Lea Cefalu (10/17/00)
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| The Evolution of Religion | |||||||||||||||||||
| Religion, the belief that there exists a higher power or a greater purpose to life based on faith, is probably the most pervasive idea in human civilization. In most religions there is a higher power or God who created man and all other life on Earth, and a code of morals or values that, in general, states that to be a good person one must be benevolent or altruistic to others. The belief in religion requires faith, or blind belief, because there is no empirical evidence for the existence of a higher being or greater purpose to life. This stated, there must be some reason why so many people believe in religion, a belief that in some cases can preclude reproduction or transfer of genetic material (as in the case of celibate priests), while requiring no evidence to back the belief up. Some questions that I am going to try to answer are: How and why did religion start? What does religion offer people? Why is the idea of benevolence so important to religion, human nature and survival? How can benevolence be explained using natural selection? What does the idea of an after life or retribution for one actions give to people? What happens when blind faith goes too far? When can religion be a survival disadvantage? | |||||||||||||||||||
| The idea of a higher power that gives our lives purpose was obviously originated by somebody at some point in time, maybe independently by many people at different times, but why did this idea continue? Why do so many people believe it? Richard Dawkins, biologist, professor at Oxford University and author of The Selfish Gene, answers this question by using replicators which he calls "memes." A meme is "a unit of cultural transmission, or a unit of imitation (Dawkins 192)." It is an idea that "propagates [itself] in the meme pool by leaping from brain to brain via a process which, in the broad sense, can be called imitation (Dawkins 192)." In a way these "memes" act like genes in that they occur in the population at random, a memetic mutation if you will, and either get spread, or transmitted, to other people via spoken or written word, song, or art. These ideas are selected for or against based on their value to people. If an idea is selected for it, gets spread through a culture; people talk about it and maybe even believe it. If the idea is not selected for then it does not get propagated through a culture and the idea eventually dies out. If Dawkins is correct about how ideas are transmitted from person to person through memes then there must be a reason that the idea of religion was selected for. The idea that there is a higher being and greater purpose to life must benefit people in some way. It is hard to say what this benefit is because generally blind faith is not something that is seen to possess a survival advantage, yet religion is based on blind faith. Dawkins says that religion provides "a superficially plausible answer to deep and troubling questions about existence. It suggests that injustices in this world may be rectified in the next. (Dawkins 193)." This idea is that religion may or may not have a biological advantage but does have "great psychological appeal (Dawkins 193)." Religion offers people an explanation of how life came to be, a reason life exists, a moral code to live by, retribution for living a good life on Earth and punishment for people who do evil on Earth. These things might give a person a less chaotic picture of the world; a world that is easier to live in and to understand. This argument is based on the assumption that humans have a curiosity for how the world works and a need to understand their role in it. If these two things were not true then religion would offer no benefit at all. | |||||||||||||||||||
| One specific survival skill religion offers human beings is benevolence. Benevolence means "good will towards others. It is a positive attitude toward people in general, a desire for their well-being and for peaceful, cooperative relationships with them (Kelley 1)." The fact that benevolence is preached in most all religions gives evidence to the claim that benevolence is not only a part of human nature but beneficial to the survival of our species. If a person was not benevolent and just went around all day being a jerk to everyone they are not going to be very well liked. They probably won't have many friends and thus will not have a support system in place when they need someone to talk to or help with something. They also might not attract a mate and consequently will not reproduce and pass on their genes. The lack of benevolence is detrimental to survival and propagation of genetic material. But is religion necessary to promote the idea of benevolence? It may not be. How Dawkins describes religion's appearance is that it happened completely by chance. In other words, someone didn't sit down and say "Well, I think that if I told everyone that there is a God and this God says be good or you will be punished then everyone will survive longer, live more peacefully and have more babies." According to Dawkins, religion was an idea that one or some people had and shared and it just happened to catch on because it provided people with a more stable and more understandable view of the world than they previously had. It just so happened that religion ended up being just one way people try to shape the behavior of a larger group of people. Our laws and court system are another way. The aspect of religion where the belief that there is retribution for actions during life on Earth promotes benevolence. In Christianity, a "good" or benevolent person will go to heaven and a "bad" or selfish person will go to hell. In Judaism, this retribution takes place while on Earth. "Bad" people may suffer more than "good" people while still living. In Hinduism, a person who is "good" reaches the state of Brahman while "bad" people are reincarnated and must live another life on Earth until they get it right. | |||||||||||||||||||
