Comments on: Reader Comments

By: Charles W. Estus, Sr.

Charles W. Estus, Sr. — Mon, 21 Feb 2011 18:30:46 +0000

I was delighted with this work. It confirms, from a socio-biological perspective, what religionists have said for some time (see for example Lewis’ MERE CHRISTIANITY). As a student of religious behavior from a sociological perspective, Durkheim’s work has always been central for me. That is because his distinction between the sacred and the profane seemed to describe many “sacred making” rituals outside the more traditional contexts, e.g., creating small treasures by making them untouchable, sacralizing relationships, etc. It seemed to me, then, that the natural – supernatural distinction was the result more of natural philosophy and modern science in the west, hence not as useful as Durkheim’s distinction in speaking of more “primitive” societies. Your conscious choice of the natural-supernatural dichotomy in describing emerging religious behavior among hunter-gatherers is quite fascinating especially since you attribute the sacred-profane dichotomy to more modern philosophy and science. None-the-less your work is a real contribution to bringing a profound dimension of the human experience under the evolutionist’s tent. Thank you!

By: Guy Dauncey

Guy Dauncey — Fri, 21 Jan 2011 20:30:37 +0000

Dear Nicholas,
I’ve just finished Before the Dawn, and you have done a truly masterful job. This should be the first book read in every history course!

It opened my eyes to a number of new perceptions, and caused me to ditch some ideas I had been holding.

In particular, your insights on warfare are really important, since they challenge the widespread belief that modern humans are far more warlike than early humans. If you were to take this theme, and explore it in more detail, I think it would create quite a stir. As things stand, it is lost in among so many other important themes that your book raises.

This insight gives us good reason for being hopeful that humans could eliminate all warfare, and channel the alpha male dawn-raiding instinct into sport, as we are doing so well.

I co-authored the book “Enough Blood Shed: 101 Solutions to Terror, War and Violence”, and I know how much effort there is going into the work to end warfare.

… in case you were wondering what to write next!!

With much appreciation,
Guy Dauncey,
Victoria, Canada.

By: barry jaggers

barry jaggers — Wed, 19 Jan 2011 17:17:58 +0000

Excellent article on Chaser in the IHT today, but Etonians, like border collies, should be capable of distinguishing between common and Proper nouns!

yours

barry

By: Don LIston

Don LIston — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 05:32:57 +0000

I didn’t realize that this was for comments on “The Faith Instinct” which I have not read.
I wanted to ask you about the time line in “Before the Dawn” and whether or not you established the possibility of affects of the receding glaciers that allowed the humans to move progressivly north from the “Near East?”
The time between 50,000 years, more or less when the foxP2forkhead mutation occurred and the 5,000 year marker seems to have been a time when we added written language in the form of ice cave drawings all over the world. The ones that depicted animals found in the caves in France and Spain suggest that we gained this ability fairly early on. If homo sapiens was moving toward the greener pastures opened up from melting of glaciers it would seem that the Spanish caves would have older drawings than the French caves.
Was the geological aspects considered in the traking of language development through this period?

By: John Bernhart

John Bernhart — Wed, 17 Nov 2010 04:46:01 +0000

In Before the Dawn, you refer several times to a new version of the ASPM gene that occurred 6,000 years ago in Caucasians. Could this be connected to the fact that within a few hundred years of this development, both writing and the great civilizations of the Middle East appeared relatively suddenly, historically speaking? As I read the book, I kept waiting for you to develop this connection, yet you neither did so nor explained why this connection might not be valid. What do you think?

By: Kurtis Fechtmeyer

Kurtis Fechtmeyer — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 03:06:05 +0000

It seems to me that groupthink and conformity (if that is as core to religion as you seem to indicate) might have as many mal-adaptive traits as pro-adaptive ones — witness leaders driving entire conformist societies toward extinction. In reading your book, Michael Polanyi came to mind. Could the instinct to imagine the unknowable be more adaptive as an individual knowledge system than as a group cohesion technique? Would other group cohesion techniques be more adaptive than religion? Edwin Friedman also comes to mind in his review of evolutionary basis of successful leadership. In other words, is the cohesion of the group the adaptive trait or the quality of the leadership of that group? I’m not so sure the tension between alpha and egalitarian has been put neatly to bed.

In any event, would appreciate your impressions on my foray in to reputation theory: blog.cleangovernmentnow.org (2nd posting down)

By: Roger Kruger

Roger Kruger — Tue, 14 Sep 2010 18:53:07 +0000

As I have been in the midst of writing a book tentatively entitled Is Church Necessary: Believing and Belonging in an Age of Spiritual Individualism, I found much in your book that was insightful and helpful.

Just a couple of comments:

In your discussion of whether or not religious phenomena result from genetics or culture and whether it is adapative or non-adaptive, you may find it useful to explore what psychologists call “transitional objects”–the developmental stage that nearly all children go through wherein they development an attachment to dolls or imaginery friends. I believe you may find far more forceful arguments for a genetic source for a religious instinct that is later shaped by culture than those you marshalled in your book (which primarily presumed that belief in supernatural deities derived from dreams and trance states).

Your arguments in Chapter Six wherein you detailed examples of the enthusiastic aspects of religion challenging the more staid later stages of religious development seemed contradictory to your previous argument. Previously you argued that religious dance reinforced a sense of unity. The examples you cite of religious enthusiasm where almost entirely examples of individualistic expressions of religion and a rebellion against religious uniformity.

By: Ananta

Ananta — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 09:20:57 +0000

I am interested to read your book “Before the dawn”. How would I get a copy?

By: Carol Lee Flinders

Carol Lee Flinders — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 04:51:40 +0000

I’ve found The Faith Instinct fascinating for many reasons, but I particularly enjoyed Chapter 5 on Ancestral Religions.
I believe the author would like to know about a ceremony performed every two years in Northern California called Jump Dance. It will be taking place this year in fact, in a village near the Klamath River, over ten days following September’s full moon, beginning September 24, bringing together, as always, the members of the Yurok and Hupa tribes, who’ve lived adjacent to one another for thousands of years.
The ceremony bears a great resemblance to the ones you’ve described. Fasting, drumming, keeping vigil, singing and dancing with mounting intensity, the participants “fix the world,” rebalancing it and resolving all of their own conflicts in the process. For a riveting description of the 1990 Jump Dance, see Thomas Buckley’s article “Renewal as Discourse and Discourse as Renewal in Native Northwestern California,” published in Native Religions and Cultures of North America: Anthropology of the Sacred, edited by Lawrence E. Sullivan (New York and London: Continuum, 2000),33.
Oh yes, and in possible support of the idea that ceremonies like this strengthen group cohesion and thus give the group itself an adaptive edge, the Yuroks number 5600 members, making them the biggest surviving California tribe.
Thank you for a balanced, insightful, and original contribution.

By: Sylvia F. Duncan

Sylvia F. Duncan — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 06:05:09 +0000

Of all the thousands of books that I have read, this is the first time that I have sent a note off to the author thanking him for writting his book. In this case, The Faith Instinct, may also be the most meaningful (and timely) explanation of the science behind what we are experiencing today as a Western culture. In the final chapter Nicholas Wade left just enough wiggle room to accommodate God or The Universe or Whomever seems to be guiding our evolution.