APR 4

22: APR 4.

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.

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.

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”.

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.

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.)

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.

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.

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!

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?