Another theme presented in The Faith Instinct is that religions evolve from predecessors, somewhat as languages do, and that therefore all religions are likely to be connected through a common tree of descent. Is this plausible, and if so does it matter?
Nicholas Wade
The Faith Instinct, Before the Dawn
Both 1 and 2 are quite reasonable, although I have never previously made the connection between religion and music.
As to Question 3, any historical examination of religion will certainly lead to the conclusion that all religions are derivative of another religion, at least to a somewhat significant degree (and with its own unique additions).
Whether a common tree of descent is plausible creates some difficulties. More likely is the notion of a common neural wiring among humans that predisposes to the development of religion. (Although that may be saying the same thing in different words).
unlike steve, i have chosen to give each question its own reply.
so in answer to this, i need to make clear that there is only religion not religions.
what we term religions are only codified aggregates of behaviour, which we substitute for religion and superstitiously claim to be religious.
you are however closer to the mark when you claim: “religions evolve from predecessors, somewhat as languages do…”
however the analogy is incorrect; even though the components are correct. in fact all languages evolve from the symbolic operations of religion.
and the consequent claim: “that therefore all religions are likely to be connected through a common tree of descent.” should read: “all languages are connected through a common process of development,the symbolic operations of religion.”
And as you then ask: “Is this plausible, and if so does it matter?” my answer is a definite affirmative.
how else would we evolve, as steve states: “a common neural wiring among humans.”
but his sequence needs to be reversed. religion predisposes to the development of language, not vice versa.
this has been demonstrated and can be verified scientifically, by analysing the development of “linguistic primes” through the symbolic operations of religion.
as you might guess: despite current populist attempts to free god from religion; my endeavours aim to liberate religion from god and from art and science as well.
this ‘eu-men’-ist tradition, may then help revalue human kind not only with kindness; but with the qualities long surrendered and lost to the divine, as being beyond human capacity.
Dear Mr. Wade:
Over the years, I have admired your writing in the NYT. I have a master’s degree in the history of medicine–w/a thesis topic on psychosomatic medicine (to which I brought a skeptical bent–even a now most unfashionable Marxist and materialist skepticism–not that I have not had my flings with mysticism and Jungianism, AND my mother was an Episcopal priest–but that’s neither here nor there–or is in that I’ve read far more patristic literature in Greek and Latin than the average run-of-the-mill American atheistically-inclined American 60 y.o. + female–certrainly more than my Church of God preacher cousin, who is currently on assignment in n.e. Scotland).
I’m not wanting to call your motives or deepest beliefs into question, but with your Templeton Fdtn. supported book, I find it hard to parse through what it is you yourself do actually believe (I admit to not having read your book in entirety–not having the money to buy books). But I don’t know, I don’t know. There’s something strikes me wrong in the book’s whole tone, the whole argument, the whole approach. Of course, evolution and religion as inter-related. How can it be otherwise? And–well, what is the story of that mass cannibalism of several thousand years ago out of Germany that’s been in the news head lines past week (12/10/2009)? What I perceive you as overlooking is the extreme violence of the religious against nonbelievers or other believers–the infamous canard the irreligious always use, “religion is the cause of all wars,” which I don’t happen to believe, myself. Those who didn’t believe got wiped out–the genes of the believers were ruthlessly selected for–and yet skepticism has persisted. On the same token, the genes for violence towards others were being selected along w/genes for cringing shut-up-and-be-quiet-and-go-along (or what some people call cooperation and altruism). In other words, that sword cuts two ways.
How did Elizabeth Smart survive her captor or Jaycee Dugard? How do Afghani women survive Talibani men? How have the less powerful always survived the ruthless and the wantonly violence-prone? They shut up and laid low. What is the foundational myth of Western civilization? The Rape of Europa. See the obverse side of the two Euro coin.
Why is it the male of the species somehow seem to see civilization a whole hell of a lot more benign than what really has happpened? Even in the light of current events?
Quite frankly, I don’t see why any one wants to take to heart all the iconography of murdered gods as paramount. My studies of the religions of the Caucaus and trans-Caucaus regions leaves me quaking in my boots when I think of these being the domnant scripts for the 20th (as it was all across what was the USSR and its sphere of influence) and the 21st centuries (as it seems it so far has and will be along the cratered edges of the USSR).
“Social cohesion is critical to both the ant and human systems. With ants, cohesion is secured by the shared chemical signals that regulate their behavior and the high degree of relatedness among members of a colony. Neither of these factors is compatible with human physiology. This is why ants don’t need religion but people do.”
http://www.nicholas-wade.com/the-faith-instinct/
The thing about socially evolved behaviours is that they can become maladaptive, and that’s what I think has happened to religion in the present age. It has become captive to itself, an idol (in the Nietszchean sense) and is an anti-creative, maladaptive force. And as such contributes to the ever expanding population, the resistance of political forces to rational solutions to dealing with poverty, global pollution caused by humans, substance abuse and addictions and fantasy abuse and addictions and all the various forms of human insanities, the worst of which is young angry men, either impoverished and unemployed in 3rd world countries or well-fed and educated and employed by the military-industrial complex in highly industrialized first world countries, with access to firearms and explosives.
