Unlike cumbersome and expensive methods of monitoring and punishing behaviour, religious belief promotes self-control.

religion has given human beings an evolutionary advantage by discouraging selfishness and promoting communal cooperation

My thought is that having a personal 'father' who can forgive your every sin before you die gives people sort of a free pass to pile up the sins with an eye toward 'forgiveness.'

Much better if they had to pay the piper while alive.

Just my humble opinion.

For those that know it's a scam, they think, "What a great scam!"

Harsh.

Trying to apply evolutionary biology to this kind of question is malpractice of the highest order.

Until his next paper tells of the link between female anatomy and male ribs.

If someone had a doctorate in astronomy, then wrote a paper saying the bible is right, the Sun orbits the Earth, I would advocate stripping him of said doctorate like Lance Armstrong was stripped of his titles.

10 High-Profile People Whose Degrees Were Revoked

These notable figures saw their degrees stripped for plagiarism or other crimes.

http://www.usnews.com/education/best-global-universities/articles/2012/05/02/10-high-profile-people-whose-degrees-were-revoked

His argument rests on several weak assumptions:

1)People likely to not be altruistic by nature are also likely to believe in God (in enough numbers to be significant).
2)The interpretation of God's demands (be good, not evil) is consistent both with itself and with humanist good. (i.e. Good as Johnson defines it.)
3)In a significant portion of the population likely to not be altruistic, belief is strong enough to impart a significant amount of certainty of God's punishments.
4)The time and energy society spends instilling fear (of God) could not be better used following another strategy to promote altruism.
5)Religion is not simultaneously promoting as much evil as the altruism it does create.

I could go on, but let's review some examples of above.
1 - I'll go ahead and grant #1, though it's by no means a given.
2 - Consider "Saint" Augustine. A famed Catholic Theologian. Also a torturer (of opposing non-Catholic Christian leaders to force them to convert). Augustine, as a bishop, believed in God, acted accordingly, and spread tremendous amounts of evil. He labeled it altruistic, comparing the torture to distasteful medicine needed to heal the sick. Healing people is altruistic, as was Augustine in his mind. But this is inconsistent with humanist good, unless Johnson is fond of torture for some reason. So in this case, there is a pressure to be altruistic from religious belief, but encouraging altruistic behavior as defined by Catholicism backfires from a non-Catholic perspective (which is a vast majority of people in all eras).
3 - We'll stick with Augustine. He was a bit of a wild child, not very altruistic. Despite believing in a few versions of God, promise of punishment was not a visceral truth, and thus not successful in promoting altruistic behavior.
4 - Girl Scouts. Way, WAY better than girls camp/religious instruction in Mormon churches. Both for promoting personal growth and altruistic behavior. Religious instruction means less Girl Scouts instruction, reducing altruistic behavior even if promoting fear of a God does produce a lesser altruistic impulse.
5 - Fear and Shame is promoted by religion. Even if you grant it's ability to inspire altruism, you must also take into account increased suicide rates for transgender people, for example.

Long story short, Johnson's argument is full of holes. It makes sense from an evolutionary perspective, and thus Johnson's, only if you assume there are lots of inherently not-altruistic people being affected by religion or not being affected by religion WITHOUT otherwise changing that person's life. But that model cannot take into account the complexity of human nature or how societies are constructed, and Johnson comes up with a crappy understanding.

This is yet another example of how science is a tremendously shitty way to understand problems that are fundamentally part of the humanities. Johnson has fallen afoul of assuming he can reduce the variables in the thought experiment. But people don't work that way. Worse, he's failing to understand basic philosophy of science. Science only applies when you can perform repeatable experiments. That's not the case here. Leave alone his conclusion, his approach was doomed to fail from the beginning.

Dawkins is also a writer that engages in repeated fail for the same reason. Assuming that science is the right way to come up with answers to questions science is not designed to be able to answer.

Edit: for the record, I refer to myself as agnostic in terms of religion (though not philosophy). Most other people would define me as atheist.

Both of those reviews contain exactly the kind of flawed thinking I criticized Johnson for.

Dominic Jonson (Evolution Institute review) is an professor of international relations talking about psychology. And doing it badly, by assuming game theory directly applies. It's another example of assuming the techniques of your competency (in this case international relations) are good for solving problems your competency is NOT designed to solve.

I didn't catch the author for the review in The Economist. But that author assumes that Evolutionary Biology is the best possible discipline to solve the question "Why do people believe in God?" In the process, they adopt several teleological arguments (extrapolating purpose/design from function). Example of how this becomes fail: an alien anthropologist looks through their telescope at the Earth on a hot day. It sees a woman fanning herself with a pamphlet she got at the doctor's office. The Alien anthropologist extrapolates purpose from function and writes an article about how humans design folded paper for use as cooling devices.