| Molding behavior by promising salvation for those who are "good" and hell-fire for those who are "bad" seems a little simplistic. It sounds almost like someone telling a four year old not to pick on his sister or he will not get a cookie after dinner. But this argument works on adults and it works because of the existence of faith. The need to be sure of one's purpose in life is so strong that behavioral tactics that normally will not work after age ten make perfect sense to an adult. This is the difference between religious faith and faith in anything else. Faith that skyscrapers are made out of marshmallows is just plain stupid. It can be very easily refuted and if you still believe it after hearing evidence against it you probably have a mental illness. Any sane adult would look at the facts (that skyscrapers are not made of marshmallows), realize their mistake and move on. But somehow religious faith is different. After all the evidence that points to natural selection as the reason for our existence, that there is no real purpose to life, and that there is no after life where our actions will be rewarded or punished, adults, with full mental capabilities, refuse to accept the facts and go on believing a story that does not have any evidence to back it up. What is even more curious is that religious faith is admired precisely because it does not require evidence. In the Bible, Doubting Thomas, one of Christ's apostles, was used to show how virtuous the other apostle are for having complete faith in Christ (Dawkins 197). It is claimed God and faith are "quite beyond reason, not a matter to which such mundane methods of [scientific] testing applies (Dennett 153)." Why is religion somehow above scientific scrutiny? If believers are so sure that their views on life and existence are correct, then why don't they let their religion be tested so as to prove to the world that they were right? It does not even matter. No matter how much evidence is mounted up on the side of evolution and natural selection, they will not believe it. This only shows the power faith has over a person. Faith "leads people to believe in whatever it is so strongly that in extreme cases they are prepared to kill and to die for it without the need for further justification (Dawkins 330)." | |||||||||||||||||||
| Keith Henson has coined the name 'memeoids' for 'victims that have been taken over by a meme to the extent that their own survival becomes inconsequential...You see lots of these people on the evening news from such places as Belfast or Beirut.' Faith is powerful enough to immunize people against all appeals to pity, to forgiveness, to decent human feelings. It even immunizes them against fear, if they honestly believe a martyr's death will send them straight to heaven. What a weapon! Relious faith deserves a chapter to itself in the annals of war and technology, on an even footing with the longbow, the warhouse, the tank , and the hydrogen bomb (Dawkins 330-1). | |||||||||||||||||||
| Dawkins illustrates, in my opinion beautifully, the destruction that religious faith can cause. How can the people who kill in the name of their religion, which teaches to kill is wrong, live with themselves? Why isn't there any obvious sign of cognitive dissonance? It is puzzling that the same faith in a benevolent God or a positive purpose for mankind can allow for such mass destruction of human life and for there to be seemingly no inner conflict in the individuals who kill women and children and bomb innocent people's homes. The "meme" or "memes" for religion and faith seem to have more control over our actions than the genes for reason and logic. There is no doubt that religion provides hope and guidance for many people and does not lead to the murder of innocents. It promotes benevolent behavior which is vital to the survival of the species. Its only downfall is it is not based on reason. If people could understand the rational reason for being kind to one another, which is so that they might in turn be kind to you, instead of having to rely on faith to do the thinking for them, we might not have as much senseless violence or wars started because of differences of beliefs. Maybe someday the memes for evolution and natural selection will gain as much of a following as the ones for religion have and we can start killing each other over who is more evolved and has the better genes instead. | |||||||||||||||||||
| Dawkins, Richard. The Selfish Gene. New York: Oxford University Press, 1976. | |||||||||||||||||||
| Dennett, Daniel. Darwin's Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meaning of Life. New York: Touchstone, 1995. | |||||||||||||||||||
| Kelley, David. Unrugged Individualism: The Selfish Basis of Benevolence. New York: Institute for Objectivist Studies, 1996. Lea Cefalu (10/17/00) |
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