The Evolutionary Functions of Religion

Something as pervasive as religion, which is found in every human cultural group, must have an evolutionary explanation. I assert this without proof, but I trust that most scientists agree with me. Even though religion must have served a useful function to enhance fitness in the past, today it might serve no useful function.

Or does it?

I will present three functions of religion.

First, it facilitates altruism. This is a good thing. Altruism is an instinct in animals, especially in humans. But how can you be altruistic? Religious groups provide ways of doing so. Give them your time and money, and they can direct it toward people who need help. It certainly beats walking the street and looking for people who need help. One example is that poor rural villages in Africa need clean drinking water even more than they need advanced medicines. Civil engineers can join a religious organization that sponsors them to install wells in rural villages. (You can’t just dig a hole in the ground. Surface water would contaminate it. Rural villages need civil engineers from advanced countries to help them have healthier lives.) As far as I can see, this is pure altruism. Thank God for this kind of religion.

Second, it impedes the discovery of truth. Throughout history, religions have suppressed truth. So far, it has always been temporary. The Catholic Church persecuted Galileo, but they now celebrate him. By 1843, the cathedral at Strasbourg had an astronomical clock (Horlogue Astronomique) that celebrated the Copernican system it had condemned three centuries earlier.

Religions eventually embrace truth but only after sometimes centuries of resistance. I used to be a member of the American Scientific Affiliation, a group of Christians in the sciences who meet together to confront scientific and social issues from a Christian perspective. After immense angst, they usually end up embracing concepts that other scientists had long before accepted. Never has the ASA presented any new perspective on science. I finally left because I got tired of the endless angst that these fine people put themselves through (usually internal, rather than external, conflict) for reasons that were ultimately unimportant. Thus, I conclude, even good religion impedes the discovery of truth. 

Third, it makes money for religious leaders. This cannot explain the origin of religion, for it only works when altruistic and other instincts are already in place. Charismatic leaders who use religious devices can brainwash people into following them, giving them lots of money, and ignoring the times when they are discovered to have moral failings that they condemn in others. Examples have filled books. This continues because people still have an instinct for credulity, to believe religious leaders, even after repeated proof that many of them are frauds, and there is so much money to be made that there is a big intake of new fraudulent leaders. I used to be in one such cult, and know what it feels like to slowly and painfully extract myself from it.

Religion is part of our nature and will not go away. We need to be aware of it and allow only its good functions to operate.

John Muir's Scientific Experiment with the Animals of the Forest

Almost every hour of every day, John Muir (see previous essay) was busy walking around and looking at everything in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, taking notes, making sketches. But one day he was resting out in the woods, and the animals started coming up to him. What a perfect time to perform an experiment! He had no hypothesis, but he just wanted to see how the animals would respond to different kinds of music. I describe this in my Darwin YouTube video.

First, he whistled and sang Scottish folk songs. (Muir’s parents were immigrants from Scotland.) The squirrels, chipmunks, and birds seemed to love it. One thrush even hopped out on a dead branch to within a few feet of him. “By this time my performance must have lasted nearly half an hour. I sang or whistled Bonnie Doon, Lass o’ Gowrie, O’er the Water to Charlie, Bonnie Woods o’ Cragie Lee, etc., all of which seemed to be listened to with bright interest, my first Douglas [squirrel] sitting patiently through it all, with his telling eyes fixed upon me...”

Then he sang the Old Hundredth, a famous Christian hymn. It begins, All people that on Earth do dwell... One of its middle-verse lines is the incomprehensible For it is seemly so to do. As soon as Muir began to sing this hymn, “he [the squirrel] turned tail and darted with ludicrous haste up the tree out of sight, his voice and actions leaving a somewhat profane impression, as if he had said, I’ll be hanged if you get me to hear anything so solemn and unpiny. This acted as a signal for the general dispersal of the whole hairy tribe...” Muir tested the hypothesis that animals do not like the Old Hundredth. (Muir never hesitated to make up a word, in this case unpiny.)

