[ExI] Rick Warren on religion

[Keith Henson]

 It is an interesting talk by Daniel Dennett.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DTepA-WV_oE

I wrote Dennett, this is most of what I said.

Watched your recent TED talk where you brought up this from Rick Warren:

"Surrendered people obey God's word, even if it doesn't make sense."

You have a problem with that, and so do I.  But it is a common feature
of religions.

The trait of having religions, like all else in living things,
evolved.  It was either directly selected or it is a side effect from
some other trait that was selected.  The trait to have religions is
widespread.  This indicates that at some point in our past, the trait
was under strong selection.  Similar to
http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Capture-bonding

What situations in our evolutionary past would have led to a strong
selection for this psychological trait?

War.

Humans are a top predator, i.e., nothing except other humans
ultimately limits their numbers.  About once per generation (in a
stable environment), population growth leads to a resource crisis.  In
this matter, humans are very different from chimpanzees.  With chimps,
their xenophobia is always on.  Humans detect a resource crisis and
undergo a behavioral switch.  It is not cost effective (in gene terms)
to fight neighbors if the alternative (starvation) is not worse.

War is a situation where personal and genetic goals are in conflict.
Thus, even if "it doesn't make sense" the genes of our ancestors did
better if they went to war under some circumstances.  (The key to the
model is that the downside for the loser's genes was limited by the
universal human trait of the winners taking the female children as
wives or extra wives.)

I make a case that "Surrendered people obey God's word, even if it
doesn't make sense" has its origin in the same psychological trait
that worked up our ancestors in a resource crisis to kill their
neighbors.

This is not to condemn religions in general.  As you say, they have a
long history of evolution under human direction. It is an attempt to
account for the evolved human psychological traits that underly
religions.

Keith