Just Finished Reading: Six Impossible Things before Breakfast – The Evolutionary Origins of Belief by Lewis Wolpert.
Professor Wolpert in this interesting little book puts forward the idea that the foundations of our beliefs – all of our beliefs – originate from the time when early humans began using and making tools for the first time. This process of making tools – almost a definition of humanness in itself – changed the structure of the brain through natural selection ‘designing in’ beliefs regarding cause and effect. Wolpert extends this suggestion to encompass beliefs about health, the supernatural, religion, morality and much else besides.
Whilst full of interesting ideas and snippets of information I think that Professor Wolpert failed to make his case here. I can certainly understand why we can be ‘programmed’ to believe things – to have in effect a ‘belief engine’ as part of our brain structure - but I’m not convinced that this followed on from the process of early tool making. It certainly might have had an impact on the development of beliefs but it wasn’t necessarily at the core of things.
I actually found this book to be fairly badly written. Wolpert made many statements (some of which I agreed with) but made little effort to back them up. I continually found his assertions to be heavy with conjecture but light on the evidence to support them. Even though I agree with his idea that evolution most likely plays a significant part in the development of our belief systems – to the extent that we are built to believe – I would have liked to see a stronger argument put forward to support it. Six Impossible Things was an interesting and often thought provoking read but a little too light for my liking.
6 comments:
That topic (religion as part of evolution) seems to be coming up a lot lately. Dawkins goes into it in his book and I just read an article in the NY Times about it. I'm going to try and post something about the NY Times article on my blog tonight.
It's obviously an interesting idea. We developed the need for religion for some reason. It's just debatable whether that reason still exists or whether it's just one of those left-over things.
dbackdad said: We developed the need for religion for some reason. It's just debatable whether that reason still exists or whether it's just one of those left-over things.
Indeed. It must have been useful at some point in our history. The question is: Is it *still* useful or should we abandon it.
I bet you can guess what my answer would be.... [grin].
Interesting hypothesis for how our belief system developed. Good review too, calling him on not backing up his statements with proof. I've never even considered the notion that tool making could have shaped our brains to affect our belief systems. I'm so glad other people think about these things and explore them. I believe the questioning and exploring for answers helps us evolve as a species when we share what we've found and expand our understanding.
V V - Yes it was an interesting hypothesis it's just that it wasn't followed through very well.
I like to be fair in my reviews so I'll call baddly written books just that - even if I agree with their point of view.
My theory is that our ability to create and innovate also gave us the ability to accept supernatural belief and explanations for things we couldn't explain.
And the last 2000 years through breeding this has been reinforced, where non believers were either killed, or thrown out of their communities or at least shunned. Believers tend to have more children and they might be more susceptible to keeping the myths alive even though God in the gaps theories have been getting filled up quickly in the last 100 or so years.
All this may have started with our ability to make tools, but chimps also make tools, and you don't see them praying to an invisible sky fairy....at least we don't know if they do.
BEAJ said: My theory is that our ability to create and innovate also gave us the ability to accept supernatural belief and explanations for things we couldn't explain.
As soon as imagination developed it would indeed follow that it was used to 'imagine' just about anything including gods & supernatural spooks. You can imagine what effect dreams had on early humans!
BEAJ said: And the last 2000 years through breeding this has been reinforced, where non believers were either killed, or thrown out of their communities or at least shunned.
Well, 2K years isn't very long in the sceme of things so is unlikely to have much effect on our gene pool. Religion in general has been around a *lot* longer than that though so I'd be very surprised if it hasn't produced some sort of effect.
BEAJ said: All this may have started with our ability to make tools, but chimps also make tools, and you don't see them praying to an invisible sky fairy....at least we don't know if they do.
Other apes do indeed use tools. As to praying... I'm not sure if there has been any studies on the spiritual life of other creatures. I do wonder how such a thing could even be attempted.
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