knowledge.

          As for the larger topic of all good and evil being relative, well, can of worms here we come, but I’m going to suggest that if people came together we could probably hammer out rationally that certain things are more good than others and certain other things more evil than others. Maybe we don’t get it all right, but I think we will find that much in the realm of good and evil isn’t relative at all. Certain actions and beliefs are better than other actions and beliefs and I think reasonable people could probably agree on this. As to the unreasonable folks out there, which could be a great majority of people and throw a wrench into all reasonable discussions, what to do with them, I don’t know…patience, love, learning?

  11. Hilarious. But I would be equivalent to a faitheist in the Cats vs. Dogs war. A d*g owner who believes that cats should have human staff.

  12. I’ll argue that there are many politically liberal people in the West who rush, in the name of multicultural acceptance, to defend the practices of non-xtian religions. The problem from a civil rights standpoint (and something that gets under the skin of many atheists), is that these practices do not, themselves, reflect toleration or progressive ideals. This paradox was pointed out on this blog quite some time ago with the spat that Bill Maher had with Reza Aslan and his so-called liberal allies. An column in today’s Washington Post is along the same lines. Do-gooder exemplars of tolerance promoting some non-xtian practice that isn’t actually tolerant: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2015/12/21/as-muslim-women-we-actually-ask-you-not-to-wear-the-hijab-in-the-name-of-interfaith-solidarity/?hpid=hp_hp-more-top-stories_aof-hijab-900am%3Ahomepage%2Fstory.

  14. Come on now, any ‘true’ fluffy pet owner knows that it is not a d*g-vs-cat fight, its a d*g & cat-vs-lizards & bugs fight!

    Besides, these combatants could be distracted easily with youtube videos, bit of puppy stampedes and cats with boxes and they are too busy laughing and sharing videos to even care they were about to fight.

  15. I didn’t infer that PtiB (Pliny the in Between) was making any broad political/religious statement with his cartoon.

    The idea that people will always find something to fight about seems problematic. It sort of implies that violence is caused by magic, meaning that if you remove the causes one-by-one as you find them, the violence remains the same. I find that implausible.

    1. Violence is caused by our stupid ape brains. We have to go against our instincts not to seek revenge, not to slap people who annoy us and generally to be polite. That takes a lot of energy. Either we breed those characteristics out or we accept that we’re a bunch of ape jerks that need to be tamed.

      1. That’s small scale, interpersonal violence. The present context is large scale violence, when you may be trying to kill people you don’t even know.

        1. But surely that translates up. It starts as an idea in a few ape heads and escalates to something bigger.

          1. I’m sure those emotions you describe are used to generate large-scale violence, but it rarely happens. When we talk about large-scale violence, I think we implicitly are talking about those things which scale up our emotions and give us permission to indulge in them.

          2. I don’t know, I think JFK was pretty close to nuking us all over the Russians taking those nukes to Cuba and it seemed to me that a lot of testosterone was at play. We all owe our lives to Nikita Khrushchev for backing down.

          3. I thought it was a mutual understanding: both Kennedy and Khrushchev negotiated their way out of the Cuban Missile Crisis. I mean, could you imagine Bush doing the same thing?

          4. Well, yes, that particular issue of one man having the ability to kill millions/billions is kind of a different story. If everyone had that ability, we’d all be dead in a heartbeat. 😉

          5. After thinking about the Cuban thing a bit, it still bears asking: “How did we get to the point where one man’s will separates us from Armageddon?”

            The Cold War arguably required the same sort of public manipulation that a hot war does.

  16. Here is a new way that US is peculiar, which touches on the religion theme I’m sure but also on our hearth for education:

    “Poverty stunts IQ in the US but not in other developed countries

    Country-specific effects may help solve a piece of nature-vs-nurture puzzle.”

    “… over the years, researchers have gone back and forth on this theory, called the Scarr-Rowe hypothesis. It has held up in some studies, but inexplicably slipped away in others, leaving researchers puzzled over the deciding factors in the nature-vs-nurture battle. Now, researchers think they know why.

    In a new meta-analysis of 14 psychology studies from the past few decades, researchers found that the strength of poverty’s pull differed by country, with US poverty providing the only forceful yank among developed nations. The authors, who published the results in Psychological Science, speculate that the wider inequalities in education and medical access in the US may explain poverty’s extra power.”

    “While the authors speculate that inequalities in educational and medical access in the US may beef up poverty’s effects, Turkheimer thinks school environments in particular may be to blame. He plans to follow up on the findings in his own work.”

    [ http://arstechnica.com/science/2015/12/poverty-stunts-iq-in-the-us-but-not-in-other-developed-countries/ ]

    1. Disparity or inequality is more salient in America. If you and all of your nearest neighbors are poor, creativity and intelligence I would suspect would be equal.

