Transcript The Evolutionary Origins of Religion

The Evolutionary Origins
of Religion
Presented by Ken Baskin
2016 IBHA Conference
Amsterdam, Netherlands
July 2016
The Writers’ Rorschach, except
“The first step is to remember that gods are
products of cultural evolution, not
biological evolution.” Robert Wright, The
Evolution of God
And now for something
completely different . . .
 In its most expansive sense, Religion is a product of
natural selection, evolving genetically to fulfill the
human need to create a vital symbolic order (VSO) – a
living, adaptive way for group members to survive
through cooperation
 That need derives from the integration of two survival
strategies that are at least 200 million years old:
 All animals need to create models of a world too
abundant to perceive directly
 Social animals need sophisticated communications.
Survival Functions at Three Scales
 Personal scale: the need to know, connect with, and
“control” the invisible forces of the world
 Social scale: the process by which we negotiate a
shared model of the world (VSO), enabling group
members to understand each other, cooperate, and
build common identity
 Cultural scale: the blueprint from which all our societal
institutions emerge, as an integrated, symbolically
coherent set of “games”
Three stops along the journey
 Survival strategy 1: Perceptual reduction
 Survival strategy 2: Social cohesion
 Religion as the integration of 1 and 2
Umwelt and Perceptual Reduction
 The world-as-it-is: William James’ buzzing, formless
mass of signals, an ocean of possible meaning
 Every species evolves the senses that enable it to
reduce this mass to the model they need to survive – the
umwelt (inner world) of bats and dogs
 Human umwelt – coherent explanatory stories and storylike constructions
 Those stories become models that we use to collapse
the mass of signals into a specific experience
Brain Structure of a Storyteller
 Brain structures that make us storytellers: neo-cortex
and associated structures – thalamus, hippocampus
 Functions of neo-cortex include expanded memory;
integration of senses; executive functions, such as
abstract thought, anticipation of future, and image
construction (all necessary for storytelling)
 These structures emerged fully in last 3 million years
Evolution of Human Brain
Species
Cranium size
First appeared
Chimpanzee
c. 350 cc
c. 5 million years ago
Australopithecus
afarensis
c. 450-550 cc
c. 3 million years ago
Homo erectus
c. 880 cc
c. 1.8 million years
ago
Homo sapiens
c. 1350 cc
c. 250,000 years ago
Emergence of Storytellers
 Brain structure for primitive storytelling as early as
australopithecines
 Merlin Donald (1991) on “mimetic culture”: Homo
erectus first to communicate through creative mime and
imitation
 Without sophisticated language they could have
represented acts in the spirit world as mime and dance –
ritual
Social Animals, Social Order
 The lives of social animals – bees, wolves, chimps –
depend on cooperation
 They live in diverse, often hierarchical groups with
many generations, hunt and defend together, and often
rely on learning
 In that cooperation, they need ways to communicate
complex messages quickly and ensure social cohesion
(bird songs)
Fixed Action Patterns
 FAP: characteristic patterns of action with set meanings
for group members
 Example 1: Mating rituals – silverwashed fritillary (I
approach not to hurt you but to negotiate sex)
 Example 2: Wolves packs are so complex they need FAPs
to demonstrate public commitment to social hierarchy
FAP as Storytelling
 When evolutionary ancestors developed a storytelling
umwelt, natural selection favored genes for brain structures
that enabled FAPs as mimetic communication strategy
 With Homo erectus, FAPs may have become ceremonial rituals
to share stories, perhaps even about the invisible world
 While controversial, Homo erectus seemed to need a
powerful method of communication to colonize from Spain to
Australia (boat building)
 Neanderthals, c. 500,000 years ago, almost certainly because
of ritual burials
“Ritual” as an Adjective
 People talk about ritual as formal ceremony, repeated
in a standard manner (government and religions)
 Human FAPs range in degree of ritualization from the
Eucharist to handshakes, with sports, business meeting,
and birthday parties between them
 All are FAPs that communicate complex messages and
enable participants to understand each other
Human FAP Functions
 To recreate/remember participants’ vital symbolic
order, especially in increasingly large post-Ice Age
communities
 To signal commitment to the resulting social order
