WEBVTT NOTE Religion as Adaptation: The Role of Time Preference 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:03.000 Why do human beings believe in God? 2 00:00:03.000 --> 00:00:07.800 The sacred approach to this question might well conclude because God wants us to. 3 00:00:07.800 --> 00:00:13.100 In contrast to the more profane approach of the natural and social sciences, 4 00:00:13.100 --> 00:00:16.000 this question has always presented a conundrum. 5 00:00:16.000 --> 00:00:20.800 Sociobiologists suggest that religious belief could only have been transmitted through generations 6 00:00:20.800 --> 00:00:24.200 if it enhanced survival or reproductive opportunities. 7 00:00:24.200 --> 00:00:27.500 Unfortunately, natural science has been unable to convincingly describe 8 00:00:27.500 --> 00:00:32.540 the source of such evolutionary benefits. I will argue that religion confers survival 9 00:00:32.540 --> 00:00:38.780 benefits on societies and individuals because it allows a general lowering of time preference, 10 00:00:38.780 --> 00:00:47.780 allowing for employment of capital in time-consuming roundabout means of production. 11 00:00:47.780 --> 00:00:52.360 Time preference is the desire to enjoy immediate gratification. For example, time preference 12 00:00:52.360 --> 00:00:58.480 is especially high in children who lack experience and maturity, and in individuals with low 13 00:00:58.480 --> 00:01:04.080 life expectancy. Time preference is also high for criminals and the poor, and the general 14 00:01:04.080 --> 00:01:10.040 lowering of time preference both facilitates and is facilitated by the development of civilization 15 00:01:10.040 --> 00:01:15.760 and the increase in complexity of social relationships. People with high time preference consume more 16 00:01:15.760 --> 00:01:22.000 of their income or output immediately, while those with low time preference save more. 17 00:01:22.000 --> 00:01:26.320 If an individual's time preference were zero, all the individual's income would be saved 18 00:01:26.320 --> 00:01:28.560 and available for investment. 19 00:01:28.560 --> 00:01:33.760 If an individual's time preference were infinite, no income would be saved. 20 00:01:33.760 --> 00:01:36.920 Time preference varies significantly across individuals. 21 00:01:36.920 --> 00:01:41.840 Often the increase in time preference occasioned by diminishing life expectancy accompanies 22 00:01:41.840 --> 00:01:45.760 an increase in interest in religion. 23 00:01:45.760 --> 00:01:51.040 From the perspective of sociobiology, religion has to confer survival benefits which should 24 00:01:51.040 --> 00:01:56.100 to be observable in order to be transmitted to future generations. 25 00:01:56.100 --> 00:02:01.760 Clearly religious societies dominate unless we view Western secular societies which emphasize 26 00:02:01.760 --> 00:02:05.960 tolerance and pluralism as having supplanted them. 27 00:02:05.960 --> 00:02:10.440 This is a plausible view, but I will take the view that religious societies have always 28 00:02:10.440 --> 00:02:16.800 and continue to dominate human civilization even if they are no longer as culturally monolithic 29 00:02:16.800 --> 00:02:20.540 as they may have been in the past. 30 00:02:20.540 --> 00:02:25.460 Religion poses a problem for sociobiology. It has existed from the dawn of known history 31 00:02:25.460 --> 00:02:30.720 so it almost certainly conferred or at least accompanied evolutionary benefits, but these 32 00:02:30.720 --> 00:02:35.840 benefits are difficult to identify from a secular perspective. Clearly one function 33 00:02:35.840 --> 00:02:41.620 religion served in primitive times, the explanation of natural phenomena has largely been superseded 34 00:02:41.620 --> 00:02:47.140 by science. Stephen Jay Gould suggested we inherited important ethical behaviors such 35 00:02:47.140 --> 00:02:53.300 such as empathy, reciprocity and peacemaking, because they were successful evolutionary adaptations 36 00:02:53.300 --> 00:02:58.260 which enhanced our ancestors' survival and reproductive opportunities, and that religion 37 00:02:58.260 --> 00:03:03.600 was transmitted as a byproduct of the ethical behavior regularities it accompanied. 