David Sloan Wilson - Answering Richard Dawkins
For quite some years, devout disciples of Richard Dawkins basked in the perception that evolutionary studies would prove religions to be false and harmful. But in 2002, evolutionary biologist David Sloan Wilson published "Darwin's Cathedral. Evolution, Religion, and the Nature of Society", leading to new perspectives of scientific study...
Since then, David Sloan Wilson has questioned Richard Dawkins theses on three main points:
1. Complex traits usually evolve by conferring reproductive benefits. Dawkins did never test if human religiosity had been adaptive, nor if it could be today. He'd relied solely on anecdotes. In contrast, by scientifically analyzing religious community teachings and practices i.e. among Jains and Calvinists, Wilson motivated many researchers into the Evolutionary Religious Studies.
2. With Dawkins theory of the "selfish genes", the author had tried to rule out any means of natural selection working on higher orders as individuals - silently dropping Charles Darwin in the process. Together with one of the main founders of modern sociobiology, Edward O. Wilson, (not related) David challenged this already widespread dogmatism. Religions turned out to be good testing cases of multilevel selection processes and today terms as "group selection" have been fruitfully brought back into scientific debate.
3. For more than 30 years, laypeople believed in Dawkins "Memes", without any clear definition, any observations, experiments, studies or just testable hypotheses supporting the claim. David was among those who pointed out that this emperor wasn't wearing any clothes - memetics are bringing forth pseudo-scientific "metaphors" as is Intelligent Design.
In his new book "Evolution for Everyone", David incorporated religiosity and religions into his wider, darwinian worldview. To many atheists, agnostics and religious alike he proved that sound science is about respectfully exploring and discussing, not debunking phenomena we have yet to understand from the perspectives of the natural sciences.
Printview
I just noticed that David has begun to blog at Huffington Post, especially about his favourite topic, the reintroduction of group selection into evolutionary biology. Worth any visit, here:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...lson/#blogger_bio
I don't think that DS Wilson's very positive view of religion is justified by his scientific theories or his results. Even if he is right that religion is a group adaptation, this is far from saying that it is something that we, as individuals, would find desirable once fully aware of its effects.
Dear Konrad,
thanks for your comment. As I experienced it, there are very different perspectives concerning religiosity in the field of evolutionary studies and I am glad about that. Although I am not specifically endorsing group selection, David's "Darwins Cathedral" was an eye-opener to me!
Although I have a personal opinion concering religion(s) as every other person, I feel we don't have enough findings about the subject for any final judgements yet. Besides, to regard evolutionary processes as either "positive" or "negative" indicates a philosophical rather than empirical position. Personally, I prefer to explore and describe the phenomena before discussing their "values". Regarding these topics, I am more likely to be found among the interested audience. :-)
im doing a project for a class about whether religiosity is inherited or not. i believe it has both genetic and environmental influences.
what would you say is the heredability of the phentotype? and what gene causes it?
Thanks for your help
I do agree with your assumptions. As Twin studies are conclusively pointing out, there seems to be a partial polygenetic inheritance of religiosity (as of most other biocultural traits).
For fresh data and resources on the topic, see here:
http://www.scilogs.eu/...med-by-another-twin-study
Best wishes for your project!
Please see my post on 24 March 2011. It is very relevant to the questions that you have posed.
Best wishes.
The article I refer to is called 'The Genetic Priming of Religiosity' and is on this blog. See top-right-hand side of this page for link.
Good article,it is very remarkable.