Model predicts 'religiosity gene' will dominate society

[Amby 490]

I blame HFCS.

maybe HFCS causes some sort of mutation at the cellular level that we don't know about yet

[Jenn! 918]

This reminds me of that movie, Idiocracy.

[one...two...tree 2,762]

In my opinion, if an answer can not be scientifically justified then it is made up.

Made up implies that religious beliefs are not rooted in any logic and reason, which is not intellectually honest. Philosophy, which exists outside of religion, isn't based on any scientific evidence.

[James and Cynthia 70]

This doesn't surprise me. Why do you think many religions don't believe in birth control? They've known this a long time before now.

Don't worry, I'm sure religious wars will limit their numbers in the end.

-James

[HeatDeath 430]

Rowthorn may be a Cambridge economist, but like so many academics, he sounds like an idiot when he steps outside his field.

A simple reading of any history book, let alone any evolution book (I recommend "The Blind Watchmaker" in particular, written by Dawkins before he went crazy) would tell us something that should be obvious to anyone who thinks about the idea of a genetic basis for religiosity for even two seconds:

If there is a gene or gene-complex for religiosity, it has already become nearly universal in the human species, and did not do so recently!

It's important to remember that, whether or not one believes atheism is correct, one cannot honestly believe it is the default condition of most of humanity. Secularism is a modern movement, and any secularist who allows their belief in the correctness of atheism to morph into "secularism and atheism have always been obviously true, and believed by the majority of human cultures, and religion is a johnny-come-lately development in human society - well, that's just plain pig-ignorance of the most basic facts we know about the last 100,000 years of human history.

It may very well be that the near-universality of religious belief in humans came about because it correlated strongly with increases in fertility, but the phase shift happened a long time ago, much closer in time to the initial development of structured recursive grammar languages, and that was a long, long time ago.

To speak of this being a novel, recent occurrence, that's simply dumb. To quote Richard Feynman, "It's not right. It's not even wrong." It's a basic application of Dawkins' "The Selfish Gene" to the idea of a genetic basis for religiosity, and it's so badly misapplied, it's just comical.

Edited January 29, 2011 by HeatDeath

[HeatDeath 430]

Evolution takes place on time periods of thousands and tens of thousands of years. Secular materialism has been a significant force driving some human societies for less than 500. Far more likely is the opposite theory: that a gene or gene-complex for religiosity is and has been nearly universal, and a regional mutation has caused the rise of a significant subgroup that lacks the gene. I'll let you know in about 5000 years how that mutation is faring amongst the human population, but on an evolutionary timescale, it's far far too early to tell.

Fluctuations in the fortunes of secular humanity that we can detect observationally, even measured from decade to decade, are still just instantaneous transient background noises in the population growth trajectory of the group bearing the genetic trait. Evolution just doesn't work that quickly, by several orders of magnitude. Even if that would make it a reasonable topic of speculation for tenured economists who've gotten bored studying economics.

Edited January 29, 2011 by HeatDeath

[one...two...tree 2,762]

Rowthorn may be a Cambridge economist, but like so many academics, he sounds like an idiot when he steps outside his field.

A simple reading of any history book, let alone any evolution book (I recommend "The Blind Watchmaker" in particular, written by Dawkins before he went crazy) would tell us something that should be obvious to anyone who thinks about the idea of a genetic basis for religiosity for even two seconds:

If there is a gene or gene-complex for religiosity, it has already become nearly universal in the human species, and did not do so recently!

It's important to remember that, whether or not one believes atheism is correct, one cannot honestly believe it is the default condition of most of humanity. Secularism is a modern movement, and any secularist who allows their belief in the correctness of atheism to morph into "secularism and atheism have always been obviously true, and believed by the majority of human cultures, and religion is a johnny-come-lately development in human society - well, that's just plain pig-ignorance of the most basic facts we know about the last 100,000 years of human history.

It may very well be that the near-universality of religious belief in humans came about because it correlated strongly with increases in fertility, but the phase shift happened a long time ago, much closer in time to the initial development of structured recursive grammar languages, and that was a long, long time ago.

To speak of this being a novel, recent occurrence, that's simply dumb. To quote Richard Feynman, "It's not right. It's not even wrong." It's a basic application of Dawkins' "The Selfish Gene" to the idea of a genetic basis for religiosity, and it's so badly misapplied, it's just comical.

Great post.