Institutional religion is one social coordination solution among many that evolved in large-scale societies exceeding kin relations. The document discusses using phylogenetic inference rather than adaptationism to understand the evolution of religion. It defines religion as social institutions that bind ethnically diverse groups and examines the behavioral foundations of religion in human dominance hierarchies, empathy, and cultural transmission.

1. The naturalising of religion:
A phylogenetic approach
John Wilkins
Universities of Sydney and
Melbourne
Friday, 6 July 12

2. 2
Warning: work in progress!
1. Sociobiology 3.0
2. Religion as an adaptation to the environment
3. Methodological concerns
–Homology versus analogy
4. Evolution and religion
–A principled definition of religion as social institutions
5. A behavioural foundation for institutional religion
6. Dominance
7. Euhemerism
Conclusion: Institutional religion is one among many social
coordination solutions in large-scale societies that
exceed kin relations
Friday, 6 July 12

3. Introduction
• The explanatory target: the social role
and structure of religion
• The research question: Is religion an
adaptation to the environment?
How can we answer this? I suggest
the best way is not to look for
adaptive explanations, but rather
to use phylogenetic inference
This indicates a difference between
analogical and homological
inferences in biology
Friday, 6 July 12

4. 4
Sociobiology
• Born-Again Sociobiologist
• V. 3!
• Version 1: Analogy by impression
• Exporting European and American culture to animals and
back
• Inappropriate metaphors
• Version 2: The Mythical EEA
• We stopped evolving in the Pleistocene
• We have modules to do special tasks that are shaped by
selection
• Exporting assumptions about evolution and adaptation
• Version 3: Inference by homology and comparative psychology
• What do humans as apes have as species-typical?
• What do we have that varies from the “ape-norm”?
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5. 5
Naturalising Religion
• Recent publications:
• Dan Dennett, Breaking the spe$
2006
• Pascal Boyer, Religion explained
2001
• Justin Barrett, Why would
anyone believe in God? 2004
• Scott Atran, In gods we trust
2002
• Richard Dawkins, The God
delusion 2006
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6. 6
Varieties of Naturalisms
about religion
Existential/Psychological Naturalism
–Fear of death/uncertainty
–Control illusion
–Cognitive propensities (Atran/Boyer/Barrett)
Socioeconomic Naturalism
–Weberian/Marxian
Evolutionary Naturalism
–Kin selectionist accounts
–Group selectionist accounts (Sloan Wilson)
–Individual adaptationist accounts
–Cultural adaptationist accounts (Dennett)
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7. •To begin, let us consider a claim:
•Religion is an adaptation to the
environment
•How to proceed?
•We need to
•Define the explanandum (what do we
mean by religion?)
•Work out what sort of adaptation and
fitness bearers (what is evolving?)
•Decide if it actually is adaptive (or is a
spandrel/byproduct)
•And what it is an adaption to (what is the
ecology?)
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8. 8
Religion is an adaptation to
the environment
What sort of adaptive?
– Is religion something that was directly selected for,
or non-religious selection of?
– Biological,
– Psychological, or
– Cultural adaptation?
•What is the fitness bearer?
– Confusing cultural and biological lineages and
reproducing entities
•“Memetic” fitness is borne by cultural agents or entities
•Biological fitness is borne by genetic, organismic or trait
lineages
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9. 9
Religion is an adaptation to
the environment
Why adaptationism?
– Natural selection is a powerful
theory
– Limitations:
•We find what we seek (Just So-ism)
•We draw careless analogies between
unrelated traits
(Sociobiology and “stamping
grounds”)
•Convergent evolution loses
phylogenetic information
Perhaps religion is a side effect,
or spandrel
– MCI: Minimal Counter Intuitive
agency
– HADD: Hyperactive Agency
Detection Device
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10. 10
Religion is an adaptation to
the environment
What is “the” environment for religion?
– Brains “infected” by religious memes
•This is at best question begging and normatively judgmental
– Social ecology
•Nationalism, imperialism, capitalism
– Biological environment
•Environment of Evolutionary Adaptation
•Agriculture? Cities? Modern medicine (eugenics fears)?
– We are now, and always have
been, in our natural environment
•Niche construction the norm
– Modularity is not useful for cognition
• Dispositions, “devices”
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11. 11
Methodological concerns
• Naturalising religion as evolutionary investigation
• We have to identify the things that are informative about the
process, but we do not have direct access to the process
• Analogical reasoning can lead to some problems and limitations:
• Inappropriate analogies, based on prior biases and expectations,
often from a cultural bias
• An analogy adds nothing more than the similarity relations used in
drawing the analogy in the first place
• This has been around for a while: Homo homini aut deus aut
lupus [Erasmus]
• We should instead use homology first, before analogy, to properly
identify the analogies
• Analogies with apes more relevant than analogies with gazelles
or dogs or ants
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12. 12
Phylogenetic inference
What could we predict if all we knew was
– Humans are apes
– Humans use symbolic communication
– Humans sometimes live in high density populations?
Could we use phylogenetic inference?
– Look at our nearest relatives for clues
•what we share as apes
• what we differ in as derived humans?
Adaptationist thinking : phylogenetic thinking ::
argument by analogy : argument by homology
Phylogenetic inference is inductively projectible
– Adaptive inference is only deductive (that is, you get out what you put
in, with certainty)
– Phylogeny delivers inductive license (you get out much more than you
put in, defeasibly)
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13. 13
Analogy versus homology
The notion of homology is pre-Darwinian, coined by Richard
Owen in 1843, based on “affinity”
– Homology is derived from the
observational fact that there is a
strong isomorphism between parts of
distantly related organisms; e.g.,
pigeon and human skeleton (Belon
1555)
– The same organ or part under all transformations of form
and function
The relation between analogies is one of similarity (ratio)
The relation between homologies is of identity (Brigandt and
Griffiths 2007)
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14. 14
The epistemic warrant
of homology and analogy
If you have an analogous class, you know nothing more about its
members than what is implicit in the class definition
– A predator may have teeth or claws or mouthparts or stingers…
If you have a homologous class, you know a lot about its members
– If I tell you an organism is a raptor, you know about its properties
from knowing any other member of the clade: beaks, claws,
feathers, physiology, life cycle, etc.
Inference by homology licenses further induction (which may be
defeasibly wrong)
Inference by analogy licenses no further inference
– Adaptive analogies will turn out to be limited to the “free floating
rationale”
– Your motivation for applying analogies depends on what
abstractions you are prepared to make away from the gritty detail
Friday, 6 July 12

