The sleep of reason produces monsters Goya, Francisco Caprichos
May common Sense and Reason prevail Evolutionary psychology of religion and the reign of science
Richard Dawkins an introduction Primer to Dawkins BBC programmes The Root of all Evil The Enemies of Reason. Slaves to superstition 00.-30 The Virus of faith REASON and IRRATIONALITY
Disclaimer: my religion: Harry Potterism Hermione Granger & the Resurrection Stone Hermione, ". 'But that's - I'm sorry, but that's completely ridiculous! How can I possibly prove it doesn't exist?.. you could claim thatanything's real if the only basis for believing in it is that nobody'sproved it doesn't exist! Bertrand Russell: the Holy flying China Teapot in Orbit around the Sun RoE 44.50 Too small to be spotted by telescope we are all teapot-agnostics Fairies, goblins, giants, Dawkins: We re all atheists about most of the Gods that societies have ever believed in some of us just go one God further.
Disclaimer: my religion: Harry Potterism Severus Snapism Hermione Granger & the Resurrection Stone Hermione, ". 'But that's - I'm sorry, but that's completely ridiculous! How can I possibly prove it doesn't exist?.. you could claim thatanything's real if the only basis for believing in it is that nobody'sproved it doesn't exist! Bertrand Russell: the Holy flying China Teapot in Orbit around the Sun RoE 44.50 Too small to be spotted by telescope we are all teapot-agnostics Fairies, goblins, giants, Thor, Aphrodite Dawkins: We re all atheists about most of the Gods that societies have ever believed in some of us just go one God further.
On evolution A chicken is just an egg's way of making more eggs.
Charles Darwin Premise 1: Struggle for survival Premise 2: Variability Premise 3: Heritability Premise 4: Fitness CONCLUSION : NATURAL SELECTION He observed breeders and different naturally evolving species Charles Babbage: God = programmer of laws
Evolutionary psychology The Human Animal (Sociobiology) Adaptationism Originally applied to biological organs the most well-known is the eye Extensions: the brain is a biological organ Supposition: the brain produces behaviour and consciousness Therefore: behaviour and consciousness is formed by evolution just as the biological body is
Problems with evolutionary psychology Level of selection (individual, gene, group) Question of fitness & adaptation Small designs that lead to a higher reproduction of a trait CIRCULARITY: How do you recognize fitness? Xenophobia, colour of bones, form of earlobes Just-so stories (Rudyard Kipling) The Panglossian Paradox George Jackson Mivart - what do you do with 5% of a wing? Blind adaptationism (by Pinker) Gould: exaptations Physical constraints Gould: spandrels in the cathedral Genetic Determinism nature-nurture debate The Swiss-army-knife model of evolution
Pinker, Tooby and Cosmides, Buss Massive modularity Modern-day phrenology
Dawkins s views An ardent opponent to creationism and proponent of evolution - earning him the title of Darwin s Rottweiler The Blind Watchmaker focuses on how evolution could create marvellous structures like the eye William Paley a watch presupposes intelligent design because of its complexity
The Weasel problem Shakespeare s Hamlet Hamlet: Do you see yonder cloud that's almost in shape of a camel? Polonius: By the mass, and 'tis like a camel, indeed. Hamlet: Methinks it is like a weasel. Based on the infinite monkey theorem A monkey bashing away at random on a typewriter given enough time he would type the entire works of Shakespeare how long would it take him to produce the sentence Methinks it is like a weasel.?
