Religion
Related: About this forumSmart atheist heads $3-million grant into religion and morality
UBC Asian Studies professor "loves" his daughter intensely, but doesn't really believe in "love" or in overarching "meaning." It's all grist for the metaphysical mill in his team's $3 million research project into religion and morality.
January 11, 2013. 6:01 pm
Douglas Todd
Why is a self-described complete atheist in charge of a $3-million research project into religion?
To find out how Edward Slingerland, a professor of Asian Studies at the University of B.C., came to be the primary investigator for the worlds largest study on the evolution of religion and morality, we need to go back a couple of decades.
Slingerland was an undergraduate majoring in molecular biology at Princeton University. But the hard sciences just werent clicking for the curious young man.
So he hopped on a motorcycle and headed to California with two books in his saddlebag: Jack Kerouacs On the Road and Robert Pirsigs Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.
http://blogs.vancouversun.com/2013/01/11/wise-atheist-wins-3-million-to-research-religion-and-morality/
http://www.hecc.ubc.ca/cerc/project-summary/
cbayer
(146,218 posts)He recognizes the power of religion while holding no personal beliefs. He is also turned off by the anti-theists.
I look forward to his work.
Jim__
(14,045 posts)Religious leaders have encouraged humans to engage in costly displays, like self-sacrifice, donating to charity and even martyrdom. On the surface, Slingerland says, such behaviours dont seem to support individual humans struggle for survival.
But religion has often led to social cohesion. One question the project will ask is can other forces create such interdependence?
I look forward to seeing what answer they come up with to that question.
The starting point for religions is altruism, the "other" being a god, followed quickly by other humans and, in some, to all living things. It is a very different starting point from "individual humans struggle for survival."
One doesn't have to be religious to be altruistic to others but, from a purely human perspective, to what extent, and why?
The process in moving from these two starting points is different. The methodology entailed in answering these questions will be as intriguing as the concusions.
edhopper
(33,164 posts)are understanding and control. People trying to understand the world around them and people trying to control others.
rug
(82,333 posts)Eventually religion gets there too, but I submt it's secondary. When humanity outgrew rocks and sticks as means of control, it looked around and found religion to harness in service to politics. But it was already there, having arrived from another point.
edhopper
(33,164 posts)religion as a set of beliefs or an organized group based on those beliefs..
Jim__
(14,045 posts)My understanding is the the social cohesion of religion began long before Christianity or Islam or any organized religion; it actually began with communal dance. I don't think government, per se, can replace that; but other forms of communal meeting might.
mr blur
(7,753 posts)And yes, I have read both of them.
Jim__
(14,045 posts)From Science + Religion ( http://www.scienceandreligiontoday.com/2013/01/14/what-does-the-cultural-evolution-of-religion-research-consortium-hope-to-accomplish/ ):
Despite its centrality to human affairs, religion remains, from an academic perspective, one of the least studied and most poorly understood aspects of human behavior. Over the period of our grant, CERC aims to answer the questions of how religious cultural forms have evolved over time, how religion is linked to morality, and why religion plays such a ubiquitous role in human existence. Our theoretical starting point will be that of gene-culture co-evolution. We believe that, although religious cognition originally arose as a byproduct of other human cognitive capacities, apparently maladaptive religious beliefs and behaviors have been maintained and strengthened because certain groups succeeded in integrating them into packages of cultural elements (beliefs, rituals, devotions) that deepened group solidarity by incentivizing trust and cooperation with supernatural punishments and rewards. We believe that the gradual assembly of this cultural package was not only a key to the origin of large-scale societies, but also provides a convincing answer to the historical question of why religions with moralistic godsrather rare amongst the panoply of human religious varietyhave spread at the expense of other types of religion. Cultural groups with religions that best promote within-group cooperation and harmony tend to outcompete other groups. Our hypothesized link between religion, group identity, and morality also potentially explains the persistence of religious belief in the face of countervailing evolutionary pressures, and lends credence to arguments postulating a link between moral evaluations and some sort of metaphysical realism.
CERCs research activities will revolve around one central question: Are religious beliefs and behaviors linked to within-group solidarity and cooperation? This central question will be broken down into a set of related sub-questions, ranging in scope from cognitive processes at the individual level to broader group dynamics and cultural and historical processes. These questions will be interrogated by two overlapping teamshistorical and ethnographic-experimentalspread across CERC, and under my overall direction. Each team will address the sub-questions using the data and tools particular to their own specializations, and design their studies in such a way that our central hypothesis can be tested against competing, alternative theoretical models that have recently been advanced to explain the evolution of religion.
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