Why did evolution make us religious?

[VociMike]

Where did you get that idea? I have a degree in anthropology, and I know for a fact that you have no evidence to back up the claim that our immediate ancestors had no religion. It is true that those species that lacked the mental capacity for it would have lacked it, but there is no way of knowing when it first developed.

Who said anything about immediate ancestors? I’m simply stating the obvious, which is that before there was a religious “bent” in the human line, there was not such a “bent”. Religiosity evolved in creatures that were not, beforehand, religious. Like I said, this is obvious stuff.

Listen closely… evolution doesn’t decide what is going to happen. It selects for adaptive traits.

I know that. Why the condescending tone? Why not just address what should be for an atheist a very real question?

Evolution didn’t form anything.

You’re arguing over words now. You know perfectly well what I mean when I use such shorthand language.

It selects the most adaptive of randomly mutated traits. There is no evidence that we could have developed an imagination without religion being a byproduct.

That sure is a weak answer. In fact, it is no answer at all. Does this mean that atheistic societies will have no imagination, or that there will never be atheistic societies?

Evolution didn’t make up God, humans made up God.

But evolution selected for humans who made up god(s), even in spite of all the wasteful and destructive baggage that goes along with that. And I want to know why. Don’t you want to know why, since you (most atheists, at least) consider religion to be wasteful if not downright bad for humanity?

You seem to be confusing evolution with your concept of God.

I can assure you that I am not, so you needn’t pursue that line of argument any further.

 

[VociMike]

Perhaps you should have just made it clear that you were going hammer away at a straw man argument rather than suggesting in your opening post that you were asking a serious question. You would have saved me responding to your thread. But then again, I should have learned by now that almost no one posts on this forum in order to learn anything.

Now here I was assuming that atheists would want to respond to my question, would want to explain why evolution selected for humans who believed in made-up gods, in spite of (certainly in the atheist view) is an enormous load of unproductive and often destructive religious baggage. Again I ask, how can creatures carrying such baggage be “the fittest”?

But instead you claim “straw man” and leave in a huff.

 

[VociMike]

I’m going to try wording my objection in a different way. Another straw man, you might say. This is what I think the average atheist believes:

1. That evolution has selected for religiosity in the human species, since it somehow, directly or indirectly, makes such people more fit than those who lack that religiosity.
2. That in fact, religion is wasteful and often downright destructive, and that it provides nothing that atheistic thought/society/civilization cannot provide at least as well, if not better.

So how does one reconcile the verdict of evolution on religion with the verdict of atheists on religion. And nobody get your knickers in a bunch about my speaking of “the verdict of evolution”, OK. Because you know darned well what I mean.

 

[Shredderbeam]

I’m going to try wording my objection in a different way. Another straw man, you might say. This is what I think the average atheist believes:

1. That evolution has selected for religiosity in the human species, since it somehow, directly or indirectly, makes such people more fit than those who lack that religiosity.
2. That in fact, religion is wasteful and often downright destructive, and that it provides nothing that atheistic thought/society/civilization cannot provide at least as well, if not better.

So how does one reconcile the verdict of evolution on religion with the verdict of atheists on religion. And nobody get your knickers in a bunch about my speaking of “the verdict of evolution”, OK. Because you know darned well what I mean.

The point that I was trying to make is that evolution might select for something else, of which religion is a by-product. At the risk of sounding repetitive, children that believe their parents, at least for the first few years, have an enormous advantage - they won’t do things to get themselves killed, or they’ll do them less frequently. The advantage conferred by this tendency is greater than the damage of religion. It’s like finding $100 and losing $50 - it’s a net gain.

 

[wasmit]

This question is addressed, of course, at those who assume that it was evolution that made us religious (and I hope we can at least acknowledge that the human race is religious).

If we are religous, and if evolution made us so, then why? Religion (that is, believing in things that don’t exist) has great costs associated with it. So what are the even greater benefits?

And, the most important question of all, why couldn’t evolution produce those benefits in us without the great costs of believing in something that doesn’t exist?

Can we apply Occam’s Razor to the “being religious gives us benefits” view and ask “why can’t we have gotten the benefits without the religion?”

Here is one possible idea on this issue. I have no idea of the accuracy of this hypothesis.

In the Good Old Days™, it was beneficial for young children to be gullible - to believe whatever an authority figure told them. This authority figure was usually the parent, who usually said things like “Don’t go near that river, it is full of crocodiles”, or “don’t eat this particular fruit”. A gullible child would accept this claim and avoid the river/fruit. A less-gullible, or more skeptical child may want to check whether the river/fruit is actually dangerous, or if its parents were lying. The child may enter the river or eat the fruit, and die. Gullibility increases individual survival if the individual is a member of a group. Therefore, gullibility is a trait that is selected for amongst human populations.

A side effect of this is humans of all ages blindly accepting claims from authority, therefore group leaders will claim divine revelation to maintain their power/status as leaders (because there is no higher authority than the deity of ones group).

That said, this is just one idea that I have heard about on this issue. I have no idea of its accuracy. If you are genuinely interested in this issue, you may want to look into this.

 

[wasmit]

Here is what I assume an atheist believes. They believe that there is nothing that society needs that cannot be had in an atheistic society. They believe that atheistic society is in no way inferior to religious society, and in fact is superior. But in that case they seem to be in disagreement with science, in particular with the science of evolution. Because evolution has selected for religious human beings. To the atheist there can be no other explanation for the existence of religious human beings.

Your assumption is wrong. A person who says “I am an atheist” is only saying “I do not believe in the existence of any gods”. This says nothing about what they think society needs, or what society should be.