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Darwin's Apple: The Evolutionary Biology of Religion
Darwin’s Apple proposes a new explanation for the origin and purpose of religion within the incontrovertible theory of evolution. It describes how religion is biologically adaptive and genetically evolved through the co-evolution of religion, ritual, and advanced human cognition.
Reviewers’ comments about Darwin’s Apple:
* A good melange of scholarly thinking and yet readable to those who are not anthropologists, philosophers, or neuroscientists.
Walter Greenleaf, Senior Research Scholar and Director for the Mind Division, Stanford Center on Longevity
* I like the idea of religious experience as a way of dampening out dissonance, the internal conflict between the emotions and the logical-symbolic executive with its nagging internal narrator. You may be on to something there.
Bill Graf, Vice President of Engineering
* Darwin's Apple is, for me, one of a small number of books that illuminate the human experience in new and exciting ways. Diamond makes a convincing case that individual religious practice is grounded in evolutionary biology, and in so doing, provides a framework for thinking about culture that will make a real difference in my practice as a historian, and in my understanding of the world.
Daniel Stewart, Ph.D., Cabrillo College
* You are doing better with understanding and explaining our conscious mind than anyone else I have read.
J. Alan Le Fevre, Senior Systems Engineer
* Equating [religion] with the evolution of consciousness is a reasonable approach.
Matt Rossano, Professor of Psychology, and author of Supernatural selection: How religion evolved.
* Brilliant!
Anna Malyala, PhD, Neuroscience
Reviewers’ comments about Darwin’s Apple:
* A good melange of scholarly thinking and yet readable to those who are not anthropologists, philosophers, or neuroscientists.
Walter Greenleaf, Senior Research Scholar and Director for the Mind Division, Stanford Center on Longevity
* I like the idea of religious experience as a way of dampening out dissonance, the internal conflict between the emotions and the logical-symbolic executive with its nagging internal narrator. You may be on to something there.
Bill Graf, Vice President of Engineering
* Darwin's Apple is, for me, one of a small number of books that illuminate the human experience in new and exciting ways. Diamond makes a convincing case that individual religious practice is grounded in evolutionary biology, and in so doing, provides a framework for thinking about culture that will make a real difference in my practice as a historian, and in my understanding of the world.
Daniel Stewart, Ph.D., Cabrillo College
* You are doing better with understanding and explaining our conscious mind than anyone else I have read.
J. Alan Le Fevre, Senior Systems Engineer
* Equating [religion] with the evolution of consciousness is a reasonable approach.
Matt Rossano, Professor of Psychology, and author of Supernatural selection: How religion evolved.
* Brilliant!
Anna Malyala, PhD, Neuroscience
328 pages, Kindle Edition
First published August 21, 2013
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
September 30, 2017
This is an excellent book. Few people know about this gem.
Diamond is an excellent writer. He knows how to make his case clearly and concisely. He makes a case that he believes is unique at this time, and that case is basically this: art, music, dance, mythology, and prayer are not accidents; they did not form as a byproduct of consciousness but as an integral, necessary part of the evolution of consciousness. Consciousness and these other compensating activities co-evolved together: consciousness needs religion as much as religion needs consciousness.
This is a bold and dramatic claim. Many others, like Richard Dawkins or Darrel Ray, see religion as a kind of virus that finds a niche in the human mind and propagates opportunistically leveraging natural proclivities that are necessary in the wild, but are no longer required in a civilized setting so they are otherwise available. Yet look at the amount of energy expenses on religious rituals. We know that nature is miserly, and one might easily wonder that if religion was not necessary, then wouldn't a branch of humans do without it and gain an advantage? Religions seems universal across all cultures, and anything that uniformly distributed almost surely serves a purpose; perhaps we simply don't see the purpose. He proposes -- I am somewhat simplifying here -- that consciousness by itself would be too powerful without art, music, dance, mythology, and prayer as compensating mechanisms.
It is a fascinating idea, and I am quite persuaded. Religion is so ubiquitous and occupies such a quantity of energy, that it is hard to imagine that it is superfluous. There has to be a benefit --- and even more, a purpose.
