Religion is a product of evolution, software suggests
11:56 27 May 2008
NewScientist.com news service
Ewen Callaway

James Dow, Oakland University
Richard Sosis, University of Connecticut
Evogod code download

God may work in mysterious ways, but a simple computer program may explain how religion evolved

By distilling religious belief into a genetic predisposition to pass along unverifiable information, the program predicts that religion will flourish. However, religion only takes hold if non-believers help believers out – perhaps because they are impressed by their devotion.

“If a person is willing to sacrifice for an abstract god then people feel like they are willing to sacrifice for the community,” says James Dow, an evolutionary anthropologist at Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan, US, who wrote the program – called Evogod (download the code here).

Dow is by no means the first scientist to take a stab at explaining how religion emerged. Theories on the evolution of religion tend toward two camps. One argues that religion is a mental artefact, co-opted from brain functions that evolved for other tasks.
Aiding the people

Another contends that religion benefited our ancestors. Rather than being a by-product of other brain functions, it is an adaptation in its own right. In this explanation, natural selection slowly purged human populations of the non-religious.

“Sometime between 100,000 years ago to the point where writing was invented, maybe about 7000 BC, we begin to have records of people’s supernatural beliefs,” Dow says.

To determine if it was possible for religion to emerge as an adaptation, Dow wrote a simple computer program that focuses on the evolutionary benefits people receive from their interactions with one another.

“What people are adapting to is other people,” he says.
Religious attraction

To simplify matters, Dow picked a defining trait of religion: the desire to proclaim religious information to others, such as a belief in the afterlife. He assumed that this trait was genetic.

The model assumes, in other words, that a small number of people have a genetic predisposition to communicate unverifiable information to others. They passed on that trait to their children, but they also interacted with people who didn’t spread unreal information.

The model looks at the reproductive success of the two sorts of people – those who pass on real information, and those who pass on unreal information.

Under most scenarios, “believers in the unreal” went extinct. But when Dow included the assumption that non-believers would be attracted to religious people because of some clear, but arbitrary, signal, religion flourished.

“Somehow the communicators of unreal information are attracting others to communicate real information to them,” Dow says, speculating that perhaps the non-believers are touched by the faith of the religious.
Ancient needs

Richard Sosis, an evolutionary anthropologist at the University of Connecticut in Storrs, US, says the model adds a new dimension to the debate over how religion could have evolved, which has previously relied on verbal arguments and speculation. But “these are baby steps”, he cautions.

Sosis previously found that in some populations – kibbutzim in Israel, for instance – more religious people receive more assistance from others than the less faithful. But he notes that the forces that maintain religion in modern humans could be very different from those that promoted its emergence, thousands of years ago.

Palaeolithic humans were probably far more reliant than modern humans on the community they were born into, Sosis says. “[Now] you can be a Lutheran one week and decide the following week you are going to become a Buddhist.”

Journal reference: Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Stimulation, vol 11, p 2

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn13983

Quran Vs. Muslim behaviour

The mistakes on Geert Wilders by the foreign media-My reflections

By Arnold Mol

I have been reading some foreign news articles about Geert Wilders and it astonishes me every time how little people know about the real situation in Holland.

Let me quote the first sentence from an article who starts with:

“Geert Wilders, the popular MP”.

Popular with whom? Wilders is far from popular in Holland. Many people see him as a childish hatemongering man who has no real contribution to Holland. He got so many votes in the last election as Rita Verdonk, minister of Integration, wasn’t party leader of the Liberal right VVD party.

This caused many voters to end up at Wilders, but many of them later regretting the vote. There are many factors involved that caused his so-called popularity, and this is mainly because of the internal struggle within the VVD party.

Last November finally a break emerged within the VVD and Rita Verdonk created her own party “Trots op Holland”, meaning “Proud of Holland”. She is mostly concerned with people abusing the liberty given to migrate to Holland by mainly Moroccan and Turkish families. She raised the bars of integration higher then was ever before and made sure Moroccan and Turkish families could not easily import new husbands and wives to Holland for their children.

One of the biggest problems in Holland had emerged around men and women imported straight from the mountain villages to marry a Dutch-born Moroccan or Turkish male or female. They didn’t invest in learning Dutch, nor were educated in Dutch values. This caused also many differences and problems with the straight-from-the-village husbands and their Dutch-born liberal highly educated wives. A clash which is of course completely understandable.

This is what Rita Verdonk focuses on. If you want to “import” a wife or husband. The person must first learn the Dutch language, values and history in their home country and the person must prove it can find a job immediately and not just jump straight into welfare.

Although many Muslims acted as if this was an attack on Islam, as it took away the power to pre-arrange marriages, this was a great blessing for many Dutch-born liberal Muslim women who belong to the largest group of highly educated women of all minorities in Holland. Now they would not be “matched up” that easily with a never-educated nephew straight from the mountain villages.

This is what most Dutch people really care about. That people do not abuse the freedom to immigrate to Holland and abuse the welfare system. As sadly, the Moroccans are the largest percentage of all minorities who make use of the welfare system, and are also the largest group who are frequently caught abusing it.

Geert Wilders only really started making his anti-Islamic rantics after he was elected. Before the election he had never said such radical things as destroy and ban the Koran and throw out the Muslim population, so many of the people who voted for him were shocked as for them it was more about cleaning away the abusing of the welfare and get the minorities better integrated. But he has also attracted a new crowd behind him.

Now suddenly it turned out they had voted on a mini-me version of Hitler. This is why Wilders will evetually lose power and votes in the new election. His rantics are harming the economy. Many highly educated young Muslims born in Holland are immigrating to Morocco or Turkey as they feel Holland is losing its values. Holland has turned in the world media from the most liberal country in the world to an Islam-hating country.

