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

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.

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.

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.