From the New York Times Magazine. Darwin’s God.
Lost in the hullabaloo over the neo-atheists is a quieter and potentially more illuminating debate. It is taking place not between science and religion but within science itself, specifically among the scientists studying the evolution of religion. These scholars tend to agree on one point: that religious belief is an outgrowth of brain architecture that evolved during early human history. What they disagree about is why a tendency to believe evolved, whether it was because belief itself was adaptive or because it was just an evolutionary byproduct, a mere consequence of some other adaptation in the evolution of the human brain.
Fascinating stuff, whether there’s an a priori assumption of God’s existence or not.
As some adaptationists see it, this could have worked on two levels, individual and group. Religion made people feel better, less tormented by thoughts about death, more focused on the future, more willing to take care of themselves. As William James put it, religion filled people with “a new zest which adds itself like a gift to life . . . an assurance of safety and a temper of peace and, in relation to others, a preponderance of loving affections.”
Such sentiments, some adaptationists say, made the faithful better at finding and storing food, for instance, and helped them attract better mates because of their reputations for morality, obedience and sober living. The advantage might have worked at the group level too, with religious groups outlasting others because they were more cohesive, more likely to contain individuals willing to make sacrifices for the group and more adept at sharing resources and preparing for warfare.
There’s the positive side. But the negative side of that would be true also: those without the “god gene” would be the out-group.
Anyway, a fascinating and wonderfully wide-ranging article. Full of thought-provoking ideas.
Siamang
03-06-2007 |
10 Comments »By Siamang
Unless you’ve been parked on the planet Mungo for a week, you know that the King of the World claims to have found a box that previously contained the bones of somebody named Jesus.
There are various claims of DNA evidence and other evidence, including the names of others found with this ossuary that line up with some of the biblical names of Jesus’ family and/or friends. And then there are some extra folks that the Bible doesn’t talk about, and James Cameron draws the dotted lines to ask… “did Jesus have two sons?”
Ben Witherington has a skeptical look at the claims.
I am hopeful, however, about this. I have hope that this incident will provoke people in general and Christians specifically to practice looking at claims skeptically. I note that Christians reject this claim because it flatly contradicts Christian tradition about Jesus’ resurrection. I have read the reactions of atheists like PZ Meyers who reject it for being poor scholarship amazingly unsupported by the find.
But I do have hope that people will use something like this to think about skepticism and the reasons why this claim is not credible.
Myself as a person who does not believe in Biblical inerrency STILL has a strong skepticism about the claims of James Cameron. I think there’s an interesting lesson there, that there are some things that Christians and non-Christians can come to a consensus about based on the facts on the ground. We can agree that the King of the World is more PT Barnum than Howard Carter.
-Siamang
And I do get an ironic chuckle from that Discovery Channel link above. The page features an ad for another Discovery Channel show, the skeptical “Mythbusters.”
02-27-2007 |
9 Comments »