Religion played ‘key’ role in social evolution?

Evolutionary psychologist Robin Dunbar and a team of researchers at Oxford University revealed during a recent American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting a new and frankly, rather confounding theory suggesting that religion played an integral part in the social evolution of human beings, as reported in The Washington Post’s article, “A scientist’s new theory: Religion was key to humans’ social evolution.”

As this hypothesis goes, religion, with its communicative and interactive elements, helped to drive the social development and bring people together in important ways through singing, traditional rituals and customs and shared experience. Dunbar has argued that these religious components release endorphins, which, in turn, support feelings of in-group closeness and togetherness. According to Dunbar:

You need something quite literally to stop everybody from killing everybody else out of just crossness. Somehow it’s clear that religions, all these doctrinal religions, create the sense that we’re all one family.

Dunbar is best known for coming up with a sociological system known as “Dunbar’s number,” which is a tally for how many connections humans can maintain at any given time. For instance, he has argued that we can maintain ties with five intimate friends, 50 good friends, 150 friends more casual friends and as many as 1,500 acquaintances. He posits that his number is so high for humans largely because of religion. Here is The Post:

And then Dunbar turned to figuring out why Dunbar’s number is so high. Did humor help us manage it? Exercise? Storytelling? That riddle has been Dunbar’s quest for years — and religion is the latest hypothesis he’s testing in his ongoing attempt to find the answer.

“Most of these things we’re looking at, you get in religion in one form or another,” he said.

I doubt I will be the first to point out that his proposition on the role of religion on social evolution suffers from multiple fatal flaws.

First, and perhaps most obvious, is that the social evolution of humans began many millions of years before religion. Earliest estimates indicate that developing humans did not begin what we might consider religion activities (i.e. the ritual burying of the dead) until 100,000 ago or slightly earlier.

Matt Rossano, a psychology professor with Southeastern Louisiana University, in his paper, “The African Interrugnum: The ‘Where,’ ‘When,’ and ‘Why’ of the Evolution of Religion,” argues that the evolutionary foundation for religion began between 60,000-80,000 years ago:

A crucial aspect of their (anatomically modern humans’) increased sophistication was religion. It was during the time between their retreat from the Levant to the conquest of the world (The African Interrugnum) that their religion emerged. Using archeological, anthropological, psychological, and primatological evidence, this chapter proposes a theoretical model for the evolutionary emergence of religion — an emergence that is pin-pointed temporally to the ecological and social crucible that was Africa from about 80,000 to 60,000 ybp (years before present), when Homo sapiens (but for the grace of God?) nearly vanished from the earth.

Even before that, scientists have concluded that our primate ancestors coalesced around a common cause for the purposes of hunting, staying alive and yes, some kind of primitive form of socializing and even levity in between meals and child rearing. All things considered, I would even go so far as to argue that since religion has only been around for a such a short period of our common history based on the vast stretches of evolutionary time — tens of thousands of years versus millions — that it can hardly be considered as having been a major factor in the social evolution of humans. Although it might have brought some level of “sophistication,” as Rossano points out, religion was a late bloomer on the horizon of humanity.[pullquote]Religion was a late bloomer on the horizon of humanity.[/pullquote]

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If The Post article accurately reflects what Dunbar thinks on religion, a couple other parts of this article are wide of the mark.

In the first quote I posted here, Dunbar suggests early humans would have just torn each other apart limb from limb in wanton displays of aggression and bloodletting were it not the moderating influence of religion and doctrine in these early human communities. Intergroup aggression and nearly endless quarrels over land and resources were hallmarks of early societies and are well documented, but even within individual communities, certainly males acted with hostility and jealousy toward other males who might threaten to wrest their mates away from them.

Even so, the sense that “we’re all one family” inside a particular tribe or culture was largely rooted in place — in the particular spot that group had captured or settled and called home, not in religion. At least in more modern ancient times, gods were viewed as distant and inaccessible. All of the other elements of religion, like singing, dancing, rituals and burial and mating practices, were secondary to maintaining and protecting whatever the concept of “home” meant for them.