A scientist might wonder if this was just a singularity, something that happened once and would not happen again. When Muir sang, just one of the animals might have gotten spooked, for any reason or no reason, and started to run, provoking all the others to flee as well. Muir must have wondered the same thing. When he was later resting outside in the Coast Range, about 150 miles away from his original experiment, the animals paid quiet attention to him as he sang folk songs. “I then began to whistle as nearly as I could remember the same airs that had pleased the mountaineers of the Sierra. They at once stopped eating, stood erect, and listened patiently until I came to “Old Hundredth” when with ludicrous haste every one of them rushed to their holes and bolted in, their feet twinkling in the air as they vanished.” Muir had replicated the test of his hypothesis, and done so in a different forest with different species of animals.

Muir did not intend this as serious scientific investigation, any more than my video investigation of “Do Cats Like Mahler” here and here. But one thing a scientist should not do is to extend his or her conclusions out too far. Muir did not conclude from his investigation that animals are agnostics. I bet that it was just that Muir was happy when he sang the folk songs, and sanctimonious and grand-voiced when he sang the Old Hundredth.

More than anything else, Muir was probably just playing with the animals because he loved them so much. Scientists, too, play with the natural world because we love it so much.

The Secret to John Muir's Success

John Muir hiked around in the Sierra Nevada Mountains and climbed a lot of peaks. He wrote about them also. Many of us think of him as the original and the most powerful voice for conservation in California. He and his associates were successful in saving Yosemite Valley from being turned into a reservoir, but lost the battle for nearby Hetch Hetchy. He could be considered the granddaddy of American conservation. As we face the biggest ecological threats since the Cretaceous Extinction, we should consider how John Muir accomplished what he did.

John Muir did not argue that setting aside wilderness was a good investment for society. He did not base his life on the conviction that we need to save wild biodiversity because it might come in handy for agriculture or forestry, or because trees protect watersheds. Thousands of people since Muir’s time, including me, have made this argument in books. Muir’s enthusiasm was based almost entirely on his love of the forests and mountains. If you read The Mountains of California, Muir’s Swedenborgian ecstasy is unmistakable in every paragraph. He loved the natural world so intensely that his thrill was contagious to everyone who knew him and to all who continue to read his writings.

Muir was the kind of man who would visit one of his friends in a cabin in the mountains; then, when a storm began, instead of staying inside, he would run out into the storm and experience the fulness of its power. He would watch the powerful winds bend the trees, some of them almost to the ground. He claimed it was no less safe to be outside in a storm than inside a cabin. Not only that, but during the storm he climbed the highest nearby peak, and climbed to the top of the tallest tree on that peak! He was the kind of man who would, without very much preparation, decide to go climb a mountain: running, leaping, and grasping onto vertical cliffs. When he found himself stuck in a place where he thought he would surely die, his strength was renewed and he scrambled to the top of the peak. The kind of energy that comes out of people in extremis would pour out of Muir all the time.

Muir did not look; he beheld. One way he did that was by thinking about the processes that were going on behind the scenery. He did not just see glacial lakes; he saw the processes by which glacial lakes were gradually filled with sediment and vegetation, and how lakes connected by streams were different from lakes isolated on the tops of granite peaks.

Muir saw a world that has vanished. He saw Native Americans hunting and foraging in the mountains, before the campaign to exterminate them proved largely successful. The California legislature put a bounty on Indians. Some, such as the Chumash, became extinct as tribes, though their genes live on; others, such as the Yokuts, had at least some cultural continuity. Moreover, the major disturbance that Muir saw was shepherds bringing sheep through the mountains, which damaged the vegetation and trampled the clear water of the lakes. He did not imagine the extent of disturbance that we see today even in the most protected places.

Muir’s writing was not, from my viewpoint as a writer, very good. He used every possible superlative and simile and metaphor for everything from a mountain peak to a dormant brown sedge. My soul feels tuckered-out after reading just a page of his book. And when he started writing about squirrels, watch out! I can do little better than to quote some of his description of the Douglas squirrel:

“He threads the tasseled branches of the pines, stirring their needles like a rustling breeze; now shooting across openings in arrowy lines; now launching in curves, glinting deftly from side to side in sudden zigzags, and swirling in giddy loops and spirals around the knotty trunks...punctuating his most irrepressible outbursts of energy with little dots and dashes of perfect repose. He is...a fiery, sputtering little bolt of life, luxuriating in quick oxygen and in the woods’ best juices...”

