Naturalising Religion

Transcription

1 Naturalising Religion Some Remarks. Andrew Atkinson, University of Bristol

2 First Remarks It s not enough (as Dawkins, 1993, 1976, 2006 tries to do) to claim that religious belief is some form of mass delusion. If that s the case Why are so many of us deluded? However, the duty to explain religion does seem to fall on the atheist in an interesting way. Why, for example, do many cultures devote huge fractions of their limited resources to placating the Gods, given that there are no Gods to placate? Sterelny, K. Memes Revisited, 2006.

3 A Background Question If an adequate naturalistic account can be given for religious culture (its beliefs, practices, ontology), would it pose any significant worries for the professional Theologian? I don t quite know what I should say in answer to this as such I ll claim I m sat on the fence for now... Either Theology is at an end, or it s an open question...

4 Some Claims An adequate account of religion (I argue) is going to rest on successfully overlapping of a number of approaches such that each solve the problems of the other. A naturalistic approach need not be a debunking project and can remain neutral on a great many things. But could even a neutral approach, if successful in capturing an explanation of religion, be damaging to those of a theological bent?

5 Being Realistic Theologians are people too with children, a pension, a mortgage etc and who are engaged in defending their field as best they can. We re not going to get them to loosen their grip on that position very easily when such things as one s livelihood are at stake even if the naturalist wins the argument. Anyway: Lawson: In my experience, most Theologians are secretly atheists and they re really interested in this stuff. (how fair is that for the students?)

6 Intentions In what follows, I attempt to provide a neutral skeletal framework for explaining religious culture. I do this by arguing the successful overlap of a number of apparently competing explanations of religion.

7 Men can scarce avoid having some kind of ideas of those things, whose names, those they converse with, have occasion frequently to mention to them: and if it carry with it the notion of excellency, greatness, or something extraordinary; if apprehension and concernment accompany it; if the fear of absolute and irresistible power set it on upon the mind, the idea is likely to sink the deeper, and spread the farther; especially if it be such an idea, as is agreeable to the common light of reason, and naturally deducible from every part of our knowledge, as that of God is. John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding

8 Bad Habits

9 Praying through a wall...

10 The Maha Kumbh Mela, or Grand Pitcher Festival, takes place every 12 years and sees millions bathe in the Ganges to purify their sins. serious commitment

11 Every night at Lourdes.. (myths can become established doctrine)

12 The Boi Bumbá ritual tells the same story in all three nights of the festival, amounting to 6 different performances of the same show

13 Hierarchy Sacred Objects Rules about sex Tithing Speaking in tongues seductive ideologies...

14 Covert shopping expeditions... and apparent lunacy...

15 Nature s Oddities...

16

17 Doing it differently... Traditionally Cosmological Argument Ontological Argument Design Argument Subjective Assertion Supra-teleological (we re evolving to a higher place) Seriously Theories about Cultural Evolution in general based on symmetries with evolutionary biology. Looking at qualities of religiosity that reflect underlying workings of the mind. Viewing it (religion), ultimately, as a natural phenomenon, rather than, a simple delusion.

18 Three Steps Memetics (DIT). A theory of cultural transmission. Cognitive Science. The Kind of Mind it takes Religion as a cognitive by-product Multi-level Selection. An adaptive by-product at the group level. (considered individually they have their problems but considered in unison, they turn out to be mutually supportive)

19 Memetics The Replicator Dennett, Blackmore, Dawkins

20 Memetics Memetics is (broadly) the theory that various bits of culture memes - are analogous to genes on the replicator view. It is an aspect of the evolutionary process, and may achieve separate trajectories. Memetics takes a meme s eye view as a selfish process on other words, some memes replicate more than others. QUESTION : Why do some memes spread better than others?

21 What are the factors governing Memetic transmission/replication? Themes explored are;- Instructions intrinsic to the ideas themselves; spread the word etc Reproduction: don t use contraceptives, be fruitful and multiply Memorability (Boyer 2001, Barrett, 2004) Psychological/Social appeal; beauty, desire, etc Fitness increasing; look both ways before crossing the street, tool making skills, desirable knowledge.. Imitability and imitation prestige bias, conformity bias, ease of copying. Fidelity and the like as with genes.