Despite a caveat, The Economist's author assumes that organized religion causes successful cultures because large, powerful political or ethnic groups generally exhibit organized religion. This is taking available evidence WAY too far. Anyone trained in the Humanities worth their salt will immediately recognize that we can't assume that organized religion causes large, powerful political or ethnic groups. But scientists convince themselves that enough examples of this happening is "confirmation" of their hypothesis. That would work if it's a repeatable experiment you can run multiple times, altering variables, the way science is supposed to work.

But multiple examples in history are NOT THE SAME as multiple results from a properly designed scientific experiment. Without being able to design and repeat an experiment, we can't verify if high social organization or the large size of a polity tend to establish organized religions, not the other way around (that's the argument I would make - something for another day). Alternatively, you could challenge the assumption that large, powerful societies are an indication of successful humanity (an assumption necessary to define evolutionary advantage as Dominic Johnson has). You could say that there are large, powerful societies because they destroy and assimilate lots of smaller societies, potentially reducing human success (however you define that) overall. That would make it a bad evolutionary strategy to create large and powerful societies, which is an assumption necessary to the work of Dominic Johnson and the writing of The Economist reviewer.

Those reviews are just further evidence that people foolish enough to think that the scientific method is the best approach to all problems of knowledge get suckered into making the same errors over and over again. Humanities are the humanities instead of sciences because they are disciplines that deal with problems of knowledge that the scientific method simply doesn't apply to, not because scholars in the humanities are just old-fashioned and refuse to use the scientific method. The author of the book and the author of the review in The Economist are another pair of scientists suckered into making mistakes by their own ignorance of the fundamentals of their discipline - including their discipline's limitations.

The Alien anthropologist extrapolates purpose from function and writes an article about how humans design folded paper for use as cooling devices.

Come to think of it, in most doctor's offices I'd prefer if they passed those out instead of pamphlets planted there by drug company reps.

Assuming all the benefits of religion outweigh all the detriments is pretty ridiculous to begin with because it's not as if the detriments are all that hard to point out. This is further complicated by trying to envision a model for early civilizations that didn't include religion. If I were to put much thought into that, it's pretty hard to come up with a model that wouldn't be inherently more democratic and decentralized.

If one assumes the idea of an invisible sky daddy is effective for manipulating people into being unselfish, it's just not that much different to assume you can similarly manipulate them into doing anything else selflessly like dying for the interests of someone else or slavery for a conveniently unverifiable promise of reward.

who flew those planes into the World Trade Center sure exercised self-control. If they'd been atheists, this asshole would probably have expected them to set off a nuclear bomb in Manhattan.

I'm saying that neither is presenting evidence sufficient to reach a conclusion with a significant degree of certainty. (Both are pissing into the wind with random factoids and calling it good.)

As opposed to internet comments.

Peer-reviewed work is accepted or rejected for publication based on the evaluation of the author's methodology by others in the field. Yes, reviews were written about Dominic Johnson's book, by educated scholars. But they were not written with the responsibility to endorse Johnson's professional practices. Nor were those written by others in Johnson's professional field. You're not a peer just because you have a graduate degree. If that's the case, I'd count as Dominic Johnson's peer (I'm a historian). Peer in terms of "peer-reviewed" needs to be someone trained in the discipline applicable to the material being reviewed.

Someone trained in International Relations writing a review of a biologist writing a book about sociology and/or religious studies is not peer review.

Now if portions of the book were published in a peer-reviewed journal (Social Evolution and History, Evolution and Human Behavior, or some other relevant journal) before being remade into a book, then I'd be wrong and we'd be close enough to call the book peer-reviewed.

Interesting how he more-or-less completely switches his research focus in 2004, when he's freed of the constraints of his doctoral program.

do good because they think they have a god looking over their shoulders.

organism behavior.

Dawkin's basic premise is that genes, or, probably more correctly, the genome of each organism is "selfish" in so far as each evolved to encourage they they are reproduced as much as possible. The best way to do that is to ensure the reproductive success of the organism that expresses the traits of that genome. But, and this is important, this is also dependent on the environment and strategies of that genome and its resulting organism and groups of related organisms. In practice, this is NOT to be misconstrued or making the assumption that humans are supposed to be selfish to ensure the best reproductive success.

