Proximate vs. Ultimate Explanations of Religion

One question that must be asked with respect to Wilson's multi-level (group) selection approach to religion is how much of the religious experience do his tools explain?  Before answering this question, it is probably wise to follow Wilson's example and clean up the distinctions between proximate and ultimate causes.

Religions are hard to pin down to a single function - whether this be community, economic (rational) choice, or any other casual explanation.  While religion may be much more than community, "this statement might be true at the proximate level, but not at the ultimate level," (Wilson, 2002, pp. 170).

By proximate level, Wilson means the direct individual reasons motivating a behavior, ie pleasure from s e x, or contentment from love.  The ultimate level is the selective advantage behind these actions, ie babies, more robust environment to raise children.  

By postulating an ultimate cause for religious tendencies, Wilson avoids having to directly explain specific  features of  religious belief.  His theory just needs to show selective advantages for belief.  In this task, scale becomes an important issue.  Wilson advocates using the congregational scale (single church groups) rather than a denominational, or larger, scale.  This choice will likely require some appeals to complexity theory to explain the emergence of larger structures.  Biologists are quite comfortable with this, so it shouldn't be problematic.  Perhaps the extension of scale will provide an opportunity to tie in approaches like Pascal Boyer's (2001) religion as no-longer adaptive, or the Gould like view of religion as a spandrel.

However, I suspect it will be some time before the utility of the metaphysical and supernatural questions religion raised can be openly tackled.  Thus, I don't at all think Wilson's work undermines the value of religion.  Knowing the reason for love doesn't undermine it's value.  Knowing the evolutionary underpinnings of religion should only strengthen how it can be leveraged. Some may reference Christ's spiritual solitude on the cross as evidence that a hands off god is still functional while others may proceed to other conclusions.  Whatever answers resonate, religious tendencies are a fundamental component of our existence.  As such they have implicit effects in everything that is done, especially in terms of group dynamics.

Boyer, P. 2001. Religion Explained. New York: Basic Books

Wilson, D. S. 2002. Darwin’s Cathedral: Evolution, Religion, and the Nature of Society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Group-level adaptations and circularity issues in change management

or

Why people sing "May the Circle be Unbroken"

“Science works best when it tests among well-framed hypotheses that make different predictions about measurable aspects of the world,” - D.S. Wilson (2002, pp. 44)

"Once the reasoning associated with scientific thought loses its status as the only adaptive way to think, other forms of thought associated with religion cease to be objects of scorn and incomprehension and can be studied as potential adaptations in their own right." - D.S. Wilson (2002, pp. 43)

Changing the implicitly held core beliefs of large organizations is difficult.  Change that affects core beliefs in an organization that commonly understood to guardian core societal values is daunting.  In the field of education, Tyack and Cuban (1995) have suggested that only reforms that are fundamentally important, societally supported and culturally long lasting actually affect teacher implementation.  Do religious tendencies inform some of the circularity issues that surround educational change?

Wilson(2002, pp. 45)  has summarized most of the evolutionary approaches to religion as follows:

1 . Religion as an adaption
1.1 Religion as group level adaptation
1.2 Religion as individual level adaptation
1.3 Religion as cultural parasite that often evolves at the expense of human individuals and group

2 Religion as nonadaptive
2.1 Religion as an adaptation to past environments, such as ancestral kin groups, that is maladaptive in modern environments, such as large groups of unrelated individuals
2.2 Religion as a byproduct (spandrel) of genetic or cultural evolution

I suspect a number of circularity issues associated with organizational change can be illuminated from these perspectives.  Viewing religion as a group level adaptation locates change issues in a place of dynamic tension.  Individual interests compete with group interests.  Evolved mechanisms that discouraging free loading and other self-interest strategems may inform why single-pronged, or even many multi-pronged, change approaches fail.  

Fundamental educational change normally requires the death of one generation and the regeneration of another.  The societail milieu in which the rising generation understands its world is different.  Core beliefs can be protected, while other beliefs can be reinterpreted or completely jettisoned (Tyak & Cuban, 1995).  In effect, the rising generation has a different implicit understanding of what behaviours are group-appropriate.

