ANT1004 06May2016

Recap last lecture:

● Religion is a by product not an adaptation?

● There is an intuitive way of thinking about the world (religious ideas ‘fit’ this
intuitive framework)
● Darwinian evolutionary process leads to adaptations and byproducts
○ But it is more complex than this - some by-products become
adaptations (not always fundamental differences between the two)

Religion as adaptation by natural selection

● See PPT slide for long quote by Jesse Bering (p.143)

● 2 views:
○ Belief in god result of adaptive design
○ God might be an accidental by product of human cognitive evolution
● Bering provides a third option:
○ An ‘exaptation’ - a spandrel that turned out to be useful and was
subsequently selected by evolutionary pressures
○ I.e. religion was once a by-product but acquired a functional trait
● Exaptation definition -
○ a shift in the function of a trait during evolution. For example, a trait
can evolve because it served one particular function, but subsequently
it may come to serve another. Exaptations are common in both
anatomy and behaviour. Bird feathers are a classic example: initially
they may have evolved for temperature regulation, but later were
adapted for flight. (Wikipedia)

How did religion as by-product become an adaptation?

● The Supernatural punishment hypothesis - (5 main components)

○ Ancient selfish motives (behaviour is usually selfish- Dawkins, 1986)
○ Evolution of intentionality system (naive psychology) and of language -
we understand human behaviour through ‘folk psychology’
○ Elevated costs of social exposure - due to development of language
cheating became more risky (people gossip about others, and do not
want their reputation tarnished so they do not cheat)
■ Religion/ god as a corrective mechanism
○ Belief in supernatural punishment from gods or spirits increases
cooperation and reputation management (everyone has an intuitive
way of thinking about the world in terms of supernatural agents

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i.e.belief that we are being observed leads us to moderate our

behaviour)

Implicit regulation of misbehaviour

● See quote on PPT from Jesse Bering

○ Students tested
○ Told the test was on spatial intelligence
○ Also told there was a glitch in system and to hit space bar if correct
answer was shown in error (to avoid cheating)
○ One group told story about a ghost in the room
○ The group that had been told about ghost hit space bar quicker than
other groups (due to fact that they felt ghost was observing them, they
were less likely to try to cheat)
● Video clip shown in class:
○ ‘Princess Alice’ experiment (young girl told not to look in box) shows
how we regulate our behaviour if we believe a supernatural agent is
observing

Evidence (events as messages and fate)

● Humans have tendency to interpret events as a ‘sign’

● E.g. Paulo’s life story - his offer of job at QUB was completely unpredictable -
but even though he is an atheist he felt that it was predestined

● Afterlife beliefs & Folk Dualism

○ After body dies the soul survives
○ See PPT puppet show - mouse eaten by alligator - children thought
that some emotional and epistemic survived death (they thought the
mouse could still be sad etc.)
○ Younger children believed some mental traits survived death (intuitive
belief in afterlife)
○ This belief in young children suggest these beliefs are intuitive and are
not the result of cultural indoctrination

Correlation between high gods & cooperation (more details next week)

● Are all supernatural agents concerned with morality

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○ There is a lot of variation cross-culturally (some gods are simply not

concerned with human behaviour/ morality
○ High-gods- appear to be widespread across cultures
○ Consistent with evolutionary thesis
○ But there are a number of criticisms which we will address next week -
e.g. selfish gods that need ritual sacrifice