38 00:03:03.600 --> 00:03:09.180 In this view, religion is at best a non-functional spandrel, to use Gould's expression, and 39 00:03:09.180 --> 00:03:15.900 at worst a negative inheritance. 40 00:03:15.900 --> 00:03:23.140 Atran and Norenzayan frame an argument around minimally counterintuitive narratives which 41 00:03:23.140 --> 00:03:29.100 a religion allows a community to adopt. Societies which can rapidly reach a consensus about 42 00:03:29.100 --> 00:03:34.620 responses to challenges and opportunities have an evolutionary advantage over societies 43 00:03:34.620 --> 00:03:40.740 which cannot commit to decisive action. Furthermore, the observance of mass communal rituals contributes 44 00:03:40.740 --> 00:03:46.320 to Social Cooperation and Coordination. 45 00:03:46.320 --> 00:03:50.620 Of course, from the perspective of religious belief, there is no problem to explaining 46 00:03:50.620 --> 00:03:51.980 why religion exists. 47 00:03:51.980 --> 00:03:58.360 It is divinely ordained and our observance of particular rituals is required to obey 48 00:03:58.360 --> 00:04:00.260 the deity or deities. 49 00:04:00.260 --> 00:04:04.880 Thus, I will emphasize the solution I will propose only addresses the secular dimension 50 00:04:04.880 --> 00:04:10.380 of this problem because it can only be considered a problem from a secular perspective. 51 00:04:10.380 --> 00:04:16.140 Basically, I am providing a solution or proposing a solution to a problem in sociobiology, not 52 00:04:16.140 --> 00:04:18.140 a problem in theology. 53 00:04:18.140 --> 00:04:22.700 There is no problem in theology. 54 00:04:22.700 --> 00:04:25.200 Does religion provide an evolutionary advantage? 55 00:04:25.200 --> 00:04:28.780 If not, how did it evolve as a human institution? 56 00:04:28.780 --> 00:04:34.580 If it did once provide evolutionary advantage, does it still, or have we outgrown it, as 57 00:04:34.580 --> 00:04:36.520 a species? 58 00:04:36.520 --> 00:04:41.120 Religion may have facilitated the coordination of preferences, including time preferences, 59 00:04:41.120 --> 00:04:46.520 and if this was a source of evolutionary advantage, this helps explain why monotheism supplanted 60 00:04:46.520 --> 00:04:48.440 polytheism. 61 00:04:48.440 --> 00:04:53.220 Religion may have served as a carrier of behavioral norms which conferred survival benefits such 62 00:04:53.220 --> 00:04:59.800 as empathy, reciprocity, social hierarchy, and peacemaking. 63 00:04:59.800 --> 00:05:04.080 I propose that the answer to these and other questions is found in the economics of time 64 00:05:04.080 --> 00:05:05.080 preference. 65 00:05:05.080 --> 00:05:10.680 Lower time preferences in patients, the desire for immediate want satisfaction or gratification. 66 00:05:10.680 --> 00:05:15.080 Lower time preference enables individuals to save, to plan for the future and to engage 67 00:05:15.080 --> 00:05:17.520 in entrepreneurial activity. 68 00:05:17.520 --> 00:05:22.520 Ceteris paribus, religious belief, allowed humans to have significantly lower time preferences 69 00:05:22.520 --> 00:05:27.200 and significantly longer planning horizons which accompany them. 70 00:05:27.200 --> 00:05:31.680 Recall that until the start of the Industrial Revolution, infant mortality approximated 71 00:05:31.680 --> 00:05:39.320 100%, and in primitive times, life expectancy approximated 15 years for the survivors. This 72 00:05:39.320 --> 00:05:46.360 suggests that compared to modern humans, early humans should have had very high time preference. 