Anthony Ca
Sat, Jan-20-07, 17:17
An HTML version of this review is available at:
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Over 300 other reviews of books on acupuncture, biography,
biology, brain and mind, cosmology, cycling, death and dying,
evolution, fiction, history, history of science, medicine,
parapsychology, palaeontology, philology, philosophy,
philosophy of science, psychology, religion, science, and
travel may be found at this site.
---------------------------------------------------------
----------
Scott Atran
IN GODS WE TRUST
The evolutionary landscape of religion
---------------------------------------------------
----------
Book review by Anthony Campbell. The review is
licensed under a Creative Commons License.
---------------------------------------------------
----------
Many attempts to provide a naturalistic explanation
for religion start from the assumption that it must
have had survival benefits for our hunter-gatherer
ancestors. But Atran does not believe that religions
are adaptations which enhance genetic fitness or that
they have evolutionary functions as such. This does
not mean that he neglects evolution, however; quite
the opposite. Rather, he thinks that religion needs to
be seen in the wider context of how the mind itself
has evolved.
As his subtitle implies, he uses the metaphor of a
mountain-valley landscape to explain the forms that
religions take.
This landscape is shaped by natural selection. It is
ancestrally defined by specific sets of affective,
social, and cognitive features (different mountain
ridges). Each mountain ridge in this landscape has a
distinct contour, with various peaks whose heights
reflect evolutionary time.
All religions are supposed to follow the same
structural contours, so the shape of the landscape
determines the kinds of religion that can arise. The
constraining forces that shape the landscape are
folk-mechanics, folk-biology, and folk-psychology. All
of these have in turn been shaped by natural selection
over long periods; indeed, Atran suggests that
folk-mechanics may have its ultimate origin in the
reptilian brain.
Probably the most characteristic feature of religions
is that they presuppose the existence of invisible
beings such as gods, demons, and spirits that
influence human life. How to explain this is a major
problem. Atran's solution is fairly similar to that
of a fellow anthropologist, Pascal Boyer, being based
on the idea that belief in these invisible entities
results from the operation of the same mental
processes as are involved in the formation of
ordinary beliefs.
Atran postulates the existence of an "innate releasing
mechanism" in the mind or brain. This mechanism has
been selected for during evolution because it allowed
our ancestors to detect hostile animals and humans in
time to take avoiding action. It would be advantageous
for the mechanism to have hair-trigger sensitivity;
better to respond to a threat that wasn't there than
to miss one that was.
This hair-trigger response, however, caused the
mechanism to respond not only to "real" threats but
also to inanimate phenomena that mimic the appearance
of living agents: apparent voices in the wind or
running water, faces in the clouds and so on. And
eventually the response became still further removed
from actual phenomena in the outer world to encompass
imaginary beings derived from dreams and visions.
While this is probably as plausible an account of the
origin of these counter-intuitive beliefs as any, it
requires supporting evidence if it is to amount to
more than armchair speculation. This is what Atran
seeks to provide, with ample citation of
anthropological material and other sources. The book
has four parts. Part 1 looks at the innate releasing
mechanism theory in detail. Part 2 is about the
cognitive structures and social commitments that make
up belief in the supernatural and promote stability in
societies. Part 3 deals with ritual practice and
religious experience. Part 4 contrasts the approach
used in the book with rival theories such as
sociobiology, group theory, and meme theory which have
been suggested by people who think that religion is
best explained in terms of selection and adaptation.
Atran finds all of these rival ideas to be wanting in
various ways. I thought his demolition of
"neurotheology" was particularly telling ("A 'God
Module' in the Temporal Lobe? Not Likely). Still,
there do seem to be some intriguing connections
between brain function and belief: Atran cites
studies which show that exposure to descriptions of
death and suffering increases strength of belief in
God. "[E]motional stress associated with
death-related scenes seems a stronger motivator for
religiosity than mere exposure to emotionally
unstressful religious scenes, such as praying."
Catholic rituals such as the Stations of the Cross
take on a new light in this context.
