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To what extent can anthropology and evolutionary biology provide an…
To what extent can anthropology and evolutionary biology provide an explanation of religion?
Anthropology
Spencer, Tylor and Frazer
the notion of a psychic unity among all peoples
an unquestioned faith in the efficacy of the comparative method
the idea of progress
Religion as a Social Phenomenon (Durkheim)
unified system of beliefs and practices
collective social act
the essence of religion is the concept of the sacred contrasted with the profane
God is a projectio nand reflection fo scoiety (Bowie)
Religion as a Cultural System (Geerz)
formulates conceptions of a general order of existence
conceptions have an aura of faculty
establish powerful, pervasive and longlasting moods and motivations
moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic
a system of symbols
Cognitive Anthropology (Boyer)
religion is about the existence and causal powers of non-observable entities and agencies
Thesis: belief in supernatural agents is a natural part of human cognition
culturally widespread beliefs in supernatural agents result from the hypertrophy of social cognition
the content and organisation of religious ideas depend on properties of human mind-brain
tendency to attribute psychological states, including agency and design, even when it is inappropriate to do so, or to assume intervention by conscious agents, regardless of whether they are present
the formation of religious concepts are based on pre-existing mental systems and capacities, which have evolved to meet the needs of the organism
religious notions of supernatural agents recruit our institutions about agency in general
derive from mental templates that are in turn the result of an evolutionary process which favours certain forms of cultural transmission over others (Bowie)
Evolutionary landscape of institutionalised religion (Atran)
attempting to explain the emergence of ritualised and institutionalised religion
Freud: religion emerges due to a pathological need for a father figure (Bloom)
Marx: indoctrination by the pwoerful as part on an ongoing class struggle (Bloom)
Malinowski (Bowie)
religion arose as a response to emotional stress
whjen technical knowledge proved insufficient, huam nbeings turn to magic and religion in order to achieve their ends and as a fgorm of catharsis
difficult to dsitingush religious ritual from magical actions
distinguish magic from religion
magic and religion serve the same psychological function: the alleviation of anxiety in the face of life's uncertainties
were it mere survival, it would die out
whatever exists today does so because it continues to serve a function
Tylor (Bowie)
scientific rationalist
all religious ideas had developed, in his view, out of a primitive belif in animate nature of natural phenomena
most anthropological approaches to religion are agnostic or atheistic
Spencer (Bowie)
survival of the fittest
religion arose from the observation that in dreams the self can leave the body
the theory that all things, animate and inanimate, move from simpler to more differentiate complex forms, from homogeneity to heterogeneity
ancestor worship was at the root of religion
Evolutionary biology
Sociobiology: a field of biology that aims to examine and explain social behaviour in terms of evolution
closely allied to Darwinian anthropology, human behavioral ecology and evolutionary psychology
investigates social behaviours such as mating patterns, territorial fights, pack hunting and the hive society of social insects
Edward Wilson
congeal identity
classifies people; unquestioned membership in a group claiming great powers
highest form of religious practicfe when examined closely, can be seen to confer biological advantage
a driving purpose in life comparable with self interest
Is Religion Adaptive?
natural selection acts on individuals
individuals would not altruistically sacrifice their fitness for the sake of a group
religious practices are a form of evolved social behaviour that confers biological advantage on individuals
before 1990s, most evolutionary biologists argued that natural selection acted primarily at the level of the individual
Group Selection
group selection involving altruism was possible
kin selection is now accepted as an explanation of some forms of altruistic behaviour
group selection is proposed mechanism of evolution in which natural selection acts at the level of the group, instead of the individual
early emerging tendency to believe in supernatural beings is the product of direct selection, possibly because of its role in shaping altruistic thought and behavior (Bloom)
development of culture leads to the idea of a universal and beneficient creator (Ruse)
Religion as a Natural Phenomenon
religion is promoted by evolution
not necessarily beneficial for human beings
memes: cultural units that compete for allegiance
David S Wilson: both a genetically evolved component and an open-ended cultural component (Ruse)
religion has some evolutionary costs
celibacy
ritual physical disfigurement
devotion to others
sacrifice
Wilson: human psyche demands religion and thus he sees the place to move in with a king of evolutionary humanism
if evolution is true and natural selection is the main mec hanism then the sociobiological approach to religion camnot be without merit (Ruse)
Religion
what are we trying to explain
religious beliefs
religious experiences
religious practices
institutionalised forms of religion
explanations of religion depend on what you think religion fundamentally is-
what constitutes religion? (Cam)
social solidarity theories (Durkheim, Weber)
cultural symbolic theories (Geerz)
what are the origins of religion?
cultural evolution and sociological anthropology - social conditions (Atran)
psychoanalysis - the unconscious (Freud, Lacan)
evolutionary biology and cognitive anthropology - evolved architecture of the brain (Boyer)
existential phenomenology - the alterity of self (Csordas)
political sociology - class suffering (Marx)
Religion as a byproduct
naturally selected elements of human cognition
inherent susceptibility of religious beliefs to modularised conceptual processing systems
existential anxieties and moral sentiments constitute - by virtue of evolution - ineluctable elements of the human condition
religion has no evolutionary functions
religion is unusual because it is about entities and processes and events that are not evident in the sense (Bloom)
Religion as language analogy
both are universal
both are NOT present at birth
both develop through emergence in a social environment
religion is less universal and less inevitable than language
Darwin: religion is accidental
religion is hard to define and understand (Bowie)
CsordaS: RELIGION IS INEVITABLE, PERHAPS EVEN NECESSARY (Bowie)
Debunking arguments
epistemic premise
religious beliefs are produced by cognitive adaptations that do not track truths but have evolved as secondary adaptations
evaluative scepticism
none of our religious beliefs is justified
causal premise
our evolutionary history has explained why religion has emerged
Existential Origin of Religion
Thesis: the origin of religion - its experiential source, is the primordial sense of otherness or alterity
Corollary:insofar as alterity is part of the structure of being in the world an elmentary structure ofg huam nexistence - religion is inveitable, perhaps even necessary
Alterity of Embodiment
the human body is both subject and object
the desire of oneness or unity and idewntity can never be consciously achieved
to become ourselves, we must be raised by others
religion, in essence, has its origins in this "inevitable moment of embodied otherness"
alterity is a fundamental feature of being in the world
Is religion natural? (Bloom)
cultural learning leads to religious belief
dualism: separarttyion of bodies and souls into separate entities
dualism comes naturally to children but is not so common in adults
it is assumed by virtually all scientists that mental life is the product of physical brains
bias towards creationism appears to be cognitively natural
children are prone top a more promiscusous teleology
some religious beliefs are entirely learned