One of the stumbling blocks of anti-theistic arguing is that any theist can point to any place on the globe and say "Here, in this place, they believe in some kind of God(s)" without any real fear of being wrong. Logic be damned - everybody has a God, how can they all be wrong..?Everybody has heard of Tony the Tiger™ the loveable stripey tiger advertizing Kellogs Frosties. Does this 'having heard of him' require his existance..? Obviously not. But, if he doesn't exist, why has everyone heard of him..? Because he's associated with a rather scrummy breakfast cereal, chok-full of vitamins and frosty goodness.
Most people have eaten of Tony, and found him to be good.
But you don't buy Tony for Tony, you buy it for the benefits of the cereal inside, even if it's Tony's face you see when you think of the brand.
Obviously God and Religion are not very crunchy, and do not fit easily into a bowl at the breakfast table, but might theism and cereal-ism have more in common than meets the eye..?
Might the simple belief in a God, and obedience to the strictures of the religion involved, be benefcial in itself, without there actually needing to be anything concrete involved..? Let us see.
The purely motivational benefits of believing in an afterlife have been discussed before, however I put it to you that religions have become so widespread because societies believing in them automatically breed a more competitive group of humans.
It does this in three ways.
1) Religions usually in some way regulate reproduction and the family unit by ratifying some kind of marriage ceremony. In christianity - 1-1 - in Islam 1-4 (if the man is able to support all his wives equally). I can't think of a religion that does not stipulate limits on sexulaity. Sex outside of marriage is frowned upon to the extent of execution in some cases.
The effect of this is to stabilize the family unit and further ensure that the child recieves attention from its mother and, in most cases, father. In rats, offspring which do not recieve adequate attention from their mothers in the form of licking, closeness etc. - rat-love - grow up stupid. Intimacy inhibits methylation (ie the switching off) of gene-sequences which promote brain growth.
In short - the more intimacy, the more intelligence.
ie: Religion, by encouraging a stable family unit, and preventing oportunistic coupling, increases the intelligence of its believers.
2) Most religions go to various lengths to regulate the diets of their adherents. Bans on various foods - pork and alcohol for example in Islam - Kosher meats in Jewish Orthodoxy etc. Sometimes periods of fasting, Ramazan, Lent are involved. Abstinence and/or moderation. Fish on fridays etc. Big dinner on sundays; hand outs for the poor.
A poor diet and the overindulgence in 'vices' such as alcohol causes increases the methylation of genomic sites varying from genes which produce anti-cancer effects, effectively shutting down the body's protection, to areas of the genome dealing with the immune-system and cell-repair, shortening life and increasing vunerability to disease.
A poor diet in early pregnancy can switch the phenotype of the child produced to a thrifty-metabolism making said child prone to type II diabetes, obesity, and heart disease.
ie: religion, by influencing dietry habits, increases both the fitness of adult members and the phenotype of their children.
3) Any follower of Religion would probably say that with it they feel a little more cheerful about the future knowing that death is not the end of the deal. And a kinship of belief add friends to your social circle and avenues of support you'd never have had without.
Religions have a high 'happiness' value, when compared to say, fatalism, or nihlism. Why is this a factor..?
Because it would seem that women's instinctive perception of a society's future is important.
After 9/11, a strange thing happened in Calafornia - a dramatic spike in spontaneous late-term miscarriages. Of boys. Only boys.
We don't really know why, but after supremely society-wide stressful events - the same thing happened in the 1990's in Germany in the aftermath of the reunification - the sex ratio of new births suddenly skews toward a female bias.
Same thing was recorded in the 90's after the Hanshin earthquake in Kobe, Japan and in Slovenia after the 10-day war during the Balkan conflicts.
The reverse happens in periods after threats have ended and everyone is filled with joie-de-vivre. After the ends of both WWI and WWII birth rates skewed back in favour of males.
In short good times mean more boys, bad times more girls.
