It is a critical problem that religion has an evolutionary advantage. Because it seems that other animals have no troubles at all to survive and adapt without religion, and in spite of so many negative theories about religion, religion still exists fi ...
It is a critical problem that religion has an evolutionary advantage. Because it seems that other animals have no troubles at all to survive and adapt without religion, and in spite of so many negative theories about religion, religion still exists firmly and vividly. If there is no evolutionary advantage of religion, it will remain as one of the mysteries that religion still survives without being dead despite the long term evolutionary process.
Stewart Guthrie thinks that it is also possible for animals to have religion, which is inspired by Goodall’s report about chimpanzees. But Jesse M. Bering insists that chimpanzees have no religion and only humans have religion. Though I think that this problem is somehow dependent on the definition of religion, there remains the problem of why religion exists and where it is originated from. But if religion has any evolutionary advantage, the reason for its existence and survival will be, to some extent, clear.
Communist predicts the death of religion, and in reality, the Soviet Union had tried to extinct religion. But after the collapse of Soviet Union, religion is being revived. Why do people without religion suddenly begin to believe As Eugene d’Aquili and Andrew Newberg say, is there religious neurological circuit in human brain. Or are there any sociological causes Anyway, if there is no evolutionary advantage, it is difficult to explain why religion exists throughout the long term evolutionary process.
Theories about the evolutionary advantage of religion cannot but be sharply divided in ‘have’ or ‘have not’. I hope that you refer to David Sloan Wilson and Daniel Dennett. But I want to introduce Wilson’s story briefly. He draws a line between religion as an adaptation and religion as nonadaptive. Religion as an adaptation includes ‘a group-level adaptation’, ‘an individual-level adaptation’, and ‘a cultural parasite just like Dawkins’s meme’. Religion as nonadaptive includes ‘an adaptation to past environments, but maladaptive in modern times’ and ‘a byproduct of genetic or cultural evolution’.
This paper tries to prove the evolutionary advantage of religion by game theory. It is based on Robert Axelrod’s iterated prisoner’s dilemma simulation. As I know, William Sims Bainbridge is the only scholar who applies game theory to the study of religion. His simulation is characteristic in that he introduces strategy rejection which rejects playing game with those who defects and incentive for cooperation.
I assume that religion takes into account not only realistic rewards in this world, but also religious rewards in the other world. These religious rewards have a very subjective and imaginary feature. These rewards can be given in the other world, in this world immediately, or in the future of this world. A believer will compute religious rewards and secular rewards at once, and will behave. I try to prove the evolutionary advantage, including religious rewards into the game model, and considering what effects religious rewards give to the survivability of population.
Simulations are performed according to three game models. Those are the secular game model, the religious game model, and the religious-secular game model. The secular game model is a traditional game of iterated prisoner’s dilemma. It is called the secular game model in order to distinguish from the religious game model. The religious game model performs the game including only subjective, imaginary payoffs without considering secular payoffs. The religious-secular game model combines the secular game model and the religious game model.
It's very hard to show the simulation processes and methods. If you want to know about them, you can refer to the uploaded report paper. The simulation results show that religion has evolutionary advanage, which means that religiion makes subject more adaptive and more survivable.