Dunbar also seems to draw too close of a connection between religion and singing, as if religious worship has a monopoly on being able to evoke emotion and draw people together. Here is another quote:

What you get from dance and singing on its own is a sense of belonging. It happens very quickly. What happens, I suspect, is that it can trigger very easily trance states. Once you’ve triggered that, you’re in, I think, a different ballgame. It ramps up massively. That’s what’s triggered. There’s something there.

One can’t read this quote from Dunbar without wondering if he has been to a secular music concert in his life because if he had, he would realize that hearing an inspirational and uplifting rock anthem or a love song or a ballad produces precisely the same kinds of emotions as one can experience inside the walls of a church or in a kind of spiritual “trance.” Suggesting that singing and dancing in the name of religion is any more meaningful or creates anymore of a sense of belonging than doing these activities for their own sake or with friends or loved ones in a moment of innocent revelry seems like too far of a leap from one hypothesis to the next. These can be, and have been for millenia, enjoyed in and of themselves independent of any admonishments from heaven.

Women dancing on a vase in the Museo Borbonico, Naples.

Women dancing as depicted on a vase in the Museo Borbonico, Naples.

No, not that tree of life; the real one

treeoflife

Scientists compile a complete tree of life:

Humans, bacteria, daffodils: We’re a diverse bunch on the surface, but trace each and every Earthling back far enough, and you’ll arrive at a common ancestor. For the first time, scientists have built a comprehensive tree of life that binds us all together.

A draft of the One Tree, published Friday in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences, includes the roughly 2.3 million named species of animals, plants, fungi and microbes. It shows how all of the major branches relate to one another and traces each individual group back to its shared beginnings in a prebiotic soup 3.5 billion years ago.

“This is the first real attempt to connect the dots and put it all together,” said principal investigator Karen Cranston of Duke University in a statement. “Think of it as Version 1.0.”

Book review: ‘The Selfish Gene’

For readers who are new to books on biology, evolution and natural selection, I would recommend reading Dawkins’ other works, “The Blind Watchmaker” and “The Greatest Show on Earth” before tackling this one. In “The Selfish Gene,” which originally came out in 1976 one year before I was born, Dawkins seems to still be developing his writing style. As such, parts of the book tend to get a little weighted down by minutiae, and we only get glimmers of the eloquence that so characterizes his later works.

selfishgene

“The Selfish Gene” by Richard Dawkins: 30th Anniversary Edition

That said, this is well worth the effort, as it presents the revelatory premise that we, along with every other living thing in the universe, are merely “survival machines” carrying genes that live on well past our individual lifetimes based on the “ruthless selfishness” of our genetic and evolutionary makeup. Some have criticized this view as depressingly cynical and bleak, but as Dawkins points out, “however much we may deplore something, it does not stop it being true.”

“The Selfish Gene,” of course, does not imply selfishness at the conscious level by human beings or any other plant or animal. The term is a figure of speech, and Dawkins’ main thesis has nothing to say about morality or how we ought to act, as Dawkins is mainly concerned with the selfishness of genes living inside “survival machines,” and in some cases, altruism and cooperation, at the genetic level.

Indeed, as a way to move forward as the only self-conscious creatures in the universe — that we know of — Dawkins posits that we can and should rise above our own basic selfish nature and proceed as a species in spite of it. As he says in the book:

Let us try to teach generosity and altruism, because we are born selfish. Let us understand what our own selfish genes are up to, because we may then at least have the chance to upset their designs, something that no other species has ever aspired to.

I very much look forward to reading “The Extended Phenotype,” which is the follow-up work to “The Selfish Gene.”

[rating: 4.0]

Young-earth creationism is done, but so much for God-driven evolution too

I think the argument, which some moderate Christians in the past and even today have put forward, namely that evolution by natural selection was a mechanism put in place and and guided by the omnipotent and all-loving God of the Bible, implodes on itself right from the start, and Darwin, a former Christian, was obviously sharp enough to realize this, and thus he abandoned the faith and became an agnostic.

Way back in 1872, Robert Ingersoll smashed the argument for divinely-inspired evolution to bits in his work, “The Gods” and proceeded to outline an impenetrable argument on the problem of evil.

