Hard-wired to be religious
flwyd, tensegritydan, and I have comment in this corner of my last post's comments about whether people are "hard-wired to be religious". One of my family members reads this blog and wrote me to ask about whether "the prevalence of belief strongly suggests a genetic predisposition for it".
Lots of atheists (including Richard Dawkins) agree that there is a fairly clear (and possibly genetic) predisposition for religiosity. This might seem surprising to atheists. Going through the sham motions of a false religion ought to be extremely wasteful. Except that there are lots of examples in nature where animals with elaborately wasteful adaptations have evolved and thrived. Wasteful excess is the whole point. A Peacock's elaborate tail advertises that it is so fit and well adapted that it can use its extra food and energy to grow an unnecessarily elaborate tail. An affluent religious family displays its material advantages when they fund the construction of a new church or send one of its children to a life of monastic chastity. You can only afford to do that if you're already successful.
Group selection theory point out that religious belief may also be more valuable for the group than its individuals. Warriors who believe they're protected by god (or lucky charms) may take greater risks and fight more fearlessly, exposing them to greater risk but providing greater protection for their group. Dan Dennett is less charitable, pointing out that our behavior benefits to our genes and cultural memes as much as the other way around. A religious meme like suicide bombing negatively benefits the individual while the individual's behavior benefits the meme itself, allowing the meme to survive the death of its host.
I accept that there's likely to be not just a genetic predisposition not just toward religion, but toward general credulity of claims without evidence. When our ancestors were told "there are tigers in that long grass", the ones that accepted this claim lived longer than the ones who said "I'm going over to check that out before I believe you". Even if the claim was wrong most of the time - if there was no tiger in the grass - false negatives had far worse consequences than false positives. We can still see echoes of this in Pascal's Wager, where falsely denying a true religion has far worse consequences than accepting a false one.
There's a place for pragmatic, realistic optimism. It may appear unlikely that God or heaven exists, but if someone wants to hedge a long bet by living a life I'm obviously OK with that. I'm also OK with my friends who are planning to freeze their heads on the off-chance that future-science will repair and revive them. It's only if they say "I'm certain that future science will be both able and willing to revive me" that they're crossing the line from optimism to delusion.
Lots of atheists (including Richard Dawkins) agree that there is a fairly clear (and possibly genetic) predisposition for religiosity. This might seem surprising to atheists. Going through the sham motions of a false religion ought to be extremely wasteful. Except that there are lots of examples in nature where animals with elaborately wasteful adaptations have evolved and thrived. Wasteful excess is the whole point. A Peacock's elaborate tail advertises that it is so fit and well adapted that it can use its extra food and energy to grow an unnecessarily elaborate tail. An affluent religious family displays its material advantages when they fund the construction of a new church or send one of its children to a life of monastic chastity. You can only afford to do that if you're already successful.
Group selection theory point out that religious belief may also be more valuable for the group than its individuals. Warriors who believe they're protected by god (or lucky charms) may take greater risks and fight more fearlessly, exposing them to greater risk but providing greater protection for their group. Dan Dennett is less charitable, pointing out that our behavior benefits to our genes and cultural memes as much as the other way around. A religious meme like suicide bombing negatively benefits the individual while the individual's behavior benefits the meme itself, allowing the meme to survive the death of its host.
I accept that there's likely to be not just a genetic predisposition not just toward religion, but toward general credulity of claims without evidence. When our ancestors were told "there are tigers in that long grass", the ones that accepted this claim lived longer than the ones who said "I'm going over to check that out before I believe you". Even if the claim was wrong most of the time - if there was no tiger in the grass - false negatives had far worse consequences than false positives. We can still see echoes of this in Pascal's Wager, where falsely denying a true religion has far worse consequences than accepting a false one.
There's a place for pragmatic, realistic optimism. It may appear unlikely that God or heaven exists, but if someone wants to hedge a long bet by living a life I'm obviously OK with that. I'm also OK with my friends who are planning to freeze their heads on the off-chance that future-science will repair and revive them. It's only if they say "I'm certain that future science will be both able and willing to revive me" that they're crossing the line from optimism to delusion.