Religion is a product of evolution, software suggests.<\/a> (New Scientist article about research by James Dow.<\/a>)<\/p>\n Now who could argue with software<\/strong>? It’s not as if software can only give out results in the way it’s been programmed to or anything….<\/p>\n By distilling religious belief into a genetic predisposition to pass along unverifiable information, the program predicts that religion will flourish<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Theories on the evolution of religion tend toward two camps. One argues that religion is a mental artefact, co-opted from brain functions that evolved for other tasks. I am basing my opinion on a cursory reading of a pop-science version of real research that I have only skimmed (and I expect some more careful reader will comment to challenge my surface arguments with facts.) But, I take this to mean that the algorithm seems to indicate that telling convincing lies has evolutionary advantages. No surprise there. Otherwise politicians would have long been extinct.<\/p>\n But, are lies about gods in some other even-more-genetically-advantageous category than just regular lies? This experiment appears to favour the religious only when others help them:<\/p>\n Under most scenarios, “believers in the unreal” went extinct. But when Dow included the assumption that non-believers would be attracted to religious people because of some clear, but arbitrary, signal, religion flourished<\/p><\/blockquote>\n So, this research actually implied that belief in lies was not a successful survival strategy? Unless the goalposts were moved to make it one? <\/p>\n I assume that the arbitrary attractors could arise from activities such as like embedding lies in interesting stories. Some myths are somehow compelling. Narrative is attractive. (The attractiveness of narrative is itself something of an evolutionary mystery.) All the same, I am largely unconvinced by the explanatory power of the arguments, the choice of variables and the specific values assigned to them<\/p>\n However, science being science – i.e. developed through experiment and debate rather than through accepting erroneous beliefs because they come with clear but arbitrary attractive signals – I can test it out. The software can be downloaded<\/a> under the GNU public licence. This is so admirable a way to conduct and spread research that I have to tip an oversized conceptual hat to James Dow.<\/p>\n
\nAnother contends that religion benefited our ancestors. Rather than being a by-product of other brain functions, it is an adaptation in its own right. In this explanation, natural selection slowly purged human populations of the non-religious. (From the New Scientist article)<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\nShare this:<\/h3>