Thanks to John Loftus for passing along this quote, which was, in turn, ferreted out by professor John Schneider, who described the following passage as a “killer quote from him that should intimidate any thoughtful believer in the Christian God and make them think along lines that evangelical theology cannot even begin to do, much less cope with the problem he raised in the light of Darwinism.”

Here is Ingersoll:

Would an infinitely wise, good and powerful God, intending to produce man, commence with the lowest possible forms of life; with the simplest organism that can be imagined, and during immeasurable periods of time, slowly and almost imperceptibly improve upon the rude beginning, until man was evolved? Would countless ages thus be wasted in the production of awkward forms, afterwards abandoned? Can the intelligence of man discover the least wisdom in covering the earth with crawling, creeping horrors, that live only upon the agonies and pangs of others? Can we see the propriety of so constructing the earth, that only an insignificant portion of its surface is capable of producing an intelligent man? Who can appreciate the mercy of so making the world that all animals devour animals; so that every mouth is a slaughter house, and every stomach a tomb? Is it possible to discover infinite intelligence and love in universal and eternal carnage?

What would we think of a father, who should give a farm to his children, and before giving them possession should plant upon it thousands of deadly shrubs and vines; should stock it with ferocious beasts, and poisonous reptiles; should take pains to put a few swamps in the neighborhood to breed malaria; should so arrange matters, that the ground would occasionally open and swallow a few of his darlings, and besides all this, should establish a few volcanoes in the immediate vicinity, that might at any moment overwhelm his children with rivers of fire? Suppose that this father neglected to tell his children which of the plants were deadly; that the reptiles were poisonous; failed to say anything about the earthquakes, and kept the volcano business a profound secret; would we pronounce him angel or fiend?

And yet this is exactly what the orthodox God has done.

According to the theologians, God prepared this globe expressly for the habitation of his loved children, and yet he filled the forests with ferocious beasts; placed serpents in every path; stuffed the world with earthquakes, and adorned its surface with mountains of flame.

Notwithstanding all this, we are told that the world is perfect; that it was created by a perfect being, and is therefore necessarily perfect. The next moment, these same persons will tell us that the world was cursed; covered with brambles, thistles and thorns, and that man was doomed to disease and death, simply because our poor, dear mother ate an apple contrary to the command of an arbitrary God.

No ‘debate’ on evolution

Scientific theory versus conjecture

Scientific theory versus conjecture

Herein lies one of the many problems with scientist Bill Nye deciding to debate the disingenuous supreme leader of creationist sophistry Ken Ham: As I anticipated last year shortly after the debate, fruitless exercises like this with creationists, who have no interest in examining or considering any real evidence, serve no purpose and only legitimizes the fairy tales, such that a guy like Brandon Pettenger, a high school scientist teacher from Arroyo Grande (Calif.) High School, can point to the exchange between Nye and Ham and surmise that there must be a “debate” surrounding evolution and creationism after all. If there wasn’t a debate, why would a high-profile scientist like Nye even bother?

To his detriment, Nye did agree and go through with the debate, so it’s a fair question. In any case, Pettenger, who admits to being a Christian, showed the Nye-Ham debate to his students as a way to present “both sides of the argument,” as he said in this defense, after being called out by the Richard Dawkins Foundation and the Freedom From Religion Foundation:

I understand that you might be worried I am teaching religion in a public school science class which is not the case. There is debate within the scientific community about how to answer the question where did life come from (italics mine). I feel it would be a disservice to my students not to present both sides of the argument. We are investigating the main theories that are presented in this debate and the evidence used to support those claims. I am very clear beforehand that I am a Christian but I am trying to present the scientific evidence. It is up to each student to decide for themselves which side they believe based on the evidence. I will be asking each student to write an argumentative essay stating their position in the debate and to support their position with scientific evidence. I am trying to give students tools to use in their essays.

As Hemant Mehta points out, of course, the question of our origin from simpler forms only has one legitimate side, which is the scientific theory of evolution by natural selection. All other “theories,” including creationism and intelligent design and all other origin tales from religion, are just that — theories in the most laymen-esque, conjectural sense of the word.

