Darwin's Cathedral: Evolution, Religion, and the Nature of Society by David Sloan Wilson

Author:David Sloan Wilson [Wilson, David Sloan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Published: 2010-09-15T14:00:00+00:00

Without attempting to prejudge the results, I think that the basic functionality of religion will be amply confirmed. Durkheim was right. Something as elaborate—as time-, energy-, and thought-consuming—as religion would not exist if it didn’t have secular utility. Religions exist primarily for people to achieve together what they cannot achieve alone. The mechanisms that enable religious groups to function as adaptive units include the very beliefs and practices that make religion appear enigmatic to so many people who stand outside of them.

SEEING THE OBVIOUS

I began this chapter with Darwin’s account of how he failed to see the evidence for glaciers that lay all around him, for lack of the right theory. By chance, the authors that I drew upon for my three selected examples of religious systems represent a number of major intellectual traditions, including Marxism, cultural relativism, evolutionary biology, and rational choice theory. These traditions are almost never related to each other in a constructive fashion; more often, their adherents speak of each other as evil (or even worse, irrational) aliens from other planets. Different images of religion also seem to emerge from each tradition; compare Stark’s theory with Marx’s famous statement that religion is the opium of the masses. All of these traditions confront the same world but see different worlds based on their ideas that organize perception. In this sense they really do come from different planets. But there is only one world, and with the appropriate set of ideas we can see the functional nature of religious groups as clearly as Darwin eventually saw the evidence for glaciers in the valley of Cwm Idwal.

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