Roots of Religion

(Copy of my e-letter to Prof. Richard Dawkins, the author of THE GOD DELUSION)

Dear Prof. Dawkins,

This has reference to your search for a truly Darwinian explanation for an almost universal and all pervasive human propensity to adhere to religious beliefs in preference to rational thinking and understanding based on observed natural phenomena. In chapter 5 of your latest book, THE GOD DELUSION, you have made an heroic effort to come up with a theory that the expensive, wasteful and sometimes even fatal human adherence to blind faiths does offer a selection advantage in Darwinian sense albeit indirectly and only as a by-product of another typically human trait, namely, child indoctrination. While I am in full agreement with your views on God and religion and also your faith in the efficacy of the theory of natural selection for such explanations, I find your 'by-product' explanation somewhat contrived.

Edward O Wilson in his book, On Human Nature, had also observed that the hold of the religious faiths on human mind had of late strengthened and expanded rather than weakened and diminished. He also wondered as to why religious faiths hold overwhelming sway the world over in spite of the fact that we live in an age of science. His answer was: we humans are genetically programmed to be led by our beliefs rather than by reason.

Like yours, my latest book, Prithvi Mera Desh, Science Mera Dharm, (Earth is my country, science my religion), has also a chapter titled, The Roots of Religion. (I am a Hindi litterateur devoted to science popularization.). In this book I have proposed a Darwinian explanation for the human propensity to religious addiction. Here it is:

In Delhi streets, in broad day light, (and only in the broad day light), you will find thousand of cows roaming and loitering or whiling away their time leisurely sitting on the dividers or traffic islands of busy roads. They also forage on the open garbage dumps which are plenty in numbers in the city. You will wonder whether these cows are wild or domesticated and therefore owned by people. The answer is, each one of them is owned. Their owners milk them in the morning (The yield is generally very little, you can say nominal.) and kick them out to look after themselves during the day. The cows cleverly meander their way through mind bogging roads of thick traffic of Delhi without letting any injury to themselves or to people. They also cause minimal disturbance or confusion to the fast moving vehicles. They move about and fend for themselves as individuals and not as members of a herd. At the end of the day each cow returns to its respective owner who never has to worry about these animals lose their way or go missing. The cows of Delhi impress you as very smart and intelligent beings.

In Delhi region cows do not form the majority among the milch animals. The buffalos by far outnumber the cows. But you don't see any buffalo roaming on Delhi streets on their own. They are very lazy, dumb and docile. They stay at home. They seldom venture out. If they go out they are more comfortable in company of other buffalos. If one strays away it is unable to rejoin the group. If one loses its bearings it cannot find its way home. No owner of these animals will let them out without strict supervision. They always have to be herded. They eat what their owners give them to eat. In return they yield more milk than cows do.

Now question arises why these two otherwise similar species behave so differently. Why one is smart and intelligent and other dumb and stupid? The Darwinian explanation is not hard of imagine. The ancestors of cows and buffalos when in the wild happened to have applied different strategies to fight back the predators. In the case of cows, when attacked by powerful predators they ran helter-skelter in all directions and reassembled after the battle was over. They did perhaps mourn their dead but lived to see the next day and to reproduce. The modern cows are the decedents of those smart cows that survived and not of those lazybones who stood their ground and died. On the other hand, in the case of buffalos, when attacked, they closed their ranks, put their heads down, shut their eyes, stuck to each other so as the entire herd became a mountain of solid biomass. In this biomass the babies and females generally kept themselves in the inner core and some hot-headed males on the periphery. The attackers picked up their prey from the periphery leaving the inner core of lazybones intact. The modern buffalos are the decedents of those individuals who had put their heads down, stuck to the herd and remained inert during the battle and survived. The smarter guys on the periphery left fewer decedents.

Now, the ancestors of we humans, while living in the wild, had similar attacks to face from predators, particularly wily and clever foxes and ferocious cats who hunted in packs. When under attack our ancestors must have applied one or the other of the two above mentioned defense strategies. My hunch is that they must have applied a mix of the two strategies – sometime this and sometime that. Also partly this and partly that.

In the 21^st century, if we humans are more religious minded than science orientated it is because we are the decedents of those ancestors who survived the frequent deadly attacks on them by employing a defense strategy which was more buffaloish than cowish. We humans are indeed more buffaloish than cowish.

With kind regards,

Yours truly,

Baldev Raj Dawar,

07.07.2007