Clues to the evolution of religious faith

Posted by Guessedworker on Saturday, 04 October 2008 00:32.

This morning the Telegraph ran a short news feature titled, “People who believe in God are more helpful.

Scientists say that those who frequently pray and attend religious services report more charitable donations and volunteer work

However the review, published in the journal Science, does suggest that believers acting for the greater good may be doing so to enhance their own reputation among friends and acquaintances.

In one experiment, volunteers who had been told that a dead student’s ghost had been seen in the experiment room cheated less on a test than those who had not.

In another, children who were told that a fictional character called Princess Alice was watching them were less likely to disobey their instructions.

In Science, the authors wrote: “These findings are consistent with the idea that outward evidence of religious devotion may engender more trust.”

The evidence also suggests that trust in other members of a religious group is higher when those groups involve a greater degree of commitment, for example in stricter forms of religious belief, such as Mormonism.

The authors say that the research supports the idea that in early societies religion helped to foster social cohesion by encouraging cooperation.

The original paper is titled The Origin and Evolution of Religious Prosociality and is by Norenzayan and Shariff, Department of Psychology, University of British Columbia. The abstract reads:-

We examine empirical evidence for religious prosociality, the hypothesis that religions facilitate costly behaviors that benefit other people. Although sociological surveys reveal an association between self-reports of religiosity and prosociality, experiments measuring religiosity and actual prosocial behavior suggest that this association emerges primarily in contexts where reputational concerns are heightened. Experimentally induced religious thoughts reduce rates of cheating and increase altruistic behavior among anonymous strangers. Experiments demonstrate an association between apparent profession of religious devotion and greater trust. Cross-cultural evidence suggests an association between the cultural presence of morally concerned deities and large group size in humans. We synthesize converging evidence from various fields for religious prosociality, address its specific boundary conditions, and point to unresolved questions and novel predictions.

Three quick observations:-

The linkage of faith to “reputational concerns” suggests a rather heartening parallel to liberalism and moral superiority. Not really a surprise from our POV.

The notion underlying this study that religious thoughts can be “experimentally induced” pretty much equally among people is a concern, as it suggests that the non-religious production of “prosociality” must be under-reported. By no means everyone who is incapable of religious feeling is also incapable of “prosociality”. That, perhaps, should be the next area of study.

The phrase “morally concerned dieties” is interesting and suggests that these cogelites understand that religious esoterism has non-moral goals (self-perfectionment; enlightenment, union with the eternal). Currently, science can offer no convincing fitness gain to explain non-moral esoteric religious goals.

Tags: Psychology

Comments:

Posted by Fr. John on Wed, 08 Oct 2008 06:36 | #

This sort of ‘trying to measure God’ is the modern post-Christian equivalent of the Scholastic ‘How many angels can fit on the head of a pin?’ illogic.

What does it matter? Aren’t Christians SUPPOSED to ‘be [ye] perfect, as your Heavenly Father is perfect’? Didn’t C.S. Lewis clearly lay out the rationality of the Christian faith on the BBC, back when it was something WORTH listening to?

How DOES one measure the Holy Spirit? Well, frankly, the canonization of saints was what that (more or less) was all about, at least back in the first millennium. With the more bizarre Roman excesses of saint’s miracles and stigmatas, etc. it all became rather ‘over the top.’

But sanctity -and the desire for it- is still the bottom line. A culture that does not value that, is an antichristian culture, purely and simply. And a boot stomping on a face, forever, is the only fitting ikon for such an anticulture.

And a church’s hierarchy that doesn’t see the supercessionist nature of Christianity, or the moral superiority of Biblical law over Sharia, is merely the False Prophet of that ‘Whore that sitteth on seven hills,’ to quote a much ignored piece of Scripture for the present day.

Posted by Guessedworker on Wed, 08 Oct 2008 11:23 | #

Fr. John,

This isn’t about measuring the Holy Spirit. It explains the Holy Spirit as a function of Man’s evolution.

What does it matter?

It matters because the ““morally concerned dieties” of exoteric religion are merely focii for evolutionary adaptive behaviours. The human sense of faithhood or, if it is at all of a moralistic and self-regarding character, the “desire for sanctity” are evolved mechanisms that lead faithists - which is half or more of Europeans - to these behaviours. Faithhood has no relevance that I can see to esoteric religion. Sanctity, however, may do so if by that we mean a wholly practical freedom, however fleeting, from the condition of exile or illusion or, indeed, hell which stands for that thief of time, ordinary waking consciousness.

Posted by Fr. John on Wed, 08 Oct 2008 14:58 | #

Guessed,

To be blunt, (and no personal offense) but keep the dung of Evolution OFF the Trinity.

I repudiate (and have gone on record before) any concept of evolution to tie me to some ape-like common ancestor.
I believe Adamkind to be of a different genus than others, just as Homo Sapiens sapiens is a different kind from Neanderthal man, etc.

YOu don’t throw dog doo-doo on the Pieta of Michaelangelo. Neither does one try and syncretize the Orthodox faith with an utterly atheistic faith known as Darwinism.

Posted by Guessedworker on Wed, 08 Oct 2008 17:26 | #

Fr John,

Faith - the need or desire to worship - IS an evolved faculty of the emotional mind. It is peripheral - literally - to those non-moral spiritual goals which I mentioned in the post, aspects of which are expressed in religious texts and symbology. However, where the interpretation of those texts and symbols is merely moralistic, or where texts and symbols refer solely to moral rule-following, there we are wholly in Darwin-land.

There is no “dung” here, and no need to emotionalise such. It is right and proper, indeed adaptive, for those with an expressed faith gene to live by their morals and follow their faith-rules. It is vivyfying for the group as a whole. But, obviously, it is limited to that, and is not an agency in those non-moral human purposes which I mentioned in the post. They, as I’ve always said, lie well outside the scope of this website - until such time as evolutionary science claims them, if it ever does!

Posted by Ratso on Fri, 10 Oct 2008 21:21 | #

A good website on Christ
http://www.jesusneverexisted.com/

and one more
http://www.revilo-oliver.com/rpo/RPO_NewChrist/toc_ol.htm

and more
http://www.revilo-oliver.com/rpo/Reflections.html

and more
http://www.anthonymludovici.com/ri_pre.htm

Posted by snax on Sat, 11 Oct 2008 00:41 | #