This is a familiar presumption among researchers in the social sciences and humanities, who often deem it âreductionisticâ (and very bad form) even to pose questions about the biological bases of these delightful and important phenomena. I can see some cultural anthropologists and sociologists rolling their eyes in disdainââOh, no! Here comes Darwin again, butting in where he isnât needed!ââwhile some historians and philosophers of religion and theologians snicker at the philistinism of anybody who could ask with a straight face about the evolutionary underpinnings of religion. âWhat next, a search for the Catholicism gene?â This negative response is typically unthinking, but it isnât foolish. It is supported in part by unpleasant memories of past campaigns that failed: naïve and ill-informed forays by biologists into the thickets of cultural complexity. There is a good case to be made that the social sciences and humanitiesâthe Geisteswissenschaften, or mind sciencesâhave their own âautonomousâ methodologies and subject matters, independent of the natural sciences. But in spite of all that can be said in favor of this idea (and I will spend some time looking at the best case for it in due course), the disciplinary isolation it motivates has become a major obstacle to good scientific practice, a poor excuse for ignorance, an ideological crutch that should be thrown away.10
We have particularly compelling reasons for investigating the biological bases of religion now. Sometimesârarelyâreligions go bad, veering into something like group insanity or hysteria, and causing great harm. Now that we have created the technologies to cause global catastrophe, our jeopardy is multiplied to the maximum: a toxic religious mania could end human civilization overnight. We need to understand what makes religions work, so we can protect ourselves in an informed manner from the circumstances in which religions go haywire. What is religion composed of? How do the parts fit together? How do they mesh? Which effects depend on which causes? Which features, if any, invariably occur together? Which exclude each other? What constitutes the health and pathology of religious phenomena? These questions can be addressed by anthropology, sociology, psychology, history, and any other variety of cultural studies that you like, but it is simply inexcusable for researchers in these fields to let disciplinary jealousy and fear of âscientific imperialismâ create an ideological iron curtain that could conceal important underlying constraints and opportunities from them.
Consider our current controversies regarding nutrition and diet. Understanding the design rationale of the machinery in our bodies that drives us to overindulge in sweets and fats is the key to finding the corrective measures that will actually work. For many years, nutritionists thought that the key to preventing obesity was simply cutting fat out of the diet. Now it is emerging that this simplistic approach to dieting is counterproductive: when you strenuously keep your fat-craving system unsatisfied, this intensifies your bodyâs compensatory efforts, leading to overindulgence in carbohydrates. The evolutionarily naïve thinking of the recent past helped build and put in motion the low-fat bandwagon, which then became self-sustaining under the solicitous care of the low-fat-food manufacturers and advertisers. Taubes (2001) is an eye-opening account of the political processes that created and sustained this âlow-fat gospel,â and it provides a timely warning for the enterprise I am proposing here: âItâs a story of what can happen when the demands of public health policyâand the demands of the public for simple advice [emphasis added]ârun up against the confusing ambiguity of real scienceâ (p. 2537). Even if we do the science of religion right (for the first time), we must strenuously guard the integrity of the next process, the boiling down of the complex results of the research into political decisions. This will not be easy at all. Basil Rifkind, one of the nutritionists who were pressured into a premature verdict on low dietary fat, puts it succinctly: âThere comes a point when, if you donât make a decision, the consequences can be great as well. If you just allow Americans to keep on consuming 40% of calories from fat, thereâs an outcome to that as wellâ (Taubes, 2001, p. 2541). Good intentions are not enough. This is the sort of misguided campaign that we want to avoid when we try to correct what we take to be the toxic excesses of religion. One recoils in horror at the possible effects of trying to impose one misguided âcrash dietâ or another on those hungry for religion.
It may be tempting to argue that weâd all have been better off if there hadnât been any know-it-all nutritionists meddling with our diets in the first place. Weâd have eaten what was good for us by just relying on our evolution-shaped instincts, the way other animals do. But this is simply mistaken, in the case of both diet and religion. Civilizationâagriculture in particular and technology in generalâhas hugely and swiftly altered our ecological circumstances compared with the circumstances of our quite recent ancestors, and this renders many of our instincts out of date. Some of them may still be valuable in spite of their obsolescence, but it is likely that some are positively harmful. We canât return to the blissful ignorance of our animal past with any confidence. Weâre stuck being the knowing species, and that means weâll have to use our knowledge as best we can to adapt our policies and practices to cope with our biological imperatives.
4 A Martianâs list of theories
If you were God, would you have invented laughter?