22 What s the beauty in Memetics? Just as genes build the variety of biological life we have today Memes might build a great deal of our cultural phenotypes in similarly complex ways We can look for cultural phylogenies

23 Religion Memeplex G L S E P R E I T A C N O I L I E R baser memes R E L I G I O N R E P L I C A T E S Original Memeplex

24 Rivalry Between Memetics and Dual-Inheritance Theory? Memetics: Replicators Genetic benefit Non-genetic benefit from some cultural replicators Selfishness (memetic drive) Popular science writing Dual-Ineritance: Replicators Genetic benefit All of genetic benefit apart from rogue cultural variants Selfishness not a common theme outside genetic consideration. rogue cultural variants *** Mathematical rigour

25 What Memetics Doesn t Do Provide an explanation of the origin of religion in a satisfactory way (mouse trapping problem) Memetics describes transmission, but not genesis. Explain why some religious individuals appear more religious than others.

26 That s Conceptual Tool Kit No:1 Now, we need origin theories for the very idea of a God..

27 The Cognitive Science of Religion The Kind of Mind it Takes Boyer, Barrett, Atran, Lawson & McCauley, Bering

28 A Metaphor

29 Descartes reduction of the God concept can be extended to God is an agent. We have been endowed by natural selection with the ability to detect agency. That s just one faculty of mind.

30 Religion as Rube Goldberg Devices Cognitive By-product

31 Human Ontology The human brain has evolved to deal with its environment in a number of specialised ways (modularity/innateness) Folk psychology, folk biology, folk physics Fundamentally primitive agency detection

32 HADD Original coinage: Hyperactive Agency Detection Device (Rob McCauley, Barrett (2004) = Better paranoid than dead (false positives arise easily) Closely linked to HADD is ToM (Theory of Mind) for increased adaptivity the two are so closely linked they run together in our everyday experience of the world. Together, they can produce false ontologies from Heider Simmel, to finger puppets with emotions, and enable us to engage with fictional works of literature.

33 When things gain minds

34 That s an account of the generation of God concepts agency perceived in nature. Other themes in CSR bolster the claims of memetic cultural transmission.

35 MCI Transmission Bias Religious narratives and concepts tend to violate primitive (fundamental) ontological categories (intuitive physics/folk biology/folk psychology) (Atran, Boyer, Lawson & McCauley, Barrett) Thus they are imprinted in our memory they get sticky and are thus more likely to transmit religions stick. In principle however, appeal to memorability can be made in many other ways e.g. fancy ritual displays, singular religious experience, music, right up to the plain outrageous.

36 Some other themes in CSR...

37 Spirits, Ghosts, Life After Death Jesse Bering (2011) 1. Simulations of other minds, 2. Inability to imagine the end of some mental state (Descartes), 3. Simulations of other minds can continue after their death hence ghosts, spirits of ancestors, Claim is that we run a simulation of that agency perceived in nature as if having intention grand intentions we call teleology. Deb Kelemen Tendency in developing children to give teleological explanations

38 The Dopamine System If there was ever a smoking gun at the scene of a crime, with religion, it s the dopamine system... (Hood, 2009) Previc (2006) dopamine system implicated in sense of upper distant space/upward eye movements associated with hallucinogenic episodes... Read Montague (2007), The dopamine system is hijacked by every drug of abuse, destroyed by Parkinsons disease, and perturbed by various forms of mental illness. McNamara, P. (2006) Patients with PD religion/life philosophy not important.

39 Dopamine + Religiosity Linked (+HADD?) Stargazer rat Previc 1998 Meaningful information/l-dopa skeptics vs believers/alzheimer s patients. Degree of religiosity interesting along with significantly hyperactive agency detection

40 How far have we got? Thus far, we have described a process of both the transmission and retention of ideas in a population. We have described the generation of God concepts via HADD and some other mental characteristics. This explains the ubiquity of such concepts. Concepts differ between cultures as they create and transmit them. Traits vary between cultures, so cultures vary in their respective fitness. Culture doesn t have to be absorbed by the genes (Baldwin Effect), it just has to facilitate gene flow. This is the crux of the dualinheritance view.