Diamond sees consciousness and emotions in a balancing act. Art, music, and religion evoke the emotions, and keep consciousness in check. I don't entirely agree with this idea that consciousness is the exclusion of emotion and emotion is the exclusion of consciousness. Perhaps by consciousness Diamond really refers to the logical, linear thinking (called system 2 thinking by Daniel Kahneman and Jonathan Haidt) that we experience as our internal narrative. This is where a lot of careful thought is needed to sort out the exact relation between emotion, consciousness, ego, mind, contemplation, meditation, etc -- and I admit I am not prepared at the moment to pass judgement at that level.
Diamond draws parallels between prayer and meditation which exists in various forms, which is known to be healthy for the mind. Art and music are pleasurable and relaxing. Dance is known to be restorative to the mind. We call it "recreation" but what is it that we are re-creating anew? Your consciousness? Makes you think he may have something.
Not everything falls perfectly in line. What Diamond does not consider is all of the other activities that we humans do, which no animals do, which do not support his theory. For example, wind surfing and skiing. These are activities that (in some sense) co-evolved with consciousness, require a lot of energy, and yet there is no reason to believe that consciousness depends upon them for compensation. It is entirely possible that art, dance, music, mythology, and prayer all are simply pleasurable activities for a being with language skills. Perhaps we like talking simply because we like talking. All of his five compensating rituals are communicative in nature. Is it possible that they developed not as a necessary compensation, but instead something that is simply enjoyable, like skiing, wind surfing, and any of the other myriad of things that humans do that no other animal does. Still, these are not trivial questions in any case.
It is clear that this is a work of many years effort, painstakingly laid out, and well supported by references to many other important works. I might even call it a philosophical masterpiece -- but I need to mull it over a bit and let it sink in. If you are intrigued by grappling with these issues, you will not be disappointed. It is without a doubt thought provoking. Definitely, a good read.
Diamond is an excellent writer. He knows how to make his case clearly and concisely. He makes a case that he believes is unique at this time, and that case is basically this: art, music, dance, mythology, and prayer are not accidents; they did not form as a byproduct of consciousness but as an integral, necessary part of the evolution of consciousness. Consciousness and these other compensating activities co-evolved together: consciousness needs religion as much as religion needs consciousness.
This is a bold and dramatic claim. Many others, like Richard Dawkins or Darrel Ray, see religion as a kind of virus that finds a niche in the human mind and propagates opportunistically leveraging natural proclivities that are necessary in the wild, but are no longer required in a civilized setting so they are otherwise available. Yet look at the amount of energy expenses on religious rituals. We know that nature is miserly, and one might easily wonder that if religion was not necessary, then wouldn't a branch of humans do without it and gain an advantage? Religions seems universal across all cultures, and anything that uniformly distributed almost surely serves a purpose; perhaps we simply don't see the purpose. He proposes -- I am somewhat simplifying here -- that consciousness by itself would be too powerful without art, music, dance, mythology, and prayer as compensating mechanisms.
It is a fascinating idea, and I am quite persuaded. Religion is so ubiquitous and occupies such a quantity of energy, that it is hard to imagine that it is superfluous. There has to be a benefit --- and even more, a purpose.
Diamond sees consciousness and emotions in a balancing act. Art, music, and religion evoke the emotions, and keep consciousness in check. I don't entirely agree with this idea that consciousness is the exclusion of emotion and emotion is the exclusion of consciousness. Perhaps by consciousness Diamond really refers to the logical, linear thinking (called system 2 thinking by Daniel Kahneman and Jonathan Haidt) that we experience as our internal narrative. This is where a lot of careful thought is needed to sort out the exact relation between emotion, consciousness, ego, mind, contemplation, meditation, etc -- and I admit I am not prepared at the moment to pass judgement at that level.
Diamond draws parallels between prayer and meditation which exists in various forms, which is known to be healthy for the mind. Art and music are pleasurable and relaxing. Dance is known to be restorative to the mind. We call it "recreation" but what is it that we are re-creating anew? Your consciousness? Makes you think he may have something.