Muir made no attempt whatever at scientific accuracy. He just jotted down his observations, and how he felt about them; he had no time for scientific description—he used his time instead to make more observations. Sometimes he even got cause and effect backwards. Consider this passage: “The mountain winds, like the dew and rain, sunshine and snow, are measured and bestowed with love on the forests to develop their strength and beauty.” I think he really meant this; he thought the wind blew as it did because it loved the trees. We usually think of the little trees at timberline to have the shape they do because of their responses to the wind, over evolutionary and physiological time; but to Muir, the winds blew strong because that is what the little timberline trees need. But, you see, he left the scientific description, just as he left the practical values of the trees, to other people. He was too busy being ecstatic.

And it is that ecstasy that made his work successful, and that is why we remember him.

As far as I can determine from his writings, he lived entirely off of tea and bread. I doubt, however, that this was his entire source of physical energy. But the thrill of nature seemed to be his entire source of mental and spiritual energy. Nothing less than this, on our part, can get modern people to save the natural world. People have to love the natural world, which means they have to see us love it. What that means is, if I see you out on a nature trail, I am going to walk up to you and start talking about the plants, and from there, the entire ecosystem. You might think I’m a little crazy, but you might start loving the natural world too.

This does not mean, however, that Muir never performed scientific experiments. The next essay will be about a whimsical experiment that Muir performed on the animals of the forest.

When to Give Up and Trust the Future: My Farewell to the Seaside Alder

As I look into a new decade, I see the imminent approach of retirement. A major focus of my professional work has been to understand, and to save, a rare species of shrub known as the seaside alder (Alnus maritima). My colleagues and I have found that:

• This species may persist only from clonal resprouts; the seeds, though often abundant, only germinate on wet, sunny gravel, a condition that was common after the last ice age but is now rare.
• This alder species is less shade-tolerant than other, more abundant alder species in North America.

In the entire world, this species consists only of three subspecies:

• A maritima var. maritima grows only in small, scattered populations in bogs around the Delmarva Peninsula.
• A maritima var. georgiensis grows only in a single swamp in northwestern Georgia.
• A maritima var. oklahomensis grows only in south central Oklahoma along part of the Blue River and a few nearby creeks.

That’s it, for the entire world. Only a few of the populations are protected.

In this photo from the Blue River in Oklahoma, the alder is the right foreground tree.

There are a few of the Delmarva alders in Trap Pond State Park; the others are unprotected. My colleague Phil Gibson and I looked for one population that was documented in the 1970s, only to find that it consisted of just one shrub, in someone’s back yard. We did not tell them about it, lest they cut it down before the much-feared federal government could tell them that they could not.

Most of the Georgia alders are on private land; a few are now, thanks to the work of Catherine Borer, protected by the major utility of the region, which has a large power plant nearby.

Many of the Oklahoma alders are on state wildlife land, and are thus protected.

I did not pursue the option of trying to get the federal government to list this species as endangered. In 2010, I talked with the Southeast district director of the Fish and Wildlife Service. She said this species was already on a list which was the subject of litigation; the plaintiffs thought the FWS was proceeding too slowly. The director told me that, even if the suit was won, they could not work on it until 2016. I decided to try other options.

This species produces antibiotic compounds in its branches. Not being a chemist, I cannot identify these compounds, though I have identified a number of their properties. A small pharmaceutical company in Massachusetts was interested in developing it, but just when the papers were signed and they began their research, Little Pharma was bought up by Big Pharma, which is hostile toward the development of new antibiotics, regardless of how much they are needed. Big Pharma, perhaps only by neglect, killed this line of research.

The Nature Conservancy of Oklahoma attempted to grow some of these alder bushes in a portion of the Blue River that they reclaimed from degradation by cattle. This was the vision of Jona Tucker, who saw this eroded stretch of river and saw a new riparian forest. But deer would eat the little saplings. Only deer fencing—which washed away with every flood—could keep the deer out. The Preserve is still there, but without a thriving population of alders.

