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I think religion is actually an evolved mechanism for perpetuating (human) life. I developed this theory when my wife and I visited some friends in rural Kansas

I think religion is actually an evolved mechanism for perpetuating (human) life. I developed this theory when my wife and I visited some friends in rural Kansas. We attended their Christian church service and I was struck by the potential evolutionary advantages that would play out if the preacher’s advice was taken at face value: 1) Anti-LGBTQ rhetoric: if only a fraction of LGBTQ individuals were shamed into a heterosexual relationship, there’s a potential evolutionary advantage. 2) Stay-at-home mothers: encouraging marriage/reproduction as the end goal for women likely has evolutionary advantages. 3) Early marriage: again, likely evolutionary advantage. I find it extremely ironic that the groups most opposed to evolutionary biology are likely a bi-product of those forces.

patcon 6y ago
re: religion being evolutionarily advantageous. Totally. Though with your specific 3 points, I respectfully suggest you're missing the forest for the trees. The specific stories we tell through religion don't always matter as much as the aggregate power of enacting and conjuring them together. Sometimes strong-willed and stubborn groups are what was needed to thread a needle through an important time in history. Many of the specific stories that emerged through that stubbornness might be no more than vestigial features -- feature that have no direct purpose, but as products of some underlying third factor. For example, the old testament version of christianity was perhaps the right thing for that time, and the new testament person of Jesus was perhaps the right iteration of Christianity for that time. These stories suited the human network of the time, which perhaps had very different network structure -- the lawless chaos of man and nature during old testament times (in which strict codes were needed to gel society), vs the rigid and dominant social stratification and class conflict/divides of New Testament times (in which Jesus' teachings helped knit together a fractured social network). In case these things are of interest, there are some fields delving into this stuff: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/276494993_Structures_of_Human_Societies https://www.researchgate.net/publication/276494993_Structure...
- monkeynotes 6y ago
  I think this is why technology and science is the new religion we all live by. Technology has the potential to perpetuate information indefinitely. Organic life bootstrapped the path to inorganic life and beyond. Religion served its purpose and no longer feels relevant in light of technology and science.
  - patcon 6y ago
    > Religion served its purpose and no longer feels relevant in light of technology and science. Ah interesting. I personally wonder whether our challenges with conspiracies are related to the hole we're left with as religious belief starts to deteriorate. So I'm wondering if spirituality is still needed, if only as a rubber plug until we learn again how to use shared stories to more intentionally chart collective directions. Maybe a new form of spirituality will be the new plug in the end. But imho we need shared stories that occupy the evolutionary holes that religion previously filled, rather than dissolving the old plug only to have it re-colonized by cultural noise (like conspiracy) I mean, civics is a quasi-religion in my thinking, it's just kinda weak. Not sure if we need something strongly to hold societies together :)
    - jahbrewski 6y ago
      Additionally, at a more fundamental/basic level, I wonder about the social gap we're left with, sans religion. I'm probably biased by my Christian upbringing, but I can't help but miss the camaraderie I experienced growing up in a church. My wife and I just can't bring ourselves to knowingly participate in something that now feels intellectually dishonest.
  - TeMPOraL 6y ago
    I think we've lost something here. Shared delusions are delusions, but the important part was that they're shared. Unfortunately, science doesn't have the "shared" part - by itself, it doesn't build communities. In my experience, if you ignore the particulars of faith, most religions are essentially community construction kits. We'll probably figure this out at some point - we need to, if we are to survive. Right now, the alternative community glues to religion are national identities, supernational identities (e.g. "I'm a citizen of EU" vs "citizen of country X"), and a wide variety of little identities we create for ourselves as we join groups we're interested in. But the problem with most of those is that they're detached from geography - so they're not particularly useful for building geographically-defined communities.
- jahbrewski 6y ago
  Ah, I like where you're coming from. Thanks for the link; I'm definitely interested in exploring these topics further. Is there a name for this field of study? Perhaps just the sociology of religion? That seems to leave out the evolutionary biology perspective though.
  - patcon 6y ago
    No prob! "complexity science + <subject>" is usually a great starter for finding stuff from this angle. Complexity podcast by SFI is a wealth of knowledge, and had a recent episode about archeologists applying complexity thinking to history: Scott Ortman on Archaeological Synthesis and Settlement Scaling Theory https://complexity.simplecast.com/episodes/47 https://complexity.simplecast.com/episodes/47
- raiflip 6y ago
  Old Testament version of Christianity? You mean Judaism?
  - patcon 6y ago
    heh, oops. yep :)
bla3 6y ago
I've heard this the other way round: religions that perpetuate reproduction (by discouraging contraceptives, encouraging child bearing, encouraging raising your children with the same beliefs, etc) have an evolutionary advantage over other religions, so religions are likely to have these traits after a few centuries.

