Faith Matters - The evolution of religious behavior

The evolution of religious behavior (chapter 3)

Nicholas Wade writes, “The human form has undergone extraordinary changes since its lineage split from that of chimpanzees some 5–6 million years ago. Our brain tripled in size, our body hair was shed, we down-sized our teeth, shriveled our gut and gained a fine facial appendage for conserving moisture in dry climates – the nose. Equally radical and transformative, though less well appreciated, have been the changes in human social behavior…” (see The Faith Instinct, p.38-39)

1. Did religion evolve as hunter gatherers settled into more complex societies? (see Wade, p. 38-39)

• Religious ties might have helped groups maintain internal unity and withstand external threats.
  

2. What are some universal features of religion? (see Wade, p. 40-41 and p. 288)

• Rituals with music and dance
• Rites of passage: rituals marking birth, puberty, marriage and death
• Sacred ways to gain access to the gods
• Rituals of sacrifice to influence the gods’ behavior
• Rules of morality, elevating moral behavior from an individual to a collective matter
• Beliefs, such as: the soul survives after death

3. What are the evolutionary advantages of religion? (see Wade, p. 58)

• Religious behavior could be seen as a necessary biological drive.
• The fundamental drives of eating and reproduction appeared at the dawn of animal behavior; religious behavior in humans is more recent, with a reward system operating at a far higher cognitive level than food or sex.

4. Why do all religions impose costly behaviors? (see Wade, p. 58-62)

• Commitment to socially constructive behavior seems to be at the core of religion.
• Costly behaviors promote group cohesion and discourage free loaders.
• If there were no evolutionary benefit to these costly behaviors, groups using up resources in such behaviors would have been eliminated by other groups without the same handicap.
  

5. Could evolution really work at the level of group selection? (see Wade, p. 67-74)

• Fierce conformist pressures within hunter gatherer groups could enhance group cohesion; and intense warfare between groups could eliminate some groups and promote survival of others.
• Human groups could become subject to natural selection when a moral system or religion regulates group behavior.
• The satisfactions of religious belief make individuals practice religion, but the evolutionary function of religion is to bind people together and make individuals put
  the group’s interests ahead of their own.

6. Why are sacred symbols always part of religious practice? (see Wade, p. 74)

• Religious symbols evoke strong emotions. (Emotions are ancient evolved mechanisms for motivating adaptive behavior, often beneath or partly beneath the level of consciousness.)
• Evoking sacred symbols can organize group behavior.
  

7. Why might ancestor worship have developed in early societies? (see Wade, p. 74-77)

• Surviving groups of hunter gatherers believe their ancestors exist in a supernatural world, where they still exert influence.
• Natural selection might have favored groups which practiced ancestor worship, if their beliefs helped their society survive.
  

8. What were the ancestors believed to want? (see Wade, p. 75-76)

• Special forms of respect (prayers and rituals) may have developed for the ancestors’ benefit.
• Sacrifices were offered (gifts were killed to ensure delivery to the supernatural realm).
• Sacrifice, prayer and ritual all have the same basic purpose: to influence the gods’ behavior.