> Daniel Kruger wrote:
>
> >Given the recent postings on religious and supernatural topics, I would
> >like to take the opportunity to suggest a new area of discussion. As
> >intelligent and knowledgeable people, I believe we can progress beyond
> >quibbles over whether the world was *really* created on the back of a turtle
>
> >(etc.) and focus our efforts on something much more productive. Even with
> >our tremendous advances in understanding in the last few centuries,
> >religions and supernatural beliefs persist. Fields of social science such
> >as anthropology have well documented the functions religions and
> >supernatural beliefs play at both the individual and social levels. Given
> >the recent findings that religious beliefs/behaviors may contribute to our
> >well being even after other likely influences are controlled for ..., it is
> likely
> that
> >the capacity for religious/supernatural beliefs has been adaptive for our
> >survival and reproduction.
Your premise that particular religions now exist in our species because of
their biological adaptiveness can be questioned. An alternative way of looking
at the matter has been discussed by Susan Blackmore and others (e.g., Richard
Dawkins). In her recently published book, _The meme machine_ (1999, Oxford
University Press), Blackmore argued that any particular religion consists of a
large group of "memes" that are passed from one person to another (often parent
to child). A meme is simply anything that is passed from person to person
through imitation: "Imitation includes any kind of copying of ideas and
behaviours from one person to another. So when you hear a story and pass on the
gist to someone else, you have copied a meme" (p. 43). The most important point
about her discussion of memes is that they are "replicators" (anything that can
be copied) that are passed from person to person independently of the
replicators known as "genes." Because of this, memes are subject to selection
pressures that can act independently of the selection pressures to which genes
are subject. Thus, the selection of genes and memes may come into conflict:
memes may be selected that cause a reduction in the fitness of particular
genes:
"The more ways there are for memes to spread, and the faster they can go, the
less they are constrained by the needs of the genes. What determines the
success of a meme in a traditional hunter-gatherer society, or even a simple
farming society, is quite different from what determines its success in a
modern industrialised society. In the former, life changes slowly, transmission
is largely vertical [i.e., from the parental generation to children], and a
meme is most likely to succeed if it benefits (or at least appears to benefit)
the helath, longevity, and reproductive success of its carrier. In the latter,
a meme is most likely to succeed if it can get quickly and efficiently from
host to host, and never mind how well each host does in terms of either its own
survival or its reproductive success--as long as there are more hosts around to
infect. We now live in this latter kind of society and the memes have utterly
changed--and continue to change--the way we live." (p. 133)
Thus, according to Blackmore, a person may engage in behaviors, have thoughts,
and feel emotions NOT because these help the person's genes to be passed to the
next generation, but because they help the person's memes to be passed to
others more effectively. In our evolutionary past, religious beliefs may have
helped us to be more reproductively successful; but the speed and breadth of
transmission of memes in modern societies may have disengaged their "fitness"
from the fitness of the genes that help to build the brains that store the
memes. In other words, if I am understanding Blackmore's argument correctly,
religions may have spread for reasons other than biological advantage. In one
passage, she stated in a nutshell the basics of a memetic approach to
understanding religion:
"When we look at religions from a meme's eye view we can understand why they
have been so successful. These religious memes did not set out with an
intention to succeed. They were just behaviours, ideas and stories that were
copied from one person to another in the long history of human attempts to
understand the world. They were successful because they happened to come
together into mutually supportive gangs that included all the right tricks to
keep them safely stored in millions of brains, books and buildings, and
repeatedly passed on to more. They evoked strong emotions and strange
experiences. They provided myths to answer real questions and the myths were
protected by untestability, threats, and promises. They created and then
reduced fear to create compliance, and they used the beauty, truth and altruism
tricks to help their spread. That is why they are still with us, and why
millions of people's behaviour is routinely controlled by ideas that are either
false or completely untestable." (pp. 192-93)
If one constantly keeps in mind that much of her book is highly speculative,
the approach she outlines is extremely stimulating (to me, at least). It is an
interesting attempt to show how culture may have co-evolved with our biological
natures, and how these two major aspects of our existence also can evolve in
independent directions.
Just spreading my memes,
Jeff
--
Jeffry P. Ricker, Ph.D. Office Phone: (602) 423-6213
9000 E. Chaparral Rd. FAX Number: (602) 423-6298
Psychology Department [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Scottsdale Community College
Scottsdale, AZ 85250
"One of the problems of being a human is that it is rather hard
to look at humans with an unprejudiced eye." Susan Blackmore
