Cautions must precede discussions of Social Darwinism, so consider yourself warned. While the article was thought provoking, there is a lack of anthropological support for fitness characteristics that would lay the groundwork for Judo-Christian dogma development. Natural selection timelines are much longer and failing traits are impossible to eliminate with focused genocides.
Still, the first two paragraphs grabbed my attention and my first read led to an outline:
"Darwinian analyses of religion have tended to come in two forms. The first is characterized by efforts to debunk, dismiss and sometimes openly ridicule religious (and usually Christian) beliefs. Huxley himself engaged in this type of critique, and Richard Dawkins and Dan Dennett have done so more recently (as have lay Darwinists like Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens). Darwinian critics, at their most negative, tend to portray religious beliefs as not just irrational and credulous but also as weak and infantile. Evolutionary psychologist Geoffrey Miller describes his view of how religious believers deal with the fear of death: “They construct pathetic ideologies of self-comfort to plug their ears against such mortal terror. They nuzzle through reality's coarse pelt for a lost teat of supernatural succor. I call them the Gutless, because they aren't bright enough or brave enough to understand their true place in the universe.”
"In contrast, the second type of Darwinian analysis involves a more earnest effort to understand religious thinking from a scientific perspective. This approach has produced two competing general theories about the origins of religiosity. One Darwinist camp, which includes Dawkins and Dennett, anthropologists Pascal Boyer and Scott Atran, zoologist Robert Hinde, and writer Michael Shermer, has arrived at a “by-product” theory. They suggest that religious thoughts are by-products, the result of the mind’s deployment of psychological mechanisms that evolved to fulfil other, non-religious functions. Dawkins, for instance, claims that religion persists because children have adaptations for believing anything their parents tell them.4 The second Darwinist camp, which includes anthropologists William Irons, Lee Cronk and Richard Sosis, biologists Richard Alexander and David S. Wilson, and political scientist Dominic Johnson, offers an alternative “religious cooperation” hypothesis. This camp argues that religious beliefs evolved to fulfil a particular function: specifically, to enhance the ability of people to cooperate in groups and to successfully compete against rival groups."
My outline started with items following these two paragraphs. While the breakdown of camps was interesting, there are too many competing concepts funneled into the lengthy examination of Christian methods of sorting out membership qualification and they are unrelated to natural selection and unconnected to any hypothesis that makes sense in an anthropological context. The following two paragraphs summarize the viewpoint:
"If people are convinced that others sincerely believe, then they will be confident that they can also believe, without the fear that they’ll be exploited by non-believing free riders. The second-order public good is thus produced, divinely and psychologically. Still, assessing someone else’s level of religious belief is a tricky matter—gauging it isn’t always straightforward, and faking religious adherence is possible—so Christians don’t rely entirely on God to enforce the rules. As a backup plan, they also deliver their own incentives. The fact that congregations are generally long-lived organizations helps believers to deliver these incentives. When congregants meet regularly and repeatedly, and members know each other reasonably well, it’s easier for virtuous members to be recognized for their contributions and to achieve high status and popularity within their congregation. It’s also easier to recognize and punish free riders.
"The system works by forbidding behaviors that might harm the group, and by establishing a system of heavenly and terrestrial incentives that make it individually advantageous to follow the rules. By reducing “social ills” like murder, adultery and theft, the system empowers the group and its members: it reduces conflict, frees people up for economically productive work, and increases group solidarity and competitive ability."
Whether this was a worthwhile read for you might hinge on how you take to the final conclusions:
"I’ve used Christianity as a case study in this essay, but I don’t mean to suggest that Christianity lends itself, more than any other religion, to Darwinian interpretation. If the human mind is the product of Darwinian selection, and religious thoughts are generated by human minds, than all religions should be equally amenable to an analysis like this one. This doesn’t mean that all religions are equally well-designed for the specific purpose of producing public goods. However, the basic features that help Christianity regulate group behavior—specific codes for moral conduct and supernatural and natural incentive systems—are shared by other major religions. For example, Judaism has the Talmud and a covenant-enforcing God; Islam has Sharia law and paradise and hell; Hinduism has the Laws of Manu and the principle of Karma.
"Religious systems like Christianity do not, of course, provide the only means by which people may overcome their short-term selfish interests and generate public goods. These systems do, however, seem to be exceptionally well-designed for doing so. Could secular institutions be as effective as religious systems at motivating people to produce public goods? It’s possible, but religious systems have a crucial advantage: their adherents don’t just believe that God knows about all their good and evil deeds, they believe that He is a perfectly just and incorruptible administrator of punishment and reward. Secular institutions for the production of the second-order public good, on the other hand, depend on judgments that are made by police officers, lawyers, judges and juries. A scenario in which fallible, corruptible human beings such as these were allowed to monitor the actions of each citizen, every second of every day, would be regarded by almost everyone as a dystopian nightmare. In the minds of believers, only God can be trusted not to abuse this kind of power.
"It is plain to see that, for many people, religion provides a moral framework for their lives that is both meaningful and compelling. We still have much to learn about why so many people cherish their religious beliefs so deeply, and about how these beliefs may help generate the types of social environments in which many people would prefer to live. By identifying the ways in which religious systems harness human cooperative instincts, and thus generate real-world benefits for their adherents, we can gain a Darwinian perspective on religion that does not just dismiss it as a cognitive by-product. This perspective does not imply that religious concepts exist only in the minds of believers. It simply suggests that, whatever mysteries may be inherent in religious belief, there are compelling Darwinian reasons to believe that religion’s benefits have historically been real."
The ideas are interesting enough, but the perspective doesn't even give lip service to conflicts between belief systems. How political systems use religion and how religion uses power are modern stories that can't automatically be converted to work. As they say in the financial markets, "past performance can not be used to reliably predict future gains".
Anyway, this is a long article and a work in progress. While there is a link to the focus piece, the site got and deserves more attention. Here is a little about the site:
" About the Global Spiral
The Global Spiral is the winner of a 2007 American Graphic Design Award from Graphic Design USA.
Purpose
The Global Spiral is a monthly online magazine dedicated to the mission and vision of Metanexus Institute. Metanexus is a not-for-profit organization that promotes transdisciplinary research into profound questions of human meaning and purpose with the aim of transforming our educational, religious, and civic institutions.
Problem
The present moment, with its ever-accelerating technological development, instantaneous global communication, and unprecedented interaction among cultures, presents remarkable possibilities for enhancing the common good. However, despite the increase in the quantity and diversity of our knowledge, our understanding of ourselves and our world is becoming ever more fragmented. This fragmentation lies at the root of many of the current threats to our well-being and the well-being of our planet.
Proposal
The Global Spiral addresses this problem by offering transformative, transdisciplinary content that is not just about the life of the mind, but about paying mind to the whole of life. We do this through…"
and it goes on. See it all for yourself at:
http://www.metanexus.net/
and
http://www.metanexus.net/magazine/
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