Neuroscience
Have you been following the debate over religion & science? Whether you have or not, if you're interested, you should definitely check out Darwin's God, an article in Sunday's New York Times magazine. Robin Marantz Henig summarizes the debate on both sides in clear prose that is not (imho) inflammatory.
The main question is: "are we hard-wired to believe in God? And if we are, how and why did that happen?"
In this corner, we have ... Byproduct Theorists, who argue that religion is a "spandrel", which Henig describes thusly:
"Stephen Jay Gould, the famed evolutionary biologist at Harvard who died in 2002, and his colleague Richard Lewontin proposed 'spandrel' to describe a trait that has no adaptive value of its own. They borrowed the term from architecture, where it originally referred to the V-shaped structure formed between two rounded arches. The structure is not there for any purpose; it is there because that is what happens when arches align." (see the wikipedia definition of spandrel.)
The spandrel could be a result of one or more of these three cognitive tools: agent detection, causal reasoning, and/or theory of mind.
Spandrelists (great name) do not necessarily agree that religion or belief in God "offered an adaptive advantage to our ancestors."
Adaptionists, in the other corner, think that "even if a trait offers no survival advantage today, it might have had one long ago."
David Sloan Wilson, evolutionary biologist at SUNY Binghamton, "staked out the adaptationist view. 'Through countless generations of variation and selection, [organisms] acquire properties that enable them to survive and reproduce in their environments. My purpose is to see if human groups in general, and religious groups in particular, qualify as organismic in this sense' " in his 2002 book Darwin's cathedral : evolution, religion, and the nature of society.
(side note: How does this relate to me? I'm going to see him speak this afternoon at Hampshire College.)
Henig's article is important reading if you are interested in this topic!
- Alzheimer's: "the Last Day Of Her Life" From The New York Times Sunday Magazine
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Interesting podcast from Australia’s All in the Mind about the evolution of morality. See their description below: “Moral Minds: The Evolution of Human Morality “Incest, infanticide, honour killings - different cultures have different rules of...
Neuroscience
Religion: Spandrel or Adaptation?
Have you been following the debate over religion & science? Whether you have or not, if you're interested, you should definitely check out Darwin's God, an article in Sunday's New York Times magazine. Robin Marantz Henig summarizes the debate on both sides in clear prose that is not (imho) inflammatory.
The main question is: "are we hard-wired to believe in God? And if we are, how and why did that happen?"
In this corner, we have ... Byproduct Theorists, who argue that religion is a "spandrel", which Henig describes thusly:
"Stephen Jay Gould, the famed evolutionary biologist at Harvard who died in 2002, and his colleague Richard Lewontin proposed 'spandrel' to describe a trait that has no adaptive value of its own. They borrowed the term from architecture, where it originally referred to the V-shaped structure formed between two rounded arches. The structure is not there for any purpose; it is there because that is what happens when arches align." (see the wikipedia definition of spandrel.)
The spandrel could be a result of one or more of these three cognitive tools: agent detection, causal reasoning, and/or theory of mind.
Spandrelists (great name) do not necessarily agree that religion or belief in God "offered an adaptive advantage to our ancestors."
Adaptionists, in the other corner, think that "even if a trait offers no survival advantage today, it might have had one long ago."
David Sloan Wilson, evolutionary biologist at SUNY Binghamton, "staked out the adaptationist view. 'Through countless generations of variation and selection, [organisms] acquire properties that enable them to survive and reproduce in their environments. My purpose is to see if human groups in general, and religious groups in particular, qualify as organismic in this sense' " in his 2002 book Darwin's cathedral : evolution, religion, and the nature of society.
(side note: How does this relate to me? I'm going to see him speak this afternoon at Hampshire College.)
Henig's article is important reading if you are interested in this topic!
- Alzheimer's: "the Last Day Of Her Life" From The New York Times Sunday Magazine
"The Last Day of Her Life" by Robin Marantz Henig The New York Times Sunday Magazine 17 May 2015 Read the article here...
- Beyond Belief
Here's a terrific conference I wish I could have attended: The ScienceNetwork's sequel to the 2006 Beyond Belief conference, the 2007 Beyond Belief: Enlightenment 2.0 was designed "to undertake together an ongoing reconnaissance of Enlightenment...
- Evolution For Everyone!
Have you heard about David Sloan Wilson's new book Evolution for everyone : how Darwin's theory can change the way we think about our lives ? I saw him speak at Hampshire back in February, and he was great. Natalie Angier reviewed the book in...
- "the Crusade Against Religion"
Been meaning to post about the November 2006 article in Wired magazine called The Crusade Against Religion, but time kept slipping away. Plus, I didn't much agree with the article, and now that I've heard a counter argument to the "new atheism",...
- A Moral Grammar?
Interesting podcast from Australia’s All in the Mind about the evolution of morality. See their description below: “Moral Minds: The Evolution of Human Morality “Incest, infanticide, honour killings - different cultures have different rules of...