One psych-test, questioning 600 mother in Gloustershire, England correlated that women who believed "they would live to a fine old age" were statistically more likely to have male children.
It would seem feeling happier about the future manifests itself in a skew toward males in the sex-ratios of new-borns.
What impact would this have upon society..?
Males are more competitive than females. If the direct method of fighting to the death is prohibited this leads to a lot of economic showing off in the form increased productivity, creativity and hardwork on the parts of the competing males - women being a materialistic lot on the whole.
ie: religion by proxy of sex-ratio skewing, increases the productivity of a society.
A surplus of males is useful in times of war, on the one hand you have more available warriors, and on the other, when they are all dead, you still have some guys left over to knock up the women and rebuild the population.
ie: religion by proxy of sex-ratio skewing, increases the aggressive capabilty of a society.
There are probably other avenues of epigeneticimpact religion can have on a host society as yet undicovered - the field is still relatively new.
But perhaps I have been able to illustrate then that religion, and a belief in God, just like eating a bowl of Frosties™, can have great physical benefit without the actual need for a Tony.
Er... I mean, a God.
Just to be completely transparant:
I assert that the actual physical and reproductive benefits derived from religious belief, with or without God, coupled with the purely social and motivational effects such a belief set lends its hosts - gives religious societies a competitive edge over irreligous societies, to the extent that no such societies exist in any dominant form today.
ie: It is no coincidence that belief in God covers the map, it was always going to be that way.
And it still does not give any credence to the existance of the divine.
6 comments:
I'm a rather devout follower of your works, and most of the time I whole heartedly agree with you, or at least don't disagree with you. However, this one perturbed me enough to cajole me to respond with a (rather lengthy) comment. Here goes.
Your first point - that religion regulates reproduction and and the family unit by promoting the nuclear family and married parents, insuring children get enough love and attention- I agree with. Kind of.
But your second point urks me. The idea that religious restrictions put on food and alcohol actually increases a culture's chances of survival and decreases their vulnerablity to disease is kind of asanine, you must admit. Let's take a look at what items the old testament takes off the menu for desert dwelling christians.
-Leviticus 11.1-8 You may eat any land animal that has divided hoofs and that also chews the cud, but you must not eat camels, rock badgers, or rabbits. These must be considered unclean for they chew the cud but do not have divided hoofs. Do not eat pigs. They must be considered unclean for they have divided hoofs but do not chew the cud.
-Leviticus 11.9-12 You may eat any kind of fish that has fins and scales, but anything living in the water that does not have fins and scales must not be eaten. You must not eat them or even touch their dead bodies. You must not eat anything that lives in the water and does not have fins and scales.
Leviticus 11.13-19 You must not eat any of the following birds: eagles, owls, hawks, falcons, buzzards, vultures, crows, ostriches, seagulls, storks, herons, pelicans, cormorants, hoopoes, or bats.
Leviticus 11.20,21 All winged insects are unclean, except those that hop.
It seems to me that religious diet restrictions could drastically limit the possible food resources people of that faith had access to. Rabbits, catfish and winged insects would be nice every once in a while.
Moreover, your argument that religion makes people happy, therefore keeping the male population booming because happy women have boys is flawed.
You use for an example the fact that after 9-11 many women miscarried their boys because, I assume, the stress from that event triggered a hormonal change. What you failed to mention was that 9-11 was carried out to pursue religious objectives. Were it not for religion, 9-11 would not have happened.
Flip through your college history books and note how many wars have been waged in the name of religious ideologies. Let's make a rough estimate of how many traumatizing events have happened in the name of religion since, say, 1000 BC. We're talking billions. That's with a big, fat, tongue-speaking, tithe-offering, three-times-a-day praying, capital B. All for their personal opinion of how best to enjoy that bowl of Kellogg's Frosties. If traumatic events tip the scales for male/female ratios, religion offers more trauma than consolation.