Not everything falls perfectly in line. What Diamond does not consider is all of the other activities that we humans do, which no animals do, which do not support his theory. For example, wind surfing and skiing. These are activities that (in some sense) co-evolved with consciousness, require a lot of energy, and yet there is no reason to believe that consciousness depends upon them for compensation. It is entirely possible that art, dance, music, mythology, and prayer all are simply pleasurable activities for a being with language skills. Perhaps we like talking simply because we like talking. All of his five compensating rituals are communicative in nature. Is it possible that they developed not as a necessary compensation, but instead something that is simply enjoyable, like skiing, wind surfing, and any of the other myriad of things that humans do that no other animal does. Still, these are not trivial questions in any case.
It is clear that this is a work of many years effort, painstakingly laid out, and well supported by references to many other important works. I might even call it a philosophical masterpiece -- but I need to mull it over a bit and let it sink in. If you are intrigued by grappling with these issues, you will not be disappointed. It is without a doubt thought provoking. Definitely, a good read.
March 22, 2015
[Note March 12, 2015: I wrote this in December 2013, but I decided to post it now because Mitch recently addressed our meetup group again. He spoke about the hypothesis proposed in his book, using an interesting round-table format in which the group participated with questions, suggestions, and debate. It was good meeting. I am currently reading Consciousness and the Brain: Deciphering How the Brain Codes Our Thoughts by Stanislas Dehaene. Dehaene uses many of the same arguments Mitch uses…but for consciousness rather than religion.]
My Review
This is a well researched, well organized, coherent book written in a professional but accessible style. Mitch has clearly put a great deal of thought and effort into it. I just don't agree with the main argument -- that religion is biologically adaptive. I have a bias. When I de-converted, my lifelong struggle to reconcile my religious beliefs with the evidence of my senses was over. I do not envy or admire the certainty or complacency that religious people seem (claim) to have. I am interested in the theories about the persistence of religion, but I favor the idea proposed by Dawkins that it is a viral meme. It may have at one time played an important part in our evolution, but it is no longer necessary for survival. Mitch seems to argue that it is still a useful adaptation, and that, I think, is where we differ.
I keep encountering people who try to explain, and reconcile, mythology with science. The proposal here is something called "The Split" hypothesis. He disputes the conclusions of some big names in evolutionary biology and psychology, like Richard Dawkins and Steven Pinker. On the other hand, he finds support in the ideas of "visionaries" like Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell. He presented his ideas in a talk to our small meetup group in December 2013. From my unschooled perspective, I am forced to appeal to authority. I don't have the time or resources to get my own Ph.D., but I read a lot of science books.
He mentioned Tooby, Cosmides, and Ramachandran in support of his hypothesis. I have not read them, but I have read books by Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Steven Pinker, Carl Zimmer, Neil Shubin, Jared Diamond, Stephen Jay Gould, Donald Prothero, Jerry Coyne, Daniel Kahneman, Andy Thomsen, and Michael Shermer. The strict Darwinist view is that the mind is a product of the brain, and it, like all other traits, evolved in gradual, cumulative change over time. They ask, is the religiosity that seems to be ubiquitous throughout human history an adaptive trait, or is it a non-adaptive by-product, or what Stephen Jay Gould called a spandrel?
I decided to read his book to learn more. Here is his argument (at loc 223): "Emotions are evolved systems that ensure our survival. Religion stimulates our emotions and suppresses consciousness; therefore religion is adaptive. This is to say religion evolved biologically, and the propensity for religion is inherited and in our genes." He also proposes that "religion evolved as a compensating mechanism for the problems raised by the evolution of consciousness." This is his Split hypothesis.
Why must human behavior be considered either nature or nurture but not both? Isn't that a false dichotomy? I think human culture, language, higher consciousness, and intelligence are layers added by evolution, like our pre-frontal cortex. Both are interconnected with the lower layers of instinct and emotion and cannot be separated from them.
He writes "from what I could tell, the existing theories for the evolutionary origin of religion are profoundly lacking." (He has never heard of Michael Shermer.)
