Does Evolution Undermine Religion? Pt. 1 - Putting Religious Belief in the Space of Causes
Even if one were able to render the whole of the content of faith into conceptual form, it would not follow that one had grasped faith, grasped how one came to it, or how it came to one.
— Johannnes de silentio, Fear and Trembling
Typically, when one discusses the relationship between religious belief and evolution, the main concern is whether certain findings or hypotheses of evolutionary biology can be squared with certain creedal or dogmatic tenants of a particular religious faith. For example, one might wonder whether the claim that evolution by natural selection (a blind, undirected process, heedless of intelligent control, applicable to all living things) explains contemporary biodiversity (how we got the various species we actually have on the planet now, including homo sapiens) is compatible with the creation story in the Book of Genesis, the general Judeo-Christian belief that human beings exist as the imago dei, the distinctively Catholic dogma that the human soul must have been specially created by a divine act (miracle), the belief that all human beings are subject to original sin because of our common parentage in a single breeding pair (Adam and Eve), etc., etc. Those questions have their place (even if they take up more space than they deserve in our intellectual landscape), and they have been amply dealt with by others whose theological pay grade is far above mine. (I have in mind here in particular work by my colleague and good friend, Matthew Ramage.)
Thus, rather than concerning myself in what follows with questions regarding the compatibility of of evolutionary biology and religion, I will consider whether religious belief and the deliverances of evolutionary psychology can be simultaneously held in good faith. (Of course, one might worry whether evolutionary biology and psychology can be neatly separated, but that is an issue I will take up in some detail below.) The move from evolutionary biology to evolutionary psychology alters the character of the question concerning compatibility with religion significantly. To get a sense of this reorientation, consider the following distinction between two different types of incompatibility (though in recent epistemology they would go under the moniker of different kinds of “defeaters”):
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Direct Incompatibility: two beliefs, A and B, are incompatible in this sense, if either A and B cannot both be true, or A and B entail or otherwise strongly imply (given the general facts of the world) other claims that cannot both be true.
Indirect Incompatibility: two beliefs are incompatible in this sense, if holding one of the beliefs A were good reason for us to doubt our standing to hold the other. That is, two beliefs, A and B, have indirect incompatibility, if holding A gives us good reason to doubt that we are in any position to make a justified (or otherwise warranted) judgment regarding B. A and B could both be true, but holding A means that one cannot likewise also claim to hold B reasonably.
An easy example of direct incompatibility would be the beliefs There is a snake in my office and There is no snake in my office. Nobody could hold both such beliefs, on pain of a strict logical contradiction. Someone tempted otherwise, would need to give up one or the other beliefs or simply stop making any kind of sense at all. These two beliefs cannot both true, under any conditions. Even where beliefs are not logically contradictory, however, there can still be direct incompatibility, e.g., Paris is the capital of the Fifth French Republic and Paris is a lake in Wisconsin. There is no formal contraction between these two beliefs; affirming them both is not at all like saying “P and not-P!” There certainly is a just-so story we can tell according to which Paris is the capital of the Fifth French Republic and Paris is a lake in Wisconsin both come out as true, but it is obvious, given the non-controversial facts about the actual world, that such a story is indeed false. Given how things stand with lakes, cities, European history, geography, etc., nobody can seriously entertain both beliefs without straining credulity beyond its breaking point. These two beliefs cannot be taken as both true under any plausible set of conditions (even if possible or remotely probable ). I take it that standard debates about the compatibility of evolutionary biology and religion are mostly concerned with direct compatibility of this sort. For example, the beliefs Creation occurred as outlined in Genesis and Speciation occurred through evolution by natural selection have the prima facie appearance of direct incompatibility, and the subsequent debate is over whether a plausible just-so story can be told that relieves this initial tension. As I said above, I’ll not be taking that well-trod path in this essay.
As for indirect incompatibility (what I might've called “epistemic incompatibility”), consider the beliefs I am generally a poor judge of character and Smitty possesses a fine character. Whether or not I am a good judge of character has no bearing whatsoever on whether Smitty indeed has a sterling character, and vice versa. My lack of judgment is no strike against Smitty’s moral bearing. Thus, the truth of both beliefs are directly compatible in sense I discussed above, i.e., it is perfectly plausible that the world is such that both beliefs are true. If I said “I believe that I am not a good judge of character, but I believe Smitty possesses a fine character,” nobody would reply “Really? Both those claims can’t both be true!” Certainly the world could well turn out to be such that both I’m not a reliable judge of character and Smitty is as an all-around great guy. Be that as it may, there is still something odd about asserting “I believe that I am not a good judge of character, but I believe Smitty possesses a fine character.” I would expect a smart interlocutor to reply by saying “Well, who are you to vouch for Smitty, if you admit that you are not a good judge of character?” In other words, though the beliefs are directly compatible (there’s no worry that they can’t both be true), holding the one (I am a poor judge of character) undermines ones standing to hold the other (Smitty possesses a fine character) on rational grounds. The former gives me good reason to mistrust my judgment in the case of the latter. If I believe that I’m a poor judge of character, then I shouldn’t trust my conclusion regarding Smitty’s character.