      I am not sure where the research for this comes from but this Minute Earth is interesting:

      Poor places are more diverse

  17. Am I alone in still seeing a religious war in that picture? Anubis worshippers versus Bast worshippers, maybe?

  19. A no-brainer if (certain) religions went extinct.

    Fertility would collapse below replacement and the species would die off, until someone invented the idea of a personal God looking over everyone’s shoulder, who commanded humanity to be fruitful and multiply.

    It is easy to understand why some people reject group selection: if group selection operated in humans, then the main vector of group selection would be religion. So choosing atheism would be rejecting a successful group selection strategy in favor of extinction.

    http://www.scilogs.com/nature-of-faith/its-about-fertility-stupid-the-evolutionary-adaptivity-of-religion/

    Not that I care, humanity may have had its day in the sun. But there are those who preach Darwinism, and those that practice it like the Amish.

  20. If we are willing to consider the hypothesis of group selection, and religious tradition specifically as the of means creating group cohesion and mutual cooperation, then the true value of religion may be in its ability to set a limit on human altruism, by setting a limit on the group, and kicking out free-riders.

    International relations, using a game theory model has discussed the security dilemma. Two strangers in the state of nature encounter each other. If one believes the other is hostile, it makes sense to attack and kill the other first. If you are mistaken about their hostility, then the other pays the cost, not you. Further, once the other realizes that it is rational for you to attack them first, they are sure to attack you. Thus, because neither party can determine the other parties true intentions with certainty, the situation is weighted to end in a blood bath without an intervening miracle.

    So the mystery is not xenophobia, but the irrational part is the lack of fear of your own in-group. Something is necessary to irrationally create trust beyond kinship groups, and obviously, policing the bounds of altruism is critical to survival–if you trust hostile strangers, they will hurt you, as the history of the Native Americans demonstrates.

    Further, if you don’t start from an arbitrary given, you are liable to end up with some absurd ethical system like Peter Singer were you may end up having ethical duties to monkeys and endangered cave mold.

  21. If you look at discussions of late Soviet life, there was widespread cynicism, and little interest in acts of benevolence directed at strangers. At the same time, most people were very heavily invested in their own kinship groups.

    I worry that paradoxically, atheism, universalism, and humanitarianism, when actually translated into a political system, like Communism, inadvertently destroys social trust (and reciprocal altruism) between non-kin related humans. Part of this structural, if you eliminate any intervening structures between the State and the individual, then there is no basis for communal life other than the family. But I am not sure that the Boy Scouts or the Rotary Club could fulfill this function in the same way as religion (and note, both the Boy Scouts and the Rotary Club have non-superficial links with organized faith.)

    Peter Hitchens has written about this phenomenon in his God book, probably in a way that would be objectionable to the author of this blog, but leaving the God question alone, does religion have the integral function of creating irrational bonds of altruism beyond kinship groups? Further, aren’t these bonds in some sense connected to shared ritual and shared ascetic practices (creating a sense of solidarity), so an atheist version would in short order morph into a new religion?

  22. Seems that the need to believe in something is a requirement for H.sapiens. Doesn’t matter if this is a religion, ideology or simply the existence of Aliens. Yes, it might be helpful for my personal, psychological wellbeing to believe the sun will rise again tomorrow, or my dead ancestors are still alive in a spiritual world. It even might be helpful in group building against a dangerous world. But it becomes madness when two different groups with incompatible believe systems meet each other. If we would be able to identify the genes for “believe” and found a way to eliminate them, would this be a benefit for the individuals or the human population in total? I doubt it. Since we are not able to extinct the need to believe, we have only the possibility to change the content of what people believe in. But please don’t ask me what kind of believe system this should be….

  23. Nothing to kill or die for
    And no religion, too

    John Lennon recognized religion as a primary (though not exclusive) cause of the world’s turmoil and violence, of its Sturm-und-Drang.

    He cited nationalism (“Imagine there’s no countries”) and greed (“Imagine no possessions”) as others.

    1. Warfare is not even an inevitable consequence of the human nature.

      In a state of chaos, with no night-watchmen to punish the bullies and the bad guys, without knowing the strangers real intentions, the logical move is to kill the stranger before they kill you. Otherwise, you find yourself dead.

      In international relations, where there is no night-watchman, you have wars. What fuels war is fear of the enemy. And frankly, you have every reason to fear Putin or Xi. As a result, Putin and Xi have every reason to fear Obama. Unless a stable balance of power is reached, the result in warfare.

      As I said, the real miracle is why humans, like Chronos, don’t eat their children, before they become more powerful than them and supplant them. Okay, maybe genetics/natural selection kick in here. But why would anyone trust someone who is not kin?

      Obviously, a group that extended beyond kin and could coordinate and cooperate would kick the snot out of a kinship group based on numbers and possibly tactics. But how do you overcome the rational fear of the other? How do you get someone to take that irrational leap first?

