Genetic's poisoned chalice

[JWFrogen]

That is interesting Boxy.

My view is there may be some genetic component to like seeking like, but I think most resistence to immigration is fear (some times justifable) of different cultural norms and practices. This can be learned and unlearned.

By the way, I can confirm there is a God gene.

My genes have made me a God.

[boxy]

Yes, well fear of difference (xenophobia) is the trait that is being selected for. Xenophobic monkeys, who chase off strangers, keep their community more closely related to themselves, so that any support they give to the community at large is more likely to benefit positively related individuals than the negatively related.

Yes, a tendency to believe in a form of spirituality, or religion, does seem to provide an evolutionary advantage, holding communities together, and providing an excuse for a moral framework that doesn't require constant intellectual discussion on the rights/wrongs, advantages/disadvantages, of rules that benefit the community at large (and hence benefits the genetic success of others who are closely related).

Religion in the Brain
Robyn Williams: Robin Dunbar is Professor Evolutionary Psychology at Liverpool in Britain. He's convinced that apes with bigger brains have more friends. But our brains are far larger than we need for the size of the village. So what's going on? It's a question of levels of intention.

Robin Dunbar: Levels of intentionality, of belief states. So, I believe that something is the case: that's the first order of intentionality. It's a belief about my mind, if you like.

Second order of intentionality is: I believe that you believe. Third order is: I believe that you believe that I believe that something is the case. And so, in principle, adinfinitum.

Robyn Williams: What about four and five?

Robin Dunbar: It's very hard to see any obvious reason or circumstance when we need levels for four or five in everyday life. Level three is probably about as complicated as it gets, because it's what happens when you say, I believe that you intend me to suppose that something is the case, and you're trying to explain something to me or trying to perhaps deceive me or outwit me. And yet it's very clear that the upper limits for normal adult humans is about level five. Because that requires essentially a very large computer to do the calculations if you like, and that computer, ie the brain, is extremely expensive. It's one of the most expensive organs in the body.

It's puzzling as to why we should have to have such a large brain to handle this kind of thing, and the only thing I can see that will do that really is religion. Because we have to work not only at the third level that's operative between ourselves, but we also have to add on a conditional level for the unseen world as it were, where these other individuals lie, who also have minds that can be influenced by us. And to make religion communal then we have to add that fifth layer in, because we have to attend to influence other minds.

Robyn Williams: The question of expense. If you're going to invest in this fantastically demanding organ which takes, what 20% of our energy, and therefore our food or whatever, and it's committed mainly so that you can believe in God or gods or some sort of spiritual values, there has to be a pay-off apart from the god.

Robin Dunbar: Absolutely so. I mean nothing in evolution comes for free so there has to be some real benefit to make that cost, and the size of the cost implies that the benefit is absolutely huge. Religion does lots of things for us. The bad news for those of us who are not religious is that those who are religious, it is that the live longer, they generally live happier lives, they recover from surgery sooner, and it just goes on and on and on. It's very depressing.

But the other thing that it does is it bonds you into a community. Somehow, that sense of religiousness creates this sense of belonging to a family; it makes people much more willing to tow the party line, in effect, on those key informal social contracts that make social life as we know it possible. Large complex groups of perhaps 150-200 individuals that we have spent most of our evolution history, they are very easily disrupted. It's a general problem for all social species where you have the existence of a social group, allowing individuals to solve communally, and therefore more efficiently the problems of life and reproduction. And those communities exist as a kind of social contract, an informal social contract, in which I have to give up something in the short term to benefit much more in the long-term. You always have this risk of free-riding; the temptation to take the benefits associated but not pay the risk. I mean we see it every day. Guys who don't buy their round every time in the pub. It's the over-fishing on the oceanic fisheries where everybody knows that we'd all do better if we all agreed to restrict our catches. So that is a very very intrusive problem for all primates and it's just writ large for humans.

Robyn Williams: What about the chimpanzees? They have social groups don't they?

Robin Dunbar: They have social groups but they're much smaller, they're a third of the size of ours. So they have that problem but it's just much less intrusive.

Robyn Williams: You were suggesting in your book that the big difference between us and the apes is religion.

Robin Dunbar: It is what it boils down to. There really isn't anything substantive beyond that, that is big enough, if you like, to really explain why we have the cognitive capacities that we have.

Robyn Williams: But having got those cognitive capacities, and presumably evolved with some sort of spiritual underpinning, you don't have to have that, as you described, you yourself don't have a religion and therefore you've still got your brain. So we've got it now so we can use it for other things.

Robin Dunbar: Oh yes, that's absolutely right, but that's in the nature of all biological processes. The history of evolution is basically the history of windows of opportunity opening up. You just think of the history of computers. Computers were built 150 years ago by Babbages as counting machines. And for a long time that's about all they did. Then suddenly one day somebody got the idea of using the same technology to create word processors and create things to assemble cars. So, you've got your big brain, now we can do maths with it and you can do all sorts of other trivial things, because you're just using the same hardware.

Religion is a trickier problem, because if its real function has been in terms of bonding, our problem is to dispose of religion because it's a “bad thing”. What are we going to replace it with? In effect, society won't work as efficiently if it doesn't have that bonding mechanism that provided by religion. So you need something that will make people collaborate together in effect. Somehow we've got to solve that problem.