I then attempted to get Oklahoma gardeners to plant this species in their wetlands. A few of them did, but not many. One such gardener sold the land and moved, and the fate of what the new owner probably thought was a worthless bush is unknown. Few gardeners have the approximately 10-foot-by-10-foot wet area in the sun that a single bush requires. My former student Sonya Ross has planted several of them on the campus of Southeastern Oklahoma State University. Will they be maintained after I am gone and she is gone also? I have also attempted to get the Tulsa Botanic Garden to plant them extensively to hold down the soil of their new plantings and to educate Tulsans about this important native species. As far as I know, only a few alders have been grown and none planted outdoors.

A botanist in Mississippi recently contacted me for some seeds, which I sent to him.

I cannot save this species single-handedly, nor can my colleagues Phil or Catherine, nor can any one person. I was hoping I could have the salvation of this species be my crowning achievement, but this dream has died. This species enriches the soil by harboring nitrogen-fixing bacteria in its roots, and produces medicinally important compounds in its branches. I am just going to have to trust the future. I know that the pharmaceutical angle will not work. Researchers in Oregon seem to have rediscovered the antibiotic compound, which is found not just in the rare seaside alder but in the incredibly abundant red alder as well; the medicinal angle will not help save the rare species. Maybe the FWS will classify the species as endangered. But it was a low priority under the Obama Administration, and all endangered species are now the personal enemies of Donald Trump. Maybe someday someone will rediscover a few of the shrubs at Trap Pond or along the Blue River or in Mississippi. Maybe someone at Southeastern, decades from now, will remember what these trees are.

Fraud, Big and Little

The human world is so thick with fraud that we have to be suspicious of everything we see. There are countless ways in which evil people can get money or, even more valuable, identity and reputation from us.

But there are little kinds of fraud that do not cost us anything but which can be used to deceive third parties.

One example is free magazines. I received a phone call from the publisher of Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology News, asking me if I wanted a free subscription. My own work does not overlap this field in any way, so I said no. The person then said they would send it to me anyway.

And they did. It is a very slick publication, nearly as nice as Science, one of the world’s major scientific journals. Nearly every third page is a full page, very slick advertisements that are as high quality as those in Science. And there is no question that the articles and news items are very well done, also.

It is also apparent that this publisher (Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. Publishers) gets a lot of income from the advertisements. I am sure that their very large list of subscribers is part of the attraction for the advertisers. But if the advertisers think that the subscription list reflects possible customers, they are wrong. I believe that this is a deliberate strategy by the publisher to entice corporations to pay for more expensive ads than they otherwise might choose. To this extent, it is fraudulent. I am a partner to this process, and cannot do anything about it. I have no time to pursue this matter, and since I am losing no money, I have no legal interest in a case against them. It is not victimless, but I am not the victim.

If you visit the Mary Ann Liebert home page, you will find a link to Journal Collections. But this publisher does not publish these journals. The link to Biomedical Research, for example, leads to the journal home page; the journal is published by Elsevier. If you click on their publications A-Z, you find such journals as Advances in Wound Care, published by the Wound Healing Society of Beverly, Massachusetts, not by Mary Ann Liebert.

It is apparent that this “publisher’ is parasitic upon many other publishers. Maybe it matters and maybe it doesn’t, but I am a partner to this parasitism and there is nothing I can do about it. I will probably continue to be a “subscriber” even after I retire or even after I die.

Another example of “victimless” fraud is IHG (International Hotel Group). I stayed at a Candlewood Suites hotel last summer. They enrolled me in their email feed, and would not let me unsubscribe; the unsubscribe button apparently does nothing, nor did a personal phone request. Because my stay at this hotel was deeply unsatisfying (a feeling shared by other reviewers on TripAdvisor.com), I told them I would not stay at an IHG hotel again. (Before staying, I called them with a question, and instead of answering the question they insisted that I rent a car from them. I hung up.) The point is that IHG has a very long list of email recipients, and they can tell advertisers that this is the case. But the advertisers may not realize that the list may consist mostly of dissatisfied customers. IHG appears to me to be a parasitic corporation that uses former customers like me to lure others. I dislike this even though I am not losing any money to them.

