Atheists: Caught between evolution and a hard spot?

Alan Jacobs, professor of English at Wheaton College, ponders—in a piece for Books & Culture—why it is that atheists who adhere to evolution are so upset over how the evolutionary process has apparently (according to their faith system) worked so far in producing a preponderance of religious belief:

One question that atheists invariably must face concerns the sheer prevalence of religious belief: if all religions are fundamentally mistaken about the thing that most concerns them, then why are human beings everywhere and in every time so overwhelmingly religious? Why is this mistake—which many, perhaps most, atheists think catastrophic—so nearly universal?

Since atheism came into its own a hundred and fifty years or so ago, atheists have tried various ways of answering these questions, some anthropological, some sociological, some psychological, some existential. But recently the most common explanation atheists give for religious belief is that such belief is evolutionarily favored: that is—for reasons which some atheists guess at, while others decline to speculate—religious belief in a person increases the chance that that person will pass on his or her genes to another generation. (Earlier this year Robin Marantz Henig wrote a helpful survey of some of these "adaptationist" views of religion for the New York Times.)

Now, an atheist saying this immediately has a new problem, especially if he or she thinks that religious belief produces violence and intolerance—which is what many atheists, most notably Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris, have shouted from the world's rooftops. Anyone who holds both these views is in an interesting position, to say the least. Do we say that if I am violent and intolerant toward others I am more likely to pass along my genes—perhaps because I kill or injure those who do not share my religious beliefs before they can reproduce? If we do say that, then the atheist who protests against violence and intolerance will have to argue that we should behave in ways that do not maximize the likelihood of passing along our genes.

But this is a bad situation for an atheist to be in, since he or she is likely to have trouble grounding that "should" in anything compelling, and in any case is—according to his or her own philosophy—fighting a losing battle. If religiously inspired violence and intolerance are evolutionarily adaptive, and the blind processes of natural selection are the only ones that determine reproductive survival in the long term, then people who argue against religion and its accompanying pathologies are certain to diminish in numbers and eventually become totally marginal—nothing more than the occasional maladaptive mutation. The selfish gene will ultimately, necessarily, win out over the altruistic one.

In his recent book The God Delusion Richard Dawkins has referred to religious belief as a kind of evolutionary "misfiring," but, curiously enough, uses precisely the same term to describe "the urge to kindness—to altruism, to generosity, to empathy, to pity." Now it is true that he thinks religion is a lamentable, disgusting evolutionary error, while altruism and kindness are "blessed, precious mistakes." But in the long run—and evolutionary theory is always and only about the very long run—misfirings are misfirings, and Dawkins clearly doesn't believe that the instinct for altruism is adaptive. So Dawkins had better enjoy those blessed and precious mistakes while they're still here to enjoy: they won't be here forever. (Of course, Dawkins can take comfort in knowing that long before natural selection eliminates altruism he'll have made his own exit from the scene.)

Read the entire piece.

Previous, related posts:

• Sam Harris's Religious Devotion to Abortion (Aug. 31, 2007)
• Continuing with the theme... (Aug. 23, 2007)
• The Irrational Dogmas of Rational Atheism (Aug. 23, 2007)
• "Which atheism do you not believe in?" (May 1, 2007)

Comments

[Dan]

I find the whole notion of evolutionary psychology preposterous, especially to the extent it purports to explain what we think and believe. I cannot believe that there is any credible evidence that religious belief is genetically determined or otherwise inherited.

And if religious belief is the product of evolution, aren't then belief in feminism, civil rights, Nazism, socialism, democracy, and communism -- to mention just a few belief systems -- also the product of evolution? How can evolution account for so many contradictory things?

[Matt Robare]

From my personal observation of history religious belief (except in a few cases like Aztec Mexico and the like) does not provoke violence and intolerance. Instead it is nearly always people exploiting the power of religion for violent purposes because unless the ravening wolves hide in sheep's clothing the people will be against them.

[MenTaLguY]

I'm not a fan of evolutionary psychology. But let's suppose its broad premises are true for a moment: if there is such strong evolutionary pressure in favor of religion, the question of what real conditions it is a response to (the existence of God?) cannot be honestly ignored.

There's also the issue already mentioned, that atheism would appear to be evolutionarily maladaptive, but we needn't even invoke the spectre of religious violence to show it: religious belief correlates strongly with large family size, whereas atheists tend to reproduce at rates far below replacement.

[LJ]

Exactly right MenTaLguY.

This process of evolution is something happening right before our eyes. The non-religious and the secular progressives are contracepting and aborting themselves into oblivion while Catholics (of the orthodox kind) and Muslims are still reproducing apace.

Right now I think the Muslims might have the edge world-wide, but I think that if more Catholics can be convinced that the goal is to populate heaven, we can keep up.

[Stephen Sparrow]

How can Evolution account for Atheism? Actually what Dawkins and Co cannot reconcile is the virtue of Hope (or the vice of Despair) with random Natural Selection. They're trying to tell us that the virtue of hope was "forced on humanity by random natural selection". The fact is that "natural selection is hostile to all that is not geared toward survival at its most basic, and so at the very least, random natural selection would have, at the moment of hatching, crushed the faculty that enables both hope and despair to be contemplated. That faculty is free will, and it is unique to human beings, and it is confirmed and celebrated by Judeo-Christianity". Free will enables us to be er free - free to believe whatever we like. To be an atheist one needs to be able to stop thinking. However we, should still be able to admire atheists for their deep faith, right?

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