Buddhist temple, Singapore
(Wikicommons – Cattan2011). In Buddhism, family is valued over self, but not
strangers over family. Christianity goes farther: strangers are valued over
self and family.
Originally, and even today in
much of the world, social and economic activity is organized mostly by small
groups of related individuals. As a result, a society cannot realize its full
potential as it grows larger and encompasses people who are less related to
each other. This is the “large society problem.” It has been alleviated by
making kinship less important and, conversely, by encouraging forms of
sociality that include everyone, and not just close kin. Northwest Europeans
and East Asians have gone the farthest down that path.
In a large society, a social
norm is less situational and more universal; it transcends the situation and
its actors. The same applies to norm-breaking. To break a norm is to offend not
only a particular person but also a general principle. In time, the principle
may be sanctified, thus becoming even more inviolable. Offenders incur the
wrath of the entire community, and not just the victim's family (Berman, 1974).
Eventually, these reified norms coalesce into "religion."
Religion is key to the
cultural environment of large societies and forces humans to adapt to it, just
as they had to adapt to the natural environment of small societies. Unlike the
natural environment, however, religion is a human creation. We have conceived
an idealized vision of what humans should do, and this vision has rewarded
those who do right and punished those who do wrong. In short, we have given
religion the powers of natural selection.
This point is made by the
authors of a recent study:
Cultural evolution research on religion has highlighted the role religions play in enforcing large-scale cooperation [...]. Religious beliefs that expand what gods know and care about beyond local concerns and the local group, and increase gods' ability to punish rule breakers, may have contributed to sustaining cooperation at larger scales [...]. These beliefs create the perception that one's bad actions will be punished supernaturally, even if undetected by others, and can expand the circle of cooperation to anonymous strangers. Religions that lay out rules for cooperative behavior, and systems to enforce that cooperation, may create more stable and successful groups [...], perhaps increasing the ability of these groups and their religious beliefs to survive and spread. (Willard et al. 2020)
Thus, over time, there has
thus been selection for individuals who respond to religion and willingly
comply with its norms. Twin studies show that religiosity is 25 to 45%
heritable. As is always the case, the non-heritable component includes everything
else, like errors in understanding the question and collecting the data. We
therefore have a substantial propensity to learn and obey social norms.
This propensity doesn't act
alone. A growing child will develop it to a greater extent in a religious
environment than in a non-religious one. The kind of religion also makes a
difference.
Christianity encourages altruism
Gene-religion interaction has
been shown at the gene DRD4. People
are made more susceptible to social norms by the 2R allele or the 7R allele and
less susceptible by the 4R allele (Sasaki et al., 2013). Furthermore, this
susceptibility interacts with religion in the development of altruism. Using
American and East Asian participants, Sasaki et al. (2013) found that 2R and 7R
carriers were more altruistic than non-carriers if previously primed by the
task of making a sentence from religious-sounding words. Priming had no effect
on non-carriers.
These findings were partially
replicated by Jiang et al. (2015). Among Singaporeans of Chinese descent, 2R
carriers were more altruistic than non-carriers among male Christians, while
being the same as non-carriers among women, Taoists, and Buddhists. The authors
argue that men have more room for improvement because women start off caring
more about others. The authors further suggest that Christianity better
supports altruism by offering fellowship, comprehensible texts, and regular
activities. Thus, if people are already more susceptible to social norms, they
will become more altruistic if their environment is Christian. If, however, their
environment is non-Christian, they will be no more altruistic than anyone else.
Because Christianity is better
at developing this innate potential, and because this potential differs from
one individual to another, altruism will vary much more among Christians than among
non-Christians. A Christian society will have far more "super
altruists" as a proportion of its population. This can be advantageous. Such
people were once priests, pastors, nuns, philanthropists and the like. Before
the rise of the welfare state, they provided valuable "collective
goods," like education, moral guidance, and care for the sick and elderly.
But what happens when a Christian society becomes post-Christian? For a while,
there will still be lots of super altruists, but they will no longer be priests
or pastors. They will become social justice warriors.
Taoism and Buddhism encourages veneration of ancestors and support for
one’s in-group
Willard et al. (2020) studied
how different religions affect prosocial behavior among Singaporeans of Chinese
descent. Certain religious beliefs seemed to be key:
A moral afterlife
Buddhism, Taoism, and
Christianity all share a belief that good deeds will be rewarded and evil deeds
punished in an afterlife. When cued to think about the afterlife, participants
from all three religions expressed a greater willingness to assist strangers.
Veneration of ancestors
Veneration of ancestors is an
older stage of religious belief. It began in small societies but can be used to
make large societies more workable, as long as everyone shares some common
ancestry—or at least a belief in common ancestry.
Participants from all three
religions believed that ancestors should be venerated, but this belief was
supported much more by Buddhism and Taoism than by Christianity. When
participants were cued to think about ancestor veneration, the Buddhists and
Taoists expressed a greater willingness to assist their family and their
in-group than did participants in the control condition. This effect was absent
in the Christians: in fact, they became more willing to assist strangers:
When cued to think about moralized afterlife beliefs, Buddhists showed larger increases across almost all questions than Christians in what they believed was the normative amount to give. This effect is driven by Buddhists claiming weaker norms of giving than Christians in the neutral conditions on many of the questions. Though the moralized afterlife prime produced a greater change here, it brings both groups up to relatively similar normative amounts [...]. The ancestor condition generated weaker prosocial effects for Buddhists and Taoists on allocations to strangers than for Christians. In fact, the Christians showed a stronger effect here than anticipated, and the effects of the ancestor condition were stronger than those of the moralized afterlife condition on all questions. (Willard et al. 2020)
Conclusion
Religion encourages
selflessness, but to varying degrees and to varying levels. In Buddhism and
Taoism, family is valued over self, but not strangers over family. Christianity
goes farther; strangers are valued over self and family. The Christian religion
is thus more useful in large societies whose members don’t even pretend to
share common ancestry.
References
Berman, H. J. (1974). The Interaction of Law and Religion.
Nashville, Abingdon Press.
Bouchard, T.J. Jr., (2004).
Genetic influence on human psychological traits: A survey. Current Directions in Psychological Science 13: 148-151.
Jiang, Y., R. Bachner-Melman, S.H.
Chew, and R.P. Ebstein. (2015). Dopamine D4 receptor gene and religious
affiliation correlate with dictator game altruism in males and not females:
evidence for gender-sensitive gene × culture interaction. Frontiers in Neuroscience 24 September.
Lewis, G.J. and T.C. Bates.
(2013). Common genetic influences underpin religiosity, community integration,
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Sasaki, J.Y., H.S. Kim, T. Mojaverian,
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Willard, A.K., A. Baimel, H.
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