More Religious Diversity, Less Disease?
According to the Telegraph, researchers from the University of New Mexico have come to the conclusion that the development of religion may have been a way to stem the spread of disease. Their recently released study shows that areas of the world where religious diversity is highest, diseases do not spread as far.
The researchers posit that the development of a diversity of religions helped to divide people, and thus stop the spread of disease:
Any society that increased its coherence by adopting a religion, and dealt less with local groups with other beliefs as a result of cultural isolation, gained an advantage in being less likely to pick up diseases from its neighbours, and in the longer term to have a slightly different genetic makeup that may offer protective effects, for instance by making them less susceptible to a virus.
Equally, societies where infectious diseases are more common are less likely to migrate and disperse, not because of the effects of disease itself but as a behaviour that has evolved over time.
The basic idea is that more diseases correlate with more religions, and thus less interaction between the societies is a protection mechanism. The researchers say they have evidence to back up the claim:
“A sample of traditional societies shows that the range of those societies is lower in areas with more disease agents, compared with areas with few pathogens, and in countries religion diversity is positively related to two measures of stress caused by infection with parasites. Religion richness was positively related to disease richness (and significantly so).”
However, the effect does seem to be limited to the hotter areas of the planet, as they have more diseases. The article also mentions the religious diversity stemming interactions with other local groups. I think more study needs to be done on the how the hypothesis may have affected intercontinental interaction. I say this since a hot climate didn’t stop the Muslims from trying to conquer much of Europe centuries ago. I suppose its possible that the hypothesis only applies to much earlier humans. I’m not sure, since I don’t have access to the study. I’ll see what I can find.
I’m not yet convinced, so I think this hypothesis needs more study. Yet, imagine if more evidence finds it to be true. It’d be the ultimate irony, wouldn’t it? The development of religion as an evolutionary response.
"the development of religion may have been a way to stem the spread of disease" Is a bit of misinterpretation of their findings. They aren’t talking about 1 religion vs 0 religion, they are talking about many religions vs 1 religion.
The basic idea is that with tight social networks that spend a lot of time together, such as relgions, you get the spread of disease. If you have only 1 religion then those diseases can spread through the entier population in this easier fashion. If you have more relgions, you break up your population in to separate social groups that are slightyly more insulated from disease.
Actually, this research would point to a downside of 1 relgion vs 0 religions. without religions you don’t have a strong central social network. The absence of that central network would actually slow the spread of disease, much like the conditions of religious diversity.
But, there have been plenty of people to suggest in the past that religion confers an evolutionary advantage. Many religious rituals and rules have direct evolutionary advantages such as careful preperation of food, and the avoidance of inbreeding. However, it seems to me that rules of this nature don’t necessitate a strong central religion any more than the knowledge of how to make a bow properly or sow a field.
More convincing to me however is the idirect form evolutionary advantage. Basically, some see the entier point of relgion as to define one social group and strengthen social bonds. The benefits of a tight social group are well acknowledge in evolutionary science, from water buffalo, to wolves, to primates. Under this view, it makes sense that religion is exclusive, (sometimes) arbirary, heavy with group rituals, restrictive (at least in some ways), and intimately tied to our personal identity because it’s benefits derives from it’s ability to divide people into us and them.
It’s not exactly the must flattering view of religion, but neither is it truely condeming. It doesn’t say that religion is truth or untruth, but it contends that the primary benefits to a people given by religion have little to do with how true the religion is, merely how effective it is at providing for social cohesion.
From the article:
"Although religion apparently is for establishing a social marker of group alliance and allegiance, at the most fundamental level, it may be for the avoidance and management of infectious disease."
Although the chief point of the study is to research diversity of religions compared to diversity and range of disease, that’s chiefly where I got my first sentence from.
I’d think you’d need to develop something at the same time as you diversify it. Both characteristics would need to have come together in order for this response to be effective, or else it’s useless, so why do it? There’s no study I know of to back this up, so it’s just speculation, but I doubt there was ever a "proto-world religion", like some theorize there was a "proto-world" language.