The Weasel problem Methinks it is like a weasel This is 28 characters Using 26 letters only capitals and a space bar Probability? 27 28 = 10 40 = infinity, or at least much longer than milliseconds from the existence of the universe (13,73 billion = 13,73 * 10 9 years = 7,22 * 10 18 milliseconds)
Sir Frederick Hoyle approximately the same order of magnitude as the probability that a hurricane could sweep through a junkyard and randomly assemble a Boeing 747. solar system full of blind men solving Rubik's Cube simultaneously. The simplest bacterium needs 10 40,000 permutations, while the number of the atoms in the universe is only 10 80, the chance is the same as throwing 50 000 sixes in a row with a die
Sir Frederick Hoyle Astronomer and sci-fi writer He opposed the Big Bang theory because it needs a cause Steady State theory He also opposed natural abiogenesis! Intelligent design - Evolution from Space
Hoyle s fallacy You don t need 28 letters. You start with say 3. They calculate the probability of the formation of a "modern" protein, or even a complete bacterium with all "modern" proteins, by random events. This is not the abiogenesis theory at all it starts with VERY SIMPLE organisms They assume that there is a fixed number of proteins, with fixed sequences for each protein, that are required for life. They calculate the probability of sequential trials, rather than simultaneous trials. Changing one at a time mutations are rare but do not exclude each other They seriously underestimate the number of functional enzymes/ribozymes present in a group of random sequences only one good solution fallacy
The Weasel problem Cumulative selections instead of a single step selection Two differences in his model: Copying mechanism it retains previous states There is an inherent goal any change that occurs towards methinks it is a weasel is kept, others are discarded Generation 1: WDLMNLT DTJBKWIRZREZLMQCO P Generation 2: WDLTMNLT DTJBSWIRZREZLMQCO P Generation 10: MDLDMNLS ITJISWHRZREZ MECS P Generation 20: MELDINLS IT ISWPRKE Z WECSEL Generation 30: METHINGS IT ISWLIKE B WECSEL Generation 40: METHINKS IT IS LIKE I WEASEL Generation 43: METHINKS IT IS LIKE A WEASEL
Fitness or adaptive landscapes genetic variation is pushed to the direction of the arrows Waddington epigenetic landscape curiously posits a rolling, not a climbing ball Saddle points in mathematics as non-optimal solutions
The circular argumentation problem Inherent goal often evokes attacks of circular argumentation The effects strive towards the goal The goal preexists (who invented the goal?) Answer evolutionary forces How do you know this was the goal? Because it is reached! Mary Midgley: Evolution as a Religion Buss: the moral phallacy (Dawkins examines it as well.)
On evolution and religion
The Four Horsemen of the anti- Apocalypse *The God Delusion: Dawkins *Breaking the Spell: Dennett *The end of Faith: Harris *god is not Great: Hitchens Would you like the Churches empty? The Bible as a literary piece = Harry Potter
Evolutionary accounts of religion Richard Dawkins Openly attacking religion derogatory of believers Supporter of the Brights movement Bright Paul Geisert s umbrella term Daniel C. Denett More of a compromise Restricts himself to the argument that religion can and should be studied by science
Daniel Clement Dennett Philosopher With an interesting history (father spy, self-education) Darwin s dangerous Idea Consciousness Explained (at least not religion..) No Cartesian theatre bundle of semi-independent agencies content-fixation
Denett on religion An argument towards the scientific study of religion terrorist attempts 9/11 Explanation given on the basis of meme theory (by Dawkins) Evaluation of good and bad aspects
Denett on religion Part I: Opening Pandora's Box Relationship of science and religion Part II: The Evolution of Religion Part III: Religion Today What should be done to stop religious fanatics
There is reason in unreasonable behaviour somewhere, if you look long enough The story of the suicidal ant and the lancet fluke (a small worm) There are many ideas to die for protecting ideologies (other animals protect food, cubs or habitat only) The curious example of the dog (domestication) Ideas are not intelligent themselves- why should they cause others to kill Neither are lancet flukes and the wings of butterflies
What is religion for Dennett? Religion Social systems Participants avow belief In supernatural agents OR Agents whose approval is to be sought Elvis Presley fan club is not one Need not be anthropomorphic Jehova exists in real-time according to some accounts and not real.time according to others If prayer is a symbolic activity, not addressed to anyone, it is not part of religion Maybe this is the origin of religion Some rituals can pass to non-religious (Santa Claus or Halloween) Private religions spiritual in his terms, not religious Black magic and satanist cults They are not religions, because no one thinks so?? Buddhism & Confucianism (again a contradiction)
Breaking which spell? Breaking the spell of religion The analogy of the men with a cell phone in the room Religion as a potentially evil spell sharin gas attack, 9/11 Other ones mentioned: Drugs Gambling Alcohol Child pornography Addiction? life without it is not worth living Excessive physical or psychological dependence (conversation? Communication?)
