Whirling Dervishes is a customary dance performed within the Sema, or worship ceremony, through which dervishes (also called semazens) aim to reach the source of all perfection, or kemal.
Jonathan Haidt on Religion, Evolution, and the Ecstasy off Self-Transcendence
Author: Jonathan Haidt
Source: Ted Talk
The topics of religion and multilevel selection have been much in the news on the pages of ETVOL, and for good reason--a growing consensus that humans are a strongly group-selected species and that religion and morality are largely products of group selection. That was the topic of a recent TED talk delivered by evolutionary social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, author of the newly published The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion.
The ‘self ‘on one hand and the ‘group’ on the other are not like the settings for an on/off switch. They are more like a volume control with ‘self’ and ‘group’ as the extreme settings. Most of the time - even when we are working within a group - this volume control is set at somewhere between the two extremes.
The other point to make is that concerns for self or group are not orthogonal. We are well aware that the success/ failure of the group to which we belong often has an affect on our personal success, status or reputation.
Groups that are able to achieve high degrees of loyalty from all, or most, members have high potential for good or for evil. Good; the British in World War 2. Bad; the Japanese in World War 2. Established religions that have achieved similar levels of loyalty in particular groups have often tended to drift toward fundamentalism and extremism.
Religious belief can be a powerful force that encourages cohesion and therefore the effectiveness of a group. However, effectiveness is not the same as Darwinian adaptation. It depends on the particular objectives of those pulling the strings.
Post: March 20 2012 4:45 am By: JOHN JACOB LYONS
The basic argument here appears to be as follows. We are all descended from ancestors who were members of ‘successful’ groups; families, tribes, religions etc. Successful in that their genes evidently survived and replicated. A desire for group membership may well be coded into our genes. Hence innate religiosity for example.
But is this simply group selection at work? Not necessarily. Such a desire may well have had its origin in individual selection.
In our evolutionary past, it would have been dangerous to be a lone dissenting voice among even a small group intent upon a particular action. Therefore I want to suggest that the tendency to ‘follow the perceived group will’ would have been adaptive at the level of the individual. (The core group intention may have arisen from a particular family via kin selection for example.) Furthermore, membership of a group will usually bring the benefit of protection for self and family. Surely these effects would have been sufficient to account for an innate tendency to hanker for identification with the group(?)
Post: March 20 2012 9:58 am By: JOHN JACOB LYONS
To continue—
At 8:42 in the video, and based on quotation from ‘The Descent of Man’, Jonathan concludes that Charles Darwin “—believed in group-selection”. If the phase ‘believed in’ means ‘believed that group-selection sometimes occurs’, Jonathan’s claim is obviously correct and few would argue against Darwin’s point. However, the main contention among evolutionists has been whether or not group-selection has been an important driver of natural evolution; and I suggest that there is no evidence that Darwin thought that this was so.
If tribe A prevailed over tribe B, a difference in relative coherence may have been a factor. But there are many other possible cultural differences such as; superior weapons, superior war strategy, better fight training or fitness for the fight. Even as far as coherence is concerned, this can be achieved by fear and ruthlessness in leadership as well as by reciprocal altruism/ common beliefs.
The case for group-selection as an important driver of human evolution will need stronger arguments than those offered here. Likewise for the case that religiosity has been an adaptation important to human group-selection and therefore to human evolution itself.
Post: March 22 2012 2:14 am By: JOHN JACOB LYONS
However, I do believe that we are genetically primed for religiosity. See Justin L. Barrett’s new book, ‘Born Believers’, for bags of evidence. The million dollar question; how did this occur? What was the evolutionary mechanism? Religiosity would probably have been an adaptive behaviour throughout our hominid evolutionary history. But as an ontogenetic, acquired characteristic, it cannot be inherited directly. However, it could have been passed down the generations by the indirect inheritance process called ‘Genetic Priming’.
Comments
Post: March 19 2012 4:04 am By: JOHN JACOB LYONS
Some thoughts.
The ‘self ‘on one hand and the ‘group’ on the other are not like the settings for an on/off switch. They are more like a volume control with ‘self’ and ‘group’ as the extreme settings. Most of the time - even when we are working within a group - this volume control is set at somewhere between the two extremes.
The other point to make is that concerns for self or group are not orthogonal. We are well aware that the success/ failure of the group to which we belong often has an affect on our personal success, status or reputation.
Groups that are able to achieve high degrees of loyalty from all, or most, members have high potential for good or for evil. Good; the British in World War 2. Bad; the Japanese in World War 2. Established religions that have achieved similar levels of loyalty in particular groups have often tended to drift toward fundamentalism and extremism.
Religious belief can be a powerful force that encourages cohesion and therefore the effectiveness of a group. However, effectiveness is not the same as Darwinian adaptation. It depends on the particular objectives of those pulling the strings.
Post: March 20 2012 4:45 am By: JOHN JACOB LYONS
The basic argument here appears to be as follows. We are all descended from ancestors who were members of ‘successful’ groups; families, tribes, religions etc. Successful in that their genes evidently survived and replicated. A desire for group membership may well be coded into our genes. Hence innate religiosity for example.
But is this simply group selection at work? Not necessarily. Such a desire may well have had its origin in individual selection.
In our evolutionary past, it would have been dangerous to be a lone dissenting voice among even a small group intent upon a particular action. Therefore I want to suggest that the tendency to ‘follow the perceived group will’ would have been adaptive at the level of the individual. (The core group intention may have arisen from a particular family via kin selection for example.) Furthermore, membership of a group will usually bring the benefit of protection for self and family. Surely these effects would have been sufficient to account for an innate tendency to hanker for identification with the group(?)
Post: March 20 2012 9:58 am By: JOHN JACOB LYONS
To continue—
At 8:42 in the video, and based on quotation from ‘The Descent of Man’, Jonathan concludes that Charles Darwin “—believed in group-selection”. If the phase ‘believed in’ means ‘believed that group-selection sometimes occurs’, Jonathan’s claim is obviously correct and few would argue against Darwin’s point. However, the main contention among evolutionists has been whether or not group-selection has been an important driver of natural evolution; and I suggest that there is no evidence that Darwin thought that this was so.
If tribe A prevailed over tribe B, a difference in relative coherence may have been a factor. But there are many other possible cultural differences such as; superior weapons, superior war strategy, better fight training or fitness for the fight. Even as far as coherence is concerned, this can be achieved by fear and ruthlessness in leadership as well as by reciprocal altruism/ common beliefs.
The case for group-selection as an important driver of human evolution will need stronger arguments than those offered here. Likewise for the case that religiosity has been an adaptation important to human group-selection and therefore to human evolution itself.
Post: March 22 2012 2:14 am By: JOHN JACOB LYONS
However, I do believe that we are genetically primed for religiosity. See Justin L. Barrett’s new book, ‘Born Believers’, for bags of evidence. The million dollar question; how did this occur? What was the evolutionary mechanism? Religiosity would probably have been an adaptive behaviour throughout our hominid evolutionary history. But as an ontogenetic, acquired characteristic, it cannot be inherited directly. However, it could have been passed down the generations by the indirect inheritance process called ‘Genetic Priming’.
See http://www.scilogs.eu/en/blog/biology-of-religion/2011-03-24/the-genetic-priming-of-religiosity-guest-post-by-john-jacob-lyons for an explanation of this process.