May 27 2008
Religion Gets Help From Non-Believers
According to a New Scientist article, “religion only takes hold if non-believers help believers out – perhaps because they are impressed by their devotion.”
James Dow, an evolutionary anthropologist at Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan, US, wrote a software program called Evogod that predicts religion will flourish. The program is centered on the evolutionary benefits people receive from their interactions with one another.
“If a person is willing to sacrifice for an abstract god then people feel like they are willing to sacrifice for the community,” says Dow. Thus he concludes non-believers will help believers out because of admiration for the believers’ devotion.
Along the same lines, Richard Sosis, an evolutionary anthropologist at the University of Connecticut in Storrs (whose main area of research is “the relationship between religion, trust, and intra-group cooperation”) previously wrote on the support believers received in ancient societies, when humans were more reliant in general on the support of the community. He found that in some populations such as the kibbutzim in Israel, more religious people receive more assistance from others in the community than the less religious.
“[Today] you can be a Lutheran one week and decide the following week you are going to become a Buddhist,” Sosis says.
7 responses so far
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Interesting stuff. Regarding the New Scientist article, I wonder if most atheists today respect believers’ faith and devotion to their god(s). I certainly don’t, but I wonder if there are still many who do.
In my opinion atheists does not respect respect believers. For them the faith is just a joke.
This is really inspiring. Thinking that non-believers would support the religious ones as it was in ancient societies can make a progress towards a better world.
As an Atheist, I have every respect for believers, if they REALLY believe. I think a lot of people just go through the routine of religion just because this is how they were brought up, and when they have to face the hard questions, they don’t really have the answers.
I’d also like to point one thing that I believe was wrong in the post - Buddhism is NOT a religion, at least not in the sense that we Westerness think of religion. It is more a way of life than religion. This is why there’s little conflict.
I think that in some way, an atheist puts himself at the center of the universe (and I’m not saying that it’s a bad thing), and a religious person, on the other hand, puts God at the center. I think that people tend to respect those who put something else- God/ an idea/ community/ values and etc., prior to themselves. It signals “humbleness” which is a valued quality that we, as a society, want to empower. Maybe that’s why we tend to help out religious people more often? We all want to be “at the center of the universe”, and the religious ones are those who overcame this hybristic desire. Just something to think about…
I think that no matter what your religion be a good person and not a fanatic