Now one can take the view that appropriate group behaviours are learned, but I would suspect this idea doesn't stand on its own. Rather, I suspect, tacit understandings combine to form implicit conceptions of moral imperatives.  In some cases moral imperative become embodied in an avatar like fashion (religion).  In other cases they remain fuzzy and unembodied.  I suspect thresholds for agent detection systems  (Atran, 2002), and other factors come into play here.

For organizations this means changes touching fundamental nerves may have to compete against deep evolutionary adaptations that prevent the average person from abusing group-level benefits.

Atran, S. (2002). In Gods we trust: The evolutionary landscape of religion. Oxford University Press: New York.

Tyak & Cuban (1995). Tinkering toward utopia. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Religion from the perspective of economics and rational choice theory

After encountering numerous references for Rodney Stark's work, I thought I would just bring up a couple of short thoughts about approaching religion from the perspective of economics and rational choice theory. Wilson (2002, pp. 48) summarizes this approach nicely in his book Darwin's Cathedral;

"Religion is envisioned as an economic exchange between people and imagined supernatural agents for goods that are scarce (eg., rain during a drought) or impossible (e.g., immortal life) to obtain in the real world. Religious belief is therefore rational in the sense of employing cost-benefits reasoning."

One question that arises from this approach is whether exchanges with imagined entities for impossibly given products has practical benefits? While it is possible to discuss the spin off benefits that come from emergent structures, I think the question is much more interesting when narrowed. Are there any benefits directly related to this class of exchange?

To answer this from a religious perspective, I suspect a history of exchange experiences is necessary before nuance and weight emerge. In lieu of this religiously focussed discussion, I think the question continues to get more interesting when focussed to the level of quasi-religious organizations. For example, in terms of the quasi-religious aspects of formalized education, what benefits emerge when educational players enter into exchanges for results that are essentially random or impossible to produce?

The following examples may be parallels.

Religion: A folk religion may involve dancing to end a drought.

• An indirect effect of this action may be a changed potential for group cohesion.
  
• Individuals may be indirectly affected by changing personal commitments.
  
• Individuals may be directly affected by the imagined exchange by altered perceptions of religious utility.
  

Education: A motivational speaker gives some advice at a conference whose effects, when implemented at the level of detail understood, are essentially random.

• An indirect effect of this action may be a changed potential for group cohesion.
  
• Individuals may be indirectly affected by changing personal commitments.
• Individuals may be directly affected by the exchange by initiating a learning cycle that produces measurable effects.

So, on one level, the question to ask is whether an altered perception of religious utility has results that are as real as a work place learning cycle? They both can spur pragmatic investigation which find practical applications. The former may be subject to greater idealistic fantasy than the latter, but is the controlling variable the degree to which practical results can be knowingly leveraged, or is the controlling variable the degree to which practical results end up being leveraged?

I suspect many people heavily weight actions whose benefits are weakly dependent on deep awareness. You shouldn't have to know sophisticated linguistic discourses to produce benefits from an elementary reading program. However, religious actions may require sophisticated cognitive awareness in order to leverage direct benefits on an individual level. (I don't think you need to really know what is going on to leverage group benefits).

Darwins Cathedral Chapter 1 pt 2

As I finish up chapter 1, Wilson mentions how genetic evolution does not only lead to closed ended processes. He references Plotkin`s (1994, as cited in Wilson 2002) concept of Darwin machines. As I understand it, these are processes which have evolved to certain levels of adaptability. The immune system and anti-body creation is cited as an example. Since Wilson`s book is about an evolutionary approach to religion, here is a quote with some far reaching implications (pp. 31, Wilson 2002),

"When physical and social environments become sufficiently variable, juke-box solutions are inadequate and the only recourse is to evolve Darwin machines."

