EDWARD'S LECTURE NOTES:
More notes at http://tanguay.info/learntracker
C O U R S E 
The Science of Religion
Edward Slingerland, University of British Columbia
https://www.edx.org/course/science-religion-ubcx-religionx
C O U R S E   L E C T U R E 
The Landscape of Religious Belief and Practice
Notes taken on March 29, 2018 by Edward Tanguay
how do you define a religion?
the folk idea of religion is that it has to do with supernatural beings
other people define it as having to do with the sacred
other people think religion has more to do with practice and we want to define it in terms of rituals and communities, i.e. what people do together and what rituals they practice is important
one of the advantages of the cognitive science of religion is that it sidesteps the whole definitional issue
we simply fractionate what people call religion into different types of beliefs and practices
we look at any sort of phenomenon that people are inclined to call religion
in this way, we approach religion as a type of radial category, it's not in the box or out of the box, it's more of a prototype, we have a basic idea of what most people call religion, but we will include anything that anybody calls religion, it's just that various definitions lie closer or further away from what we consider a prototype religions
so something like the Pope conducting a mass is clearly religious
people in China doing ancestor worship, that seems pretty religious
spectator sports and ideologies have many characteristics and provide many of the functions of a religion, both giving people meaning to their lives and binding them into communities with rituals and beliefs
environmentalism can be considered a religion in that it suggests there is something not right with how human relate to the world, and invites you strive for a kind of salvation through joining the group and it's activities and do what you can to right the wrongs in the world world and to protect the Earth which is seen as a kind of deity
the fact that we're not going to define religion enables us to explore all these possibilities
we're looking at certain types of beliefs and attitudes, and different types of groups of people with different aims and goals and practices and rituals, all fall somewhere on the spectrum of our area of study
how do we define science
we're not talking about science and religion
focuses on how you reconcile the claims of science with the claims of religion
e.g. evolution vs. religion
this is not our focus
we will be using tools from science to analyze religion behavior
methodological naturalism
a position where we bracket the truth claims of religion
we're analyzing the phenomenon of religion based on what we know about the world
what we can empirically verify about the world
bracketing claims about gods and supernatural rewards about the afterlife
the reason we bracket these truth claims because the naturalistic empirical approach to studying the world has proved the most effective way to gain reliable knowledge of the world
evolutionary theory
neo-Darwinian model of evolution
not social Darwinism
Darwin's ideas about natural selection coupled with our modern knowledge about how DNA work
it is shaped by adaptive pressures
gene-culture evolution
we inherit culture as well
two channels: one are the genes, and the other is culture
we're not talking about theology, not a process tending toward some goal
there's no end point
it's not a story about progress
no direction to it
no intention behind it
evolution is just heritable variation followed by selection pressures
the mind is not just a blank slate
it has a certain structure
is expecting a certain type of input
why do humans have religion
if you approach religion from within the practice of a religion, there is nothing puzzling about religion at all
it's only when you adopt a naturalistic stance which brackets the truth claims in religion, that religion becomes a puzzling phenomenon
religious belief is costly in a way that doesn't seem to bring any real benefits
valuable items are giving up to the Gods
people spend an enormous amount of time
boring rituals, things that are cognitively costly
give up pleasures
engage in scarification practices
even if you are within a religious tradition and believe that why you do these things if explained by your god
you have to be puzzled why people in other religions do what they do
why do people engage in behavior that doesn't seem to have any practical benefit
in large scale societies, it even gets more exaggerated
they are creating monuments, pyramids, in China building underground palaces, buried elaborate wealth in the ground
take up an enormous amount of the workforce
you would think that groups who focus on practical issues such as grain storage and defense mechanisms would out-compete those cultures who spent so much time in religious activity
hypotheses
1. religion is a mistake
it's an over-firing of desire, a misunderstanding
2. it's a meme, a cultural virus
they are good at getting into people's brains and spreading them to other people
but they don't actually help the people they are infecting
3. social control
religion is function but only for a certain group
it's a creation of or an adoption of ancient beliefs by a certain group
to allow a small group to manipulate and control the rest of society
4. individual adaptation theories
religious practices are beneficial for the individual
the fear of death and the fear of uncertainty paralyzes human beings
religious beliefs are a kind of psychic cushioning
5. group adaptation theories
religion binds groups together effectively
allowing them to out-compete other groups
even though they may not be beneficial for the individuals in those groups
it doesn't matter, since in these cases the needs of the group dynamics override the needs of any individual in the group