Breaking which spell? The fear of knowing Wouldn t an extensive and invasive examination destroy the phenomenon itself? Nobody knows the answer incl.denett Endangered species often become extinct because of capturing them to breed which they don t in captivity Isolated people are often changed if studied by anthropologists Cadavres were prohibited to study medicine started off, when they did Alfred Kinsey s study of Human sexual behaviour myths dispelled it improved sex life although consider free love
Breaking which spell? Reformulating the category names Gays and straights (and not glum) Bright and supers? (from supernatural) Mind Philip Tetlock s sacred values You re money or your life! I m thinking, I m thinking! Aside mugging becomes lucrative..
Breaking which spell? Religion is a natural phenomena Not an opposition of culture Of course it is cultural Not an opposition of supernatural either It is in the nature of the homo sapiens to create religious memes New myths What about a Harry Potter day? A new pretext to recieve presents! Would you be in favour of inventing it? Santa Claus - 1985
Some questions about science Basically the same argument as Dawkins and Gould s non-overlapping magisteria again It is possible to be neutral to religion The gap between mind sciences (Geistwissenschaften) and nature sciences (Naturwissenschaften) is narrowing (though not yet disappeared)
Some questions about science Homo sapiens the power of the source of prediction We can minimalize damages by preventing them no other species has been observed to do that (collecting food is a general answer to periodic changes) Epidemics Economical crisis Hurricanes Can we prevent the next 9/11 by studying religion? What if music is bad for you? It can t feed anyone or cure the ill All he asks for is to study religion if it turns out to be bad, we need to think if it turns out to be good, atheist attacks can be silenced
Why Good things happen Because of evolution Footprints of coyotes and dogs Why do coyotes howl? The homo sapiens sugar industry Tons of sugar and its counterpart obesity clinics, toothpaste Co- evolution of plant strategies to spread and homo s. strategies to find energy source The free-floating rationale It is perfectly rational as a mechanism, but nobody including the participants is aware, not conscious i.e. you don t need to understand it for it to work
Why Good things happen The CUI BONO obsession No free luch somebody has to benefit Evolution is remarkably efficient in sweeping pointless accidents off the scene Remember the lancet fluke And the toxoplasma gondii Which lives in rats, drives them reckless, so they get eaten by cats, which is the only place they can reproduce Sexual reproduction vs asexual making offspring more inscrutable to parasites actually adaptation in general Parasites are in an arms race with hosts
Why Good things happen The Good Trick obsession Anything that enhances fitness is a Good Trick Flight and eyes were invented repeatedly over the course of evolution Religion takes time & energy, both valuable and finite resources -> it must be a Good Trick -> cui bono? Free-floating rationale works with culture too that is a meme You don t have to understand the shape of the boat in terms of biodynamics - it it is a tradition (N.B. is this true for modern science?)
Why Good things happen The CUI BONO of religion The sweet tooth theory Religion is good for us just as sugar is and we have developed a taste for it And just as sugar saccharine it can be cheated The Symbiont Theories The lancet fluke theory Primarily it is not the Homo S that religion is good for Mutualists Commensals Parasites Hundred trillion cells 90% not human cells
Why Good things happen The CUI BONO of religion Sexual selection The Peacock s tail theory Runaway selection A whim of females? Fitness indicator Not a whim a sign of health Faithfulness Intelligence music Group selection People with religion were more altruistic in necessary cases better survival in rough times The pearl theory spandrels in a cathedral A beautiful by-product Does not enhance anything, it is an objet trouvé
The roots of religion Historians There have always been religion Dennett: that only means religion is more ancient than history writing The CARGO cults & Melanesians shows the formation of new religions The John Frum cult The Pomio Kivung cult
The roots of religion Formation of new religions goes at an astounding pace 2-3 created every day Average lifetime is less than a decade Religions as known today are relatively young historically compared to other cultural phenomena Christianity cca. 2,000 years Judaism cca. 4,000 years Writing cca. 5,000 years Agriculture cca. 40,000 Language cca. 35,000 -?