[JWFrogen]

Religion in the Brain
Robyn Williams: Robin Dunbar is Professor Evolutionary Psychology at Liverpool in Britain. He's convinced that apes with bigger brains have more friends. But our brains are far larger than we need for the size of the village. So what's going on? It's a question of levels of intention.Robyn Williams: You were suggesting in your book that the big difference between us and the apes is religion.

Robin Dunbar: It is what it boils down to. There really isn't anything substantive beyond that, that is big enough, if you like, to really explain why we have the cognitive capacities that we have.
.

I am not sure he is correct about higher apes and religion, or spiritual transcendence. Certainly he is making a non-empirical statement because we simply do not know, but those with the most experience examining apes think they may indeed have a form of spirituality.

Jane Goodall claims chimpanzees have at least transcendent experience (a prerequisite to religion), that there is a waterfall where a chimp group she observed would regularly go to, they would go for no utilitarian purpose, but rather just arrive and then start displaying a body language, making the sounds that chimps usually use paying homage to dominant male, swaying back and forth in honor of the water fall. The dominate male joined them.

Religious experience may be indeed the first spark of conciseness itself, the first step to self awareness, to even knowing one is alive in the first place.

Indeed I would argue Dunbar may have it the wrong way around, as we human apes become more evolved we probably become less spiritual, less inclined to experience awe before mystery and ascribe it to higher power because we could reason our way away from the experience.

[boxy]

I don't think he's saying that the difference is the ability to have "spiritual" type experiences, but that we personify those experiences.

We arn't an extra special species amongst the animals, and this extends to brain size. It's a bit bigger than other apes, but their intelligence isn't that far behind. It's not surprising that they have some similar foibles, especially those with similar social evolution paths. Chimp's live in smaller tribes, but still very much rely on group hunting/caring like us, and have similar dominance roles. Perhaps these "spiritual" displays have to do with being submissive to things that are obviously powerful influences... but until they personify it... turning the waterfall into an intelligent being, that wants them to do things in a certain way, it's not the type of religious dialogue that Dunbar seems to be talking about.

The interesting question all of this raises, is what do we do without religion? We have come to a point where (for a significant % of our population) our mind has outgrown it, however it's not clear if our societies can continue to function without a suitable replacement.

We are intellectualising away some of the underpinnings of what made our societies "the fittest to survive"... religious, nationalistic, ethnocentric solidarity.

[JWFrogen]

God, Lord of Hosts, (not to be confused with Rove Bored of Hosts) has just told me you have incurred his terrible wrath Boxy.

He wants you to sacrifice two sheep and call him in the morning.

Seriously, I concede we can’t know but the fact that the chimps are using the same body language they display for a dominate male may indicate they are personifying (or chimpifying) the transcendent or God. Indeed they are so closely related to humans that I would be surprised that at a more primitive level they do not exhibit the same religious inclinations we humans do.

Still, personification is not universal in human religion; Buddhism for instance has transcendent faith in non-personified purpose of the universe, Enlightenment, rebirth, Nirvana ECT. This is faith; there is no evidence for this purpose to existence.
Although atheism is spreading it is not the majority and as we have seen with fundamentalist religion always has revivals, the US was far less fundamentalist Christian at the time of it’s founding (many of the founding fathers were deists) than it was 50 years latter for example. In the 50s it looked like much of the Islamic world would be dominated by secular, if fascist political systems or use Ataturk as their example for a new social paradigm. But more privative forms of Islam returned with a vengeance.

I do not think we will ever witness the extinction of religion. (I am not against the idea as I think formal religion actually interferes with God experience, it is like taking a love poem and confusing it for real love, one falsely believes the metaphor is the reality.)

Even atheists have a difficult time breaking the religious instinct, by which I mean the instinct to have faith in a purpose for being which can not be proved. Christopher Hitchens for a long time was a Marxist (he honestly claims he still feels emotive pain leaving it, a sign of faith) that doctrine demands faith in a non-empirical purpose for human life, belief that there was an inevitable outcome to human history based on economic class structure and historical determinism. There is no evidence that is the case. His religious instinct simply manifested itself in a different form of irrational faith.

Richard Dawkins claims he practices Zen Buddhism, a form of faith. There is no evidence there is Nirvana or Enlightenment or that is the purpose for human existence.

We humans are hardwired for religion and even our growing use of reason can not eliminate it, it will manifest itself some where, some way.

[boxy]

The religious instinct seems to be little more than a willingness to conform to the beliefs of the mob, and a primal need to subjugate yourself before something bigger, some higher purpose. A successful strategy for the gene, to encourage teamwork, no doubt.

If religion is to die out, we will need something to replace god, some higher, universal purpose to strive for, and to unite.

[JWFrogen]

If religion is to die out, we will need something to replace god, some higher, universal purpose to strive for, and to unite.

I hereby sacrifice my life to be that new higher, universal purpose.

Women, strip off your clothing and go all Dionysian on my sacrificial body.

Men, worship me at a respectful distance and send a check or money order to Frogen.purpose.com

[JWFrogen]

What say ye Sheep-Boxy from the island of Dr Moreau?

[boxy]

Which promised land will you be leading us to with that staff?

[JWFrogen]

I have given up on promises I won't keep.

I could keep them, but I won't.

Know thyself.