Chris over at Mixing Memory has up a very interesting post on whether religion makes one nicer or meaner. The issue is when one reads a passage of the Bible in which God sanctions violence versus one where he doesn't. They then play a reaction game which purportedly tests for aggression. Those who read the passage are more aggressive. Interestingly the study is from BYU.
Chris questions some of the conclusions of the study. (Basically the idea that religion makes terrorists) I'd suggest reading his comments. I think they are apt. (i.e. the duration of the aggression, the level of the aggression and so forth) What's more interesting is that Chris brings up the notion in cognitive studies that religion allows larger social groups to form by having an invisible watcher. Thus we focus more on our reputation because even if our peers aren't watching, God is.
What's interesting about both studies is that the effect can be found in both atheists or theists. That is, there appears to be something about religion hard wired into our brains.
What I'd be very curious about is whether these cognitive structures which appear to use religion to enforce social communities apply to less formally religious structures. That is if we can find activations that are tied more overtly to religion (and thus less in the atheist) would we find them activating when the environment is discussed by an environmentalist? Or some greater good by a Marxist? My suspicion is that religious cognitive structures probably apply to much wider ideology and behaviors than some like to think.
What I'd be extremely interested in is taking Bushman's studies about Biblical passages justifying violence and taking them to significant leaders. Say reading a passage of Lincoln, Washinton, or Jefferson to an American that seem to justify violence and seeing how people react. My guess is that they'd function in a fashion very similar to the religious.
My sense is that to the degree we can talk about social evolution we'll find that both government and religion develop in an intertwined fashion. (Social evolution not in the social darwinian sense, which is of course long discredited, but in the sense of these ideas and structures developing with perhaps genetic changes in our cognitive structures) Of course this is far more controversial and gets back to the issue we talked about in our Tomasello reading from a year or two ago. That is at what point does language evolve and how does one keep civilization from developing too rapidly. There is that ever-present problem of time. Put an other way, if we have these cognitive structures for social organization that are tied to religion, do they make sense independent of a language instinct and a social structure tied to them? That is would these cognitive structures function in say apes that don't have the ability to share intents or form abstractions in the same way? If they don't, then what does that say about the evolution of language and the speed of the evolution of the brain?
BTW - those interested in this connection of religion and cognitive science really should read Atran's In Gods We Trust. While a bit dated now, it still is a great place to see some of the issues. I should also add that a lot of the structures we tie to religion almost certainly have their primary focus as something else with merely religious implications. That'd be true with the issues I discuss above. So it may well be that the structures I mention tied to religion and language may indeed have had a function prior to the development of language but took on new functions once language evolved.
To add one more point. Over a year ago I started on a reading club of Atran. My brother wrote quite a few very interesting posts on the subject. Alas I only got one started and then got very busy. I need to return to it.
I think that you are right on point with the joint development of religion and other social 'phenomena'. Required reading during my undergraduate work was Max Weber and R.H. Tawney's response - the question whether religious change drove a change in economic systems or whether religion changed to accommodate their most valued contributors was a question that seemed right out of the Book of Mormon.
"In God We Trust" looks like a great read - the reviews on Amazon leave me to wonder if it focuses on brain chemical processes or whether it is more of a broad scientific study.
It's mainly cognitive science. So I'd say neither. It is a good book though - although a lot of segments cover stuff you may have heard before if you've read any books on cognitive science.
"What's more interesting is that Chris brings up the notion in cognitive studies that religion allows larger social groups to form by having an invisible watcher. Thus we focus more on our reputation because even if our peers aren't watching, God is.
What's interesting about both studies is that the effect can be found in both atheists or theists. That is, there appears to be something about religion hard wired into our brains."
I don't trust that intuition, since it first of all relies on the assumption that our sense of some Big Other (or, in Lacan's sense, an other to the other) is preceded by a sense or idea of God. I am skeptical that there is a causal relationship between religion (what does this term even mean in this context?) and this sense of someone watching us. George Herbert Mead already, over 75 years ago, noticed and hazard some explanations of this tendency to act as if we are being watched or evaluated, despite sometimes being alone.
If anything, it makes more sense to see religious Otherness as a variation or by-product of our tendency to feel watched, especially if there are other, naturalistic we might say, conditions that can be shown to give rise to such a feeling. Consider Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morals, the Buddha's teaching about conditioned co-arising, Marx's base-superstructure, Freud's Oedipal complex, or Foucault's History of Sexuality. These are all fine examples of how historically-dependent explanations can be given for some of the most natural-feeling feelings we have.
I think that was what Chris was arguing for. I should add he has up an other, albeit less successful account of the supernatural and cognition today.
To add, one might well ask what this natural condition of feeling watched originates from. Is it some older survival mechanism that gained new functionality when language evolved? I don't know and I don't think at this stage we can say.
I'd also add that of course there being a cognitive basis for religion says nothing about whether there is a truth behind religion. Certainly there could well be other reasons for our cognitive structures other than they interact with our environment in a way that implies correspondence. To many of our intuitions are wrong to make that argument. (i.e. our intuitions about the path of falling objects) However neither can we say there is nothing to religion. At best we can suggest that our cognitive structures in their entirety tend to promote certain social structures.
Anyway, I'd simply say that while religion is hard wired in our brain it almost certainly isn't purely about religion. (A point Atran makes quite well I think)
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