Parasites can live anywhere. In 1990, nobody imagined that parasites could live in what we then called cyberspace. On a Star Trek episode, a parasite lived inside of transporter beams. And you are part of the resource space that these parasites use, even if you are not a direct victim.

Another Climate Report: The Prophet Effect

On November 26, the UN issued yet another climate report, indicating that we are further than ever from controlling carbon emissions within a limit that will prevent catastrophic climate effects in the near future (e.g. within Baron Trump’s lifetime).

This report will, like all the others before it, be ignored by American leadership, probably Russian leadership also, and maybe the Chinese leadership. It will be championed by poor countries who have the most to lose by climate change. Probably the only group of countries that will take it seriously and implement policy in response to it is the European Union.

We have been here before. A long time ago. The ancient kingdoms of Israel and Judah, in the Old Testament of the Bible, endured a series of prophets who decried the kings and most of the people of their sins and predicted destruction for the Israelites. This went on for centuries. You have probably heard of the major prophets, such as Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel. Other important prophets are mentioned in the historical books of the Bible, such as Elijah and Elisha. But there were also minor prophets whose names are on Old Testament books: Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi. They all said the same things, and the kings and priests ignored them more and more with each new prophecy. Just as they prophesied, the kingdom of Israel fell, and later the kingdom of Judah.

The United States is ignoring its own climate prophets, as well as those of other countries, whether European scientists or African and South American environmentalist martyrs. In pursuit of greed, we are destroying what most Americans consider to be God’s creation. When Jeremiah said (in 16:18), “They have polluted my land with the carcasses of their detestable idols,” he might have just as easily been describing modern American garbage, of which Oklahoma has at least a hundred pieces per mile of roadway: the idolatrous junk food and cheap pleasures are quickly used up and the cup or packaging discarded.

We have been warned by our prophets. And soon we will suffer the same fate as the ancient Israelites, and for the same reason.

A Word of Advice from the Animal Kingdom

I recently ran across a copy of a letter that I sent to Bill Clinton back in 1993, right after his inauguration as president. It will speak for itself.

[To] “Socks” the cat

c/o President Bill and Mrs. Hillary Clinton

The White House

1600 Pennsylvania Avenue

Washington DC

Dear Socks:

            Remember me? I’m Millie, George and Barbara’s dog. We met briefly. I hope you like your new home.

            I’m writing to pass along some advice about foreign policy. My master complimented me highly on my knowledge of foreign policy. Perhaps you would be kind enough to pass this advice on to President Clinton? Actually, what I’m about to say, you already know, because us animals know a lot more about the world than those humans.

            First, tell Mr. Clinton that he should be sure to have a strong and sound environmental policy. (He knows this; just remind him.) We animals are acutely aware of our dependence on the environment. But humans like to think that they are not animals. They waste energy and materials, destroy plants and animals, and pour pollutants into whatever remains. The “environment” is us. The air, water, soil, plants, and animals of the earth belong to all of us. If the U.S. pollutes the air that every country breathes, pollutes the oceans that every country shares, how can we be at peace with other countries? This is Millie’s First Law of Foreign Affairs: Other countries will get mad at us if we despoil the earth that belongs to all of us.

            Second, tell Mr. Clinton that his foreign policy should fairly address the plight of the world’s poor. (Again, he knows this, just remind him.) Some of my fellow dogs have roamed the garbage heaps of the world and seen a side of reality that kings and presidents usually ignore. There are billions of hungry people who will not sit idly and let rich countries like the U.S., or rich rulers of their own countries, trap them in poverty. Millie’s Second Law of Foreign Affairs is: The only way to lasting peace is to hear the cries of the world’s poor and to respond to these cries.

            All of us animals know that these are the two most important principles of foreign policy. And these two principles are tied together in many ways. For instance, it is the desperate poor who cut down the last trees for firewood so they can boil their last polluted water.

            Best of luck to you and to the rest of the family. Tell Chelsea to learn everything she can in school. And don’t let the Lords of Creation forget that they are, like us, animals.

            Sincerely, Millie the dog

            I included my own address as a c/o, and I got a card back from the White House thanking me for my note.