Religion
Related: About this forumThe Twain Shall Meet
By JAMES RYERSON
FEB. 9, 2016
In recent years, the scientists and polemicists known as the New Atheists have been telling a certain type of evolutionary story. It goes like this:
Once upon a time, when our ancestors were struggling for survival on the African savanna, it was good to see ghosts. What was that rustle in the grass? What was that passing shadow? If your instinct was to detect agency, even in lifeless features of the natural world, you did well for yourself. Sure, you made some silly mistakes, sometimes fleeing from what turned out to be a gust of wind. But you didn’t overlook any genuine threats, and in the end you survived.
The result is a human population hard-wired to detect agency. We hear a noise in the night and assume it’s an intruder when it’s actually a falling tree branch. Researchers report that babies as young as 5 months old perceive intention in the movements of animated colored disks. And grown-ups everywhere ascribe purposefulness to the world at large, understanding the workings of the universe in terms of divine agency — another silly mistake!
The New Atheists tell other stories in this vein: about our predilection to believe in nonphysical entities, to believe in life after death, to believe that everything happens for a reason. These narratives, in which prehistoric habits of survival become today’s intellectual liabilities, are supposed to undermine religion by scientifically demonstrating the irrationality at its core. But for the psychologist and religion professor (and Episcopal priest) James W. Jones, the author of CAN SCIENCE EXPLAIN RELIGION?: The Cognitive Science Debate (Oxford University, $24.95), they do no such thing.
Suppose, Jones suggests, that someone were to advance a similar argument against the field of biology. Back in the Paleolithic days, the story would go, it was advantageous to differentiate living from nonliving things, to assume that things had causes, to see patterns in nature. But today, far removed from the wilds of East Africa, these cognitive tendencies, detectable in children, drive our biological beliefs. As the “misfiring” of faculties developed for another purpose, these beliefs should be discredited, or at least strongly distrusted.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/14/books/review/the-twain-shall-meet.html?_r=0
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Suppose, Jones suggests, that someone were to advance a similar argument against the field of biology.
Then the hypothesis would be tested and fail spectacularly. Erroneous personal delusions don't pass objective scientific verification.
That's Why We Have The Scientific Method.
rug
(82,333 posts)gcomeau
(5,764 posts)It is that human being have pattern and agency detecting biases in our cognition that constantly produce false positives.
And that has been tested. It has been confirmed. Pareidolia is a thing. Apophenia is a thing.
The argument then proceeds from there that that being the case we have two competing possible explanations for the rise of religion.
1. Magic deities actually exist. A hypothesis that defies any testable verification down through the centuries and millenia.
2. Above issues with human beings and their identification of causes and agency. A confirmed actual phenomena.
Occam's Razor takes it from there. KNOWING that we humans constantly see patterns and causes that aren't really there when we THINK we see patterns and causes they should be confirmed. And if they can't be confirmed... ?
rug
(82,333 posts)Where's the objective scientific verification of that hypothesis?
gcomeau
(5,764 posts)The evolutionary advantage is attributed to the pattern and agency sensing biases that I just listed. The evolutionary advantages of which are obvious and easily testable.
Religion being a side effect of those processes.
rug
(82,333 posts)Pattern recognition is but one aspect of evolutionary advantage and says nothing about the formation of supernatural beliefs.
gcomeau
(5,764 posts)The review (and others) not comprehending that is not my concern.
And how supernatural beliefs arise out of incorrect attribution of agency should be so painfully obvious that I question if you're being disingenuous pretending not to understand it. But if you really need an example, and an actual study of the effect:
The evolution of superstitious and superstition-like behaviour
http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/276/1654/31
Abstract:
"Superstitious behaviours, which arise through the incorrect assignment of cause and effect, receive considerable attention in psychology and popular culture. Perhaps owing to their seeming irrationality, however, they receive little attention in evolutionary biology. Here we develop a simple model to define the condition under which natural selection will favour assigning causality between two events. This leads to an intuitive inequality—akin to an amalgam of Hamilton's rule and Pascal's wager—-that shows that natural selection can favour strategies that lead to frequent errors in assessment as long as the occasional correct response carries a large fitness benefit. It follows that incorrect responses are the most common when the probability that two events are really associated is low to moderate: very strong associations are rarely incorrect, while natural selection will rarely favour making very weak associations. Extending the model to include multiple events identifies conditions under which natural selection can favour associating events that are never causally related. Specifically, limitations on assigning causal probabilities to pairs of events can favour strategies that lump non-causal associations with causal ones. We conclude that behaviours which are, or appear, superstitious are an inevitable feature of adaptive behaviour in all organisms, including ourselves."