The Q’s you ask for commentary, aren’t they, well, a bit elementary?
lisbeth jardine, m.a.
Comment [C]: Over the years, I have admired your writing in the NYT.
Reply [R]: being an australian and only infrequently in ny, i yesterday heard a radio interview and was interested in its relevance as a resource, for a valid alternative, to the atheist’s convention in melbourne next march.
[C] I have a master’s degree in the history of medicine–w/a thesis topic on psychosomatic medicine (to which I brought a skeptical bent–even a now most unfashionable Marxist and materialist skepticism–not that I have not had my flings with mysticism and Jungianism, AND my mother was an Episcopal priest–but that’s neither here nor there–or is in that I’ve read far more patristic literature in Greek and Latin than the average run-of-the-mill American atheistically-inclined American 60 y.o. + female–certainly more than my Church of God preacher cousin, who is currently on assignment in n.e. Scotland).
[R] ah, but did you vote for obama?
[C] I’m not wanting to call your motives or deepest beliefs into question, but with your Templeton Fdtn. supported book, I find it hard to parse through what it is you yourself do actually believe (I admit to not having read your book in entirety–not having the money to buy books). But I don’t know, I don’t know. There’s something strikes me wrong in the book’s whole tone, the whole argument, the whole approach. Of course, evolution and religion as inter-related. How can it be otherwise? And–well, what is the story of that mass cannibalism of several thousand years ago out of Germany that’s been in the news head lines past week (12/10/2009)? What I perceive you as overlooking is the extreme violence of the religious against nonbelievers or other believers–the infamous canard the irreligious always use, “religion is the cause of all wars,” which I don’t happen to believe, myself. Those who didn’t believe got wiped out–the genes of the believers were ruthlessly selected for–and yet skepticism has persisted. On the same token, the genes for violence towards others were being selected along w/genes for cringing shut-up-and-be-quiet-and-go-along (or what some people call cooperation and altruism). In other words, that sword cuts two ways.
[R] yes!
[C] How did Elizabeth Smart survive her captor or Jaycee Dugard? How do Afghani women survive Talibani men? How have the less powerful always survived the ruthless and the wantonly violence-prone? They shut up and laid low. What is the foundational myth of Western civilization? The Rape of Europa. See the obverse side of the two Euro coin. Why is it the male of the species somehow seem to see civilization a whole hell of a lot more benign than what really has happened? Even in the light of current events?
[R] what do you mean! so it’s not racial after all?
[C] Quite frankly, I don’t see why any one wants to take to heart all the iconography of murdered gods as paramount. My studies of the religions of the Caucasus and trans-Caucasus regions leaves me quaking in my boots when I think of these being the dominant scripts for the 20th (as it was all across what was the USSR and its sphere of influence) and the 21st centuries (as it seems it so far has and will be along the cratered edges of the USSR).
[R] i seem to remember a link to between these regions and iberia, from which the so-called ‘new world’ of the americas was received its first infusion of so-called ‘civilization’.
Quote: “Social cohesion is critical to both the ant and human systems. With ants, cohesion is secured by the shared chemical signals that regulate their behavior and the high degree of relatedness among members of a colony. Neither of these factors is compatible with human physiology. This is why ants don’t need religion but people do.”
http://www.nicholas-wade.com/the-faith-instinct/
[R] aha! but surely, since modern science confirms that weso readily share our genetic inheritance, we can not only both need “social cohesion”; but likewise, both share and ” need religion”?
[C] The thing about socially evolved behaviours is that they can become maladaptive, and that’s what I think has happened to religion in the present age.
[R] true, but not only the present age. when man first created words as nonsymbolic entities, the doubled 6-way connection, led to ‘neural- overload’ of our genetic inheritance and a consequent breakdown in the rational patterning of the ‘eu-men’ mind. pythagoras was not its first victim and certainly not its last.
[C] It has become captive to itself, an idol (in the Nietszchean sense) and is an anti-creative, maladaptive force.
[R]amen!
[C] And as such contributes to the ever expanding population, the resistance of political forces to rational solutions to dealing with poverty, global pollution caused by humans, substance abuse and addictions and fantasy abuse and addictions and all the various forms of human insanities, the worst of which is young angry men, either impoverished and unemployed in 3rd world countries or well-fed and educated and employed by the military-industrial complex in highly industrialized first world countries, with access to firearms and explosives.
[R] so you say! but please don’t forget: isn’t it all justified as being the ‘will of god’ !!!