In conclusion, I think, as you said in your post, that the fact that every geographic area on the globe has their own version of God or religion is a good indicator that societies thrive on religion. I'm certain they do. But there's no case to be made that they thrive more with religion than without.
Whoo, long one.
Let me think, and I'll get back to you. Or if you like - debate it with me yourself on malicious intellect - There's a link I think in the sidebar. Either way, I'll be back. ;)
Tab.
Hey Strangeloop, I asked a couple of my friends to give opinions:
Friend number one said:
There is only one response to his erroneous conclusion, isn't there?
Try, "I'm sorry, the only history we have for the world shows that societies have thrived, at least up to the modern times, because of religion."
That religion's sway is ebbing in the face of mounting factual evidence may also be the final epitaph for humanity.
And friend number 2 said:
I actually disagree with the first point but agree with the second. Ultimately they are the same and that is that religion adapts to local conditions. Amongst nomadic herders in the Levant, monogamy makes a great deal of sense because, well, there is a potential shortage of women otherwise given the small overall population (and unattached males tend to pursue violent approaches to solving this problem) as well as the overall poverty that is associated with the nomadic lifestyle. Same deal with the proscriptions on sodomy (non-reproductive sex) -- if the population is already so small as to be dangerous, it makes sense to encourage as much reproduction as possible. Religions that developed under more urbanized conditions tend to be more permissive on polygamy and homosexuality (as a classic example of non-reproductive sex). Likewise, religions from more urbanized areas tend to focus less on conservation of resources and more on distribution of resources. Again, this makes sense since urbanization demands a certain excess of basic goods and so it is less starvation of the group as a whole but rather more strain on the group as a whole that needs to be managed.
WRT Abrahamic proscriptions outlined in Leviticus, it is worth remember that that particular text developed during the transition from nomadic herders to civilized Mediterraneans. So, as one would expect from both a transitional and syncretic text like this, it contains a hodge-podge of elements from both camps. There are still all the old proscriptions that have to be dutifully recorded (because they come from GOD!) as well as a series of new proscriptions.
Like the Confucii, the Levitici are reactionaries trying to preserve the old order in the face of the new order. The authors of Leviticus accomplished this by stapling a few new prohibitions on top of the old as opposed to trying to reinterpret the old in light of the new.
Stop the Press
I love my balcony. I always come up with good ideas when I'm sitting on it...
Okay - so we always talk about how crappy religions are, and how much trouble they cause right..?
We also, however many benefits we posit they bring to a society, end up saying religion X causes more damage overall. Then we wonder whytf, everybody has them.
The benefits, however big/small/other do not matter. It only matters that they are there, and apply only to the group believing in X religion.
Let's say, arbitrarily, that religion X adds 7 units to a host society (benefit), but subtracts 10 units (cost). An overall loss of 3 units. It's still crazy.
However, there is an important point of difference between the 7 and the 10.
The added 7 units applies almost exclusively to the host society. However, the subtracted 10 units does not. That cost gets spread around - crusades, witch hunts, jihad, terrorism - whatever. ie: it effects not only the host group, but all the other groups around them too.
So, say there is a region somewhere occupied by 6 distinct groups. All of them start with 50 units.
3 groups catch a bad case of religion. All of them benefit by 7 units, but suffer 10 units penalty.
They each also cause a loss of 10 units from all of their neighbours.
3x10=30.
1R = 50+7-30=27
2R = 50+7-30=27 Religious groups
3R = 50+7-30=27
4A = 100-30=20
5A = 100-30=20 Irreligious groups
6A = 100-30=20
ie. When one tribe invents religion, it's best to climb onto the bandwagon and make up one of your own.
So, it doesn't matter about the cost/benefit ratios of religions, only that the benefits stay mainly within the host group, and the penalties are broadcast globally.
I thank you.
Nice post and this enter helped me alot in my college assignement. Thanks you for your information.
No probs, glad to have proven useful.
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