rug
(82,333 posts)I suppose they also do not concern you because the reviewer (and others) do not comprehend what you do.
Sorry, I'll stick with the NYT's statement of the issue over an intellectually invested anonymous internet poster.
gcomeau
(5,764 posts)...is you're sticking with a NYT Book Reviewer over an actual study published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society on Biological Sciences.
But by all means... head... sand... do continue.
rug
(82,333 posts)"an actual study" or no.
As to your last sentence, do you wish now to engage in insults?
You may as well since you've added nothing to the OP but a diversion and a declaration.
gcomeau
(5,764 posts)You may as well since you've added nothing to the OP but a diversion and a declaration.
And the only peer reviewed scientific data on the topic. But I can understand why that wouldn't seem notable to you.
rug
(82,333 posts)That is far from the only peer reviewed scientifific date on the topic (even though you missed what the topic was).
Maybe you should read the book. But I can understand why that wouldn't seem advisable to you.
gcomeau
(5,764 posts)Only in this thread? Damn right it is. And when presented with it you refused to even look at it.
rug
(82,333 posts)Still a diversion from the topic which, alone, does nothing to support your arrogant dismissal of the book, which you haven't read, and is hardly warrented by the sum of your posts.
gcomeau
(5,764 posts)It IS the topic. That "certain type of evolutionary story" talked about in the OP? That paper is testing the basic principles involved.
Feel free to keep ignoring it while accusing me of "arrogance" for daring to bring peer reviewed science to the discussion instead of relying on a book review.
cleanhippie
(19,705 posts)The Believing Brain by Michael shermer
rug
(82,333 posts)The book is not science.
MisterP
(23,730 posts)Lindberg is unfortunately dead, but there seem to be a few cogent points here
1. the Conflict Thesis
1a. that Protestantism is the next best thing to an atheist/secular society (this has caused ... problems ... in Foggy Bottom)
1b. that this is indeed "Protestantism minus the Christianity" as can be seen in its Dan Brown rhetoric
2. evolutionary theory--that
2a. stadialism, that everything's going upward in stages--therefore someone going to a church is a mental 15-year-old at the evolutionary stage of the "Spaniard," and someone going to a psychic 8-year-old and Aboriginal
3. a bastion model of science
3a. a constant need to cover up the fact that things constantly cross the bastion walls in and out of the realm designated "woo-woo" (near-death, ball lightning, SETI, lobotomy, eugenics, focal infection theory)
4. a utopianism about disestablishment and secularization
4a. ignoring that all work about secularization theory since 1980 is about its failure
4b. and ignoring that Guatemala hit every one of their points in 1871, Mexico 1917, Russia 1920
4bi. and that both world wars and the Cold War weren't really crusades
Jim__
(14,083 posts)From phys.org:
The research, an international collaboration among anthropologists and psychologists, looked at how religion affects humans' willingness to co-operate with those outside their social circle. The study involved interviews and behavioural experiments with nearly 600 people from communities in Vanuatu, Fiji, Brazil, Mauritius, Siberia and Tanzania whose religious beliefs included Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, animism and ancestor worship.
"Certain kinds of beliefs—involving gods who are aware of human interactions and punish for moral transgressions—can indeed contribute to the evolution of human co-operation," said lead author Benjamin Purzycki, a postdoctoral research fellow at UBC's Centre for Human Evolution, Cognition and Culture.
"If you think you're being watched, and expect to be divinely punished for being too greedy or thieving, you might be less inclined to engage in anti-social behavior towards a wider range of people who share those beliefs."
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