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What use is religion? Part 2.

Article Excerpt
In my previous column (FREE INQUIRY, June/July 2004), I raised the question of the Darwinian survival value of religion. Why, given that natural selection abhors waste and extravagance, is religious behavior a human universal? I discussed various suggestions of direct advantages to religion, all more or less unconvincing, and promised to return to something more plausible. Darwinians who seek the survival value of religion are asking the wrong question. Instead, we should focus on something in our evolving ancestors that we would not then have recognized as religion, but which is primed to become recognizable as religion in the changed context of civilized society

I cited the pecking order in hens, and the point is so central to my thesis that I hope you will forgive another animal example to ram it home. Moths fly into the candle flame, and it doesn't look like an accident. They go out of their way to make a burnt offering of themselves. We could label it "self-immolation behavior" and wonder how Darwinian natural selection could possibly favor it. My point, again, is that we need to the question before we can even attempt an intelligent answer. It isn't suicide. Apparent suicide emerges as an inadvertent side-effect.

Artificial light is a recent arrival on the night scene. Until recently, the only night lights were the moon and the stars.

Being at optical infinity, their rays are...

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