Fascinating article from Salon.com on the evolution of religion.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

As an agnostic, I've never visited this forum, but I imagine this is the appropriate place for the article.

http://www.salon.com/books/int/2007/01/31/king/

[Dogmudgeon]

1. No, this is the Argument Clinic

The Admins of DU named it "The Religion/Theology forum" to throw people a curve.

But it is the right place to post it. No it's not. Yes it is. No it's not.

--p!

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

2. Well, I'm sure the article (if read) is within those guidelines.

I can certainly see arguments emerging from just about all sides in regard to the article.

[aquart]

3. Very grownup approach.

Can't wait till she figures out WHY religion was associated with caves.

[cosmik debris]

4. It seems to me

That this author is looking for evidence to support her theory more than she is looking for a theory to explain the evidence.

Take this quote for example:

We find that Neanderthals very carefully buried their social companions, but more interestingly, did so in a way that just cries out for a spiritual interpretation.

or this:

I think we have evolved to believe in transcendent realities. What we're about as a group of humans on this earth is believing that there's something more than us.

Sounds to me like she has made up her mind and can't recognize any evidence to the contrary.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

5. It seems to me that any argument about "God" is theoretical.

Even Descartes' famous axiom, "I think, therefore I am" would fall under the same description of looking for a theory to explain the evidence.

Her statement that Neanderthal burials "cries out for a spiritual interpretation" seems a bit overstated, but not without merit, considering the other available explanations.

The same for her other statement. The evidence is that, indeed, most people do believe that there is "something more than us". And, she's offering one possible explanation for the phenomenon of that belief, whether the "more than us" has validity or not.

[cosmik debris]

7. "The evidence is that, indeed, most people do believe..."

But there is no evidence that their belief is well founded. If fact there is plenty of reason to believe that there is no foundation for that belief.

She is defying the scientific method by looking only at evidence that supports her theory. In real science, first you gather evidence and then create a theory to explain all the evidence. This author created a theory and presented only the evidence that supports that theory.

It required quite a bit of anthropomorphizing to get the evidence presented to fit the theory. For example interpreting emotion based on facial expression. Just because a human has facial expression that reflect emotion, doesn't mean that other hominids share that trait. It is equally likely (or more so) that the ape learned that he would not be punished if he turned his eyes downward and frowned. Operant conditioning is a more rational explanation because we know that it is a possibility. We don't know that contrition (as interpreted by the researcher) is a valid explanation of the events reported.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

10. But, under that rubric, aren't all of us, and most creatures responding to "operant conditioning"?

Which could be what causes all evolution?

Why do some hominids smile? Why do we have muscles to smile? Why do we have emotions? If the point of life is merely survival, what use are emotions such as compassion, anger, joy, etc?

I find her speculation on the evolution of religion, if nothing else, as interesting and rational as anyone else's I've come across.

[cosmik debris]

11. Made up answers to made up questions

May be interesting, but don't represent scientific thinking or valid scientific inquiry.

[BurtWorm]

12. Why isn't sexual selection a good enough explanation for smiles?

We smile because that's the way, uh huh uh huh, we've liked it for thousands of years. Humans like sexual partners who make that expression at them, so they have molded the smile via billions of sexual encounters over hundreds of thousands of years.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

13. Could be. But, that's also speculation.

What possible evolutionary purpose does aestheticism have? Again, her speculation is just as good as any other.

[BurtWorm]

16. What you call "aestheticism" may actually be based on inherited sets of preferences for mating.

King's components of religious behavior are actually the sorts of behaviors biologists cite as reasons for the evolutionary success of hominids--social bonding (which she calls "following the rules") and symbolic reasoning (which she calls "meaning making," perhaps to give it more religious oomph) in particular. In her speculations, it seems to me, she borrows from the theories of evolutionists and gives them a religious spin. I think it's a muddled approach to the subject.

[BurtWorm]

6. I was just about to post something similar.

For example:

What kinds of behavior do you see in the great apes that show us how religion evolved?

I look at four different kinds of behavior -- meaning-making, imagination, empathy and following the rules. Together, I think they give us a sense of what religion might have started out to be. The apes have bits and pieces of all these four things, but not in a coherent pattern that adds up to religious behavior. To my mind, apes are conscious beings and they do these four things in incredibly fascinating ways.

She has decided that religion has evolved from these four behaviors, then she goes looking for those behaviors among her subjects to prove that she's right. There are all sorts of problems with this approach. What made her settle on those four behaviors? Her reading of books by Karen Armstrong? How does she know they're proto-religious and not some other type of cultural or social behaviors? How does she know where these alleged proto-religious behaviors end and other types of social behaviors begin? And that hardly touches on the questions of how she knows for sure a non-verbal behavior is any of those things she's looking for, let alone anything else.

[cosmik debris]

8. You're right

There are a lot of "cause and effect" relationships here that are not verified. For me to be a believer in this I would have to see a MUCH stronger link between cause and effect.

[BurtWorm]

9. She's not doing science.

She's actually doing religion and calling it science. She has faith that the way she's studying these animals will yield the "data" she needs to corroborate her "theory." She came to this study believing in what she thought it would tell her--and lo and behold, it told her what she wanted to hear.

[struggle4progress]

14. "You live religion. You don't talk about it. Certain questions -- Do you believe in God? Do you ...

... have a religion? -- don't necessarily make sense to all people."

Well said.

[DeSwiss]

15. I have a great deal of respect for Karen Armstrong's work...

This book seems very interesting as well, and so I' ve got to get this one too.

Thanks for the heads-up!

:thumbsup:

[Evoman]

17. The article is somewhat interesting...but I think this researcher tends to over-speculate.

Speculating is fun, but its as important to give equal weight to other hypothesis that may explain the data better or in simpler terms. I don't know what kind of scientific training anthropoligists get, and I have never read a paper from this researcher, so I can't say she hasn't done that (although on the basis of this interview, I can speculate heh). I would have to read her publications before I could say anything further (does she have publications in peer reviewed journals)