The Faith Instinct: How Religion Evolved and Why It Endures [Paperback]

One of the most interesting books I have read recently. Nicholas Wade gives a clear, well written account of the origins and evolution of religion (note: this is NOT a knock-down of religion) with persuasive evidence that it is hereditary. He does not seek to account for the presence/absence of any deities and I recommend it for anyone with an inquiring mind regardless of their faith or lack thereof.

The proposition of this book, that faith is an evolved human trait, is presented in a largely convincing and easily read way. Unfortunately, as the author himself writes, there is a lack of relevant and reliable data available making it hard to analyse the subject matter in a purely scientific way, so there is a fair amount of assumption although the reasoning is generally sound. The relationship drawn between religion and music, dance, dreams and trance is particularly interesting and resonates with modern dance music culture.

The book loses a star for the chapter entitled 'The Tree of Religion' which is an unnecessary and weak attempt at framing world religions as pure fabrication, which actually adds nothing to the wider proposition. Yes there is interpolation and assimilation of texts and other religions into the local culture, but the author damages the trust in the rest of the book's rationale when he attempts to debunk Islam as some kind of conspiracy where its founder didn't even exists, then asserts it as a matter of fact. This leads the reader to suspect that reference material throughout has been selected to match the hypothesis rather than being looked at objectively. The author does manage to recover but the damage is done.

The rest of the book is an interesting and thought provoking read. It is unlikely to convince hardened creationists or atheists who reject the idea of religion being a contributing factor in their evolution, or survival of species being influenced by group fitness.

Nicholas Wade, who also wrote the very fine Before the Dawn: Recovering the Lost History of Our Ancestors (2007) (see my review at Amazon), argues most convincingly here that religion, our sense of spirituality, and our moral instinct have been hardwired into our brains by the evolutionary process. This book, supported in part by the Templeton Foundation, is the first of its kind to put together the body of evidence that accounts for the fact that religion has been part of every known human society while explaining why.

Is religion adaptive in an evolutionary sense? is the first and most important question to be answered. The fact that religion is universal strongly suggests that it is. But until recently this idea was rejected by most biologists including some heavy hitters such as George Williams, Richard Dawkins and Steven Pinker. But, as Wade points out, Dawkins and Pinker in particular may have missed the boat because of personal biases. Wades writes that their opposition "seems to be driven less by any particular evidence than by the implicit premise that religion is bad, and therefore must be nonadaptive." (p. 67)

Moreover, Williams and Dawkins have been against the idea that religion is adaptive because of their belief that natural selection operates primarily at the level of the individual. For religion to be adaptive in the Darwinian sense, it helps a lot for selection to operate at the level of the group. Wade shows that biologists such as David Sloan Wilson and Edward O. Wilson, not mention Darwin himself, support the idea of group selection. Wade presents Darwin's argument from the Autobiography (see page 68) that tribes who had members who were ready to sacrifice themselves for the good of the tribe would help their tribe prevail over other tribes without such people. Williams and others came to differ with Darwin by arguing that free-loaders and cheaters only interested in promoting their own genes would out-reproduce the do-gooders. This opinion has held sway in evolutionary biology for a long time, but that is changing. Wade quotes David Sloan Wilson and Edward O. Wilson as putting it this way: "Selfishness beats altruism within groups. Altruistic groups beat selfish groups. Everything else is commentary." (p. 70)

But how is religion adaptive? Why should those tribes that were religious have out-competed those that were not? Where are those non-religious tribes? The answer is there aren't any. The assumption is that they were driven to extinction by the religious tribes.

Just what is it about religion that confers upon its practitioners such a huge evolutionary advantage? The answer in a word is warfare. The intimate relationship between human warfare and religion is really the crux of the matter. As warfare became more important among human groups competing for scarce resources a greater premium was placed on winning. What religion does so very well is make the tribe more cohesive than it would otherwise be. Edward O. Wilson expressed this are early as 1978 in his book On Human Nature. He wrote: "When the gods are served, the Darwinian fitness of the members of the tribe is the ultimate if unrecognized beneficiary." (p. 184, op. cit.)

One of the most interesting things about religion as revealed in this book is that religion came before language! How can that be? Wade explains that in the most primitive societies, the basis of religion is communal, rhythmic singing and dancing. This singing and dancing can be seen to draw the members of the tribe closer together so that they can act as one with less fear of danger as they are strengthened by the cohesiveness of the group. People could dance and follow rhythms and perhaps sing before they could use syntactic language. We see many animals, especially birds, that perform elaborate dances. Hominids, being social creatures would dance en mass not so much to be sexually selected (although that too no doubt) but to strengthen their ties within the group.

But this ecstatic expression of religion cuts both ways. In historic times religion has become hierarchical, the rituals have become more sedate, and the basis of group membership is based not on ecstatic communal expression but more on shared beliefs. In fact some religions have banned dancing. Wade suggests that this is because the power of the leaders of these modern religions can have their authority threatened by deeper and more immediate appeals to emotion. This might be what is happening in Latin America today with membership in the Catholic Church shrinking while membership in the more demonstrative Protestant churches with singing and even speaking in tongues gaining adherents.

In the latter part of the book Wade traces the birth and growth of various religions including especially the three monotheistic religions from the Middle East. He doesn't see religion as the cause of wars per se, only as a very nice tool for being successful in wars! Finally he looks at the future of religion. He hints at a need for religions that are more in tune with the modern world. Beyond that he does not go.

All in all an excellent book that deserves a wide readership.