Another example (which I think originates with Alvin Plantinga) might be helpful. Suppose I look out my office window and see what appear to be sheep innocently grazing in the fields across the river. Such a bucolic experience might result in the belief that There are innocent sheep grazing in that field. So far, so good, but further suppose that I received a campus alert informing me that there are in fact roving bandits dressed as sheep abroad today in my vicinity. That alert might result in the belief that There are sheep bandits abroad today in my vicinity. Is there a direct incompatibility entailed by “I believe there are innocent sheep grazing in that field, but I also believe there are sheep bandits abroad in my vicinity”? No, but, once again, there is something wrong in this statement. That is, the belief in the operation of sheep bandits in my vicinity is good reason to doubt my judgment about what appear as sheep in the field across the river. I should, at least, suspend judgment as long as I have reason to believe I might be under the influence of deceptive agencies in my environment. In short, There are innocent sheep grazing in that field and There are sheep bandits abroad today in my vicinity are indirectly incompatible. If I believe the latter, then I shouldn’t trust myself regarding the former.
The question of the compatibility of religion and evolutionary psychology is a worry over indirect compatibility, and I ask you to indulge a bit more formalism for the sake of articulating the question precisely. Let’s first define two beliefs:
Religion: There are supernatural entities and/or principles relevant to conduct.
Evolution: The human tendency to hold Religion is explained by the reproductive fitness it accrued to our prehistoric ancestors.
Thus, our question is: Are Evolution and Religion incompatible, such that holding Evolution is good grounds for our doubting our rational standing to hold Religion? Moreover, if we then think we have good reason for holding Evolution, then it would seem that we have reason to conclude that we can’t trust our judgments regarding Religion. Many skeptics answer this question affirmatively, while they likewise take it that we have very good reasons for Evolution, thus concluding that we can’t trust our judgments regarding Religion. Notice, the claim here is not that Religion is false, but that we can’t trust ourselves to make any such judgment. Our bearing toward religious belief is explained by a non-rational process, i.e., natural selection for the sake of reproductive fitness, not whatever other reasons we might cite.
Rodger Scruton doesn’t accept such a line of reasoning (in fact my own reply is much akin to his), but he articulates it well:
There is a widespread sense that social facts that were previously understood as part of “culture” are now to be explained as adaptations, and that, when we have explained them, we have removed their aura, so speak, deprived them of any independent hold on our beliefs and emotions, and reduced them to aspects of our biology. So closely do traditional religions fit to the strategies of our genes, and so callously do they seem to favor the genotype over the phenotype, that it is tempting to say that there is little or nothing more to the religious urge. It is an adaptation like any other, and if it seems to be rooted so deeply within us as to be beyond the reach of rational argument, this is entirely to be expected, since that is how adaptations are passed on. (Scruton, The Soul of the World, p. 3)
The idea here is that we can account for the tendency to accept Religion in terms of the survival advantage such a belief gave our prehistoric ancestors in the bloody struggle for reproductive advantage in the primordial past. We are religious, not because there are overwhelmingly good reasons supporting Religion, but rather because we have a non-rational, hardwired (as it were) tendency toward belief in the supernatural as a hangover from or side-effect of useful beliefs for our ancient ancestors. Just-so stories of this sort are quite common in philosophy. For example, Hobbes gives a quasi-evolutionary story about the emergence of justice from natural selfishness, and Nietzsche has a rather compelling tale to tell about the evolution of religion and morality via. the demands of the group (herd) dynamics necessary for the survival of the common run of humanity. (That is a long, and interesting story to tell, but I will leave it aside for now. I take up some similar concerns here. Daniel Dennett’s treatment of Hobbes and Nietzsche in Darwin’s Dangerous Idea is quite helpful on these points, and of course Leviathan and the On the Genealogy of Morality would not be bad places to go looking). E.O. Wilson famously introduced the evolutionary explanation of cultural practices and moral dispositions into the scientific discussion and the popular imagination in his various writings on sociobiology. The gist of his thinking is that seemingly altruistic behaviors (self-sacrifice or adherence to moral absolutes contrary to one’s direct interests) could be accounted for not in terms of our access to some rationally grounded standards of moral reason, but in terms of a kin selection. That is, animals may appear to go about seemingly altruistic behavior, but really what is going on is the pressure to keep genes maximally similar to their own up and running. Thus, so the story goes, we don’t abide moral rules for the reasons we think we do, but really because of the reproductive advantage such behaviors afforded our prehistoric ancestors.