As one would expect in a book of this kind, there are
extensive notes and references (though the indexing is
a little erratic). In a note on p.286 Atran makes the
curious observation that the Assassins of mediaeval
Islam closely resembled the Indian sect of Thugs. This
seems most implausible to me. He appears to take Marco
Polo's unreliable account of the Assassins as
drug-crazed terrorists more or less at face value, but
the Assassins (or Nizaris, as they are properly
known), were not drugged, nor were their motives
remotely comparable with those of the Thugs, who were
devotees of Kali and robbed their victims. The
Assassins used murder as a political expedient in a
way that made good sense in the circumstances at the
time but these were in no sense ritual killings.
This book does not constitute easy reading. It is
addressed to a scientifically-minded audience and the
language, in Atran's word, is often "dense", which
seems to mean not devoid of jargon; it is also
sometimes repetitious. There are large amounts of
detail, which at times tend to obscure the argument as
much as to illuminate it. Nevertheless, it is
chock-full of interesting ideas; the casual reader
might care to start with the Introduction and the
final chapter, which provides a useful summary of the
book as a whole.
Atran's conclusion is that religion is not going to
fade away any time soon.
As long as people share hope beyond reason, religion
will persevere. For better or worse, religious
belief in the supernatural seems here to stay. With
it comes trust in deities good and bad, songs of
fellowship and drums of war, promises to allay our
worst fears and achieve our most fervent hopes, and
heartfelt communion in costly homage to the absurd.
This loss and gain persist as the abiding measure of
humanity. No other seems able to compete for very
long. And so spirituality looms as humankind's
provisional evolutionary destiny.
This seems to me to be essentially correct, whether or
not one fully agrees with Atran's account of how
religion originated.
---------------------------------------------------
----------
%T In Gods We Trust %S The evolutionary landscape of
religion %A Scott Atran %I Oxford University Press %C
Oxford and New York %D 2004 %G ISBN 0-19-514930-0;
ISBN 0-19-517803-3 %P xvi + 348pp %K anthropology,
religion %O illustrated
--
Anthony Campbell - ac@acampbell.org.uk Microsoft-free zone -
Using Linux Gnu-Debian http://www.acampbell.org.uk (blog, book
reviews, on-line books and sceptical articles)
http://www.acampbell.org.uk/bookreviews/
Over 300 other reviews of books on acupuncture, biography,
biology, brain and mind, cosmology, cycling, death and dying,
evolution, fiction, history, history of science, medicine,
parapsychology, palaeontology, philology, philosophy,
philosophy of science, psychology, religion, science, and
travel may be found at this site.
---------------------------------------------------------
----------
Scott Atran
IN GODS WE TRUST
The evolutionary landscape of religion
---------------------------------------------------
----------
Book review by Anthony Campbell. The review is
licensed under a Creative Commons License.
---------------------------------------------------
----------
Many attempts to provide a naturalistic explanation
for religion start from the assumption that it must
have had survival benefits for our hunter-gatherer
ancestors. But Atran does not believe that religions
are adaptations which enhance genetic fitness or that
they have evolutionary functions as such. This does
not mean that he neglects evolution, however; quite
the opposite. Rather, he thinks that religion needs to
be seen in the wider context of how the mind itself
has evolved.
As his subtitle implies, he uses the metaphor of a
mountain-valley landscape to explain the forms that
religions take.
This landscape is shaped by natural selection. It is
ancestrally defined by specific sets of affective,
social, and cognitive features (different mountain
ridges). Each mountain ridge in this landscape has a
distinct contour, with various peaks whose heights
reflect evolutionary time.
All religions are supposed to follow the same
structural contours, so the shape of the landscape
determines the kinds of religion that can arise. The
constraining forces that shape the landscape are
folk-mechanics, folk-biology, and folk-psychology. All
of these have in turn been shaped by natural selection
over long periods; indeed, Atran suggests that
folk-mechanics may have its ultimate origin in the
reptilian brain.
Probably the most characteristic feature of religions
is that they presuppose the existence of invisible
beings such as gods, demons, and spirits that
influence human life. How to explain this is a major
problem. Atran's solution is fairly similar to that
of a fellow anthropologist, Pascal Boyer, being based
on the idea that belief in these invisible entities
results from the operation of the same mental
processes as are involved in the formation of
ordinary beliefs.
