Spandrels and religion

[mr friendly guy]

Some time ago I debated against a dishonest moron at richarddawkins forums. Among one of his tactics is to use the naturalistic fallacy and assume because something is "naturally" widespread ie therefore there MUST be a good reason for it (evolutionary speaking). He applied this to religion and when I pointed to numerous examples of things which are widespread and natural yet not particularly useful, he would try to explain a use for them.

Thats right he thinks there is a practical reason for ostriches to have wings NOW even though they don't fly and breathing and swallowing through the same tube is useful because we have a gag reflex to compensate. Geez, I guess losing your legs isn't bad compared to having them because we have prosthesis now.

Any way, it left me wondering why religious belief (or belief in any idealogy for that matter) evolved.

My thought is that religious belief is a spandrel. For those who don't know, a spandrel as proposed by Gould is a feature which is a byproduct of evolution, not created by natural selection but can be LATER acted upon by natural selection. There is a controversy somewhat between Gould and Richard Dawkins since if a feature can later be acted upon by natural selection, how do you propose to tell if it was originally not created by natural selection?

The common example of a spandrel is the ability to read (or I should say ability to LEARN to read). Our ancestors evolutionary speaking weren't that much different from us, but written language is a relatively new phenomena. The ability to read initially would not be useful without a language, however as we developed a written language, the ability to read would certainly be advantageous and natural selection will select out these people who can't read.

I propose that religion itself is a byproduct of evolving more intelligence. Having more intelligence allow us to form abstract concepts such as God, and while some abstract concepts may be useful eg mathematics, others aren't. However having intelligence still gives us an advantage over other animals as even the dumbest fundie is smarter than a dog (ok, maybe not by much ).

Since I am proposing that religious belief is a spandrel, it can be naturally selected out if not for other things like cultural factors and the ideas of meme which help propogate it.

In short, I am arguing that religion is a by product of evolving intelligence, widespread but in itself providing no evolutionary advantage. Note I am not the only one who seem to have come to this conclusion, as I am currently reading a book about why people believe in stupid things, in which the author also suggests religion is a spandrel.

Thoughts?

[Stark]

Castellan Spandrel's name was a pun and I only just found out?

It's an interesting idea, in any case.

[Knife]

I propose that religion itself is a byproduct of evolving more intelligence. Having more intelligence allow us to form abstract concepts such as God, and while some abstract concepts may be useful eg mathematics, others aren't. However having intelligence still gives us an advantage over other animals as even the dumbest fundie is smarter than a dog (ok, maybe not by much ).

boil it all down and your looking at the species asking 'what'? That explains the origins of religeon. After a while, 'why' prolongs it. That's where we are at now, IMO.

As simple as it is, the ability to ask what, and then why is pretty damn improtent when it comes to objective subjects. It only gets stupid when applied to subjective issues.

[Bounty]

Any way, it left me wondering why religious belief (or belief in any idealogy for that matter) evolved.

I think you got it more-or-less right. Humans seem to have a very strong desire to understand the world around them. The single most common questions a child asks are "what is that?" and "why?" (well, apart from "I want that") and we feel very uncomfortable when we're faced with the prospect of not knowing something. My impression has always been that, if we can't find the answer fast enough, we are able to make ourselves believe an explanation. Again, children will always try to puzzle together an explanation for an unexplained phenomenon using what little knowledge they have and I think the same happened at the dawn of religion. "Parents" made remarkable things happen when you were young, ergo, there must be a "parent" doing remarkable things today. A man cannot make the sun move, ergo, whatever is moving the sun must be greater than man. Et cetera, et cetera.

It's not an evolved trait as much as it is a byproduct of evolution that has become self-perpetuating, not because religion itself gives an evolutionary advantage, but because it was has been integrated from day one in communal activities on the one hand, giving a greater sense of unity to a community and thus allowing them to work together more efficiently, and power structures on the other, when it became clear that religion could be used as a basis for political power - whoever is the shaman's best buddy can ensure a good crop, for example.

That's why I think it has become almost impossible to remove it. The only way I can see religion as a whole die out is if we do one of two things: understand everything there is to know, which is obviously not possible, or collectively accept that we can't know everything, which is equally unlikely. Individuals have accepted that idea, but I can't see it being adopted on a wide scale.

[K. A. Pital]

That's why I think it has become almost impossible to remove it.

That's actually not that hard. Religion is self-recreating. If someone would destroy it overnight, it would have no adherents to make a comeback from, because today's science is deconverting people from religion at a huge rate anyway. Just IMHO. Look at deconversion rates in the secular nations.

[Bounty]

That's actually not that hard. Religion is self-recreating. If someone would destroy it overnight, it would have no adherents to make a comeback from, because today's science is deconverting people from religion at a huge rate anyway. Just IMHO. Look at deconversion rates in the secular nations.

Yes, organised religion can be removed by the application of sufficient amounts of force, but that doesn't stop other irrational beliefs from surfacing. And while the deconversion rates from the major religions are a goo sign, you have to ask just what those people deconverted from: religion, or the particular brand of religion they used to adhere to?

I don't think the concept of religion needs pre-existing adherents to make a comeback from. Human nature will do the trick just fine.