âChristopher Fry, The Ladyâs Not for Burning
We may be too close to religion to be able to see it clearly at first. This has been a familiar theme among artists and philosophers for years. One of their self-appointed tasks is to âmake the familiar strange,â11 and some of the great strokes of creative genius get us to break through the crust of excessive familiarity and look at ordinary, obvious things with fresh eyes. Scientists couldnât agree more. Sir Isaac Newtonâs mythic moment was asking himself the weird question about why the apple fell down from the tree. (âWell, why wouldnât it?â asks the everyday nongenius; âItâs heavy!ââas if this were a satisfactory explanation.) Albert Einstein asked a similarly weird question: everyone knows what ânowâ means, but Einstein asked whether you and I mean the same thing by ânowâ when we are leaving each otherâs company at near the speed of light. Biology has some strange questions as well. âWhy donât male animals lactate?â asks the late great evolutionary biologist John Maynard Smith (1977), vividly awakening us from our dogmatic slumbers to confront a curious prospect. âWhy do we blink with both eyes simultaneously?â asks another great evolutionary biologist, George Williams (1992). Good questions, not yet answered by biology. Here are some more. Why do we laugh when something funny happens? We may think it is just obvious that laughter (as opposed to, say, scratching oneâs ear or belching) is the appropriate response to humor, but why is it? Why are some female shapes sexy and others not? Isnât it obvious? Just look at them! But that is not the end of it. The regularities and trends in our responses to the world do indeed guarantee, trivially, that they are part of âhuman nature,â but that still leaves the question of why. Curiously, it is this very feature of evolutionary questioning that is often viewed with deep aversion byâ¦artists and philosophers. The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein famously said that explanation has to stop somewhere, but this undeniable truth misleads us if it discourages us from asking such questions, prematurely terminating our curiosity. Why does music exist, for instance? âBecause itâs natural!â comes the complacent everyday reply, but science takes nothing natural for granted. People around the world devote many hoursâoften their professional livesâto making, and listening and dancing to, music. Why? Cui bono? Why does music exist? Why does religion exist? To say that it is natural is only the beginning of the answer, not the end.
The remarkable autistic author and animal expert Temple Grandin gave neurologist Oliver Sacks a great title for one of his collections of case studies of unusual human b
eings: An Anthropologist on Mars (1995). Thatâs what she felt like, she told Sacks, when dealing with other people right here on Earth. Usually such alienation is a hindrance, but getting some distance from the ordinary world helps focus our attention on what is otherwise too obvious to notice, and it will help if we temporarily put ourselves into the (three bright green) shoes of a âMartian,â one of a team of alien investigators who can be imagined to be unfamiliar with the phenomena they are observing here on Planet Earth.
What they see today is a population of over six billion people, almost all of whom devote a significant fraction of their time and energy to some sort of religious activity: rituals such as daily prayer (both public and private) or frequent attendance at ceremonies, but also costly sacrificesânot working on certain days no matter what looming crisis needs prompt attention, deliberately destroying valuable property in lavish ceremonies, contributing to the support of specialist practitioners within the community and the maintenance of elaborate buildings, and abiding by a host of strenuously observed prohibitions and requirements, including not eating certain foods, wearing veils, taking offense at apparently innocuous behaviors in others, and so forth. The Martians would have no doubt that all of this was ânaturalâ in one sense: they observe it almost everywhere in nature, in one species of vocal bipeds. Like the other phenomena of nature, it exhibits both breathtaking diversity and striking commonalities, ravishingly ingenious design (rhythmic, poetic, architectural, socialâ¦) and yet baffling inscrutability. Where did all this design come from, and what sustains it? In addition to all the contemporary expenditures of time and effort, there is all the implied design work that preceded it. Design workâR & D, research and developmentâis costly, too.
Some of the R & D can be observed by the Martians directly: debates among religious leaders about whether to abandon awkward elements of their orthodoxy, decisions by building committees to accept a winning architectural proposal for a new temple, composers executing commissions for new anthems, theologians writing tracts, televangelists meeting with advertising agencies and other consultants to plan their new season of broadcasts. In the developed world, in addition to the time and energy spent in religious observance, there is a huge enterprise of public and private criticism and defense, interpretation and comparison, of every aspect of religion. If the Martians just focus on this, they will form the impression that religion, like science or music or professional sport, consists of systems of social activity that are designed and redesigned by conscious, deliberate agents who are aware of the points or purposes of the enterprises, the problems that need solving, the risks and costs and benefits. The National Football League was created and designed by identifiable individuals to fulfill a set of human purposes, and so was the World Bank. These institutions show clear evidence of design, but they are not âperfect.â People make mistakes, errors get identified and corrected over time, and when there are substantial disagreements among those who have the power and responsibility for maintaining such a system, compromises are sought and often achieved. Some of the R & D that has shaped and is still shaping religion falls clearly into this category. An extreme case would be Scientology, a whole religion that is unquestionably the deliberately designed brainchild of a single author, L. Ron Hubbard, though of course he borrowed elements that had proved themselves in existing religions.
At the other extreme, there is no doubt that the equally intricate, equally designed folk religions or tribal religions found all over the world have never been subjected by their practitioners to anything like the âdesign review boardâ processes exemplified by the Council of Trent or Vatican II. Like folk music and folk art, these religions have acquired their aesthetic properties and other design features by a less self-conscious system of influences. And, whatever these influences are or were, they exhibit deep commonalities and patterns. How deep? As deep as the genes? Are there âgenes forâ the similarities among religions around the world? Or are the patterns that matter more geographical or ecological than genetic?
