Religiosity - partly inherited by Genes
Of course, we don't have specific Genes inheriting the specific musics of Jazz and Beethoven or the languages of French and Chinese. But there is no scientific doubt that we have the genetically heritable traits of musicality and the abilities to speak - which then have to be acquired and formed into concrete, cultural forms in order to confer their benefits. And the same is true of religiosity and religions...
How do we know?
For one, religious behavior is a human universal - it is observable among people in all human societies known to us (since at least the middle paleolithic). Even totalitarian, atheistic regimes have not been able to wipe out religiosity - instead, they developped quasi-religious behavior themselves (as by ritually venerating deceased leaders, simulating omnipresence by pictures and monuments etc.). Of course, there's great individual and sociocultural variation in religious behavior, some people abstaining from it consciously and others never having had the chance to acquire much of it - exactly as we observe it with music and language. You can lose interest in all of these heritable traits, but if you didn't even learn to develop them as a kid, you'll seldom get an expert as an adult.
And second, we have a whole bunch of Twin Studies as presented by Thomas Bouchard and Laura Koenigs, which are measuring observable differences between genetic Twins reared together and apart. And they discover percentages of heritability of many human traits as Intelligence, Musicality - and Religiosity (40 - 60%).
If you think about it, that's the finding we would expect. Through evolution, religiosity became a part of human nature. And the process is going on, as in all free societies, religious people tend to have (on average) more offspring than their secular neighbours of the same educational and income classes.
Printview
thank you Dr. Michale for this great article .. i think i am about to addict this topic
i believe that when god created us, he planted in our souls the curiosity of finding him , we "Humans" have tried to reach to God by all means , some people found God in Money , others found their god in power .
this is part of our nature and part of our genome
Dear Emad,
thank you for the encouraging response!
And yes, you are right, religiosity is part of our nature (as is musicality and speech) - and we are at the same able and obliged to reflect how to use it.
And in a certain sense, it's not just humanity, but the whole universe, from whose evolution the perception of God, prayer and ritual is emerging.
So, one thing is for sure: There's absolutely no reason for religious people to fear science and reason. There might be timely misconceptions on either side and so there's a need of constant exploration and debate, but in the end, nobody has to fear contradictions between the belief in the Creator and the scientific observation of his creation.
So, thank you very much for your posting, Emad!
Finally had time to read you blog, and its quite interesting.
Indeed, religiosity much like every aspect of human existence has evolved and has taken root into our very being. But i think above all else, religiosity is an acknowledgement that there is a power out there greater than our own. Ever since our ancestors gazed at the sun, they have acknowledged that there is a being responsible for that miracle of light, a cognizance that we have inherited up to now because even with the advances in science, life and the universe is just so complex to explain and yet so simple to understand that there must be a higher being responsible for all of this.
Yes, I agree with your observations. The thrilling thing is, that the quite natural-based belief in a supernatural power evolves into distinct and quite succesfull, cultural forms.
I hope that science could help to a better understanding between believers and nonbelievers and between the different religions and worldviews. And besides that, we Humans seem to be very curious - we just "want" to know. :-) Up to now, the scientific findings and the German book ("Gott, Gene und Gehirn") have found encouraging interest. I wondered if this would be the same abroad. So, thank you very much for your nice and encouraging remarks!
Best greetings, dear Raffy, to the wonderful Philippines!
Yours,
Michael
Hi Michael,
Thank you for an interesting blogpost. However, I'd like to point out an inconsistency in your logic. (sorry about that ;-).
You mention that the heritability for religiosity is high. In other words: there is lots of genetic variation. Then, later on, you say that religious people tend to have more offspring than their secular neighbours, suggesting that religiosity confers some sort of evolutionary advantage. However, if the latter is true, you expect exactly the opposite: a very low heritability, since all genetic variation would be exhausted, and you are only left with highly religious people. From the heritability data, I would conclude that religiosity is NOT evolutionary important, but some sort of side effect of selection on other behaviour. Any ideas?
Hi Corneel,
thanks for the insightful question!
Yes, we have had the debate in Germany several times, although I understood the heritability rates not as exceedingly high (see Bouchard & Koenig linked). But the reproductive effect indeed is so massive that the question "Why are there nonbelievers around?" has become a focus of debate. At the moment, there are two main lines of reasonings related to the topic here (which have not to be exclusive, as is so often the case):
1. Religiosity as a trait is pretty young, i.e. discernible ritual burials among Sapiens and Neanderthalensis have been found since the middle paleolithic (120.000 yrs., maybe 160.000 yrs.). And above that: the selective pressure on the reproductive side might today be higher than ever before, as new inventions as state-welfare, state-education, pension plans instead of children etc. are making marriage, children and religious affiliation to a costly matter of choice for more and more people as never before. According to this reasoning, the rather young evolution of religiosity has just gained dynamics, and the outswamping of skeptics is just on the way.
2. Others point out, referring to the same environmental and cultural changes, that it is not quite clear that religiosity would have worked always in the way "the much, the better". The usual situation could have favoured the bell-shaped behavior that we (still?) observe among modern Homo Sapiens: Minorities of dedicated believers and sceptics, who are each ready to face costs and even discrimination for their cause and a big middle ground of opportunistis able to swing to the socially winning sides (look i.e. at the differences in church membership and religious practice between Eastern Germany and Western Germany, one regime having discriminated religious behavior, the other supporting it. Those Eastern Germans who remained in Church are often those very strict and active.). And if we look at todays religious group-structures among hunters and gatherers we see just that: some people eagerly actively seeking religious behaviors and experiences i.e. in Shamanistic roles, some others more skeptic or seeking new answers (although not atheistic in the modern sense) and a majority floating in-between. If we look at a constant task of religious communities then and today, to find and augment new answers to environmental change, groups of too much leniency or rigidity might have been at a disadvantage, favouring bell-shaped compositions.
For a variety of reasons I tend to explanation 2, although I wouldn't rule out 1 completely (we sketched both in our German book). As a small contribution to the discussion from the perspective of the scientific study of religion, I hope to have finished a study about skeptics (and possible benefits observable today or in paleolithic environment) at the end of the year.
So, you see: The debates are raging, and you are very welcome, Corneel!
Thank you for your detailed response. For what it is worth: My first intuition was that religiosity was not adaptive (Ockham's razor and al that), but I gather from your response that there is a considerable reproductive advantage. That argues against my argument. Darn! I thought I had solved it, haha.
all the best, Corneel
Hi Corneel,
yeah, I completely agree with your kind post and "darn"-experience - as I remember it myself. :-) I got the double hit of having worked with data from the Swiss Census and visited some Amish-regions of the US. Take to that I often work with religious Jews and Muslims, and there was no serious doubt left that religiosity had the potential to augment cooperative and reproductive success. While we assembled more and more data, we were still looking around for a single secular community showing the same resilience and birth rates as Amisch, Hutterites, Mormons, orthodox Jews etc. for just three generations. We found - zero.
Since then, I have surrendered to the data. :-) There is a brand new, interdisciplinary book to appear in August with lots of empirical stuff about the Biological Evolution of Religiosity, maybe of interest to you or some of your colleagues:
http://www.springer.com/.../book/978-3-642-00127-7
Best wishes, see ya, Corneel!