73 00:05:46.360 --> 00:05:50.960 This would have limited opportunities for wealth accumulation or capital intensive roundabout 74 00:05:50.960 --> 00:05:55.800 means of production. Indeed, it appears that for numerous millennia, it had not yet occurred 75 00:05:55.800 --> 00:06:01.540 to any of our ancestors that agriculture could be more effective than hunting and gathering. 76 00:06:01.540 --> 00:06:06.360 The principal way religion lowers time preference among people with short life expectancy is 77 00:06:06.360 --> 00:06:11.300 because the deity or deities worshipped are immortal. Occasionally they are merely long 78 00:06:11.300 --> 00:06:15.380 live but this would still allow for lowering the time preference of their worshippers. 79 00:06:15.380 --> 00:06:20.540 I have in mind particularly the wooden Polynesian idols described by Herman Melville in his 80 00:06:20.540 --> 00:06:25.780 novel Taipi. The oldest of the island gods had been carved by priests about 50 years 81 00:06:25.780 --> 00:06:30.980 before the time of Melville's story and was rotten and being eaten by termites. It was 82 00:06:30.980 --> 00:06:45.980 The Islanders considered it a particularly venerable god both because of its age and more pointingly their realization that it would shortly depart this world, in their belief the god would be dead and beyond veneration. 83 00:06:45.980 --> 00:06:58.980 More typical categories of religious beliefs such as belief in an afterlife, life after death, spirit survival, reincarnation, etc. seem particularly suited to address humans with short life experiences. 84 00:06:58.980 --> 00:07:08.820 are suited to address humans with short life expectancy and, consequently, with high time preference, not to mention an obsession with death. 85 00:07:08.820 --> 00:07:16.820 These beliefs serve to lower time preference by expanding the individual's planning horizon, even to extend beyond their temporal lives. 86 00:07:16.820 --> 00:07:24.820 Early chapters of Genesis and the Gilgamesh epic mention Macrobians, people like Methuselah, who lived many centuries. 87 00:07:24.820 --> 00:07:34.820 Because it does not appear that any of our ancestors in fact live that long, it becomes interesting to speculate why such features were introduced into the narrative. 88 00:07:34.820 --> 00:07:44.820 I suggest they originated as artifacts of the introduction of lower time preference beliefs among people with initially high time preference. 89 00:07:44.820 --> 00:07:49.820 Time preference lends some light on the sacrifice of Isaac in chapter 22 of Genesis. 90 00:07:49.820 --> 00:07:57.820 In this narrative, Jehovah commands Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, and Abraham intends to comply, though Jehovah protects Isaac from harm. 91 00:07:57.820 --> 00:08:07.820 Human sacrifice is an extraordinarily expensive resource-wasting ritual practice, which is consistent with extremely high time preference. 92 00:08:07.820 --> 00:08:16.620 Reference. Basically, under the Semitic deities that demanded human sacrifice, they were in 93 00:08:16.620 --> 00:08:23.560 this particular practice basically contributing to a higher time preference among their believers 94 00:08:23.560 --> 00:08:31.480 and this helps explain why that practice died out in addition to, of course, its moral repugnance. 95 00:08:31.480 --> 00:08:35.780 It is less troubling that Jehovah asks for human sacrifice which was commonly given to 96 00:08:35.780 --> 00:08:40.220 to other deities, since having created the universe, he is the final arbiter of life, 97 00:08:40.220 --> 00:08:41.740 death and morality. 98 00:08:41.740 --> 00:08:43.420 We cannot ever be dead to Jehovah. 99 00:08:43.420 --> 00:08:49.420 It is more troubling that Jehovah apparently misleads Abraham about his desires and intentions. 