Pettenger can ask his students to write essays and support their positions all they want to, but if any of them happen to agree with Ham, the teacher will be waiting a long, long time for that “scientific evidence,” since none exists.

Debunking theistic evolution

A common misconception floating about among Christians is that scientists, freethinkers and others “believe” in evolution the same way they believe in God or divine providence, and sometimes we slip into the misleading language in this way to describe our perception that evolution is a real process. Of course, this misunderstanding is essentially based on skewed semantics, as the word, “believe,” can be used to mean both something that a person takes on faith and a disputed piece of information that a person chooses to accept against the alternatives. But as Keith Blanchard said here, evolution is not disputed:

Theistic-Evolution

Theistic evolution

Evolution is nothing more than a fairly simple way of understanding what is unquestionably happening. You don’t believe in it — you either understand it or you don’t. But pretending evolution is a matter of faith can be a clever way to hijack the conversation, and pit it in a false duality against religion. And that’s how we end up with people decrying evolution, even as they eat their strawberries and pet their dogs, because they’ve been led to believe faith can only be held in one or the other.

Thus, instead of saying we believe or even accept evolution, perhaps we should speak about it with as much certainty of fact as we do gravity and the planet’s rotation around the sun, for when believers decry evolution, they make themselves look as ridiculous as if they had suddenly claimed the world is flat. While I agree with Blanchard that a person can, and many do, recognize evolution as fact and simply reconcile it with their faith — notice how the reach of faith always, always recedes behind science — they must do so at the expense of the Bible’s validity. Liberal Christians, such as Francis Collins, reconcile evolution and the Bible by claiming that God was behind the whole plan of creation and guided evolution to ultimately culminate in human beings. Basically, since Genesis does not provide an exact time frame for the process of creation, a “day” in the Bible could be virtually any amount of time.

But there are at least two problems with this theory. OK, three. First, although the Bible attempts to provide years and time periods for “historical” people and events, no attempt, as I’ve said, is made to do this in the creation story. One would think that an important event like the creation of man would have warranted a basic timeline so the Bible’s later readers could know about when the species began. Certainly, providing this information in detail would not have been out of the purview of an all-knowing god.

Second, as the image above points out, evolution is riddled with “errors” in design (Here’s just a few). Presumably a god who was in control of the process would have been able and willing to streamline the process and “guide” evolution more efficiently without the flaws, which leads to the next point. More than 98 percent of all species that ever existed, including early humans, are now extinct. An all-loving God would have had to watch eons and eons of misery and death before our little blip of time came around. Sure, some Christians will argue that millions of years for God is nothing, but while God might be able to fluidly transport himself through space and time, he still orchestrated a plan that includes 98 percent more death and destruction than life. So although some Christians do regard the accepted science of evolution as true, they still have logical mountains to climb if they are to reconcile evolution with the notion of all-loving, all-powerful god.

Dawkins: Evolution ‘no comparison’ to Genesis

It really is an enormously exciting thought that we are cousins of all living creatures, that we have a history of 4 billion years of slow gradual, evolution — just think about 4 billions years — of slow gradual history. That’s not something that we can easily take on board, but the effort of doing so is well worth it. It’s such a beautiful thought that we are the heirs of 4 billion years — maybe 3.5 billion years of evolution — and that we are cousins of all living things. When you put that against the measly, piddling little ideas that are in Genesis, it’s just no comparison, and it’s a sad and diminishing deprivation of a child’s opportunities to be denied that knowledge.

Obama speaks candidly on climate change

Although he should have been talking about climate change five years ago, it’s good to see Obama siding with science and advocating for a price on carbon. Better late than never. Here’s a preview from Tom Friedman’s interview on Showtime:

I particularly liked Friedman’s example about climate change deniers in Congress consulting the 97 percent of doctors who may diagnose their children, but on climate change, they want to consult the other 3 percent minority. This, I have found also, applies to religion, but instead, the percentages are more like 99-to-1, as Christians and other believers, despite 99 percent of scientists being in agreement about evolution and the inadequacy of creationism to explain our world, they still trust the dissenting 1 percent, and without any evidence all the while.