Evolutionary Theories of Religion

[Redbeard The Pink]

The most popular theories for why humans have religion are:
1. To answer the existential mysteries--Why do we die? What is our purpose in life? How did the zebra get its stripes, etc...
2. To increase social cohesion in tribes/groups

My question is, at least for #2, there are 1,000s of animals species that live in social groups and have perfectly adequate social cohesion mechanisms such as territoriality, dominance hierarchy, grooming, etc. Why would humans need religion to improve their social relationships when there are already abundant mechanisms and successful social species? For those of you who might be familiar with some of the theory of religion writers--Scott Atran, Pascal Boyer, Dennett, Matt Rossano, and others--I haven't seen anybody ask this question. Is this a valid question? Is this a valid question for #1? 

Personally, I think religion started the same way it ended up: as a con. I think some lazy Bush-man without the skills to hunt or gather one day discovered that he could make other humans give him food and stuff if he spun a bunch of scary bullshit about how lightning and floods are punishments from the magical beings in the cave nearby, and that he might be able to convince those beings to not do that stuff if the people bring "offerings." That guy was the first witch doctor, and we've been dealing with his fallout as a species ever since.

[Whateverist]

Redbeard, it would seem you want only to consider religion in its very weakest, easiest to dismiss form.

Personally I get tired of theists who come here and tell me what it means to be an atheist and then proudly go about dismantling the straw man they themselves created. I don't find it any more interesting when atheists do the same.

[Redbeard The Pink]

Redbeard, it would seem you want only to consider religion in its very weakest, easiest to dismiss form.

Personally I get tired of theists who come here and tell me what it means to be an atheist and then proudly go about dismantling the straw man they themselves created. I don't find it any more interesting when atheists do the same.

That may be how it seems, but no. I actually think religion is the oldest and still most successful form of charlatanism. That's how it started, and that's how it stayed. That sell is so hot it even fools some of the salesmen. Whether that makes it easy to dismiss is beside the point of why I think that.

[Whateverist]

Well congratulations on finally laying god belief as charlatanism to rest once and for all. Wasn't sure you'd be able to pull it off but you totally dismantled that bad straw boy. I can only imagine the wails of despair from those whose belief in god was based on that.

[Redbeard The Pink]

Well congratulations on finally laying god belief as charlatanism to rest once and for all. Wasn't sure you'd be able to pull it off but you totally dismantled that bad straw boy. I can only imagine the wails of despair from those whose belief in god was based on that.

I mean...what else do you call it when a bunch of people willfully trick a bunch of other people into believing unreal claims for power/monetary gain? There are people who really believe, sure, but people really believed in snake oil, too. How does that make the salesman less of a charlatan? If he succeeds in convincing people, isn't he MORE of a charlatan? Isn't that the whole goal of a charlatan?

Now, religion has been ADAPTED to various purposes, but considering how religion has been consistently used both today and historically and how effective it is to those ends, I find it very likely that god claims were invented (in their various places and forms) with the intended purpose of preying upon humanity's natural fears and weaknesses for the personal gain of those who spread it.

[Whateverist]

Don't get me wrong most of the television evangelists are no doubt charlatans. But don't give them too much credit. They didn't invent it, they just tapped into something that has already been there nearly forever and did some rebranding. Jim and Tammy B. and the crying guy, Swaggart, who can't help seeking out homosexual prostitutes are exploitative as well as pathetic, for sure.

[Silver]

The most popular theories for why humans have religion are:
1. To answer the existential mysteries--Why do we die? What is our purpose in life? How did the zebra get its stripes, etc...
2. To increase social cohesion in tribes/groups

My question is, at least for #2, there are 1,000s of animals species that live in social groups and have perfectly adequate social cohesion mechanisms such as territoriality, dominance hierarchy, grooming, etc. Why would humans need religion to improve their social relationships when there are already abundant mechanisms and successful social species? For those of you who might be familiar with some of the theory of religion writers--Scott Atran, Pascal Boyer, Dennett, Matt Rossano, and others--I haven't seen anybody ask this question. Is this a valid question? Is this a valid question for #1? 

Number two is only a popular theory in modern society because religious people think meeting in church is the way to socialize.  They are stupid retarded.

The origin of religion is simple enough; man had no idea from whence he had come and he looked toward simplistic answers due to his limited resources.  It was natural to look at the stars and imagine that gods lived up there who created them.

[rainmac]

Well congratulations on finally laying god belief as charlatanism to rest once and for all.  Wasn't sure you'd be able to pull it off but you totally dismantled that bad straw boy.  I can only imagine the wails of despair from those whose belief in god was based on that.

I mean...what else do you call it when a bunch of people willfully trick a bunch of other people into believing unreal claims for power/monetary gain? There are people who really believe, sure, but people really believed in snake oil, too. How does that make the salesman less of a charlatan? If he succeeds in convincing people, isn't he MORE of a charlatan? Isn't that the whole goal of a charlatan?

Now, religion has been ADAPTED to various purposes, but considering how religion has been consistently used both today and historically and how effective it is to those ends, I find it very likely that god claims were invented (in their various places and forms) with the intended purpose of preying upon humanity's natural fears and weaknesses for the personal gain of those who spread it.

