Religious belief can be either functional or dysfunctional


or, neutral, that is, non-functional but not dysfunctional.

and in fact the robustness of religious belief suggests that religion must be in some way, at least socially, more functional than not

in the ultimate sense, yes, but necessarily in the direct proximate sense.

e.g., if

a entails b & c, and the benefit from b > c, then a results in a net benefit. it maybe that religion is a side-effect of the nature of the minds of sentient organisms, and the only structural way to banish it is to remove sentience.


Perhaps the innate trait leading to altruistic behavior is not intrinsically altruistic, but is exapted for altruism within a learned, conventional, non-innate social context such as religion. Candidates for such innate dispositions might be those toward male bonding, submissiveness, and anger against outsiders.


i suspect this is a large part of the "puzzle." also, "status signals" are often given religious sanction. religions may serve to functionally reduce the range of "status signals" so that such activities (rich men providing alms & feasts on special occassions) are beneficial to everyone because of the elevated status and redistribution of goods.

This is the "opiate of the people" explanation

the problem with "optiate of the people" explanations is that they are magnetically attractive to atheists, as it makes us seem supremely human and sentiment :) one thing to remember is that though there has been a progressive shift toward religious which over afterlives and what not, a) they didn't start that way (sheol, hades), b) religions are not maximally salving to the soul. in other words, there must at least be cognitive bounds of plausibility, else pelasgianism and universalism would flourish.

your last point is, to put it succinctly, sort of a long term fitness boost. that is, like sex, religion might reduce short term fitness, but it is allows one to evade long term extinction. it is a way to burst, periodically, outside the "bounds of rationality."

You might want to look into entrepreneurship for some parallels. Entrepreneurs have many of the "religious" characteristics which you describe. They are driven down a path of almost certain failure (though they don't perceive it that way). They are also the engines of our economy.

Why religion?

Because tiny, non-sentient charged particles have assembled themselves randomly, over billions of years of chaotic collisions, into sentient beings capable of observing that their own existence is so ridiculously unlikely, yet so unfathomably complex, that the only way existence makes any sense is if a bearded guy on a throne lives in the sky and spends his time forging his image onto tortillas and making statues cry.

Makes sense to me.

At the smallest scale, I think the basic belief in spirits, gods, etc is due to the human tendency to impute agency to phenomena. It's not enough for people to say "I noticed some trees swaying a little bit and heard a whooshing noise." Instead, we create a noun and say "the wind was blowing."

For phenomena that aren't connected by any sensory signals, people make religious/spiritual nouns. This also includes many vaguely perceived inner phenomena: emotional changes, etc. And people have a tendency to imbue all phenomena with human-like personalities.

So in that sense, scientific explanations a subset of this category. Western folks, newly inspired by the Enlightenment to see themselves as rational beings and curious about their world, imagined these invisible things as natural forces, laws of nature, etc operating according to regular, rational principles.

What's ironic is that the Western intelligetsia is not content to describe hurricanes and other non-human phenomena according to rational processes, but other people (ex: Arab responses to military occupation, incomplete social integration of some non-whites, etc) as irrational (!). Hurricane Katrina was therefore rational (and by my analogy, holy), but those dark skinned folks who died (due to their irrationality, translation: impiety) in the flood were not. (Reminds me of this religious story I once heard about this guy named Noah...)

Gaff: the first sentence in that last paragraph should have read "the Western intelligentsia is content to describe..."

David, I've thought of that. "Proliferation and decimation / Variation and selective retention" (Donald Campbell) covers a lot of ground.

A lot of entrepreneurs in various areas, including science, have aspects of craziness, and some are just plain nuts. Lyric poets and musicians have the worst reputations, but a lot of major logicians and formal thinkers had mental health problems (Goedel and Nash are two famous examples.)

I think that the mental prerequisites for the successful maintenance of normality, and of exploration, expansion and discovery, are quite different. I don't think that IQ is the difference, both modes require IQ. But I think that normality maintenance requires the ability to stop thinking when appropriate.

So what I've said about religion is partly applicable to mental illness and intellectual revolution too.

We tend to worship the great discoverers and sneer at the ambitious failures, but I think that it's in the nature of exploration not to know what you will find. Some failures were very sharp, talented guys who bet wrong.

I am in favor of rationalism (over revelation, tradition and dreamy cultural intuitions), but a lot of rationally oriented people vastly overestimate the degree to which all practically important questions are rationally decidable. Ignorance and contingency are major factors in history -- not just stupid people's ignorance, but inevitable ignorance which smart people have too.

Nice posting. I'll venture a couple of thoughts.

One is that the kind of "religion" that gets discussed around these parts is often of a very (to my mind) particular kind. Credal ... Unlikely ... Like a club with absurd rules that some people inexplicably sign up for anyway.

OK, there are some religions that look that way. But aren't there many more that aren't remotely like that? All cultures (including) have their own mythologies, their own p-o-v's, their own belief systems. In many if not most cultures, these belief systems are almost invisible to the members of that culture. But these are religions too, no? So aren't we in many cases talking simply about what it is and means to be a member of a particular culture? If so, what's weird (or really in need of explanation)? After all, members of a culture are automatically members of that culture -- they buy into it, they live it, they *already* accept its premises. Most are born into it. Life without that belief structure seems inconceivable to them.

But I'm of the "we all inevitably partake in the religious dimension whether we think we do or not" school. Keep 'em from believing in one thing and they'll believe in another, etc.

Anyway: isn't religion in many cases more of an aspect of existence than it is an independent puzzle and peculiarity? Doesn't it thus make more sense to take note of it than it does to explain it?

Another thought: Doesn't religion, like art, culture, myth, etc, give us ways to discuss experiences and aspects of life? Isn't that one of its functions? After all, if we waited around for science to prove or disprove everything, and to give us firm footing, we couldn't get through the day. So we rely on stories, legends, poetry, associations, fantasy, etc, to account for what we encounter and need to deal with. I see that as a nice thing myth and religion do for people ...

Institutional religion is the interface between religion practice and belief and the State. Non-institutional religion exists, even under state rule, and without the state (notably in Tibet before Chinese domination became overwhelming), religion is much more fertile and diverse. I plan to write about this.

And you're right, GNXP mostly talks about institutional religion.

John, Razib, and others, Just curious -- Assuming you have or plan to have children, how will you raise them? Atheist, creationist, other?

My son is 33. I raised him without religious training, and he knows I'm an atheist.

Atheist, creationist, other?

atheist of course :-) either that, or they're out on the street :-) [my S.O. concurs on this point]

When my son meets women, he feels somewhat more comfortable if he finds out their parents are atheists. He had one girlfriend whose father is a more militant atheist than I am, and I was very sad when they broke up.