As followup to my recent post concerning religion and government and recent discussions about religion as an evolutionary trait, the thought occurred to be that the development of religion amoung human societies is more accurately understood as what Stephen Jay Gould describes as a Spandrel.
From Wikipedia:
Spandrel (biology) - In evolutionary biology, a spandrel is a phenotypic trait that is a byproduct of the evolution of some other characteristic, rather than a direct product of adaptive selection. Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Lewontin brought the term into biology in their 1979 paper "The Spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian Paradigm: A Critique of the Adaptationist Programme".[1] Adaptationism is a point of view that sees most organismal traits as adaptive products of natural selection. Gould and Lewontin sought to temper what they saw as adaptationist bias by promoting a more structuralist view of evolution.
[en.m.wikipedia.org]
The adaptation within our human species was our intellect, our ability to find patterns (at times, even when they don't exist), and our urge or drive to understand and explain these patterns as well as to use our understanding to increase our ability to survive, and to pass on this knowledge to subsequent generations so they too carry on the learned survival patterns to live and reproduce. That these aspects of adaptation became encompassed as "religion" is the side effect rather than that religion was inevitable as the evolutionary advantage itself.
Other aspects of what we find within religions such as codes enhancing cooperation with and tolerance of one another may also be included, but I don't see that any of these aspects removes the development of religion from being a biological spandrel to being the primary adaptive trait. The facts as I see them are that the broader classification of religious beliefs includes wide varieties of beliefs and types of belief systems which serves the purposes of understanding our world and applying this understanding to enhance survivability. This variety of beliefs and belief systems would be the evidence of religion being a spandrel of other traits and not the adaptive trait. Convergent evolution tends to provide trait which are closely similar and not with wide variations. These adaptive traits could also exist in non-religious systems (philosophical or even scientific or pseudoscientific systems) equally as well as within a religious one again providing evidence that religion is a spandrel.
I thought someone had mentioned Gould's concept of Biological Spandrels in earlier discussions, but a search of the site on this term didn't turn up anything.
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I heard it phrased as most modern religions were dreamed up by unbathed, bronze age goat herders who had no idea where the sun went at night.
BufftonBeotch
Level 8
Feb 8, 2022
2
Skado's latest spruiking of god botherer academia included reference to several forms of evolutionary religiosity including the adaptive, the by product, and a new one to bolster their publish or be damned cred.
waitingforgodo
Level 8
Feb 7, 2022
1
institutional
@skado mmm ino.
The idea that religions are an evolutionary trait is pure garbage. Religions came into being as a coping mechanism for humans with little knowledge or developed reasoning to cope with the fact that there was so much that they did not understand, or control. Humans created omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent gods to which they attributed the best and idealized human traits . In so doing, they debased ad devalued humanity itself. In so doing they limited and damaged the human evolutionary process.
wordywalt
Level 9
Feb 7, 2022
3
I believe this is essentially what I was saying. The evolutionary traits are our intellect, our ability to recognise and understand patterns, our ability to communicate our concepts to one another, etc. The development of religions is a side effect - a spandrel - resulting from these abilities. I said that the beliefs that develop are not necessarily religious in nature but can develop into a philosophical system or something else.
Religious systems vary widely. Dieties of some religious systems such as the Greeks and Romans were flawed just as humans are. These gods may have had great power but were not all knowing. Prometheus was bound and his liver eaten daily proving they were not all powerful, and I believe Saturn was the father of most of the Greek Gods who was killed by his son Zeus. In other systems, ancestors are worshipped. I suggested that the variety between these belief systems was evidence that they were a spandrel and not the inherited traits.
Hi, Walt. Just curious... is there a specific branch of science that you know of that espouses this particular perspective, and publishes papers to that effect? I'd like to read more about the evidential justifications behind it. Thanks.
@skado - Well, the answer is no, I don't recall having read anything about religion as an evolutionary trait. I had typically thought of evolution as effecting physical traits - paws, claws, hooves and horns; muscles and nerves. The closest I believe I have come to applying the theory to cognitive abilities would be big brains.
Having said that, a Google search revealed a couole of interesting results.
Apparently, Gould had proposed this idea that religion is a spandel of other adaptive traits and the second link below refer to this idea as the "standard model".