15. 15
Evolution and religion
• Evolutionary biology as a way to naturalise religion[i]
• Biological aspects of religion in general:
• Evolved species-typical psychology, especially cognitive and social
psychology
• Predictions about one member of the “great ape” clade (Hominoidea)
from a knowledge of plesiomorphies (primitive or underived characters) of
the clade
• Behavioural homologies that are unique to humans
• Phylogeny provides a “null hypothesis” for any great ape
• The autapomorphies (derived characters) of humans contrast with the
symplesiomorphies (shared underived characters) of the great ape clade
• All apes are dominance-driven, and have sexual dimorphism
• Humans have a special (literally, of the species) derived form of dominance
and sexual dimorphism
• [Project: map social organisation onto phylogenetic tree]
• But we can safely say: we are dominance-driven for reproductive reasons
Friday, 6 July 12

16. 16
A principled distinction:
institutional religion
Any ritual (religion[r]) or belief (religion[b]) that is indistinguishable from
general social structures and behaviours is not religion[i] (hence animism
or shamanism are not considered institutional religions)
– Gods, etiologies and rituals precede religion[i]
Religion[i] binds …
– Religare, from the Latin root ligare, to bind or unite
… members of an ethnically diverse society
– Hence is post-agriculture
– A social coordination solution when
kin-group relations fail
Not the only solution!
– Military
– Political
– Cultural (tribal markers)
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17. 17
The behavioural foundation for
religion[i] in humans
Humans are social apes
– So religion[i] will either contribute to or be a cultural adaptation
of our social nature (or both)
– Humans have particular social biologies that are unique to them
•For a start we communicate symbolically
•Since Mesopotamian times we communicate in writing
•We are long distance traders
– But we also have unique versions of ape homologies
(autapomorphies)
•Social dominance (we do it our way; probably four or five hierarchies
in each society)
•Empathy (we, and possibly the chimps and gorillas, can put ourselves
in the other guy’s shoes)
•Technological and cultural transmission (we, and chimps, can
teach cultural variants and technologies)
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18. 18
Hierarchies
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19. 19
My hypothesis (GodsAbove!)
Humans have a species-typical form of social dominance behaviour
• that leads us to venerate cultural heroes as high status individuals
(kings, warriors, inventors, law givers)
–High status individuals are MCI
–Ancestors are MCI
–Gods are MCI
•In sedentary societies permitted by agriculture, we have cross-kin
group social allegiances in high density populations
•Social dominance is expressed in such cases by allegiance to absent
individuals via subordinates
•Gods are a way of reinforcing dominance and social cohesion in
such societies
Need phylogenetic and further research on human social
dominance (Sidanius and Pratto 1999)
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20. 20
Dominance and nation building
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21. 21
Dominance Euhemerism
•Deities act as super-alpha individuals reinforcing and
punishing defection from social alliances
Conjecture: Many gods begin “life” as social heroes, kings, and
cultural innovators; often as tribal leaders
•Religions and gods represent “tribal markers” that identify
in-group (to whom reciprocal altruism is owed and expected
from) from outgroup (excluded from community support)
•There were gods before agriculture, and rituals devoted to
them, but no distinction between religion and social structure
•Religion ties groups that are bigger than kin-groups together
It is one solution to that social problem
–It is not the only solution; adaptive but not the adaptation
Friday, 6 July 12

22. Thank you
Thanks to Paul Griffiths and the University of Sydney
Friday, 6 July 12