The roots of religion Psychological explanations raisons d être 1. To confort 2. To explain the unexplainable 3. Encourage group cohesion Premature curiosity satisfaction (Dennett the hows and whys)
Pascal Boyer 1. Most of relevant machinery is not consciously available 2. Religion is based on modules that are part of ordinary cognition 3. Mental Modules combined
Pascal Boyer What mental modules are combined? Hyperactive Agent Detector Memes as supernormal stimuli right ratio of irrational in the ordinary Full Access Agent (access to strategical information) off-line social interaction Divination decision making Explanation Ritualistic behaviour Healing Decision making Social bonding Theory of mind Agency detection Contagion avoidance Social exchange
http://astro.temple.edu/~tshipley/mocap/dotmovie.html http://www.biomotionlab.ca/demos/bmlwalker.html
Useful if you need to find agentive entities in a noisy background Biological motion based on a few dots it does not work upside down pattern of activity gender!
The roots of religion HADD Hyperactive Agent Detector Device (Justin Barrett) Signal detection theory and game theory combined Is this noise a tiger? I think it is tiger rustling It really is tiger Hit Miss rustling False alarm Correct rejection
The roots of religion HADD Hyperactive Agent Detector Device (Justin Barrett) Better safe than sorry Missing a signal is more expensive than a false alarm Animism Children Adults?? the sun smiles at you There are spirits in every tree My computer hates me The less predictable something is, the more you tend to attribute intentions to it
The roots of religion Practical animism flowers and river Rain dances impractical animism (at least without proper meteorological knowledge) Skinner, B.F. Pigeon superstition Random reinforcement Elaborate dances The Enemies of Reason SS. 33.19
The roots of religion Successful memes Some counterintuitive ideas are more interesting than others Invisible person? Living dead? Invisible axe with no handle? Axe made of cheese? Successful? Contradict only one or two biases but in other ways they fot the schema Often concerned with animacy Proto- meme obsessional thought Do not miss the circular argument again
Pascal Boyer Religion Explained Concepts of the supernatural = legends, myths, folktales, fantasy & Harry Potter! Domain concepts (person, living thing, artefacts) They retain some expectations held as default true of that domain Yet specific features violate these default expecations
The roots of religion Supernormal stimuli success? Tinbergen the gull and the orange spot Humans love to surround theselves with supernormal stimuli Music rather pure sounds than noise Pure vowels melody Pure consonants rhythm Pure coloured pictures - art Bilateral symmetry It is only characteristic when the other faces you Sign of health!
The roots of religion But the bogeyman under your bed is not yet religion Non-referential names abound Cinderella Unicorns Harry Potter sorry! Severus Snape Flying carpets Pudus You need to believe that they exist! BELIEF Knowledge vs belief battle - Rationality and irrationality? 4hMApoc intertwined everywhere (lucky charms, rituals [my bag]) Contradictory knowledge and belief? [ghosts]
Hypertrophic social intelligence Strategic information = theory of mind = intentional stance Homo s. obsessed with societal relationships and other minds (remember their group size!) Stories learn about the intentions and beliefs of others = gossip A Full Access Agent? In traditions it is often ancestral figures Parents seem like that to children Freud Father Figure mythic struggles Not necessarily omniscient if you lost your knife vs. You left it at the crime scene (strategic information only) They became omniscient later on (Boyer)
The roots of religion Why are parents like full access agents? Precocial species less prone to epigenetic effects Altricial species Prolonged paternal care & training extended information transmission Informational superhighways Genes is everything needed to be coded in the genome? Presupposed regularities Gravity, salinity, electromagnetic wave spectrum, composition of atmosphere Instructional pathyway imprinting
The roots of religion Coevolution of cuteness altricial species Humans Dinosaurs - fossils Mickey Mouse
The roots of religion Coevolution of honest information - teaching It is in the best interest of parents to inform and not misinform It is in the best interests of children to listen and be obedient Authority figures often have hypnotical powers analgesia
The roots of religion Suppose there is a Full Access Agent you need a link to know what he knows Divination! take away the responsability and the acrimony of bad decisions Flip a coin More serious rituals Numerology Astrology Clouds Cards Tea leaves Melted wax pored into water Jaynes exopsycic methods of decision making The idea of randomness is relatively new
The roots of religion Decision making and consciousness Maybe people just need a placebo effect of support from their ancestors (remember what we said about the consciousness of decision making!) Skeptics are spoiling the fun
The roots of religion Shamans and rituals it actually works Jared Diamond we have discovered all edible plants (even if preparation needed) and most medical plants Ritual healing : Psychological/hypnotic effect usually called placebo today Shamanic treatment is correlated with patient hypnotizability Childbirth! Direct connection to evolution
The roots of religion Why are we susceptible to hypnotizing effects at all? Humphrey (2002) economic resource management Body has its own cures : fever, vomiting, pain, immune system However this is costly Stress reduces the possibility of these responses energy is needed for immediate defense against something else Only works if there is hope of curing Hypnosis creates both! Shamanic healing ancient health insurance!
