[ExI] [Extropolis] Religion

[Keith Henson]

"assuming you can explain human behaviors with a rational, extremely
quantitative model. "

Let me step back a bit and mention another human trait that mystifies
people in modern times.

https://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Capture-bonding

Over a very long time, perhaps the last 200,000 years, women were
captured from one tribe to another perhaps ten percent per generation.
They either adjusted (bonded) to their new situation in which case
they became our ancestors or they did not, in which case they were
killed.  This long term selection results in the behaviour we see in
capture cases such as Patty Hearst and Elizabeth Smart.

It is possible that the deeply diverged San people don't have this trait.

According to evolutionary psychology, all behavior is either the
result of selection or a side effect of something that was selected.
Drug addiction behavior is an example of an obvious side effect.

The very widespread behavior to be infected with what we call a
religion is (by EP standards) one or the other.

I make a case that susceptibility to religious memes is a side effect
of selection for war.  The alternative is that being susceptible to
infection by religious memes was selected in the past, that is that
those who were susceptible left more children.

Keith

On Tue, Aug 6, 2024 at 6:57 PM Dylan Distasio <interzone at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> My original reply got caught in the moderator queue because I included a chart directly, so reposting with a link to it instead...
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ---------
> From: Dylan Distasio <interzone at gmail.com>
> Date: Tue, Aug 6, 2024 at 9:48 PM
> Subject: Re: [Extropolis] Religion
> To: <extropolis at googlegroups.com>
> Cc: ExI chat list <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>
>
>
>
>
> On Tue, Aug 6, 2024 at 9:10 PM Keith Henson <hkeithhenson at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> On Tue, Aug 6, 2024 at 5:16 PM Dylan Distasio <interzone at gmail.com> wrote:
>> >
>> > I don't wanna be the guy who says that to someone with a hammer everything looks like...but...
>>
>> I think most of you have seen my (so far) unpublished paper
>>
>> Genetic Selection for War in Prehistoric Human Populations
>>
>> Authors: H. Keith Henson,* Arel Lucas Email: hkeithhenson at gmail.com,
>> arellu at gmail.com
>>
>> Abstract: Behavior, including human behavior related to war, is no
>> less subject to Darwinian selection than physical traits.  Behavior
>> results from physical brain modules constructed by genes and
>> environmental input. The environmental detection and operation of
>> behavioral switches leading to wars are also under evolutionary
>> selection. War behavior in the environment of evolutionary adaptedness
>> (EEA) was under positive selection when the alternative (starvation)
>> was worse than war.  The model is then applied in an attempt to
>> explain the behavioral difference between chimpanzees and bonobos with
>> additional thoughts on the KhoeSan People of Southern Africa.
>>
>> It has a math model of how psychological traits for war were selected.
>> (War is shown to be better for genes when the alternative is worse.)
>
>
> In fairness, I have not done a deep dive on your paper, but I will try to.   I apologize if I am misconstruing things from the abstract alone, but I am getting Skinner vibes here, and I don't think we live in Skinner box.   Again, my interpretation may be off though as I haven't read it yet despite being familiar with your general assertions on list.
>
>
>>
>>
>> If you want a copy, ask.
>
>
> Yes, if you don't mind emailing me it separately, that would be appreciated.
>>
>>
>> > I think xenophobia is downstream of religion if we are talking about them together (not saying all xenophobia is caused by religion though), and religion exists (and persists) because it is quite a terrible prospect for a self conscious, intelligent organism to contemplate their mortality.   I would suggest Unamuno's The Tragic Sense of Life as a guidepost in explaining why it exists and the tension between Faith and Reason.
>>
>>  Somewhat more
>> speculative is that the psychological mechanism that supports gaining
>> and holding xenophobic memes about the tribe to be attacked is also
>> the mechanism behind gaining and holding religious memes
>
>
> I'm not sold on this, but maybe I will have a different opinion after reading the paper.
>
>>
>>
>> > A great deal of life on this planet is suffering, and without the hope of an afterlife the outlook is pretty bleak.   I say this as an atheist.
>>
>> Hmm.  Are you signed up for cryonics?
>
>
> Not yet.   I don't think there is anything to lose other than money to do so, and may at some point, but I consider the odds of someone successfully resurrecting a copy of me in the future to be extremely low for multiple reasons.   If you have the money and optimism, it beats the alternative though.
>>
>>
>> >   Religious belief systems inspire hope which leads to greater reproduction in that group.
>>
>> This I doubt.  I would be interested in a model that shows more
>> reproduction for groups with a religion than without, especially back
>> when most of the selection was going on, say 50,000 years ago.
>
>
> I'm not going to include a model.   I am just going to leave this here.   Now I will grant in the past and to a lesser extent present, there are likely confounding variables like family agriculture needing more bodies / high infant mortality rates,  but I'm not sure why you immediately doubt it.   I don't need a model to come up with the hypothesis that it is a positive influence on reproduction, and again, I can't remove for confounding variables (and I do believe they are contributing to some degree as I believe socioeconomic levels and cost of raising a child are two off the top of my head), but secular populations have the lowest reproduction rates on the planet.
>
> I don't know if you're going to have bones to pick with this particular chart, but I can tell you the numbers are very clear that one particularly fervent religion has the highest reproduction rate currently.
>
> https://imgur.com/a/cueTVA4
>
>> > There are alot of additional directions I could go in as to why early, primitive religions exist in terms of explaining and controlling your environment (or rather the appearance of control) but I think the crux of my answer is in my argument above.
>>
>> See if you can generate a numeric model such as I did for the
>> differential survival of genes in the war paper.
>
>
> This won't be happening because I wouldn't pretend to be able to without at the very least spending a great deal of time and brain capacity, and even then, doubt I could, but I would point out that I think you are falling into the same trap that many practioners of the Dismal Science fall into which is assuming you can explain human behaviors with a rational, extremely quantitative model.    I appreciate your efforts even if I remain skeptical.
>
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