Yes, there are many misunderstandings about Islam within Holland, as it is in almost every Western country. But this makes many people not hate Islam, but the wrongs things that are committed in its name. Be it terrorism, abuse of wives, lack of education, superstition and lack of progress concerning democracy or freedom of people. But this is also hated by many Muslims who reflect on the old Muslim states who were the pinnacles of freedom and knowledge in the Middle Ages and the social message found in the Koran and early Islamic history. So this is a battle that must be fought together with Muslims, as the demand for reform within Islam is growing in large numbers day by day.

When it comes too Wilders, people must first know he doesn’t know anything about the Koran. He maybe has read a few books by Islam-haters here and there. But when it really comes too mentioning verses, he will fail immediately as he has done many times in the Dutch media when asked about which verses should be banned. During these debates on Dutch TV, it is never Wilders himself sitting there. No, it is mostly a reformist-protestant Dutch Arabist professor who is really selective in what to quote from the Koran, Wilders is not the mind behind this campaign but a few people with a certain anti-Islam agenda who whisper in his ear. It is better to see him as the Dutch parliament version of Bush, quick to repeat the whispers and shout them out in the most radical form, but having no real knowledge on the matter of his own. The only thing Wilders will have contributed to his movie will be the propaganda and his name below the title, do not expect more to come from the brain beneath the blond bleached waves.

The Wilders fire will die out soon and he knows this, so he is using every scrap of time he has to do as much damage as possible.

In the Netherlands we have a different groups of immigrants then for example in America. Most of them were selected in Morocco and Turkey and then shipped over to Holland to work in the factories in the 1960’s. Many of these laborers came from the poor regions of the countries, had little education and were mostly from the Berber or Kurdish regions.

They always had the idea they would only stay in Holland for a couple of years and then go back with the money to build a house or a farm, but as the economy in Morocco was growing worse and the racism towards non-Arabs, they stayed. This went on and on, and before they knew it, they were stuck here in Holland. As the Dutch government also thought the laborers would go back, they never invested in any integration projects or teach them the language.

Between the 80 and 90’s many of the wives and families of the laborers were shipped over to Holland. Hundreds of thousands of people who grew up in mountain villages with strong traditions and little education suddenly ended up in one of the most liberal countries in the world.

In Europe we always focus on how hard it is for us to deal with the ‘foreigners’, but for them it must have been a much harder culture shock.

In the mountains a social structure had emerged over the thousands of years with strict hierarchies and ways of family structure to survive in these hard and unforgiving surroundings. This is where pre-arranged marriages come from. To create certainty of survival, it is important you can predict as many factors as possible in your surroundings, you must control as many as you can.

This is why in tribes people are married only to other tribal people as your nephew is predictable, he knows his place within the social structure, he has a emotional bloodline connection and he is used to listening to you. In the mountains you cannot ask for a better husband for your daughter.

We in the West are easy in condemning pre-arranged marriages, but for them it is survival, not egoism.

But suddenly, people with this strict social structure in their mind ended up in the liberal individualistic societies of the West. It is logical the first generations cannot adapt that fast. Mostly it will not go beyond the wives being allowed to go to the market, a thing which is a male duty in the mountains as it is to dangerous for women to just go alone.

The second generations were more liberal, but in a sense were living in 2 worlds. In Holland when they went outside to school or play. But experienced the strict social structure when at home or family.

Many of these ended up in an identity crisis, when this happens, it is easier for the psyche to choose the more stricter outlined way of thinking. And so the strict social structure was upheld.

This is also by the way why many young Muslims are attracted to the strict hardliner Wahabi Islam as it sets out hard strict clear lines of what is Islam. For young Muslims this is very attractive as it creates a stabile support in a confusing world.

The third generation is mostly for 60-80% liberal Dutch then really Moroccan. But they are still under the supervision of the 2nd generation strict social structure which doesn’t approve of this liberal thinking. And so the family mostly chooses to inter-marriage the 3rd generation with nephews and cousins to keep them in control.

But also because of losing social connections with the family in Morocco, Holland and other parts of Europe where family members have immigrated to, an urge to re-unite them through marriage is also sought.

The 3rd generation is also in a larger identity crisis then the 2nd, as in Morocco they are not accepted as Moroccans but seen as Dutch, and in Holland they are seen as Moroccans.

What are they then? This creates a lot of frustration among many youths, and this is also why some choose the Wahabi Islam instead of the Berber Maliki Islam of their parents.

It is a way to rebel against the family, the West and to have a feeling that atleast God is accepting you.

Mohammed B. who killed the director Theo van Gogh a couple of years ago was such a youth. Highly educated, very social, but then couldn’t find a job. Was dissatisfied with the passiveness of the family’s way of thinking. His identity suppressed by the Moroccan and Dutch society and his Muslim identity suppressed by seeing misery in the Muslim world and oppression in Iraq and Palestine.

And then suddenly a man makes a movie attacking the Quran and saying the Prophet was a child molester.

This was the finally push that made him go over the edge and kill Van Gogh in the brutal way he did.

All of these circumstances are ignored by people as Wilders and Hirshi Ali. They abuse the weak position many 1st and 2nd generations are in as they were never educated. How can they defend themselves against professors and politicians?
And the 3rd generation is busy to find steady ground for their identity.

It is an easy group to pick on….

This is why it is important educated Muslims who have a good insight in Islam, and thank God there are many emerging in Holland, are creating information platforms that present an alternative to Wahabism and the superstitious Islam of the 1st generations.