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.


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