The Martians donât need to invoke genes to explain why people in equatorial climates donât wear fur coats, or why watercraft all over the world are both elongated and symmetrical around the long axis (aside from Venetian gondolas and a few other specialized craft). The Martians, having mastered the worldâs languages, will soon notice that there is huge variation in sophistication among boatbuilders around the world. Some of them can give articulate and accurate explanations of just why they insist that their vessels be symmetrical, explanations that any naval architect with a Ph.D. in engineering would applaud, but others have a simpler answer: we build boats this way because this is the way we have always built them. They copy the designs they learned from their fathers and grandfathers, who did the same in their day. This more or less mindless copying, the Martians will notice, is a tempting parallel with the other transmission medium they have identified, the genes. If boatbuilders or potters or singers are in the habit of copying old designs âreligiously,â they may preserve design features over hundreds or even thousands of years. Human copying is variable, so slight variations in the copies will often appear, and although most of these promptly disappear, since they are deemed defective or âsecondsâ or in any event not popular with the customers, every now and then a variation will engender a new lineage, in some sense an improvement or innovation for which there is a âmarket niche.â And, lo and behold, without anybodyâs realizing it, or intending it, this relatively mindless process over long periods of time can shape designs to an exquisite degree, optimizing them for local conditions.
A culturally transmitted design can, in this way, have a free-floating rationale in exactly the same way a genetically transmitted design does. The boatbuilders and boat owners no more need to understand the reasons why their boats are symmetrical than the fruit-eating bear needs to understand his role in propagating wild apple trees when he defecates in the woods. Here we have the design of a human artifactâculturally, not genetically transmittedâwithout a human designer, without an author or inventor or even a knowing editor or critic.12 And the reason the process can work is exactly the same in human culture as it is in genetics: differential replication. When copies are made with variation, and some variations are in some tiny way âbetterâ (just better enough so that more copies of them get made in the next batch), this will lead inexorably to the ratcheting process of design improvement Darwin called evolution by natural selection. What gets copied doesnât have to be genes. It can be anything at all that meets the basic requirements of the Darwinian algorithm.13
This concept of cultural replicatorsâitems that are copied over and overâhas been given a name by Richard Dawkins (1976), who proposed to call them memes, a term that has recently been the focus of controversy. For the moment, I want to make a point that should be uncontroversial: cultural transmission can sometimes mimic genetic transmission, permitting competing variants to be copied at different rates, resulting in gradual revisions in features of those cultural items, and these revisions have no deliberate, foresighted authors. The most obvious, and well-researched, examples are natural languages. The Romance languagesâFrench, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and a few other variantsâall descend from Latin, preserving many of the basic features while revising others. Are these revisions adaptations? That is, are they in any sense improvements over their Latin ancestors in their environments? There is much to be said on this topic, and the âobviousâ points tend to be simplistic and wrong, but at least this much is clear: once a shift starts to emerge in one locality, it generally behooves local people to go along with it, if they want to be understood. When in Rome, speak as the Romans do, or be ignored or misunderstood. Thus do idiosyncrasies in pronunciation, slang idioms, and other novelties âgo to fixation,â as a geneticist would say, in a local language. And none of this is genetic. What is copied is a way of saying s
omething, a behavior or routine.
The gradual transformations that turned Latin into French and Portuguese and other offspring languages were not intended, planned, foreseen, desired, commanded by anyone. On rare occasions, a particular local celebrityâs peculiar pronunciation of a word or sound may have caught on, a fad that eventually turned into a cliché and then into an established part of the local language, and in these instances we can plausibly identify the âAdamâ or âEveâ at the root of that featureâs family tree. On even rarer occasions, individuals may set out to invent a word or a pronunciation and actually succeed in coining something that eventually enters the language, but in general, the changes that accumulate have no salient human authors, deliberate or inadvertent.
Folk art and folk music, folk medicine, and other products of such folk processes are often brilliantly adapted to quite advanced and specific purposes, but, however wonderful these fruits of cultural evolution are, we should resist the strong temptation to postulate some sort of mythic folk genius or mystical shared consciousness to explain them. These excellent designs often do owe some of their features to deliberate improvements by individuals along the way, but they can arise by exactly the same sort of blind, mechanical, foresightless sifting-and-duplicating process that has produced the exquisite design of organisms by natural selection, and in both cases the âjudgingâ is harsh, austere, and unimaginative. Mother Nature is a philistine accountant who cares only about the immediate payoff in terms of differential replication, cutting no slack for promising candidates who canât measure up to the contemporary competition. Indeed, the tin-eared and forgetful singer who can hardly carry a tune and forgets almost every song he hears but can remember this one memorable song contributes as much quality control to the folk process (by replicating this classic-in-the-making at the expense of all the competing songs) as the most gifted tunesmith.
Breaking the Spell Page 9
