X-Message-Number: 4593 From: Peter Merel <> Subject: CRYONICS Religion and Evolution Date: Sun, 2 Jul 1995 23:13:39 +1000 (EST) I hope folks won't think me callow to chime in after the fat lady has done her bit, but reading Mike Darwin's comments on why religion might evolve gave me an idea. What evolutionary advantage does religion confer on humans? A religion is a set of ideas with some predictive value. Crude religions have only a limited predictive value - there's a nymph that makes each tree bloom in the springtime, and Apollo drags the sun across the sky with a team of horses. But if you don't know that an evil fairy makes toadstools, or that Jehovah will punish you for poor hygene, then you're not going to live long enough to breed. Religion tells you things about the world that you need to know - and that is an evolutionary advantage. Empirical evidence makes a religion fail - and others that account for the facts rise in its place. So empiricism and religion are interrelated - if the sun is a god, then you don't question its movements, but if it's not then you're going to be curious, and you'll start to puzzle it out. Slowly the more nonsensical religions die back. Very few take Apollo or the nymphs seriously any more - even the most ardent creationists don't want those myths taught in schools. The religions that are left are not science by any standard, but in the absence of science they must have served better than pure ignorance. In the presence of science they seem atavistic to us, and can confer no evolutionary advantage. Therefore we might regard science as simply the latest in a long line of religions, and just as susceptible to replacement by a system that provides a better fit with empiricisms. What would replace science? I'm reminded of a zen koan - a master tells his student, "there is a zen beyond zen"; "a zen beyond zen?" asks the student, "What could that be?"; "It is not zen" says the master, not chuckling up his sleeve. Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=4593