Just to look at one of the author's authorities, I refreshed my memory about Joseph Campbell by watching the first episode of "The Power of Myth" on YouTube. That's all I could handle. It's just silly. Campbell is like some sort of guru, raining precious droplets of inscrutable wisdom on Moyers, who virtually sits at his feet soaking it up. He's Chopra without the quantum. He utters glib statements, metaphors, and pop psychology, all deepities, to use a term Daniel Dennett coined. None of it made sense to me. It's like having a dream in which all your existential questions are answered and then waking up and wishing you'd written it down. If I get the message at all, I guess it's that we skeptics have gone to the dark side by intellectualizing everything and rejecting our spiritual side. I remember reading The Power of Myth years ago and feeling it had nothing to offer. One Amazon reviewer called it new age crap, and that's pretty much how I feel about it. I like mythology as much as anyone and see the metaphor and symbolism of it, but that doesn't mean it holds any life lessons. It's just stories people tell each other, not history or a how-to manual, any more than the bible is.
On Consciousness
I like some of the ideas Diamond presented about consciousness: the concept that it is important and powerful, that it is in charge (essentially that we're in charge), is a delusion brought about by consciousness itself. He compares consciousness to an annoying little sibling, following us about, keeping up a running commentary, but always a bit behind the actions already taken by our unconscious processes.
Research is showing that most of what our brains does is automatic and happens below the level of consciousness; very little of that activity rises to consciousness, and what consciousness does is no more than make a delayed report and a rationalization of reality, much of which is wrong. After all it's mostly ourselves talking to ourselves. And you can do away with volition, or free will. The idea that "we" make decisions and then act on them is a delusion, a fallacy. Looked at this way, consciousness becomes more a problem than an advantage. The question becomes, what is it for, anyway?
I Am Not Convinced
I have come to the conclusion that I disagree with the Split hypothesis. It says that religion and consciousness evolved simultaneously in humans, that emotions are adaptive, and that religion elicits emotion and suppresses the problems that consciousness causes, and that therefore religion is adaptive. (Appeal to nature.) I disagree that emotion is elicited by religion. I think rather it is elicited by consciousness. If religion has anything to do with emotion, it tends to suppress it. I came to this conclusion after reading a Medscape story about research on psychedelic drugs, in which it was reported that Ecstasy allows people suffering from PTSD to remember their experiences without the trauma of the associated emotions. fMRI studies indicate that it essentially disconnects the memory from the emotion. If you accept Mitch's loose definition of religion as something that suppresses consciousness, then taking psychedelic drugs is religion.
Here's something else that I feel undermines his argument. He says human singing, dancing, and art are religion, but only humans do religion. So when non-human animals sing, dance, or make art, what is that?
I think he oversimplifies emotion (which he does not define, though it is as slippery a concept as religion or consciousness). I don't think emotion can be attributed to only one aspect of human thought, such as religion or consciousness. He seems to focus only on "positive" emotions, ones that give us pleasure, for one thing. How about the hypothesis that "emotion," like "mind," is a human construct that cannot be attributed to any physiological form? Maybe "negative" emotions come from consciousness and "positive" ones come from religion. I love to sing and dance. What do they do for me? Well, they calm me. I get special pleasure when I do them in cooperation with other people. (I've sung in choral groups and I enjoy ballroom and line dancing.) What is it about it those things that I find so pleasing? Sure it suppresses some emotions, those of discord, but does it arouse "good" emotions? And does that make it "religion"? And does the fact that it pleases me that make it adaptive? "Bad" emotions are ubiquitous in human society too. Sometimes they result in violence. So, are they adaptive? Again, the circular reasoning used here could apply to a lot of human traits that most would agree are not adaptive.
Halfway through, there are descriptions and comparisons of human rituals, or what I would term comparative religion. Arguing that rituals are pleasurable or useful as therapy adds nothing to the argument that ritual is religion, or that it is adaptive, except to the extent that creatures do more of what pleases them, and therefore pleasure, or what is pleasing, might be adaptive. I think addiction is a pretty good argument against this. Jared Diamond addressed this in The Third Chimpanzee, but didn't come to any conclusions.
