>Furthermore look at religeon, not a lot of benefit to the individual but the cohesive group survival is improved. There is a very strong individual pressure t

>Furthermore look at religeon, not a lot of benefit to the individual but the cohesive group survival is improved. There is a very strong individual pressure to conform to your tribe. Humans are extremely vulnerable on their own, but benefit hugely from being in a group. It is therefore of paramount importance for an individual to avoid being outcast from the group. I think it is likely that religion is more or less the name we give to the feedback loop that causes tribal conformation pressure to override rational analysis in an individual's belief selection process. > Heck, even look at cells cooperating to make an organism - thats group selection at the most basic. No no, that is kin selection in its most extreme form. Kin selection is very strongly backed by evidence, and differs from group selection in that the individuals have an above average statistical overlap in their genomes. For example, a brother and sister have an average of 50% shared genes, so genes that promote sibling cooperation can propagate more effectively than their complementary alleles, even if that cooperation causes some reduction in survival of the individual. In the case of cells comprising an organism, the overlap in genetic material is 100% (excluding anomalies like mutation and HGT), so we see enormous amounts of individual cell sacrifice which prove advantageous in preserving those cells' genes by benefiting the other cells in the organism.