It was to satisfy fear and try to explain the unexplainable.

This guy is confident religion is a byproduct, but that isn’t the only scientific hypothesis. I’m not sure the label of “byproduct “ is all that meaningful in any case. Bird feathers are a byproduct of the need to keep warm. Does that mean flight is not adaptive? I’m not sure the line is all that crisp between product and byproduct. The idea that adaptations build on previous adaptations is not, it seems to me, enough to relegate a trait to the “byproduct” bin. David Sloan Wilson, no less an atheist, sees it very differently.

Thomson repeatedly uses the word “hijack” - a word with negative connotations - where he could as easily have chosen the word “use”. He has all the ingredients right - HADD, Theory of Mind, etc., but then he interprets them according to his personal prejudices, and insinuates the whole process is useless, or worse. What I did not hear him say however, is that religion is a “psychological disorder”. He knows that isn’t true.

His comparison of the big mac to religion is dubious. The big mac, as he correctly describes, is a supernormal stimulus. But religion doesn’t fit the description of supernormal stimulus, and that may be why he never listed the justifications for calling it such, like he listed for the McDonalds meal - the coke in place of fruit, the fatty burger in place of lean game, etc. He listed ways that religion, in his words, hijack existing systems, but supernormal stimuli are not just anything that uses a pre-existing system. Science itself rides on the backs of pre-existing systems, but that doesn’t make it a supernormal stimulus or a hijacking.

He wants to play up the angle that there is a conflict between science and religion, and his audience rewards him with applause, but what could be more unscientific?! How can there be any conflict between science and any animal or human behavior it studies? This clip is from thirteen years ago. A lot has happened in CogSci since then.

Cognitive science today does not view itself as deepening any imagined conflict between itself and its object of study. To the contrary, it is building bridges, instead of walls.

This video was a pep-rally for atheism more than a scientific talk. It is the best single video I have seen for explaining to people who are still struggling with religious literalism why we are tempted by religious literalism in the first place. But it then projects other personal biases into the picture which are not at all “settled” in science.

Characterizing religion as a “leftover” or a “psychological disorder” does not have consensus support among scientists in the fields of cognitive science, anthropology, sociology, psychology, or any other field whose job it is to study this aspect of human behavior in 2022.

As far as science “knows” religion is as vital and necessary for human societies today as it ever was, and contributes in a massively positive way toward reproductive fitness. There is no conflict between ancient metaphorical illustrations of human psychology and the scientific study of them, any more than there is a conflict between flint-knapping and the scientific study of that.

@skado well, there you have it. I'll stick with psychological disorder myself. See, by religion I mean the Dark Ages, Inquisition, fundamentalism, religious 'education', anti diversity moralism, religious authoritarianism and anti science, you know, religion in practise, and how we've been struggling to outgrow it since the Enlightenment, at least in the West. So, I'm interested in how religion evolved during our epochs of ignorance and the psychology of why people believe in mysticism, supernaturalism and magic, which I think is a psychological disorder.

@skado "and contributes in a massively positive way toward reproductive fitness." You went into such perfect example here and made valid points, can you give example for this part? Its the one part i didnt understand.

@skado Religion was useful for primitive culture. Today religion is useless, pure exploitation of man against man. Many religious people are nice but that's in spite of their religious indoctrination not because of it.

@peaceisfirst
Thanks. There’s not an awful lot of consensus in the study of religion, but a few key points seem to re-emerge here and there, that make the most sense to me. The way I understand it is as follows.

Our Homo sapiens ancestors and their precursors spent millions of years in the African savannas evolving their biology to fit that landscape and the hunter/gatherer lifestyle, in nomadic tribes of rarely more than 150 individuals who were mostly kin. All indications are that these were egalitarian societies. They had no idea of private ownership. There were no organized religions - just various folkways with a smattering of animism. Everyone they needed to cooperate with was someone they knew very well, and were probably related to.

A mere ten to twelve thousand years ago - a blink of evolutionary time - these previously nomadic bands began tinkering with animal domestication and planting crops. Farmers can't be nomads, so they started making stationary settlements that soon grew to include thousands of strangers who must be cooperated with and lived among peacefully for this new thing called civilization to work.

This shift to agriculture happened too suddenly for Pleistocene biology to adapt, so cultural counterbalances had to be invented to mediate the evolved human instincts that would otherwise have been problematic in the new environment. It's no accident that this is the period when the world's organized religions were invented.

Living sedentary lives in stable societies that had a reliable abundance of food was a huge accelerator for Homo sapiens populations. But this was possible only through the "unnatural" cooperation of thousands of strangers, and that was possible only through the adoption of a society-wide narrative that supported conformity, cooperation, moral restraint, group identity, and personal emotional buoyancy. Religion is how they accomplished those goals.

People who think that religion was just a primitive way to explain the unknown, and so it is no longer needed, are just not aware of the current scientific thinking. Religion was not and is not primarily about describing the facts of nature. It was always, and is still, from an evolutionary perspective, mostly about modifying instinctual behaviors, promoting group cohesion and identity, and salving psychological anxieties, toward the practical goal of sustaining large, agriculture-based societies, which in turn enhance reproductive fitness.

The details, of course, are more complex, but I think that is a fair summary.

@David1955 @barjoe
Those sentiments are very understandable, given the history of corruption that plagues all human institutions, but when I go looking for scientific corroboration, for your view I have, so far, not been able to find it. Yes, bad things have happened. But evolution doesn't "care" about collateral damage. It functions how it functions. Through all the bad and the good, all known human societies past and present have had behaviors that we today call religious. It's a part of human nature, like music or language. Most scientists in related disciplines today seem to think religions serve the vital needs of social cohesion and personal emotional stability. I'm happy to stick with the science. When it changes, I'll change. I'm not currently aware of any field-related scientist who claims religion is a psychological disorder or is no longer serving its original evolutionary purpose. I don't doubt one or two exist, but as far as I can tell, they would be a tiny minority.

@skado I feel that this is a circular argument or subject, that always comes back to "ok, religion has been bad, oh but look how important it is or has been to this and that,' and I'm bored with it. I agree with Gene Roddenberry when he said that humanity will only seriously improve when we embrace real social justice, economic justice, and finally ABANDON or outgrow religion in favour of reason, and these things are inter-dependent. The history of religion is littered with death, wars, oppression, thwarting progress and intolerance, but somehow it's been good for us along the way. No, it's a crutch and a distraction and we need to end it. @barjoe

@David1955
Go for it .