APR 3

21: APR 3.

Assigned

• Henrich C4 – “The Gods are Watching. Behave!” (123-152; 29) – Dictator game, “god-priming” research, moralizing gods, Big Gods and the random allocation game, hell, free will, and moral universalism.

In-Class

• Talking about Religion in a Naturalist Context.
• Designing a Religion with Cultural Evolution in Mind.

Talking about Religion in a Naturalist Context - Some caveats

• Naturalism and the Supernatural

• Methodological principle - “Whatever else might be true…”

• The beauty and importance of faith commitments.

• Belief in supernatural beings is on the decline. In light of the real work religious culture has done for humans (acc to cultural evolutionists), this is a critical problem.

Henrich C4 – “The Gods are Watching. Behave!”

• Major explanatory model for evolution of religious culture (128-133):

• Three forces may help explain the evolution of belief in supernatural beliefs:

• 1 - the power of cultural learning over personal experience (cf. Churchland and Tomasello). Likely adaptive - humans who could take on cultural norms outcompeted others.

• 2 - some of our cognitive capacities - e.g. “mentalizing abilities” facilitated belief in the supernatural. Cognitive traits like empathy favor religious belief among women and ethnicities with high empathy, big brains can imagine non-existent objects (like theoretical objects and alternative futures) - bias toward dualism, mind / body. Culture on mind/body switches 130.

• 3 - intergroup competition helps explain specific difference among religions and the emergence on “moralizing Gods” (Big God religions). Big God religions out competed Local God religions.
• Credibility Enhancing Displays (CREDs) play a role in enhancing religious commitment. (E.g. martyrdom) “costly and hard to fake commitments”.

• Big God v Local God religions

• Local God religions (131) hunter gatherer gods are partially human, not always moral, not Omni-
• Big God religions - Gods have concerns about human behavior and punish immoral behavior, surveil us, omni-potent, omni-present. More likely in pastoralist and agricultural societies.

• Major theses supported by evidence in this chapter:

• Religions vary in the types of gods they believe in. Local god religions v Big God religions, but also note change over time within a religion: OT God v NT God
• The wide range of religious belief (from Local Gods to Big Gods) have diverse effects on fitness.
• Big God religions support large cities.
• Big God religions improve prosocial norm compliance, impersonal fairness, and other cooperative social behaviors.
• Big God religions support more impartiality to distant co-religionist distant strangers. 137
• Gods typically want certain things that are also fitness enhancing. 133
• Local God religions may still promote food sharing and pro sociality in smaller groups.
• The Big God religions of Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, and (later) Islam all support beliefs in contingent afterlives, free will, and moral universalism. (Note relevance for our last unit.)

• Evidence for these theses.

• God primes — 123: test subjects primed with religious terms give more in the Dictator Game (impersonal fairness). But these effects only work for religious folks and toward religious benefactors.
• Secular primes might be equally powerful and work for both believers and non-believers. 125
• God primes in everyday life - Muslim call to prayer, porn consumption.

• In the evolution of religion toward Big God religions, we find God caring about many of the things that affect cooperation and group cohesiveness: Adultery (and paternity), norm compliance (through monitoring and punishment). Suggests connection with evolution.

• Study to test claims about cooperative power of Big God religions 134. Henrich & others created a measure of relative God-size and then found test subject across this spectrum. Test subjects allocated coins to either an anonymous co-religionist in distant village or either themselves (Self game) or a local co-religionist (Local Coreligionist game). Result: When people believed their God would punish bad behavior they were less biased against distant co-religionists. Similar results using Dictator game.

• Study to assess claims about Big God religions and scaling up of societies in large cities with complex dependencies (cooperation). 141. Watts et al used data from pre-Western contact societies (and their gods) to estimate probability of scaling up. Close to zero prob for societies with non-punishing gods. 40% with.

• Evidence on belief in: 147-148

• Contingent afterlife - >economic prosperity and <crime. Belief in heaven but not hell doesn’t help.
• Free Will - <less likely to cheat on math test. Read at 148.

Future Religion(s)

• Cultural evolution of religion suggests that religions played (and may still play) a big role helping cultures meet evolutionary challenges that depend upon values (cooperation, norm compliance, impersonal prosociality, impersonal honesty, trust, etc.)

• But religious belief is on the decline. Also, many of the positive effects from religion only extend to co-religionists (sectarianism). This wasn’t a problem when societies were religiously homogeneous, but they aren’t now. Add to this: we have new cooperative challenges like climate change and global resource use

• What is the future of Big God religions? Do we still need punishing gods? How have religions already changed in the last few millennia? (OT —> NT gods, de-emphasis on Hell, etc.). Laudato Si!

• Questions:

• Should we be thinking about a new direction for religions, perhaps toward ecumenism or syncretism, or should we be looking beyond religion for other beliefs that would help us “scale up” cooperation? Is there a way around the groupishness of religion? Could a secular or humanistic commitment to human dignity and universalism motivate people today?