In mormon circles, most members tend to take the approach that a restored religion will be quite similar to post iterations of the same. Now, I don`t think this implies the structure or appearance of the a church will or even should be the same. Aplogetics certainly do try and cite the similarities between early mromonism and the early Christian church - with some successes and some failures in my estimation. People tend to have an easier time projecting tight correlations between Book of Mormon religions and modern Mormonism. The viability of this approach gets clouded a bit depending the degree to which Joseph Smith`s own understandings affected his translation process.

One can dichotomize the restoration issue into two branches; 1) chruch structures should be congruent over time 2) only fundamental religious elements should be congruent over time. The first option meshes well with a positivist approach to religion. Religion is designed to reveal essential behaviour, rules, or standards. I will ignore this option as I find it rather problematic when taken to logical extremes. The second option forces a hard look at what is immutable over restoration cycles. I think such an approach would also be well informed from a universalist approach to religion. However, I think one needs to look beyond *what essential elements are common in religions" to "what essential elements are common in religions where distincitions between normal and extra-normal influence are overt".

This light takes some leverage from Wilson`s ideas. Religion should look different in different iterations because the conditions to which it responds are different. One can think of religion as a tool that allows the growth of sucessful developmental adaptations. However this doesn`t distinguish between what is momentarily beneficial and what benefits are more time independent. I think practical mormon theology is quite informed by the latter question.

For practical people, I suspect the following personal question emerges, to what extent does the learning associated with religion depend on leveraging what Darwin Machines can spit out?  Is religion about learning absolutes, or is it about knowing how to leverage fundamental routines?

Darwin's Cathedral Part 1

I have just started reading Darwin's Cathedral (Wilson, 2002).  I will pull out a few closely spaced quotes

"The belief that group selection can be categorically rejected belongs on the rubbish heap of history, alongside the earlier belief that groups always function as adaptive units," (pp.17).

"As we have seen, group selection can produce altruistic traits, but it must be exceptionally strong to oppose the strong selective disadvantage of altruism within groups. In contrast, the mechanisms that allow organisms to function as adaptive units do not appear very altruistic," (pp. 18)

"Social control, rather than highly self-sacrificial altruism, appears to solve the fundamental problem of social life at the individual level," (pp.19).

"Social control can be regarded as a form of low-cost altruism that evolves to promote behaviors that would qualify as high-cost altruism if they were performed voluntarily," (pp. 19).

Compared to other books I have read as of late, it is refreshing to read a nuanced author.  I have, unfortunately, grown accustomed to the prescriptions of amateur authors convinced of the validity of their own pet ideas.

The guidelines Wilson portrays on the valid use of multi level selection evolution theory create a strong base for discussion.  It seems like it will be extraordinarily difficult to rigorously discuss religion on these footings.  I think most people will fall into the functionalist thinking that Wilson infers doomed 60's group evolutionists.  As I explore more of this book, it will be interesting to see the extent to which social control informs religious function.

Givens' "People of Paradox" (2007), will be an interesting foil in this exploration.  To what extent do religions truly embrace the Mormon ideal represented by Brigham Young, "in these respects we differ from the Christian world, for our religion will not clash with or contradict the facts of science in any particular," (pp. 65 as cited in Givens, 2007), or Joseph Smith, "intelligence is the great object of our holy religion," (pp. 65 as cited in Givens, 2007)?  It seems as if religion is really several different characters.  It may involve a search for group benefits, personal growth through shared meaning & experience, the gift of placebo-like (or real) assurance.  One thing that seems correct to me, is that if one doesn't take the road of religious fundamentalism, religion grows in the weightlessness that exists with the tensions between fuzzy anchor points.

Now I may be projecting here, but I don't think practical religion can be separated from learning.  Of course in practice, learning can't be separated from leadership, which in these contexts, can't be separated from training.  Because of the circular nature of the situation, I would suspect one would need to be well informed on pragmatics to make much headway.

Givens, T. (2007).  People of Paradox: A History of Mormon Culture, Oxford, Oxford University Press.

Wilson, D. (2002).  Darwin's Cathedral: Evolution, Religion and the Nature of Society, Chicago, University of Chicago.