Many just-so stories for the evolution of religion have been proposed. For example, belief in and concern for the supernatural (Religion) is a side-effect of our natural tendency to scan our environment for agency, i.e., our adaptive tendency to be on the look out for sabertooth tigers gets a bit of out hand and starts positing fairies in the hedgerows. The most plausible of these proposed evolutionary explanations comes from Matthew Rossano:
Shortly after 100,000 ybp, Neanderthals displaced humans in the Levant, pushing them back to their African homeland . . . . Recent genetic evidence indicates that around 70,000 ybp a select subset of the modern human population in Africa began a dramatic expansion . . . . From out of Africa a new species emerged that could no longer be turned back . . . . it is around this time that we have the first evidence of religion. Our ancestors had enlisted the supernatural as a player in their social world, and this, I believe, made all the difference in their social transformation. (Rossano, Supernatural Selection, 58-59)
The idea here is that our prehistoric ancestors made their initial play for the Middle East, but were sorely thwarted by the Neanderthals and sent packing back to Africa. Thirty-thousand years later, however, our ancestors returned and got the better of the locals. What made the difference? According to Rossano, it was the development of Religion (allow with all its behavior and cultural trappings in addition to the cognitive faculties it facilitated). In other words, our ancestors were selected, in part, because they were religious. Rossano openly identifies himself as a religious believer in his book, so he clearly doesn’t think that his belief in Evolution is indirectly incompatible with Religion. For him, this story shows that Religion is baked into the human cake and the attempt to thwart it can only have ill-consequences for our mental health and social cohesion. I agree that there is much to be said for all that, but notice that if Rossano is right (and I believe he has very good reasons for his position), Religion became a general human disposition because of the advantage it afforded us in a genocidal struggle with our competitors of among the other rational animals that once roamed the earth. In other words, we are religious (so an evolutionary skeptic might argue) because it is was a necessary component to the social cohesion that marked the great advantage in warfare. That is far from a flattering story, and it seems to put Religion on a less than rational footing.
Short of the scandal Evolution might cause in the religious mind, why exactly would someone think it undermines the rational standing of Religion? Consider another couple examples of our pal Smitty:
The Space of Reasons: Smitty believes in the multiverse because he has read the astrophysics literature.
The Space of Causes: Smitty believes in the multiverse because he drank a great deal of cough syrup.
In the Space of Reasons case, “because” indicates a sort of rational/normative standing (Smitty has reasons, and those reason explain his belief), whereas in the Space of Causes case, “because” indicates a causal, non-rational/non-normative relation (Smitty is made to believe, regardless of the available reasons). Notice, that in the Space of Causes case, Smitty’s belief could be true, though he’s not really entitled to it. Moreover, Smitty could be wrong about why he believes it and he could be wrong about whether his account in terms of reasons is indeed a good one. For example, while under the influence of an ill-advised dose of cough syrup, it may indeed appear to Smitty that the alien intelligences who offered him esoteric insights into the nature of the universe were perfectly reliable authorities. In any event, while in the Space of Causes, the grounding of Smitty’s belief is simply insensitive to whether it it true or false, soundly supported or wildly unhinged. The Space of Causes does not operate rationally, but causally. It is doesn’t track truth, justification, or warrant, but merely effects. When we say “Smitty believes in the multiverse because he drank a great deal of cough syrup,” we aren’t taking a normative stance toward what Smitty believes, but merely saying how it happened to come about. In the Space of Reasons case, the consequent of the “because” is sensitive to the truth of the antecedent, and we are treating Smitty in terms of normative accountability; we are claiming that Smitty is not merely caused by non-rational factors to arrive at a belief, but that he has based this belief on reasons (he is some sort of spontaneous agent). The distinction between the Space of Reasons and the Space of Causes usually comes with the following typical assumption (about which I have my worries, but I will leave unmolested for the purposes of this discussion):
The Typical Assumption: if a belief is explained in the Space of Causes, then it is not explained in the Spaces of Reasons.
That is, if Smitty’s belief is subject to a Space of Causes explanation (“. . . because he drank a great deal of cough syrup”) then that belief is not subject to a Space of Reasons explanation (“. . . because he has read the astrophysics literature”).
We can then construct the indirect incompatibility argument regarding Evolution and Religion as follows:
If Evolution, then Religion is explained by natural selection in terms of reproductive advantage.
Reproductive advantage is an explanation in the Space of Causes.
Therefore:
If Evolution, then Religion is explained in the Space of Causes.
Evolution is very likely.
Therefore:
Religion is very likely explained in the Space of Causes.
Therefore:
Religion is not explained in the Space of Reasons.
Premise 1 is simply the definition of Evolution with which we have been operating, and I take it that premise 2 is pretty obviously true. The inference the the conclusion 3 is valid, and I think there is enough evidence to grant premise 4. The inference to conclusion 5 is valid and 6 following from the Typical Assumption (which I’m not going to pick on here). If the prima facie grip of this argument stands, then it seems we have good reason to conclude that we are all in the grips of a collective “cough syrup” hallucination regarding Religion. That is, we do not hold our religious beliefs because of their rational standing, but because of the non-rational role they played in the bloody struggles for reproductive advantage. Whatever else can be said in favor of our religious condition, it isn’t something we base our standing in the Space of Reasons.
In the second part of this series, I will put this argument to some critical scrutiny. In the way of a spoiler, you will see that there is a crucial ambiguity in premise 1 that puts the entire line of reasoning of course.
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