Russell E. Rierson

Here is an interesting quote from the book "Hyperspace" by Michio Kaku. He talks about the theory of biologist Edward O. Wilson.

Could Wilson's theory be true???

Very interesting....

Quote:

If scientists and nonscientists fail to communicate with each other over religious questions, it is because they are talking past each other, referring to entirely different Gods. This is because the foundation of science is based on observing reproducible events, but miracles, by definition, are not reproducible. They happen only once in a lifetime, if at all. Therefore, the God of Miracles is, in some sense, beyond what we know as science. This is not to say that miracles cannot happen, only that they are outside what is commonly called science.

Biologist Edward 0. Wilson of Harvard University has puzzled over this question and asked whether there is any scientific reason why humans cling so fiercely to their religion. Even trained scientists, he found, who are usually perfectly rational about their scientific specialization, lapse into irrational arguments to defend their religion. Furthermore, he observes, religion has been used historically as a cover to wage hideous wars and perform unspeakable atrocities against infidels and heathens. The sheer ferocity of religious or holy wars, in fact, rivals the worst crime that any human has ever committed against any other.

Religion, notes Wilson, is universally found in every human culture ever studied on earth. Anthropologists have found that all primitive tribes have an "origin" myth that explains where they came from. Furthermore, this mythology sharply separates "us" from "them," provides a cohesive (and often irrational) force that preserves the tribe, and sup- presses divisive criticism of the leader.

This is not an aberration, but the norm of human society. Religion, Wilson theorizes, is so prevalent because it provided a definite evolutionary advantage for those early humans who adopted it. Wilson notes that animals that hunt in packs obey the leader because a pecking order based on strength and dominance has been established. But roughly 1 million years ago, when our apelike ancestors gradually became more intelligent, individuals could rationally begin to question the power of their leader. Intelligence, by its very nature, questions authority by reason, and hence could be a dangerous, dissipative force on the tribe. Unless there was a force to counteract this spreading chaos, intelligent individuals would leave the tribe, the tribe would fall apart, and all individuals would eventually die. Thus, according to Wilson, a selection pressure was placed on intelligent apes to suspend reason and, blindly obey the leader and his myths, since doing otherwise would challenge the tribe's cohesion. Survival favored the intelligent ape who could reason rationally about tools and food gathering, but also favored the one who could suspend that reason when it threatened the tribe's integrity. A mythology was needed to define and preserve the tribe.

To Wilson, religion was a very powerful, life-preserving force for apes gradually becoming more intelligent, and formed a "glue" that held them together. If correct, this theory would explain why so many religions rely on "faith" over common sense, and why the flock is asked to suspend reason. It would also help to explain the inhuman ferocity of religious wars, and why the God of Miracles always seems to favor the victor in a bloody war. The God of Miracles has one powerful advantage over the God of Order. The God of Miracles explains the mythology of our purpose in the universe; on this question, the God of Order is silent.

End quote.


Russ

[ December 07, 2002: Message edited by: Russell E. Rierson ]</p>

pz

You keep saying that. I think you are rather easily fascinated.

Let's just recognize that what you've presented here is pop biology, interpreted in a book on pop physics, filtered through your rather peculiar sensibilities. I have my suspicion that what germ of truth might exist in Wilson's ideas (and, as fond as I am of Wilson's lucid humanism, I am not a big fan of his biology) has been turned into a gooey mush by the several layers of abstraction and distortion.

And no, to keep it simple, I do not believe that there are "religious genes". In fact, I find the whole proposal absurd.

galiel

I don't know what you have in your jeans, but what I have in mine sure ain't religion...

scigirl

Hello Russell,

That theory does sound interesting - it's hard to prove theories like that, but they make for cool bedtime reading.

I'll have to add that book to the list of books I want to read when I get time...

scigirl

Russell E. Rierson

(1.) Are Dr. Michio Kaku's ideas considered to be "pop physics"???


(2.) Are Dr. Edward O. Wilson's theories considered to be "too controversial"???

(3.)Are you a mathematician pz???

I would agree that the higher dimensional "hyperspace" is not a requirement of general relativity!!! In special relativity, spacetime has the natural structure of a four dimensional "vector space", but when we consider curved geometries the vector space structure is lost. There is no notion on how to add two points on a sphere and end up with a third point on the sphere. Yet vector space structure can be recovered in the "limit" of infinitesimal displacements about a point. This notion of "infinitesimal displacements" or tangent vectors is at the foundation of calculus on manifolds.

A sphere is a manifold which is naturally embedded in R^n, and has an intuitive notion of a tangent vector at point "p", which is a vector lying in the tangent plane. This idea can be made mathematically precise for manifolds embedded in R^n.

However in many situations, the manifold does not have an embedding in R^n . the tangent vector must be defined in a way that refers only to the intrinsic structure of said manifold, not to a possible embedding in "R^n" .

Thus the notion of a tangent vector would be defined as a directional derivative. In R^n there is a one to one correspondence between vectors and directional derivatives. A vector v ={v1,...vn} defines the directional derivative operator sigma_u[ v^u{@/@x^u}] {where "@" is the partial derivative symbol.} and vice versa.

Directional derivatives are characterized by their linearity and the "Leibnitz rule"-behaviour when acting on functions. On the manifold M let F denote the collection of infinitely continuously differentiable smooth functions from M onto R. The tangent vector v at point p an element of M to be a map v: F---&gt;R which is linear and obeys the Leibnitz rule:

(1.) v{af + bg} = av{f} + bv{g}

(2.) v{fg} = f{p}v + g{p}v{f}


Russ

[ December 07, 2002: Message edited by: Russell E. Rierson ]</p>

ps418

You have apparently embedded your tangent vector in the wrong thread. . .

pz

The book you are describing is pop physics. Kaku also doesn't seem to be particularly well informed about biology, so why you are citing him as a source here is a mystery. I didn't say anything about them being controversial, although if you were familiar with the biology literature, you'd know that they are. I will say that I think a good number of his ideas are just plain wrong. He is far too accepting of the genetic determinism of behavior. No. Are you a pastry chef? What the heck do you think you are doing here?

ps418

Religion is not 'in the genes,' at least not any specific religion. But the genes do play in a role, through indirect effects, in whether or not a person manifests religiosity. Identical twins reared apart are much more likely to be concordant for measures of 'religiosity' than are adoptive siblings raised together. Read
<a href="http://www.findarticles.com/cf_0/m1374/6_59/57800244/print.jhtml" target="_blank">this article,</a> the section on 'Is Belief in God Genetically Programmed?'

Russell E. Rierson

<img src="graemlins/boohoo.gif" border="0" alt="[Boo Hoo]" /> <img src="graemlins/banghead.gif" border="0" alt="[Bang Head]" />

Have I acted incorrectly pz???

I presented some interesting ideas which seem to be irritating to ...YOU.

I will post elsewhere, if you so desire.

[ December 07, 2002: Message edited by: Russell E. Rierson ]</p>

pz

Don't believe it. All of the known twin studies are seriously flawed, in particular since the authors tend to automatically and unjustifiably discount the role of environment in order to rationalize their bias that any concordance in behavior must be due to genes.

These same studies that find similar degrees of this general property of "religiousity" in identical twins also find concordance in which specific religious sect to which they adhere. Using their logic, then, in addition to having a genetic predisposition to religion, people must also have Episcopalian, Catholic, Baptist, and Wiccan alleles. (I do hope everyone realizes that that is a reductio ad absurdam, and that my intent is not to argue for a genetic basis for this behavior, but to show that the interpretations from this study are invalid.)