Atran postulates the existence of an "innate releasing
mechanism" in the mind or brain. This mechanism has
been selected for during evolution because it allowed
our ancestors to detect hostile animals and humans in
time to take avoiding action. It would be advantageous
for the mechanism to have hair-trigger sensitivity;
better to respond to a threat that wasn't there than
to miss one that was.
This hair-trigger response, however, caused the
mechanism to respond not only to "real" threats but
also to inanimate phenomena that mimic the appearance
of living agents: apparent voices in the wind or
running water, faces in the clouds and so on. And
eventually the response became still further removed
from actual phenomena in the outer world to encompass
imaginary beings derived from dreams and visions.
While this is probably as plausible an account of the
origin of these counter-intuitive beliefs as any, it
requires supporting evidence if it is to amount to
more than armchair speculation. This is what Atran
seeks to provide, with ample citation of
anthropological material and other sources. The book
has four parts. Part 1 looks at the innate releasing
mechanism theory in detail. Part 2 is about the
cognitive structures and social commitments that make
up belief in the supernatural and promote stability in
societies. Part 3 deals with ritual practice and
religious experience. Part 4 contrasts the approach
used in the book with rival theories such as
sociobiology, group theory, and meme theory which have
been suggested by people who think that religion is
best explained in terms of selection and adaptation.
Atran finds all of these rival ideas to be wanting in
various ways. I thought his demolition of
"neurotheology" was particularly telling ("A 'God
Module' in the Temporal Lobe? Not Likely). Still,
there do seem to be some intriguing connections
between brain function and belief: Atran cites
studies which show that exposure to descriptions of
death and suffering increases strength of belief in
God. "[E]motional stress associated with
death-related scenes seems a stronger motivator for
religiosity than mere exposure to emotionally
unstressful religious scenes, such as praying."
Catholic rituals such as the Stations of the Cross
take on a new light in this context.
As one would expect in a book of this kind, there are
extensive notes and references (though the indexing is
a little erratic). In a note on p.286 Atran makes the
curious observation that the Assassins of mediaeval
Islam closely resembled the Indian sect of Thugs. This
seems most implausible to me. He appears to take Marco
Polo's unreliable account of the Assassins as
drug-crazed terrorists more or less at face value, but
the Assassins (or Nizaris, as they are properly
known), were not drugged, nor were their motives
remotely comparable with those of the Thugs, who were
devotees of Kali and robbed their victims. The
Assassins used murder as a political expedient in a
way that made good sense in the circumstances at the
time but these were in no sense ritual killings.
This book does not constitute easy reading. It is
addressed to a scientifically-minded audience and the
language, in Atran's word, is often "dense", which
seems to mean not devoid of jargon; it is also
sometimes repetitious. There are large amounts of
detail, which at times tend to obscure the argument as
much as to illuminate it. Nevertheless, it is
chock-full of interesting ideas; the casual reader
might care to start with the Introduction and the
final chapter, which provides a useful summary of the
book as a whole.
Atran's conclusion is that religion is not going to
fade away any time soon.
As long as people share hope beyond reason, religion
will persevere. For better or worse, religious
belief in the supernatural seems here to stay. With
it comes trust in deities good and bad, songs of
fellowship and drums of war, promises to allay our
worst fears and achieve our most fervent hopes, and
heartfelt communion in costly homage to the absurd.
This loss and gain persist as the abiding measure of
humanity. No other seems able to compete for very
long. And so spirituality looms as humankind's
provisional evolutionary destiny.
This seems to me to be essentially correct, whether or
not one fully agrees with Atran's account of how
religion originated.
---------------------------------------------------
----------
%T In Gods We Trust %S The evolutionary landscape of
religion %A Scott Atran %I Oxford University Press %C
Oxford and New York %D 2004 %G ISBN 0-19-514930-0;
ISBN 0-19-517803-3 %P xvi + 348pp %K anthropology,
religion %O illustrated
--
Anthony Campbell - ac@acampbell.org.uk Microsoft-free zone -
Using Linux Gnu-Debian http://www.acampbell.org.uk (blog, book
reviews, on-line books and sceptical articles)