[kpu.pressbooks.pub]
Perhaps I had read something some 20 years ago and had forgotten. I do remember Gould explaining what a spandrel was, but what I recall reading of Gould's work was a book about the arbitrary nature of our calendar in the run up to Y2K.
[amazon.com]
I should that I did read the attached links except to get a sense that they apply to your question. I intend to, but not tonight.
There are a few other features which follow from evolution and could lead to the development of religion, such as the well known positive error bias.
Which may be hard wired into us, because for example. If you see a glint of light in the forest, which could be the reflection in a predators eye, it is better to assume that it is, say a tiger, and run away, than to think that it is maybe only a trick of the light. Because if it is a tiger, you could lose your life if you don't run away, where if you mistakenly run from a random glint on a leaf, all you lose is a little energy. And the reverse applies, if you think you see food, then it pays to move towards it, because if you are right then you get a meal, while if you are wrong, all you lose is a few seconds. A false positive error usually costs little where a false negative can be very costly.
For which reason we may tend to assume we see dangerous and helpful beings like tigers, and gods, everywhere. Rather than be tend to be sceptical. In other words we may be hard wired to be gullible. But of course, in the modern world, most of us do not live in the jungle, but in an environment built by human culture, where most of the cultural things we encounter, are made by humans to manipulate other humans, probably by exploiting our weaknesses, in which case the best error preference may now be quite the reverse.
I see that you say you have been reading Gould which is very good, you may also find that it is good for balance to read Richard Dawkins as well. Since they were great rivals and held opposite opinions, on exactly these sorts of subjects, although they were great friends for a long while and had great mutual respect.
Fernapple
Level 9
Feb 7, 2022
3
I see clouds in the sky that look just like Jesus. I think others look like Mary also. Bet ya Muslims have favorite cloud formations as well. Are there any clouds that look like Brigham Young or is he now on another planet?
DenoPenno
Level 9
Feb 7, 2022
2
Hard to say about Brigham Young and Mormons. Despite the Mormon claim that the religion is the same yesterday, today, and forever (reassursnce for the insecure Mormon) the religion as well as its leaders Joseph Smith (or Joseph's Myth as former Mormons sometimes call him) Brigham Young have morphed several times in its nearly 200 year history. Of interest to me is how things Young taught from tne pulpit have become heritical to the religion while Young himself has not. More recently, Mormon Pres. Hinckley in an interview with a non-Mormon TV journdlist reduced the basic Morrmon tenet that God was once human and humans could aspire to be Gods with their own planets down to a poetic couplet. He later assured faith Mormon he knew what the doctrine was. So who knows what the current status of Brigham Young is? Today he may be his own exalted being running planets as an omnipotent God, and tomorrow he could be the spawn of Satan.
Setting aside that vast disparities, in sects and religion and just using Catholicism as an example, it exploits the need to feel part of a group and the inarticulate and instinctive need to feel safe. God protects you is a very powerful appeal to childish emotion not logic but we all have primitive parts of our brains.
Buttercup
Level 8
Feb 7, 2022
1
I would say that the need to be part of a group is the evolutionary trait that assists human living together in groups for our mutual benefit - protection from predators, community hunting and foraging, etc. The instution of the Catholic church is one example where the need has been satisfied - the biological spandrel. The fact that the Catholic church may have enhanced their adherents' dependence on the church may or may not be a separate issue from evolutionary factor - it may be more social or political than evolution.
I would go with spandrel adding an Ernest Becker death denial chaser (aka terror management theory). In one of Gould’s articles on exaptation, he even says our brains built large for other reasons facilitated the ability for our ancestors to contemplate their own mortality but attributed that insight to Freud rather than Becker.
Dean Hamer in his over the top god gene stuff framed the putative but questionable genetic proclivities as related to self-transcendence, which isn’t necessarily religion. Even non-believers can immerse themselves in an “oceanic feeling”.
The one interesting aspect of religion or perhaps identity based ideologies in general might be to indicate trustworthiness in larger social networks beyond capacity of human memory to recall intimate details of who is who and did what to others. The upper limit is conjectured as the Dunbar number and the concept I might be reaching for is costly signaling.
Scott321
Level 7
Feb 7, 2022
1
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