Lots of people think that the main thing religions do is to bind people together. The etymology of the word works that way, right? re-ligio.
If they think that’s what religion does, then it’s only natural they’d think that’s what it gets selected for. No mystery there.
Does it take group selection? People can stay in family groups with kin selection. No mystery. Suppose that people in groups all tend to survive better than loners. That’s plausible. Then anything that helps people work together in larger groups (without too many side effects) could be individual-selected. Each individual is selected for the ability to join groups and the ability to maintain them, because the more time he spends alone or in a broken group, the worse his survival. Each individual is selected to correctly choose which others to throw out—throw out good members sand the group is weakened. Fail to throw out members that will make the group collapse and each individual member is threatened.
It’s only group selection when it’s religious groups competing against nonreligious groups. It’s individual selection when it’s individuals in groups competing against loners.
Lots of people think that the main thing religions do is to bind people together. The etymology of the word works that way, right? re-ligio.
If they think that’s what religion does, then it’s only natural they’d think that’s what it gets selected for. No mystery there.
Does it take group selection? People can stay in family groups with kin selection. No mystery. Suppose that people in groups all tend to survive better than loners. That’s plausible. Then anything that helps people work together in larger groups (without too many side effects) could be individual-selected. Each individual is selected for the ability to join groups and the ability to maintain them, because the more time he spends alone or in a broken group, the worse his survival. Each individual is selected to correctly choose which others to throw out—throw out good members sand the group is weakened. Fail to throw out members that will make the group collapse and each individual member is threatened.
It’s only group selection when it’s religious groups competing against nonreligious groups. It’s individual selection when it’s individuals in groups competing against loners.