[jahbrewski]

I think religion is actually an evolved mechanism for perpetuating (human) life. I developed this theory when my wife and I visited some friends in rural Kansas. We attended their Christian church service and I was struck by the potential evolutionary advantages that would play out if the preacher’s advice was taken at face value: 1) Anti-LGBTQ rhetoric: if only a fraction of LGBTQ individuals were shamed into a heterosexual relationship, there’s a potential evolutionary advantage. 2) Stay-at-home mothers: encouraging marriage/reproduction as the end goal for women likely has evolutionary advantages. 3) Early marriage: again, likely evolutionary advantage.

I find it extremely ironic that the groups most opposed to evolutionary biology are likely a bi-product of those forces.

[patcon]

re: religion being evolutionarily advantageous. Totally. Though with your specific 3 points, I respectfully suggest you're missing the forest for the trees. The specific stories we tell through religion don't always matter as much as the aggregate power of enacting and conjuring them together. Sometimes strong-willed and stubborn groups are what was needed to thread a needle through an important time in history. Many of the specific stories that emerged through that stubbornness might be no more than vestigial features -- feature that have no direct purpose, but as products of some underlying third factor.

For example, the old testament version of christianity was perhaps the right thing for that time, and the new testament person of Jesus was perhaps the right iteration of Christianity for that time. These stories suited the human network of the time, which perhaps had very different network structure -- the lawless chaos of man and nature during old testament times (in which strict codes were needed to gel society), vs the rigid and dominant social stratification and class conflict/divides of New Testament times (in which Jesus' teachings helped knit together a fractured social network).

In case these things are of interest, there are some fields delving into this stuff: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/276494993_Structure...

[raiflip]

Old Testament version of Christianity? You mean Judaism?

[jahbrewski]

Ah, I like where you're coming from. Thanks for the link; I'm definitely interested in exploring these topics further. Is there a name for this field of study? Perhaps just the sociology of religion? That seems to leave out the evolutionary biology perspective though.

[monkeynotes]

I think this is why technology and science is the new religion we all live by. Technology has the potential to perpetuate information indefinitely. Organic life bootstrapped the path to inorganic life and beyond. Religion served its purpose and no longer feels relevant in light of technology and science.

[bla3]

I've heard this the other way round: religions that perpetuate reproduction (by discouraging contraceptives, encouraging child bearing, encouraging raising your children with the same beliefs, etc) have an evolutionary advantage over other religions, so religions are likely to have these traits after a few centuries.