100 00:08:49.420 --> 00:08:51.660 Jehovah can kill us without that being wrong. 101 00:08:51.660 --> 00:08:55.020 It is less clear that he can authorize us to commit murder. 102 00:08:55.020 --> 00:08:58.140 It is perfectly clear that he cannot lie. 103 00:08:58.140 --> 00:09:02.620 It is less that he is subject to our limited and defective moral judgment than that this 104 00:09:02.620 --> 00:09:05.640 is an act we simply cannot conceive of him doing. 105 00:09:05.640 --> 00:09:11.320 As Esqua says of Zeus, a far less perfect deity, the father knoweth not how to utter 106 00:09:11.320 --> 00:09:14.840 falsehood in all that he sayeth he will accomplish. 107 00:09:14.840 --> 00:09:22.040 Jehovah explicitly prohibits human sacrifice in chapter 20 of Leviticus and chapter 32 108 00:09:22.040 --> 00:09:23.860 of Jeremiah. 109 00:09:23.860 --> 00:09:28.940 One tradition of medieval rabbinic commentary proposes that Jehovah's command was not real 110 00:09:28.940 --> 00:09:34.020 but a misinterpretation by Abraham, though this view is far from unanimous. 111 00:09:34.020 --> 00:09:38.060 Without glossing the text, we can observe that a more important evolutionary adaptation 112 00:09:38.060 --> 00:09:44.100 for primitive humans derives from obeying God, improving group cohesion than from loving 113 00:09:44.100 --> 00:09:45.100 Him. 114 00:09:45.100 --> 00:09:50.500 I will suggest further that from the beginning Abraham recognized Jehovah as immeasurably 115 00:09:50.500 --> 00:09:55.940 greater and more virtuous than the gods of his fathers, some of whom demanded human sacrifice. 116 00:09:55.940 --> 00:10:01.040 It is not a tremendous leap to imagine that in Abraham's mind this greater God called 117 00:10:01.040 --> 00:10:13.120 for a Greater Sacrifice, and I will skip unresolved problems and cut to the chase. 118 00:10:13.120 --> 00:10:17.100 Religion conferred survival benefits on our ancestors by promoting a lowering of their 119 00:10:17.100 --> 00:10:22.460 time preference and lengthening their planning horizon, allowing for increased use of time 120 00:10:22.460 --> 00:10:26.940 consuming capital intensive, saving based and roundabout means of production. 121 00:10:26.940 --> 00:10:31.100 This in turn enhanced the wealth, well-being and survival of the societies which adopted 122 00:10:31.100 --> 00:10:32.100 it. 123 00:10:32.100 --> 00:10:36.860 Today our longer life expectancy generally results in a sufficiently low time preference 124 00:10:36.860 --> 00:10:39.860 that the survival value of religion is lost. 125 00:10:39.860 --> 00:10:44.380 However, objectively we can still say religious belief may provide tangible benefits, that 126 00:10:44.380 --> 00:10:49.000 is lower time preference, among groups with high time preference, children, those with 127 00:10:49.000 --> 00:10:52.220 low life expectancy, the poor and criminals. 128 00:10:52.220 --> 00:10:56.620 The survival benefit of religious belief is mostly lost once life expectancy lengthens 129 00:10:56.620 --> 00:11:02.220 to the point where, as in modern society, it results in lowered time preference even 130 00:11:02.220 --> 00:11:04.740 in the absence of religious belief. 131 00:11:04.740 --> 00:11:09.960 The perspective of economics is particularly valuable to address evolutionary biology's 132 00:11:09.960 --> 00:11:16.500 inability to explain whether religion is a successful evolutionary adaptation or merely 133 00:11:16.500 --> 00:11:20.500 a useless byproduct of some other successful adaptations. 134 00:11:20.500 --> 00:11:24.920 Since religion contributes to lowering time preference and lowered time preference necessarily 135 00:11:24.920 --> 00:11:31.920 and the improved group survival opportunities, it should be clear that religion is a highly successful evolutionary adaptation.