This last hypothesis, group selection, is tricky, since the conditions under which genuine group selection can exist are hard to specify.16 The schooling of fish and flocking of birds, for instance, are certainly phenomena involving grouping, but they are not explained as group-selection phenomena. In order to see how individuals (or their individual genes) are benefited by the dispositions to school or flock, you have to understand the ecology of groups, but the groups arenât the primary beneficiaries; the individuals that compose them are. Some biological phenomena masquerade as group selection but are better dealt with as instances of individual-level selection that depend on certain environmental phenomena (such as grouping) or even as instances of symbiont-selection phenomena. As we have already noted, a symbiont meme needs to be spread to new hosts, and if it can drive people into groups (the way Toxoplasma gondii drives rats into the jaws of cats) where it can readily find alternate hosts, the explanation is not group selection after all.
If the Martians canât make any of these theories fit the facts, they should consider a default theory of sorts that we may call the pearl theory: religion is simply a beautiful by-product. It is created by a genetically controlled mechanism or family of mechanisms that are meant (by Mother Nature, by evolution) to respond to irritations or intrusions of one sort or another. These mechanisms were designed by evolution for certain purposes, but then, one day, along comes something novel, or a novel convergence of different factors, something never before encountered and of course never foreseen by evolution, that happens to trigger the activities that generate this amazing artifact. According to pearl theories, religion isnât for anything, from the point of view of biology; it doesnât benefit any gene, or individual, or group, or cultural symbiont. But once it exists, it can be an objet trouvé, something that just happens to captivate us human agents, who have an indefinitely expandable capacity for delighting in novelties and curiosities. A pearl begins with a meaningless speck of foreign matter (or, more likely, a parasite), and once the oyster has added layer after beautiful layer, it can become something of coincidental value to members of a species who just happen to prize such things, whether or not this coveting is wise from the point of view of biological fitness. There are other standards of value that may emerge, for reasons good or bad, free-floating or highly articulated. In much the way the oyster responds to the initial irritant and then incessantly responds to the results of its first response and then to the results of that response and so on, human beings may be unable to leave off reacting to their own reactions, incorporating ever more elaborate layers into a production that then takes on shapes and features unimaginable from its modest beginnings.
What explains religion? Sweet tooth, symbiont, bower, money, pearl, or none of the above? Religion may include phenomena of human culture that have no remote analogue in genetic evolution, but if so, we will still have to answer the cui bono? question, because it is undeniable that the phenomena of religion are designed to a very significant degree. There are few signs of randomness or arbitrariness, so some differential replication has to pay for the R & D responsible for the design. These hypotheses do not all pull in the same direction, but the truth about religion might well be an amalgam of several of them (plus others). If this is so, we will not get a clear vision of why religion exists until we have clearly distinguished these possibilities and put each of them to the test.
If you think you already know which theory is right, you are either a major scientist who has been concealing a vast mountain of unpublished research from the rest of the world, or else you are confusing wishful thinking with knowledge. Perhaps it seems to you that I am somewhat willfully ignoring the obvious explanation of why your religion exists and has the features it does: it exists because it is the inevitable response of enlightened human beings to the obvious fact that God exists! Some would add: we engage in these religious practices because God commands us to do so, or because it pleases us to please God. End of story. But that could not be the end of the story. Whichever religion is yours, there are more people in the world who donât share it than who do, and it falls to youâto all of us, reallyâto explain why so many have gotten it wrong, and to explain how those who know (if there are any) have managed to get it right. Even if it is obvious to you, it isnât obvious to everyone, or even to most people.
If you have come this far in the book, you are willing to inquire into the sources and causes of other religions. Wouldnât it be hypocritical to claim that your own religion was somehow out of bounds? Just to satisfy your own intellectual curiosity, you might wish to see how your own religion measures up to the sort of scrutiny we will be directing at others. But, you may well wonder, can science be truly nonpartisan? Isnât science, in fact, âjust another religionâ? Or, to put it the other way around, arenât religious perspectives just as valid as the scientific perspective? How can we find any common, objective ground from which to conduct our inquiries? These questions concern many readers, especially academics who have invested heavily in the answers to them, but others, I find, are impatient with them, and not all that concerned. The questions are importantâindeed, crucial to my whole projectâsince they put into doubt the very possibility of conducting the inquiry I am embarking on, but they can be postponed until after the theory sketch is completed. If you disagree, then before continuing with chapter 4 you should turn directly to appendix B, âSome More Questions About Science,â which deals with these questions, spelling out in more detail, and defending, the path by which we can work together to find mutual agreement about how to proceed and what matters.
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Chapter 3 Everything we valueâfrom sugar and sex and money to music and love and religionâwe value for reasons. Lying behind, and distinct from, our reasons are evolutionary reasons, free-floating rationales that have been endorsed by natural selection.
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Chapter 4 Like all animal brains, human brains have evolved to deal with the specific problems of the environments in which they must operate. The social and linguistic environment that coevolved with human brains gives human beings powers that no other species enjoys, but also created problems that folk religions apparently evolved to handle. The apparent extravagance of religious practices can be accounted for in the austere terms of evolutionary biology.
PART II THE EVOLUTION OF RELIGION
CHAPTER FOUR The Roots of Religion
1 The births of religions
Everything is what it is because it got that way.
âDâArcy Thompson
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Among Hindus, there is disagreement over whether Shiva or Vishnu is the higher Lord, and many have been killed for their belief in this matter. âThe LiÅgapurÄna promises Åivaâs heaven to one who kills or tears out the tongue of someone who reviles ´ Sivaâ (Klostermaier, 1994).