Everyone arrived safely, and a fair amount of low-key frolicking has taken place already. I have to work today, so I will miss some of it, but such is life.
Last night we were discussing The God Delusion. I am pleased to be able to report that Dawkins has come up with something interesting at last.
This may be a bit unfair. #1 daughter found some of the preceding bits interesting, and she likes the fact that it is a protracted hissy fit. And it may simply be that we have finally come to a part where I haven’t already read all the references.
But the part I found intriguing was Dawkins’s suggestion about why religion is so widespread.
You may recall that Dawkins said that religion, being well-nigh universal among humans, must have an explanation of some kind. The possibility that it is nearly universal because there actually is a God he has of course dismissed. Sighkey’s suggestion that it is adaptive in that it reduces stress-related diseases he concedes, but judges to be too small an effect.
Instead, he suggests that religion itself is not adaptive, but that it is a byproduct of some other human characteristic that does lead to increased reproductive success. He mentions a few that other folks have proposed, before settling in with this one: the human tendency to fall in love.
Falling in love increases the chances that humans will hang around with mating partners to bring up the kids. Ergo, a predilection toward falling in love is adaptive. Religion is a lot like falling in love. Ergo, the universality of religion among humans is the (unfortunate, Dawkins would say) result of this tendency to fall in love.
Son-in-law saw this. The feeling of being cared for and connected, he thought, would be a lot like falling in love. He’s a deist, himself. Not a lot of loving feelings there, the way there is in a personal God, but he could see it.
#2 daughter and I thought it was a stretch. From the inclination to fall in love to widespread belief in God? It seems, as she put it, to be one of those explanations that requires a footnote: “At this point, a miracle occurs…”
I concurred. You would expect, I thought, to see a lot of other manifestations of this tendency.
“Like lots of religions?” said #1 daughter in a trump-card sort of voice.
Not at all, said I. It shouldn’t always be religion.
At that point, Son-in-law brought up addictive behavior. Drug addiction could also be a manifestation. And I remembered the lecturer from the Tuesday night class saying “Everyone worships something” — their comfort, money, themselves, their own convenient image of God put together from the bits and pieces that they like. I can see the parallels with love.
What do you think?
My vote is for “At this point, a miracle occurs….”
Observation (trivial) in passing: This discussion does not sound like frolicking. It sounds like fun — but not like frolicking.
In a sense the point could be made that religion as an element can be a powerful force in uniting communities in shared belief. In other words those who believe the same would tend to live and love the same through ritual. So I would concede on this he is at minimum partially correct…
I don’t think that Leonidas is agreeing with Dawkins at all, but his point is certainly another possible explanation of how the tendency toward religious belief could be an adaptive one.
I am feeling, in my discussions with folks about this, that many of us are thinking that Dawkins was speaking metaphorically, but I do not think that is the case. This must be the result of my having explained it badly and the rest of the folks’ not yet having read that section of the book, but it is important. Dawkins claims that there is a physical, genetic pedisposition to fall in love, which causes all the cultures of the world to come up with some version of a personal God, independently. And that it arose through natural selection. Right around the time we became identifiable as human beings, presumably, since that is when archaeological evidence of religion becomes available. Just sounds kind of ad hoc to me.
Eh, I think that the invention of a false diety out of the desire to love and be loved is a bit of a stretch. Really, creation of false love objects goes against the survival of the species: if you could just believe yourself into thinking that you are being loved by some imaginary being, what do you even need to go out and find a mate for? Being able to truly believe anything that goes against reality goes against survival of the species: if you can convince yourself that there’s a diety out there when there really isn’t one, maybe you can convince yourself that your stomach is full when you’re really starving, or that you’re warm when you’re freezing – or that you’re really safe when there’s a sabre-tooth tiger staring you in the face. That’s why people who believe things that aren’t true (i.e. crazy people) are considered sick and in need of help – because they can’t function or survive on their own. Therefore, if God were just a kind of insanity created by people who wanted to be loved – that belief probably would have died out a long time ago. What possible biological function could loving an imaginary thing serve? None! It doesn’t help you procreate, it doesn’t help you anything. Unless, of course, the being is real.
Not even to mention that many (if not most) primitive conceptions of God were of an angry, spiteful God who demanded blood sacrifices and would smite your house at the slightest offense. If God was created by us out of a desire to love and be loved – why the freak did we create one like that?
I had to go and look up “incisive” in the dictionary. But now that I have – thanks! 😉
I think Dawkins is a romantic at heart. The romantic idea of ‘falling in love’ is a relatively new invention and came into being about the 17th century. Religion has been around a lot longer than ‘falling in love’. I think Leonidas is closer to the point. A religion allows the construction of a larger community than that simply of the family and young of all the animals are better served in a community (or herd, pack…) It also sounds that Dawkins does not separate out religion and faith. A religion is a power structure with faith as the foundation but it is possible to have faith without religion – not sure if it is possible to have a religion without faith however.