[K. A. Pital]

Human nature will do the trick just fine.

Are you falling into "religion is natural for humans" idea?

Yes, organised religion can be removed by the application of sufficient amounts of force, but that doesn't stop other irrational beliefs from surfacing.

There's a huge difference between organized religion and other generic irrational beliefs.

1) Irrational beliefs of undefined nature, without religious doctrine. Prejudicion and other crap like that. Mostly harmless, cannot rally supporters to cause a new Dark Age.
2) Irrational beliefs of defined nature with some sort of system, new-age proto-religions, etc. Short-lived, generally, compared to organized religion.

Both types are different from organized religion which is:
1) a more robust form of irrationalism, with "Holy Books" and ancient racism engraved. Modern irrational beliefs are less likely to include anachronisms (racism, bigotry), thus religion clearly is more harmful due to it's more ancient and barbaric heritage.
2) organized religion is generally a deity-religion. The concept of Deity enforces the power of said religion over it's adherents. Discarding some paranormal rubbish by "Mister Extrasense" in a modern irrational belief is easier than discarding "The Word of God Almighty" (TM).

[Bounty]

Are you falling into "religion is natural for humans" idea?

Not in the sense that it is natural because it has a value for human life and not in the sense that it is an inevitability. I do think that, in the absence of alternative frameworks, humans are likely to either form or subscribe to some form of irrational religious belief up until such a point where the merits of not having that belief outweigh the merits of having that belief. Many in the western world have reached that point, many have not.

1) Irrational beliefs of undefined nature, without religious doctrine. Prejudicion and other crap like that. Mostly harmless, cannot rally supporters to cause a new Dark Age.

Prejudice cannot rally supporters into a Dark Age? Have we forgotten antisemitism?

Because when you get right to the bottom of it, the belief that "your race" is better than "his race" is exactly the sort of irrational mental shortcut that humans are willing to take, if it means having an easy, understandable framework. This is, in my opinion, just another form of religion in the sense that a group of people unite around a dogmatic idea that claims to bring an understanding of, and solution to, their problems.

1) a more robust form of irrationalism, with "Holy Books" and ancient racism engraved. Modern irrational beliefs are less likely to include anachronisms (racism, bigotry), thus religion clearly is more harmful due to it's more ancient and barbaric heritage.

So you claim that modern religions (as in, religions that are not part of or based on the classic world religions) are less cruel? Why would you say that? Because when I look at modern religions - and I'm going to include cults in this, since they tick all the boxes of religion - I see the very same cruelty and barbarism. Not in the same degree or with the same means, but barbarism all the same. And that make sense, since religion is de facto based on an us vs them mentality - convert or suffer and all that.

Take a look at the poster boy for new religions, Scientology. Brainwashing? Extortion? Torture, if not physical then mental? Expulsion of traitors? The only thing separating it from any established religion is tenure. Why you think that this is somehow less dangerous than, say, catholicism is beyond me.

2) organized religion is generally a deity-religion. The concept of Deity enforces the power of said religion over it's adherents. Discarding some paranormal rubbish by "Mister Extrasense" in a modern irrational belief is easier than discarding "The Word of God Almighty" (TM).

That's rather flimsy, isn't it? I get the impression that you're looking at any new or marginal religion through rose-tinted glasses, where in reality they're often not that different from the big ones apart from scope.

[R. U. Serious]

In short, I am arguing that religion is a by product of evolving intelligence, widespread but in itself providing no evolutionary advantage.

Sounds plausible. But if you look at religion as an extension of "tribalism" that can extend the group-idea to something larger than your tribe, against other outsiders, you could come up with advantages (in early time) as well. It was a way of enforcing rules in larger groups and opting (in general) for cooperation instead of competition/aggression within that larger group. Purely speculative of course.

It might also be an extension of submissiveness, which (in general) benefits larger groups, so there is not constant fighting over control and those resources can be used to secure survival.

I think you can come up with plausible stories that explain how certain traits in human behaviour which also "happen to enable" (or at least play into the hands of) religion, that can in moderation be useful for early tribes.

[K. A. Pital]

I get the impression that you're looking at any new or marginal religion through rose-tinted glasses, where in reality they're often not that different from the big ones apart from scope.

Scope is a big difference, actually. Where would World Religions be without millions of their adherents? If all major religions vanished overnight, it would take a bloody long time to build even just one another major religion, IMHO.

A secular ideology may be built faster, but a religion? In our modern age? Perhaps my relatively atheist nation skews my opinion, but to build a new world religion you'd require lots of resources and time, as well as newer ideas - many of the huge masses of "moderates" which follow large religions, you know, voluntarily omit racism, etc. from their holy teachings. If their large religion became nonexistent, those moderates would most likely fall into a deist/pantheist camp and would not be eager to flock to some sort of fundamentalist cult of any character.

Just my thoughts, of course.

[Setesh]

Religion starts with hallucination. I've been convinced for many years that religious leaders spring from listening to someone babble while hallucinating wildly. If you look into the origins of circumcision, you find a mushroom. Yes the origin of dick mutalation was to make it look like mushroom the early hebrew people ingested as a holy hallucinagen.