41 That s Conceptual Tool Kit No:2

42 Multi-level Selection What Natural Selection can select Okasha, D.S.Wilson, Sober (and others)

43 Group Selection My claim is that religious memes persist because selection can maintain individuals that transmit them at the group level. (through conformity/prestige bias) Religious individuals largely stick to their own (US) as such, the most solid of groups outcompete other groups (THEM). The polite term is they cooperate.

44 While Darwin recognised that selection acts at the level of the individual organism he also toyed with the idea that selection could sometimes operate on groups of individual organisms[1] (survival of the fittest groups), favouring some groups at the expense of others.[2] [1] Darwin, C. The Descent of Man, Vol. 1, pg156. [2] Okasha, S. Could religion be a group-level adaptation of Homo sapiens?, pg2.

45 D.S.Wilson: Religious Bodies

46 Thinking of a religious group as like an organism encourages us to look for adaptive complexity. (Wilson, D, 2002) Adaptation insofar as belief in (BIG) Gods increases cooperation within groups without incurring the cost of punishment for defectors, and results in out-group hostility. [1] Wilson, D.S. Darwin s Cathedral, pg 86.

47 Ritual Behaviour (costly signalling) signifies commitment. Music co-ordinates ritual group behaviour.

48 Atheist might ask: What about the Truth Debate? If there is a trade-off between the two forms of realism, such that our beliefs can become more adaptive only by becoming factually less true, then factual realism will be the loser every time. To paraphrase evolutionary psychologists, factual realists detached from practical reality were not among our ancestors. It is the person who elevates factual truth above practical truth who must be accused of mental weakness from an evolutionary perspective. D.S.Wilson, Darwin s Cathedral, pg 228.

49 Asking the wrong question if the adaptive value of religion consists in the prosocial behaviours that religious believers display towards each other, why do virtually all religions require their members to adopt bizarre beliefs about supernatural deities? Can such fantastical beliefs really be adaptive for the community of religious believers? [1] [1] Okasha, S. Could religion be a group-level adaptation of Homo sapiens?, pg4. It s that iff you get belief, it results in in-group prosocial behaviour, ritual practices etc) (Norenzayan, A. 2006) (Talmont-Kaminski, forthcoming) Our Cognitive By-product is adaptive CSR explains belief...

50 That s Conceptual Tool Kit No:3

51 Challenging Theology? Everything s been said, but not everyone has said it yet

52 Keeping Neutral That s all neutral and can be given alongside any theological position as such, it can t be contested by Theology. Any religion has to have transmission. Any religion has to have individulas with the cognitive competences for it, and there is a history to admit of religions in their struggle against other warring factions such that a religion s present day ancestors bear the hallmarks of victory, and the scars.

53 Further Remarks Though neutral, and said in no anti-religious terms, a neutral account such as this, should be of at least some concern for the Theologian because we can show how religion might evolve in the absence of any deity. What starts out as a neutral project could still form the basis of disbelief in a deity by inference to the best explanation. On the other hand, one might argue that HADD even if it comes up with false positives doesn t necessarily mean that it yields a false ontology.

54 So What s the Upshot for Theology? A naturalised account of religion does not logically prove there is no God. Inference to the best explanation points toward the non-existence of a big God. The possible adaptive function of religiosity does not entail that God exists. Emotional / impassioned responses are to be expected from believers who would not have their sacred beliefs explained away in naturalistic terms. I think Theology Depts have a responsibility to teach CSR to their students they re interested.

55 Some Bold Claims Professional Theologians (of which there are many) might be paid large sums of money thinking the wrong way about nothing. Students with real and serious questions come to universities seeking truth about religion and come away disappointed. On the upside some Theology Depts are beginning to take on CSR researchers we ve caught their attention. There seems to be a lot of room for the religious historian, or one who studies religions themselves to collaborate with ERS researchers but we need to ask what role there may be for the Theologian, if any.

56 Thank you