patcon 6y ago

re: religion being evolutionarily advantageous. Totally. Though with your specific 3 points, I respectfully suggest you're missing the forest for the trees. The specific stories we tell through religion don't always matter as much as the aggregate power of enacting and conjuring them together. Sometimes strong-willed and stubborn groups are what was needed to thread a needle through an important time in history. Many of the specific stories that emerged through that stubbornness might be no more than vestigial features -- feature that have no direct purpose, but as products of some underlying third factor. For example, the old testament version of christianity was perhaps the right thing for that time, and the new testament person of Jesus was perhaps the right iteration of Christianity for that time. These stories suited the human network of the time, which perhaps had very different network structure -- the lawless chaos of man and nature during old testament times (in which strict codes were needed to gel society), vs the rigid and dominant social stratification and class conflict/divides of New Testament times (in which Jesus' teachings helped knit together a fractured social network). In case these things are of interest, there are some fields delving into this stuff: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/276494993_Structures_of_Human_Societies https://www.researchgate.net/publication/276494993_Structure...

monkeynotes 6y ago
I think this is why technology and science is the new religion we all live by. Technology has the potential to perpetuate information indefinitely. Organic life bootstrapped the path to inorganic life and beyond. Religion served its purpose and no longer feels relevant in light of technology and science.
- patcon 6y ago
  > Religion served its purpose and no longer feels relevant in light of technology and science. Ah interesting. I personally wonder whether our challenges with conspiracies are related to the hole we're left with as religious belief starts to deteriorate. So I'm wondering if spirituality is still needed, if only as a rubber plug until we learn again how to use shared stories to more intentionally chart collective directions. Maybe a new form of spirituality will be the new plug in the end. But imho we need shared stories that occupy the evolutionary holes that religion previously filled, rather than dissolving the old plug only to have it re-colonized by cultural noise (like conspiracy) I mean, civics is a quasi-religion in my thinking, it's just kinda weak. Not sure if we need something strongly to hold societies together :)
  - jahbrewski 6y ago
    Additionally, at a more fundamental/basic level, I wonder about the social gap we're left with, sans religion. I'm probably biased by my Christian upbringing, but I can't help but miss the camaraderie I experienced growing up in a church. My wife and I just can't bring ourselves to knowingly participate in something that now feels intellectually dishonest.
- TeMPOraL 6y ago
  I think we've lost something here. Shared delusions are delusions, but the important part was that they're shared. Unfortunately, science doesn't have the "shared" part - by itself, it doesn't build communities. In my experience, if you ignore the particulars of faith, most religions are essentially community construction kits. We'll probably figure this out at some point - we need to, if we are to survive. Right now, the alternative community glues to religion are national identities, supernational identities (e.g. "I'm a citizen of EU" vs "citizen of country X"), and a wide variety of little identities we create for ourselves as we join groups we're interested in. But the problem with most of those is that they're detached from geography - so they're not particularly useful for building geographically-defined communities.
jahbrewski 6y ago
Ah, I like where you're coming from. Thanks for the link; I'm definitely interested in exploring these topics further. Is there a name for this field of study? Perhaps just the sociology of religion? That seems to leave out the evolutionary biology perspective though.
- patcon 6y ago
  No prob! "complexity science + <subject>" is usually a great starter for finding stuff from this angle. Complexity podcast by SFI is a wealth of knowledge, and had a recent episode about archeologists applying complexity thinking to history: Scott Ortman on Archaeological Synthesis and Settlement Scaling Theory https://complexity.simplecast.com/episodes/47 https://complexity.simplecast.com/episodes/47
raiflip 6y ago
Old Testament version of Christianity? You mean Judaism?
- patcon 6y ago
  heh, oops. yep :)

bla3 6y ago

I've heard this the other way round: religions that perpetuate reproduction (by discouraging contraceptives, encouraging child bearing, encouraging raising your children with the same beliefs, etc) have an evolutionary advantage over other religions, so religions are likely to have these traits after a few centuries.