How many cultures believed like the romans that epileptic siezures were a sign of divinity. IIRC the Koran's discription of Mohammad's 'visions' are nearly the same as epileptic shock.

[TithonusSyndrome]

One of professional shithead Terrence McKenna's most enduring theories is the Stoned Ape Theory of the evolution of human intelligence. Basically, it suggests that apes that took to following after cows and scavenging anything they could in their wake wound up ingesting regular doses of hallucinogenic mushrooms from the cow's dung and opened their minds to "higher" plateaus of understanding, presumably culminating once we all finally trip out as never before and go off to remain with the Machine Elves, who await us as they dance and create reality as we perceive it.

McKenna never even pretended to have done any research into this, and supported this theory from experiences he had while, suprise! under the unfluence of psychoactive drugs.

Assholes like this man and Timothy Leary are among some of the most elusively defined and ideologically seductive assholes out there. High school dropouts and community college layabouts who have just enough sense to reject religious fundamentalism accept their teachings on their say-so alone, because they're subversive, rebellious, gives them lisence to do drugs, and not unlike fundamentalism, it offers a promise of a better, or in this case, "higher" existence. They don't fall under the banner of New Agers or anything else, so they usually remain forgotten and undetested - but I hope that changes soon.

[NecronLord]

Since I am proposing that religious belief is a spandrel, it can be naturally selected out if not for other things like cultural factors and the ideas of meme which help propogate it.

Of course it can - breed humans down to animalistic-intelligence and it's gone. But to presume it can be selected out without adversely affecting the ability to imagine other, more productive abstract concepts sounds like unjustified reasoning.

I would expect the same thought processes that allowed some nameless greek bloke to imagine Zeus also allowed Newton to imagine the idea of all mass generating an attracting force - the processes used afterwards are worlds apart in these examples, but it you want to select out the ability to come up with batshit insane crap about men in the sky, you probably select out the ability to come up with stuff like relativity; making up an explanation for observed phonomena is essential to both science and religion, even though one then tests this explanation, and the other clings onto it like a psychotic leech despite no evidence favouring it over competing theories.

[Trytostaydead]

They had a discovery channel show on this I believe. It was part of the Neanderthal segment they did. Where once they could start asking why they formulated belief structures to explain things.

[Darth Wong]

The reason we have religion is simple: we evolved intelligence but not rationality. Rational thinking is learned, not innate, and you need it in order to see through the fallacies of religion.

Humans will always want answers to questions, and religion will always provide answers, even if they are meaningless or stupid. So there will always be a place for religion as long as people are not rational enough to realize that the answers provided by religion are meaningless and stupid.

Could religion eventually evolve out? One might argue that from an evolutionary standpoint, there is little need for that quite yet. A society can thrive if only a small fraction of its population is scientifically minded, as long as that small fraction is allowed to operate freely.

[Darth Fanboy]

Mr Friendly Guy, the problem I have with your OP though is that the Ostrich still uses its wings for something useful (balance while running at high speeds), albeit not for what it was originally intended.

[mr friendly guy]

Of course it can - breed humans down to animalistic-intelligence and it's gone. But to presume it can be selected out without adversely affecting the ability to imagine other, more productive abstract concepts sounds like unjustified reasoning.

I would expect the same thought processes that allowed some nameless greek bloke to imagine Zeus also allowed Newton to imagine the idea of all mass generating an attracting force - the processes used afterwards are worlds apart in these examples, but it you want to select out the ability to come up with batshit insane crap about men in the sky, you probably select out the ability to come up with stuff like relativity; making up an explanation for observed phonomena is essential to both science and religion, even though one then tests this explanation, and the other clings onto it like a psychotic leech despite no evidence favouring it over competing theories.

I was thinking in terms of more humans could be selected to be more rational and hence see through religion. The ability to think logically currently doesn't seem to be innate in most people, it has to be learned.

[Medic]

I certainly can't lay a finger on exactly what religion is a by-product of, besides the generally aforementioned highly-evolved intelligence.

What I will bother to point out is that the explanatory power of a sprandel counters one irrationalist talking point rather neatly: this idea that because religious beliefs have surfaced in every society throughout history, that therefore, there's some merit to the religion.

Well no. It can just as likely be something else, physically truely universal, the brain of course. Religious beliefs may well be universal but the tenets of them vary so greatly, many are incompatible with other beliefs. You say it was the sun, I say it was God, he says aliens, she says dust, or samurai swords from the heavens, or... how does the Norse one go again?

Pog the Tasoth (4:33:26 PM): odin slew Ymir
Pog the Tasoth (4:33:44 PM): his body, flesh and blood became the world and the races of elves
Pog the Tasoth (4:34:08 PM): man was created from a pair of trees

By far the funniest part of Richard Dawkins The God Delusion book was the "Cargo Cults" of many pacific islands [IIRC]. Many were isolated from each other and had no physical contact with other 'cargo cults' yet many reverred European explorers and their ships. To them, the idea that 'sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic' truely materialized and spawned a number of personality cults. Wthin 40 years also of their creation, their exact origin was ALREADY shrouded in some degree of mystery.