The first woman about evolution of religiousness

I have not yet read the new book of primatologist Barbara J. King "Evolving god" (Amazon) - but it seems, that this is the first book about the evolution of religiousness written by a women. And it seems to me, that she has a very fresh and "female" look into religion. Isn't it a surprise to recognize that all other books about religion and evolution at the moment are written by men? (Look for example this list: Chronicle) It is very surprising, because we know from scientific insight, that woman have more interest than men in religion and religious activity. And even if Barbara J. King gives not a whole lot of more new good arguments and facts about the evolution of religiousness - most importantly is, it seems to me, that she gives a new "feeling" while reasoning about religion. Her main point is "belongingness". Have you ever heart about such a thing from another author writing about religion? And why not? - They are men!

"Biological anthropologist King contends that religion, conceived as a system not of beliefs but of actions, not as theology but as worship, is a consequence of primate evolution. It proceeds, she posits, from the sense of group membership that highly developed mammals, especially the great apes, demonstrate in many ways but most saliently for religion when they show concern for a group member that has died." (Amazon)

"King draws upon cutting-edge research in primatology to demonstrate that once animals are capable of emotional attachments and cognitive empathy, they are ready for—and even appear to require—certain intangibles like a belief in something greater than themselves." "It's true that the book requires some enormous argumentative leaps; it's a long stretch from demonstrating that contemporary primates have emotional attachments to claiming that they are then capable of creating religions, as King maintains human beings once did. But even readers who close the book unconvinced will be impressed by King's fresh insights and her lucid writing, which is a jargon-free, story-filled model." (Amazon)

... The origins of the religious impulse. King finds this in what she calls belongingness, "mattering to someone who matters to you," a trait found in contemporary humans but also in our human and non-human primate ancestors. (Amazon, Customer Reviews)

'Evolving God' has the added merit of pushing beyond the Abrahamic "big three," including a handy account of religious archaeology. King's touchstone is "belongingness," the idea that "hominids turned to the sacred realm because they evolved to relate in deeply emotional ways with their social partners, ... and because the human brain evolved to allow an extension of this belongingness beyond the here and now." David Barash (The Chronicle of Higher Education ) Barbara King says (according to Barash): "At bedrock is the belief that one may be seen, heard, protected, harmed, loved, frightened, or soothed by interaction with God, gods, or spirits."

Group selection - a very simple thing ...?

Does one crucial heritable trait like intelligence can change inborn altruism inside of a society?

I think: Yes. If you are more intelligent than another person, you can be more efficient with your altruistic deeds. And if a whole group is more intelligent than another group this gives this group an advantage.

But we know: Nowadays inborn intelligence of human groups does not "per se" correlate with fitness. Sometimes yes - for example in modern Israel, for example (broadly spoken) in the Western Hemisphere between 1500 and 1900. But often (today in the Western Hemisphere): No. So let us say: There is a difficult connection between intelligence and fertility in humans.

But IF human groups act mostly like the Western Hemisphere between 1500 and 1900 and like modern Israel today it is clear, that we would say, that more efficient altruism would evolve by group selection, because it is different fertility of genetically different groups that shapes human variability of traits at any given period.

And I think this is what happened in human history and evolution mostly. Aszkenazi Jews where seperated enough from other groups for thousand years and were able to evolve (by this) a "more efficient altruism" than all the other human groups have today AND they had another fertility rate than Sephardic Jews. This has not happened by extinction of (other) groups - only by separation.

I think there are a lot of other heritable traits that influence altruism in this way or another. We do not have "one" gene for altruism ...

(Razib Khan had some thoughts about group selection and motivated me for this post.)

Children have inborn morality - and adults?

Some scientists claim (here Marc Hauser), that humans have an inborn morality. As far as we talk about children, I'm easily to convince, so the first part of the following story sounds very convincing for me:

Last week, Harvard professor Marc Hauser dropped in to his daughter Sofia's kindergarten class and presented the children with a moral dilemma. You must all keep your eyes closed for 30 seconds, he told them. If none of you raises your hand during that time, you will each get a sheet of stickers when it's over. But if one of you raises your hand, only that child will get all the stickers.

The task brought immediate cries of protest, Hauser recalled. "But that's not fair!" some children exclaimed, shocked at the idea that one child could hog all the stickers.

Some might say that the kindergartners, in their short lives, had already learned much about the nature of justice. But Hauser goes a step further: Morality, he argues, is influenced by cultural teachings but is also so deep and universal an aspect of human existence that it is effectively "hard-wired" into the brain, much like the instinct for language.

The last sentence is:

(...) As for the kindergarten class and the sticker dilemma, not a single child raised a greedy hand -- and they shared the stickers equally.

We know also, that children in the age of three "cannot" lie and they "have to learn" to lie until the age of five or so. The same may be true with their reaction "That's not fair!" here. And the same may be true some years later, when they will smile about such an experiment - as adults do. Adults are another species of humans.