The roots of religion Rituals functions Divination Shamanistic healing Multilexing creating a common memory store to preserve knowledge The more people know sg the less likely it is that it is forgotten repeating all over Evans-Pritchard shamans typically try to enlist people from a young age to these rituals
Cultural evolution of religion A new perspective
Stewardship Practitioners of folk religions do not go about convincing each other of the existence of the spirits no more than we go about convincing each other of the existence of germs, atoms, oxigens or gravity How do you know? Best to rely on others about knowledge Conducting R&D is expensive Neolithic agricultural revolution and population boom no time to theorize Separation of proto-science and proto-religion Unable to refute Invisible- cannot Explicit instructions not to
Stewardship Of sheep and men Domestication caused a population growth in both species Clear case of symbiosis Religion meme and its shepherds Teachers and priests keep religious and calculus memes alive The memes keep them alive Dawkins s idea on kleptocracy the entertwining of the political and religious Threat of an Ultimate Being
Richard Dawkins Ethologist and evolutionary biologist The Selfish Gene The Extended Phenotype The Blind Watchmaker Climbing Mount Improbable The God Delusion Root of all Evil 00.-1.00 The elephant called religion the process of nonthinking called faith.
The God Delusion The book was a best-seller sold over 1,5 million copies and translated to 31 languages If this book works as I intend, religious readers who open it will be atheists when they put it down. What presumptuous optimism! Of course, dyed-in-the-wool faith-heads are immune to argument, their resistance built up over years of childhood indoctrination using methods that took centuries to mature (whether by evolution or design). But I believe there are plenty of open-minded people out there: Conversely it raised sales of spiritual books by 50% and the sales of the Bible by 120% (amazon.com)
The God hypothesis Curiously universal evolutionary theory of religion as an accidental by-product a misfiring of something useful The intentional stance Memes
The God hypothesis Morals would you commit murder, rape or robbery if you knew that no God existed? Kant : categorical imperatives Dawkins : altruistic genes selected for by evolution creating natural empathy Strongy against the religious indoctrination of children - EoR- VoF Should all cultural practices be banned then?
May Holy Reason reign above ALL Cold-reading (vs hot reading) Mentalists, fortune tellers, psychics, mediums Communicating with the dead The Forer-effect (Bertram R. Forer) Barnum effect Personal validation fallacy subjective validation Horoscopes EoR SS 6.05 Positive traits Authority Particularity
Horoscope You have a need for other people to like and admire you, and yet you tend to be critical of yourself. While you have some personality weaknesses you are generally able to compensate for them. You have considerable unused capacity that you have not turned to your advantage. Disciplined and self-controlled on the outside, you tend to be worrisome and insecure on the inside. At times you have serious doubts as to whether you have made the right decision or done the right thing. You prefer a certain amount of change and variety and become dissatisfied when hemmed in by restrictions and limitations. You also pride yourself as an independent thinker; and do not accept others' statements without satisfactory proof. But you have found it unwise to be too frank in revealing yourself to others. At times you are extroverted, affable, and sociable, while at other times you are introverted, wary, and reserved. Some of your aspirations tend to be rather unrealistic.
Vive la raison, vive le science! Mors Derrida et les monstres! Science is wonderful The enemies of reason SS. 41.00 The Crisis of reason 1. Evidence vs experience (private feelings) Ugly post-modern relativist agenda (Mors Derrida!) Philip Tetlock: Sacred Value Protection Model Secular and sacred values trade-offs - incommesurable Does it make a difference between science and religion?