Anthony A.C. Grayling - Does Evolutionary Psychology Undermine Religion?

Evolutionary psychology naturalizes religion. It seeks to explain elements of mind by selection and survival over time. Take altruism—individuals sacrificing themselves for the good of the group. Can humanity's entire religion project be explained similarly?

[erniebrewer]

in total agreement with A.C., on the historical creditability of religion. The current state of religion in modern society is mainly political, and very ideological, rather than metaphysical or supernatural.

[theophilus]

I don't think that it is even intelligible to ask whether evolutionary psychology undermines 'religion', since religion is not a single, unified phenomenon. Perhaps, for instance, some more primitive religions did have some function in explaining natural phenomena. But that hardly applies, say, to Christianity. No one becomes or maintains themselves as a Christian because they think that, say, Christ is a better explanation than science of why it rains or the sun shines. Christianity would cite God as an ultimate or final cause, of course, but this has nothing to do with competing against nature's own causes. (This has always been accepted in the great tradition of Catholic theology.) Only someone utterly ignorant of Christian doctrine and the great tradition of theological thinking could ever suppose otherwise. Grayling is right in saying that it imposes a 'conceptual grid' on things. Of course it does, it presents us with a world-view, but that doesn't quite make it explanatory in a quasi scientific sense. He is also right in saying that religions try to make sense of things. But _any_ world view at all does these things. One can hardly escape it.

On the historical point. I think that Grayling is simply wrong - or largely so. We 21st century Christians and the mediaeval and ancient Christians share a good deal - the core of Christian doctrine, for example, and much (though not all) theological perspectives. Do these ideas in some sense 'evolve'? Certainly, but not beyond all recognition.

I am also not remotely convinced that theology nowadays is full of thinkers who would stretch the commonalities of religions beyond all reason, purely for the sake of being nice to those of other religious traditions, though it did go through what I would regards a hopelessly liberal phase in the mid 20th century.

[sebolddaniel]

Jesus in the Gospel of Luke believed in the astrology of the coming age of the water bearer, Aquarius. Why throw it out if you are good Christian? Strange that Jesus knew nothing of the spiral nebula, Andromeda, visible in the desert sky to Jesus and his followers. "There are a trillion suns in that spiral nebula over there by Cassiopeia, and ten percent of them are like our own sun." Hey, I stand converted..

[BradHolkesvig]

These people are clueless to how God created them and their experiences. They do not know where they get their thoughts from.