[C] The Q’s you ask for commentary, aren’t they, well, a bit elementary?
[R] as you would expect, from someone who claims that ants don’t need religion or that there is no religion without god and so is supported by the templeton fdtn.
[C]lisbeth jardine, m.a.
[R] good for you. as you can see, i was born to be an m.a. also.
maikel annalee, your responses were clever; touche. Personally, I hate it when I come up with brilliant metaphors, allusions and euphemisms just before they go unappreciated, but at the same time, I feel that the language faculty – if used properly (without the patronizing/condescending rhetorical force) – can replace the pre-existing sentimental pseudo-arguments.
The book does a great job explaining the origins of religion from the behavioral evolution perspective, that which is similar to the structure of TREE (Trends in Ecology and Evolution).
Do you think it would be useful for future studies to utilize the minute details of behavior, like the parallels of rhetorical force and non-verbal communication with mirror neurons, and their contributions to such ‘defensive’ conversations e.g. the former i.e. emotional/defensive arguments (otherwise known as fallacies, or arguments out of fear, pity, authority, etc) that evolved to keep the instinctual behaviors juggernaut? I do, because from the Nietzschean perspective, ‘a subject for a great researcher (poet), would be god’s boredom on the 7th day of creation’; that was a single reference allusion with the insinuation that my reasoning does not properly follow i.e. my irrational mechanisms are instinctually set up to act in conformity with my moral and religious faculties, thereby inhibiting me of acquiring any ‘veritable’ rationality.
Do you think this common across other areas of study, like math, physics, epistemology, or any other realm that leaves the many unanswered questions as mere paradoxes? If so, how about psychology: should it be relegated as well?
My point: at present, every argument withstands criticism; maybe it’s an evolutionary stable strategy to leave these paradoxes as mere paradoxes. Baby mama (red queen) be runnin’ as fast as she can to stay in da hood (or in place), but obama’s bout to legalize weed yo, which is of course metaphorical to the moratoriam on stem-cell research. Once the answer does become apparent, credibility is going to be important, after all, there is a consensus on what had happened to the boy whom cried wolf.
It seems completely plausible. It matters because it helps us understand human nature and the human condition, and may help us to improve the polity.
It seems most obvious to me . If we all agree to the fact that we have all descended from a common group of people from Africa who moved to different parts of the world as Mr.Wade said in the other book, we should agree to this too.religious behavior might have have been possessed by these oldest group of humans expressed as worship of their elders,etc,and,even when they are split now,many similarities still the them together.
I cannot find this connection plausible at all. I only need observe my only family to note how all members, as adults split away from the faith ideas of our parents. To some extent, when faith has become all pervasive within any cultural construct, as in ultra orthodox communities, such a connection may appear to be the case but is only any illusion.
Hi Nicolas,
Just a quick thank you for your writing The Faith Instinct.
As an American Jew, turned ‘Messianic’ Born Again Christian, turned Agnostic, my journey has been quite interesting. Please feel free to contact me if you want to know about my own personal ‘evolution’.
Anyhow, your book rang very true, and I am so glad that there are authors like yourself, Harris, Dawkins, etc… who are offering a such interesting perspectives on ‘faith’.
Again, my thanks for your writing such an interesting book. I look forward to reading Before the Dawn.
Sincerely,
Gerry Nichol
Textile Importer
Hi Nicholas,
I believe it is possible, though it involves a slight simplification of cases where new religions are influenced by many existing religions in the society in which they arose. You cited Egyptian influences on early Christianity, which is difficult to plot on the traditional tree of religions where Christianity is an offshoot of Judaism.
That said, I’ve produced a navigable and pretty extensive tree of religions, located at http://www.religionstree.com . I’m hoping this is what you had in mind when you described the possibility of creating such a tree. Looking around I haven’t seen many examples of such a tree, especially not in academic works on comparative religion, which is why I wanted to create one. Do you think there’s a particular reason for this omission? It seems very strange to me.
Kind Regards, Stephen Aggett (student of literature and software engineer)
Dear Dr. Wade,
If we are to make sense scientifically of religion,its universality is the first thing that jumps out. No tribe, no people, no city-state throughout history lacked religion. Your question draws attention to this astonishing fact. Likening it to a family of languages sharing a common descent is heuristic.
In my judgment, you suggest an evolutionary process which links the ubiquity of religion to biology. We all share the same biology. Sail the wildest savage from Tierra del Fuego to England, and in no time at all he’s having tea with the Queen.
Widening the scope of your question: what invariant or invariants in hominin biology accounts for the universality of religion?
Frederick Kurth, M.D.
Probably applies to the majority of relgions, but Chinese ancestor worship and scientology (although originally a scam) don’t seem to fit a tree. Maybe a continuum with certain essential features.
The links between Islam, Christianity and Judaism will prove politically important some day, I hope.