Again restating his argument: religion is ubiquitous in human society. A trait like that wouldn't exist if it wasn't adaptive; it would have been selected out because nature is not wasteful. He compares the by-product argument to the intelligent design argument: we explain away traits we don't understand as accidents in the former and "god did it" in the latter. I posit the opposite: nature is incredibly wasteful. It has all of life with which to experiment, and the vast majority of the experiments fail. Individuals that survive are jury-rigged and inefficient, but they are less jury-rigged and inefficient than others in a population, so they blunder on long enough to manage to replicate themselves. Isn't that wasteful? (It should be surprising if there were not by-products and accidents.) I think stating that nature is efficient is like believing the strong anthropic principle, that the universe was designed with us in mind.
Things I Would Like to Discuss With Mitch
What is religion? He says dance, art, and music are "religion." But if they are, nearly everybody is religious and the term becomes meaningless. Mitch argues that everybody is religious because religion is adaptive, but he gives religion an extremely broad definition to get there -- that's circular reasoning. (Is religion adaptive because it's pervasive, or is religion pervasive because it's adaptive?) Those who study what is thought of as religion usually break it into its component parts, two main ones of which are belief and ritual. I think if Mitch did that, his argument would fail. Evolutionary biologists generally seem to agree that ritual is adaptive in that it strengthened tribal bonds, aiding the cooperation that helped make the human species such a powerful force. Shermer and the others I've read usually study religious belief.
What is emotion? He doesn't define it. He seems to take for granted that emotions give us pleasure, and that pleasure is somehow adaptive. (What is pleasure? Are pleased people evolutionarily more successful? Have studies been done?) He says emotions are elicited by religion (which is adaptive) and suppressed by higher consciousness (which is non-adaptive). I think that's a false dichotomy, from the old structure-function ideas about the brain: from fMRI studies we know that many parts of the brain are excited by stimulation. You can't claim that an emotion occurs in the amygdala but doesn't affect the prefrontal cortex. And what about "negative" emotions, like depression and anxiety? Are they elicited by religion? Are they adaptive? For me, they can be disabling and are ameliorated by dancing (ballroom and line) and singing (in a choral group), which fall squarely under Mitch's definition of religion. (By his definition, so would a meeting of atheists.) Maybe those negative emotions are iterations of fear, which is adaptive in the right time and place and to the right degree, but they can become pathological.
My Review
This is a well researched, well organized, coherent book written in a professional but accessible style. Mitch has clearly put a great deal of thought and effort into it. I just don't agree with the main argument -- that religion is biologically adaptive. I have a bias. When I de-converted, my lifelong struggle to reconcile my religious beliefs with the evidence of my senses was over. I do not envy or admire the certainty or complacency that religious people seem (claim) to have. I am interested in the theories about the persistence of religion, but I favor the idea proposed by Dawkins that it is a viral meme. It may have at one time played an important part in our evolution, but it is no longer necessary for survival. Mitch seems to argue that it is still a useful adaptation, and that, I think, is where we differ.
I keep encountering people who try to explain, and reconcile, mythology with science. The proposal here is something called "The Split" hypothesis. He disputes the conclusions of some big names in evolutionary biology and psychology, like Richard Dawkins and Steven Pinker. On the other hand, he finds support in the ideas of "visionaries" like Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell. He presented his ideas in a talk to our small meetup group in December 2013. From my unschooled perspective, I am forced to appeal to authority. I don't have the time or resources to get my own Ph.D., but I read a lot of science books.
He mentioned Tooby, Cosmides, and Ramachandran in support of his hypothesis. I have not read them, but I have read books by Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Steven Pinker, Carl Zimmer, Neil Shubin, Jared Diamond, Stephen Jay Gould, Donald Prothero, Jerry Coyne, Daniel Kahneman, Andy Thomsen, and Michael Shermer. The strict Darwinist view is that the mind is a product of the brain, and it, like all other traits, evolved in gradual, cumulative change over time. They ask, is the religiosity that seems to be ubiquitous throughout human history an adaptive trait, or is it a non-adaptive by-product, or what Stephen Jay Gould called a spandrel?