      This I suspect lies at the heart of the evolutionary basis of religion, and why religion is implicated (but not necessarily the driver) of war. I suspect the whole thing began as a response to predation, but eventually the hunted became the hunters. Folks like Ibn Khaldun theorized that the only way to survive in a desert is through a strong, socially cohesive group, which may explain why we have desert monotheism, and why desert monotheism may have adaptive value beyond desert survival, because of the strong, cohesive groups it creates.

      Certainly, all things being equal, I would prefer to DEFENDED by an army of fanatics.

      1. The corollary of this line of reasoning is that if you could actually establish a world government, you could end national warfare.

        However, the linguistic, cultural, and religious hurdles are probably insurmountable, and the level of tyranny necessary to destroy ethnoreligious diversity across the planet would probably be unacceptable to the governed. So I won’t hold my breath. It would be like the British Empire cubed and to the ninth power.

        Further, even if it happened, you would have civil wars between factions for control over the government, and movements to secede, etc.

        But I think, theoretically, national warfare could be abolished. Moreover, maybe if scientists developed some reliable mind reading device that couldn’t be gamed, world leaders could just agree to brain scans, and would know what the other’s intention was. That, in my mind, is science fiction, but others may see it as a realistic possibility.

  24. Why God?

    If we accept the controversial hypothesis that religion evolved (and continues to evolve) to create tight, cohesive groups of people that trust each other and are willing to cooperate, and that this confers evolutionary benefits to the group (like enhanced fertility), then why is it in addition necessary to believe in God?

    This follows from the “ought/is” issue. It maybe that participation in a strict version of a desert monotheistic cult confers evolutionary advantages, but it does not motivate me to join said cult. Moreover, if I don’t join the cult, it may make evolutionary sense to destroy the cult before they out-compete me and my group. (Even though, if as Michael Blume contends, secular groups have never been able to sustain above replacement fertility over a century).

    A belief in a personal God is the key to creating an individual motivation for participation in the group strategy, despite the significant personal sacrifices demanded by the group.

    If desert monotheism is the best group selection strategy that has emerged from the dawn of history, then it is clear that God will not be going away anytime soon, whether anyone is satisfied with the proofs of his existence or not.

    This also reveals the ideological conflict over group selection versus individual selection, and holism versus reductionism. If we are forced to acknowledge that group selection exists in nature, for example, in spider colonies like the article in the October issue of Nature, then we also have to get real about holism. If we are real about holism, we may have to revisit the Neo-Darwinian Synthesis, as some biologists have suggested. We also will have to get real about the demonstrable evolutionary benefits of monotheism. (But Hindu’s also have high fertility.)

  25. I should point out that the convergence of different genetic lines on a common phenotype (consistent with Desai’s results) may result in some kind of teleological formulation similar to Hamiltonian Mechanics based optimization principles. [It may very well be explainable in terms of some kind of Newtonian push/pull mechanics, as well-but that begs the question of whether Newtonian physics merely describe the morphology of space-time, and Hamiltonian Mechanics is closer to a fundamental description.]

    But I doubt this formulation, if it is ever found, will be operating solely at the genetic level.

    1. I don’t know why I am having trouble posting this! I took out the link just in case.

      Evolutionary selection, in general, operates on the level of the organism, based on the phenotype. Genetics operates at a lower level, and genotype does not determine phenotype (although no one denies genotype is not incredibly important).

      Desai looked at evolution in yeast and discovered while there was convergence on a common phenotype, there was divergence in genotypes. This would suggest what drives evolution is random changes in genotype, but something else. See Quantamagazine 9/11/2014 edition.

      I went as far to suggest the possibility of some kind of teleological principle or law, an optimization principle, similar to Hamiltonian Mechanics in physics, and more-or-less consistent with Aristotle.

      As far as it goes, I think the empirical evidence should trump anyone’s a priori this-is-how-the-universe-must-be. Further, I imagine that the old stick in the muds die off and are replaced with those willing to look at the evidence with unbiased eyes. I am not sure what will happen with group selection, but if it were a valid hypothesis, it might explain upwards of 75% of human behavior.

  26. If we think of religion as a group strategy, which does not seem to be a stretch, and we take Blume’s claims seriously, that only certain religious groups can maintain an above-replacement fertility rate over the course of a century, then this explains a lot of things.

    1.) Why certain religions exist (from an evolutionary perspective).

    2.) Why certain religions persist, e.g. why the world is mostly Catholic or Muslim despite modern science and all the arguments of atheism (or is it just the persuasive power of the Doctrine of the Trinity or the stirring rhetoric of the Qur’an?);

    3.) Why certain religions like paganism disappeared (lack of pro-natalist values).

    It would also mean that group selection, and religion, was integral to the evolution of human beings.

    To me, this seems a lot more plausible then supposing human beings from the dawn of time were completely irrational until someone invented atheism in the 18th Century, when a few people in Europe began to think properly.

    Why people would invest so much time or energy into religion? How could such a species sink so much time and resources into something useless, survive in competition with other species?

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