 To create a visceral sense of group unity
 To educate the young in their VSO
 To define membership and otherness (raised fist)
Evolution of Religion
 3 million years ago, larger craniums with expanding neocortex and associated storytelling hardware
 1.8 million years ago, FAPS were hijacked to create
storytelling umwelts, as well as social cohesion
 500,000 years ago, Neanderthal burial rituals
 250,000 years ago, language to tell more sophisticated
stories
 70,000 (?) years ago, symbolic language to create VSOs
 12,000 years ago, end of the Ice Age – larger groups
Post-Ice Age Challenges
 Maintaining order in larger socially constructed
communities (Uruk at 40,000 was more than a thousand
times larger than a hunter-gatherer band)
 Justifying the disparities of wealth and power in larger
communities
 Adapting to growing social complexity in “as-if”
communities, structured as culture games – tapu and
mana; positive and negative mitzvot; blessing and sin
Scale 1: Personal Level
 People tell explanatory stories about the invisible world
to complete their umwelts so they can connect with the
invisible world and understand how to “control” it
 Generally accepted stories may be H-Gs explaining
sickness as anger of ancestors or Israelite prophets
trying to explain Assyrian invasion
 These stories offer the explanation demanded by the
human brain; without it, people don’t know how they
should act and brain structures trigger increased
anxiety
Scale 1: Personal level (cont.)
 Brain circuits in religious experience: i.e.,
occipital/parietal, experience God as existing, and
parietal/frontal, feeling of relationship with God
 Meditation and ritual activate feeling of being in God’s
presence; rhythm and repetition of ritual, unity of
participants
 Shared VSOs reassure individuals that they are part of
the group, behaving the “right” way
Scale 2: Social level
 Religion creates a shared VSO that enables
communication, cooperation, and common identity
within groups
 Stories of Egyptian gods, Torah, or writings of Confucius
and Lao-Tzu provide common understanding of the
world and how to keep order when chaos always feels
near
 They provide the group umwelt, collapsing the field of
possibilities so that people can have shared group
experience
Scale 2: Social level (cont.)
 Shared experience expressed ritually in many ways –
H-G initiation rites, Muslims in mosque, Confucians in
extensively ritualized daily life
 Public ritual participation signals a pledge of
commitment to the group and its values, understanding
of the invisible world, and hierarchy (Spinoza)
 Rhythm and repetition of ritual also creates visceral
feeling of group unity, making cooperation, especially in
inter-group hostility, more easily developed
Scale 3: Cultural level
 Group’s VSO becomes blueprint for its culture – the
behavior, ideas and artifacts it generates, including an
“ideal” set of interlocking societal games, based on
value sets such as tapu/mana
 In Ancient Egypt, the religion was about realizing Ma’at
(proper order and justice): Pharaoh was responsible for
maintaining order through proper ritual and equal
justice
 Egyptian culture was about maintaining an island of
order in a sea of chaos (origin story) and its institutions
were dedicated to maintaining Ma’at
Scale 3: Cultural level (cont.)
 Because mythology serves as “cultural DNA” –
storehouse of behaviors people unconsciously draw on –
mythologies seem to predict their societies’ history
 Ex. 1: Viking mythology and conquests across Europe
 Ex. 2: Exodus story and Jewish diaspora with cycles of
entering a place as strangers in a strange land, helping
build it, being persecuted, and then leaving
Vital Symbolic Order as adaptive
 What makes VSO “vital” is its ability to change and
adapt, especially with increasing social complexity
 When they can’t change, religions become sclerotic,
making it more difficult for people in their societies to
adapt – Catholic Church and Islam today
 Changes in Egyptian religion – Old, Middle, New Kingdom
 Most profound period of such change are the Axial Age,
with the emergence of Western monotheism, Buddhism,
Confucianism, and Daoism, and Modernity
Last words
 Temptation to examine contemporary VSO – a
combination of Science, Capitalism, and Nationalism
 We see the mythology spun out on TV, in movies, and on
the Internet, with rituals such as elections, government
events, and sports
 Your feedback: Does this seem like an approach worth
following?
 If it is, I promise to come back in two years with an indepth look at our Sci-Cap-Nat VSO!