On the contrary, a "selfish gene", in a highly social animal such as humans would encourage the development of altruistic behaviors as the sure fire way to have the best reproductive success. Hell, even Dawkins himself had an entire TV special talking about "selecting for kindness" and how humans are progressively becoming more kind over time in general due to possible sexual selection pressures, at least, that's the hypothesis.

Last edited Sun Apr 3, 2016, 12:33 PM - Edit history (1)

that God is nothing more than an imaginary sky-daddy who is a stern disciplinarian, and religion is nothing more than internalizing instinctu8al fear of punishment.

I don't completely agree with the author. And the reviewers misreading of "the Selfish Gene" is laughable (come on, he is using Skilling to summerize the book!)
But that religion is an evolutionary trait, and not because of some supernatural agency revealing itself is the most obvious explanation.

Does it mean you are glad I know what you like?

You're blurring two independent clauses.

though I am glad you like the idea of religion being an evolutionary trait. Unless you don't like that idea, in which case I am not sure why you like the author?

Though like belief, what you like has no bearing on the facts of religion as a product, or byproduct of human evolution.

Or any God or Godlike entity.

to realize murder, robbery and rape are wrong without religion? Rhetoric questions aside, I believe that control of the "masses" was something that evolved along with the biological brain. I feel that when human society evolved into the concept of tribes the obvious idea of leadership evolved along with it. If a leader would be challenged, the concept of him or her being led by a higher unseen intelect is an attractive and easy "go to" idea. If that leader failed in an endeavor he could simple say that the god or gods were angry and needed appeasement. Another control device. 'The Sun will not rise without meditation or prayer', a psychological device of fear. Kings were considered divine. That made them I invulnerable to criticism. At least and until the proverbial pitchforked ladened crowd at the gates showed up.

Fear is a powerful and convincing weapon of control.

From the description at Amazon:

you did. One believes in things because one thinks they're true.

After all, believing in Father Christmas might also make one behave better, but few people over about 8 do so.

Moreover:

(1) Believing in God does not necessarily make people behave better. It may possibly make good people behave even better, but equally it may make bad people behave even worse (ISIS being a current extreme example). People tend to use their religion in the service of their existing moral attitudes.

(2) I suspect that the frequency of religious belief in humans may not have a strong advantage in itself, but may be a consequence of the human tendency to seek explanations and causes for everything, which does have a number of advantages. I may be wrong - but so may anyone else offering an evolutionary explanation; none of us were present when religion started to develop in humans.

The evolutionary advantage may not be in belief, but in the search for causes, which is important in religion, but also in many forms of learning and decision-making.

If anythibk, it likely distills underlying personality traits.

If you believe in a kind, gentle and loving God then that belief will permeate your behavior, if you believe in a vengeful, angry and smiting God then that too will influence your behavior in a different direction.

To a big extent religion is just a fancy Rorschach test, most people take away from it what fits their personality in the first place.

Neither of which has anything to do with how an individual reacts to a system of belief or nonbelief.

If you believe "belief or nonbelief does not make one act better or worse," that takes away the social advantage of a punishing God. The whole point of Johnson's book, a big part of what I criticized so heavily, is that belief makes people act better and therefore provides a social advantage.

The author is describing evolutionary advantage, advantage to a species.

That doesn't carry down to how particular individuals act in their own small dot in the evolutionary process.

But if no one's behavior is affected by belief, if everyone's true personality is going to be the same, just described in different terms based on belief, then there's no advantage to a species or society. A significant percentage of people HAVE to have their actions changed by belief in order for there to be advantage to a society or species.

this area.

Same problem. She spends nearly all effort and time, whenever the subject of religion comes up, defending religion, and attacking atheists/atheism.

Johnson might be a victim of his own work. Have a look at another book he wrote: "Adaptive Politics: The Strategic Advantages of Psychological Biases."

The idea that 'god is watching' makes people behave better, is a unfounded psychological bias.
He appears to base it on a single study; supernatural punishment as a positive impact on cooperation
(Johnson and Kruger 2004).
http://dominicdpjohnson.com/publications/articles.html


I bet you'll hate this other one he wrote.
Johnson, DDP, Price, ME & Van Vugt, M (2013). Darwin's invisible hand: Market competition,
evolution and the firm. Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization 90: S128-S140.

The title was something with "punishing gods".

It was a psychological paper. The scientists found that people who believe that a "punishing god" is watching their actions behave in a less selfish way.




But I have to add a caveat: You can replace the "punishing god" of the "religion" with any other sufficiently scary authority-figure.
There were people who steadfastly believed in the ideals of the Third Reich and there are still people who steadfastly believe in the ideals of communism.
The fighters of ISIS pride themselves in being "slaves of Allah".
They sacrifice themselves for the Greater Good.