I decided to read his book to learn more. Here is his argument (at loc 223): "Emotions are evolved systems that ensure our survival. Religion stimulates our emotions and suppresses consciousness; therefore religion is adaptive. This is to say religion evolved biologically, and the propensity for religion is inherited and in our genes." He also proposes that "religion evolved as a compensating mechanism for the problems raised by the evolution of consciousness." This is his Split hypothesis.
Why must human behavior be considered either nature or nurture but not both? Isn't that a false dichotomy? I think human culture, language, higher consciousness, and intelligence are layers added by evolution, like our pre-frontal cortex. Both are interconnected with the lower layers of instinct and emotion and cannot be separated from them.
He writes "from what I could tell, the existing theories for the evolutionary origin of religion are profoundly lacking." (He has never heard of Michael Shermer.)
Just to look at one of the author's authorities, I refreshed my memory about Joseph Campbell by watching the first episode of "The Power of Myth" on YouTube. That's all I could handle. It's just silly. Campbell is like some sort of guru, raining precious droplets of inscrutable wisdom on Moyers, who virtually sits at his feet soaking it up. He's Chopra without the quantum. He utters glib statements, metaphors, and pop psychology, all deepities, to use a term Daniel Dennett coined. None of it made sense to me. It's like having a dream in which all your existential questions are answered and then waking up and wishing you'd written it down. If I get the message at all, I guess it's that we skeptics have gone to the dark side by intellectualizing everything and rejecting our spiritual side. I remember reading The Power of Myth years ago and feeling it had nothing to offer. One Amazon reviewer called it new age crap, and that's pretty much how I feel about it. I like mythology as much as anyone and see the metaphor and symbolism of it, but that doesn't mean it holds any life lessons. It's just stories people tell each other, not history or a how-to manual, any more than the bible is.
On Consciousness
I like some of the ideas Diamond presented about consciousness: the concept that it is important and powerful, that it is in charge (essentially that we're in charge), is a delusion brought about by consciousness itself. He compares consciousness to an annoying little sibling, following us about, keeping up a running commentary, but always a bit behind the actions already taken by our unconscious processes.
Research is showing that most of what our brains does is automatic and happens below the level of consciousness; very little of that activity rises to consciousness, and what consciousness does is no more than make a delayed report and a rationalization of reality, much of which is wrong. After all it's mostly ourselves talking to ourselves. And you can do away with volition, or free will. The idea that "we" make decisions and then act on them is a delusion, a fallacy. Looked at this way, consciousness becomes more a problem than an advantage. The question becomes, what is it for, anyway?
I Am Not Convinced
I have come to the conclusion that I disagree with the Split hypothesis. It says that religion and consciousness evolved simultaneously in humans, that emotions are adaptive, and that religion elicits emotion and suppresses the problems that consciousness causes, and that therefore religion is adaptive. (Appeal to nature.) I disagree that emotion is elicited by religion. I think rather it is elicited by consciousness. If religion has anything to do with emotion, it tends to suppress it. I came to this conclusion after reading a Medscape story about research on psychedelic drugs, in which it was reported that Ecstasy allows people suffering from PTSD to remember their experiences without the trauma of the associated emotions. fMRI studies indicate that it essentially disconnects the memory from the emotion. If you accept Mitch's loose definition of religion as something that suppresses consciousness, then taking psychedelic drugs is religion.
Here's something else that I feel undermines his argument. He says human singing, dancing, and art are religion, but only humans do religion. So when non-human animals sing, dance, or make art, what is that?