Yes, this mirrors Dawkins' claim that early religious figures and/or parents leveraged a child's gullibility to promote their manipulative claims, and how these religion beliefs/memes spread throughout human cultures. Your position satisfies the loathing we share for organized religion and their attempt to force their beliefs into civil society and is certainly a popular meme in this forum that gets repeated a lot (similar to how Dawkins says religion endures). Except religion developed and persisted in small tribal bands for 99% of human existence. Now you can assert that the shaman manipulated his tribespeople for power and gain, but then you'd be rewriting all the ethnographies to fit your position. Small tribes are necessarily egalitarian and for good reason. When there's only 25-100 people in a tribe, one or a few bad apples have a disproportionate effect on tribal society. It's clear from what the anthropologists have reported that there is a low tolerance for anybody who tries to pull one over on the rest of the tribe. I sympathize with you and share the antipathy towards the evils of modern, monotheistic religions, but that is a different issue than how polytheistic religions evolved over tens of thousands of years.

[rainmac]

I'm surprised that a #3 isn't included that mentions phenomena like pareidolia, apophenia and agency-detection coupled with the human capacity for abstract thinking.  To me, that seems the most convincing reasons humans might have evolved a tendency for superstitious/religious thought.  From this fairly reasonable starting point (to me at least), you can get to #2, and then to #1.

I don't see #1 being a stand-alone explanation for why humans evolved religiosity without some kind of agency-detection system already being in place, and an agency-detection system would be the thing that builds the religious framework that is then used to explain the existential questions being asked, and, as the OP states, #2 can be achieved by so many other successful methods that religiosity doesn't seem wholly sufficient as an explanation.

Is human agency detection different from other mammals' agency detection? Why is it that humans' agency detection builds the religious framework?

---

The most popular theories for why humans have religion are:
1. To answer the existential mysteries--Why do we die? What is our purpose in life? How did the zebra get its stripes, etc...
2. To increase social cohesion in tribes/groups

My question is, at least for #2, there are 1,000s of animals species that live in social groups and have perfectly adequate social cohesion mechanisms such as territoriality, dominance hierarchy, grooming, etc. Why would humans need religion to improve their social relationships when there are already abundant mechanisms and successful social species? For those of you who might be familiar with some of the theory of religion writers--Scott Atran, Pascal Boyer, Dennett, Matt Rossano, and others--I haven't seen anybody ask this question. Is this a valid question? Is this a valid question for #1? 

Number two is only a popular theory in modern society because religious people think meeting in church is the way to socialize.  They are stupid retarded.

The origin of religion is simple enough; man had no idea from whence he had come and he looked toward simplistic answers due to his limited resources.  It was natural to look at the stars and imagine that gods lived up there who created them.

There's a lot of this religion is natural stuff like Pascal Boyer's The Naturalness of Religious Ideas: A Cognitive Theory of Religion, but whenever anybody says religion is natural, it gets my hackles up. Everything is natural, but everything still needs explanations. When people label something as natural, it means they don't know how to explain it. In the closed world of physics, everything has a cause--or probability in the quantum world--even if we don't fully understand what that is.

It's fun to bash the irrational believers, but after spending time in an atheist group, I find that atheists can be as irrational and dogmatic as any religious fanatic. And most atheists grasp of evolutionary principles is disappointing as well.

[drfuzzy]

I'm surprised that a #3 isn't included that mentions phenomena like pareidolia, apophenia and agency-detection coupled with the human capacity for abstract thinking.  To me, that seems the most convincing reasons humans might have evolved a tendency for superstitious/religious thought.  From this fairly reasonable starting point (to me at least), you can get to #2, and then to #1.

I don't see #1 being a stand-alone explanation for why humans evolved religiosity without some kind of agency-detection system already being in place, and an agency-detection system would be the thing that builds the religious framework that is then used to explain the existential questions being asked, and, as the OP states, #2 can be achieved by so many other successful methods that religiosity doesn't seem wholly sufficient as an explanation.

Is human agency detection different from other mammals' agency detection? Why is it that humans' agency detection builds the religious framework?

---

Number two is only a popular theory in modern society because religious people think meeting in church is the way to socialize.  They are stupid retarded.

The origin of religion is simple enough; man had no idea from whence he had come and he looked toward simplistic answers due to his limited resources.  It was natural to look at the stars and imagine that gods lived up there who created them.

There's a lot of this religion is natural stuff like Pascal Boyer's The Naturalness of Religious Ideas: A Cognitive Theory of Religion, but whenever anybody says religion is natural, it gets my hackles up. Everything is natural, but everything still needs explanations. When people label something as natural, it means they don't know how to explain it. In the closed world of physics, everything has a cause--or probability in the quantum world--even if we don't fully understand what that is.

It's fun to bash the irrational believers, but after spending time in an atheist group, I find that atheists can be as irrational and dogmatic as any religious fanatic. And most atheists grasp of evolutionary principles is disappointing as well.

Well, rainmac . . . I'm sorry you're disappointed in simplistic responses, because I know mine was.  I'm not stupid, I have multiple degrees, but they are not in the Sciences (or Math, or Philosophy, etc.).  I understand that my knowledge of evolutionary principles is rudimentary at best.  One good thing I find in the folks here is that we are genuinely curious, generally open-minded, and actively pursuing further education.  I do think the opinion put forth by Redbeard, Clueless, and myself, while not stellar examples of evolutionary principles, has some merit though. Humans developed sufficient intelligence to question their own existence: "who made us"?  The awesome powers of nature that they could not understand must have had a "who" behind them.  Stories about these beings began to be told.  --  A lot of preachers tell us that our brains are hard-wired for belief.

Beyond that, it's clear that I would need to do some heavy studying in order to give you the kind of discourse you seem to be looking for.  I'll bow out now.  If you would like to point me to some good sources to study, I would appreciate it.