I think he oversimplifies emotion (which he does not define, though it is as slippery a concept as religion or consciousness). I don't think emotion can be attributed to only one aspect of human thought, such as religion or consciousness. He seems to focus only on "positive" emotions, ones that give us pleasure, for one thing. How about the hypothesis that "emotion," like "mind," is a human construct that cannot be attributed to any physiological form? Maybe "negative" emotions come from consciousness and "positive" ones come from religion. I love to sing and dance. What do they do for me? Well, they calm me. I get special pleasure when I do them in cooperation with other people. (I've sung in choral groups and I enjoy ballroom and line dancing.) What is it about it those things that I find so pleasing? Sure it suppresses some emotions, those of discord, but does it arouse "good" emotions? And does that make it "religion"? And does the fact that it pleases me that make it adaptive? "Bad" emotions are ubiquitous in human society too. Sometimes they result in violence. So, are they adaptive? Again, the circular reasoning used here could apply to a lot of human traits that most would agree are not adaptive.
Halfway through, there are descriptions and comparisons of human rituals, or what I would term comparative religion. Arguing that rituals are pleasurable or useful as therapy adds nothing to the argument that ritual is religion, or that it is adaptive, except to the extent that creatures do more of what pleases them, and therefore pleasure, or what is pleasing, might be adaptive. I think addiction is a pretty good argument against this. Jared Diamond addressed this in The Third Chimpanzee, but didn't come to any conclusions.
Again restating his argument: religion is ubiquitous in human society. A trait like that wouldn't exist if it wasn't adaptive; it would have been selected out because nature is not wasteful. He compares the by-product argument to the intelligent design argument: we explain away traits we don't understand as accidents in the former and "god did it" in the latter. I posit the opposite: nature is incredibly wasteful. It has all of life with which to experiment, and the vast majority of the experiments fail. Individuals that survive are jury-rigged and inefficient, but they are less jury-rigged and inefficient than others in a population, so they blunder on long enough to manage to replicate themselves. Isn't that wasteful? (It should be surprising if there were not by-products and accidents.) I think stating that nature is efficient is like believing the strong anthropic principle, that the universe was designed with us in mind.
Things I Would Like to Discuss With Mitch
What is religion? He says dance, art, and music are "religion." But if they are, nearly everybody is religious and the term becomes meaningless. Mitch argues that everybody is religious because religion is adaptive, but he gives religion an extremely broad definition to get there -- that's circular reasoning. (Is religion adaptive because it's pervasive, or is religion pervasive because it's adaptive?) Those who study what is thought of as religion usually break it into its component parts, two main ones of which are belief and ritual. I think if Mitch did that, his argument would fail. Evolutionary biologists generally seem to agree that ritual is adaptive in that it strengthened tribal bonds, aiding the cooperation that helped make the human species such a powerful force. Shermer and the others I've read usually study religious belief.
What is emotion? He doesn't define it. He seems to take for granted that emotions give us pleasure, and that pleasure is somehow adaptive. (What is pleasure? Are pleased people evolutionarily more successful? Have studies been done?) He says emotions are elicited by religion (which is adaptive) and suppressed by higher consciousness (which is non-adaptive). I think that's a false dichotomy, from the old structure-function ideas about the brain: from fMRI studies we know that many parts of the brain are excited by stimulation. You can't claim that an emotion occurs in the amygdala but doesn't affect the prefrontal cortex. And what about "negative" emotions, like depression and anxiety? Are they elicited by religion? Are they adaptive? For me, they can be disabling and are ameliorated by dancing (ballroom and line) and singing (in a choral group), which fall squarely under Mitch's definition of religion. (By his definition, so would a meeting of atheists.) Maybe those negative emotions are iterations of fear, which is adaptive in the right time and place and to the right degree, but they can become pathological.
June 11, 2018
A very thoughtful hypothesis on evolution and religion. Although not written for the layperson, Diamond's theory is unique and profound. He builds a case for a new understanding on the nature and purpose of religion defined as a set of practices rather than a dogmatic construction. Diamond proposes that humanity's capacity for those religious acts evolved simultaneously with consciousness precisely to counteract the overwhelming burden of consciousness with which so many are familiar.
Incredibly well-researched and very intellectually honest. Diamond cites an incredible number of studies to bolster his case while also acknowledging where more research is needed and what counterarguments might disprove or invalidate his argument. In 2013 I read "The Origin of Species," and was struck by how Darwin's ability to admit where he might be wrong and what could prove him wrong. Diamond does the same.
By his own admission more research is needed, and yet he nevertheless builds a very compelling case for his argument, highlighting how our ability to dilute consciousness through religious behavior has many positive benefits, the kind natural selection would have opted for since they helped us survive.
Interesting Diamond spends very little time on the divine and the dogmatic, the things most immediately associated with religion. His definition of religious acts fits well within the greater cultural construct of "religion" with gods, churches, etc, and so while he is not focused on what makes people believe or have faith, his analyses of why we perform religious behaviors perfectly explains the societal values of having those behaviors given shape and direction by a leader, if not the reasons many people are able to find what is commonly called "faith" in the divine.
Diamond also passes no judgements on the ethics or implications of his findings nor does he offer any solutions or prescriptions for addressing social/societal issues. He approaches the important overlap between biology and religion from an objective, apolitical, and scientific perspective.
Again by his own admission Diamond concludes with more questions than answers, the questions he thinks are needed to prove his hypothesis as well as questions about the ethical and philosophical implications.
For me this was a truly revolutionary read, perhaps because it is a new - and therefore potentially revolutionary - hypothesis. However it resonated with me personally, regardless of whether it is ultimately proven correct, and even if Diamond is not entirely accurate in his conjectures, he still poses many important questions and raises interesting points, and even if his hypothesis is incorrect he is still rooting it in established science, so the reader will learn many things.
"Darwin's Apple" is dense. It took me a long time to read although admittedly I don't have a PhD in biology and I annotate heavily. I had to reread paragraphs and pages multiple times to understand some of the concepts and language, but if the reader is committed to that, they will be rewarded. This is a thought-provoking and well-constructed read.
Incredibly well-researched and very intellectually honest. Diamond cites an incredible number of studies to bolster his case while also acknowledging where more research is needed and what counterarguments might disprove or invalidate his argument. In 2013 I read "The Origin of Species," and was struck by how Darwin's ability to admit where he might be wrong and what could prove him wrong. Diamond does the same.
By his own admission more research is needed, and yet he nevertheless builds a very compelling case for his argument, highlighting how our ability to dilute consciousness through religious behavior has many positive benefits, the kind natural selection would have opted for since they helped us survive.
Interesting Diamond spends very little time on the divine and the dogmatic, the things most immediately associated with religion. His definition of religious acts fits well within the greater cultural construct of "religion" with gods, churches, etc, and so while he is not focused on what makes people believe or have faith, his analyses of why we perform religious behaviors perfectly explains the societal values of having those behaviors given shape and direction by a leader, if not the reasons many people are able to find what is commonly called "faith" in the divine.
Diamond also passes no judgements on the ethics or implications of his findings nor does he offer any solutions or prescriptions for addressing social/societal issues. He approaches the important overlap between biology and religion from an objective, apolitical, and scientific perspective.
Again by his own admission Diamond concludes with more questions than answers, the questions he thinks are needed to prove his hypothesis as well as questions about the ethical and philosophical implications.
For me this was a truly revolutionary read, perhaps because it is a new - and therefore potentially revolutionary - hypothesis. However it resonated with me personally, regardless of whether it is ultimately proven correct, and even if Diamond is not entirely accurate in his conjectures, he still poses many important questions and raises interesting points, and even if his hypothesis is incorrect he is still rooting it in established science, so the reader will learn many things.
"Darwin's Apple" is dense. It took me a long time to read although admittedly I don't have a PhD in biology and I annotate heavily. I had to reread paragraphs and pages multiple times to understand some of the concepts and language, but if the reader is committed to that, they will be rewarded. This is a thought-provoking and well-constructed read.
November 4, 2017
One of the most interesting explanations for ritual and religion I have ever heard. It also endeavors to understand rather than attack, a notion I found quite refreshing and academic. Human nature is something to which we cannot escape, and higher-order consciousness is both a blessing and a curse in this regard. In terms of progress, the Split Hypothesis offers a pathway toward ways to overcome superstition, all while maintaining the comfort of some of its emotional aspects, such as enjoying music, art, and expression. I hope that this catches on, and more efforts are put forth in researching this topic.
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