Notes on Sapolsky: Religion
Behavior
Sometimes a maladaptive gene can be good in some environments, bad in another.
Example: Sickle Cell Anemia, normally terrible, in some settings, sub-sahara Africa, can protect against malaria.
No such thing as a bad gene. Only a bad gene-environment interaction.
Among Ashkenazim Jews, Tay-Sachs disease may protect against TB. Case studies during WWII Eastern Europe.
Cystic Fibrosis full-blown, disastrous. Partial, protected against cholera.
Full-blown version, bad. Partial version, protective.
Schizophrenia
in the 1970s, Keddy, 1 Denmark study in Denmark, interviewed every family of every adoptee. Schizotypol, a mild version loose associations social withdrawal, solitary occupation
metamagical thinking, science fiction, fantasy, new age, telepathy, UFO's, concrete interpretation of religiosity
1930s anthropology half-crazy, shaman, witch doctor
hearing voices at the wrong time at the right time
18:25
western society is equally irrational
“religion is organized schizophrenia”
Erwin Ackerknecht: “Our culture is unique in outlawing irrationality.”
19:55
Gallup Poll of Americans
- 25% believe in ghosts
- 36% believe in mental telepathy
- 47% believe in UFO's
- 50% believe in the devil, and that the devil influences daily activities
27:06
social motivation for good works rituals
Beecher: religion is daily bread
29:05
obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD)
an anxiety disorder
example: tray of rice crispy treat
There's no insight.
It's not: “Help, there's something wrong with me. I need to wash my hands six hours a day.”
It's: “Help, there's something wrong with me. I can never get clean.”
38:45
religious leaders have sometimes been:
- at the head of a crusade
- has the most vivid description of hell and damnation
- most fervent, most accomplished at doing the rituals
orthodox Brahmin
- spend six hours per day in cleansing
- detailed rules on hand washing, swishing the mouth, how to lie down, what direction to face when defecating, when entering and leaving the temple, breathing, mouthfuls of food,
orthodox Judaism:
- very detailed rules involving food, prep, utensils
- entering and leaving, touching, magic numbers
often magic numbers are so because they are easy to remember
numbers are more important than the content (everyone knows there are 10 commandments, but how many people can recite them all)
numerology
48:30
rituals built around
- cleansing the body
- food preparation
- entering and leaving significant places
- numerology
same for religion and OCD
per Freud:
- OCD is an individual religiosity
- religion is a universal compulsion
49:00
15th century, St Ignatius Loyola
scrupulosity = someone who is going through religious ritual for its own sake, not thinking about the content
in the talmud = cannot do it from memory, not by rote
in Islam = saying a prayer without thinking about the content, the prayers don't count
the ritual becomes more important than the content
a trait that is destructive in OCD, done in the right context becomes protective
assume a universal dread the point of ritual is not to make the dread go away but to share it and foster the community
55:00
Kafka: the hunger artist, a performance artist who starves himself. there really were people who did this in the middle ages.
in modern times we think of a religious leader as someone who
- are empathic
- make people treat each other better
- comforts people during troubled times
but some of the time, a religious leader
- is excellent at performing rituals
people can make a living performing rituals
16th century, Martin Luther, augustine monk, paralyzed by OCD, also had asshole father
1:04:00
who created these rituals? OCD sufferers?
OCD sufferer:
- can be really good at the rituals
- can make money doing the rituals
- maybe created the rituals in the first place
OCD has 1 to 10% in the population
1:08:10
religious people:
- much lower incidence of depression
- much longer life expectancy
- less likely to drink to excess
- fewer risk factors
spirituality vs religion
- spirituality is personal
- religion is a group thing
?
- control
- predictability
- explanation
- outlet
1:09:26
correlates between patterns of behavior that we can explain and patterns of religious belief
superstitious behavior in pigeons. experimentally giving random rewards of food. The pigeon has a need to attribute. The pigeon assumes whatever he just did resulted in the food appearing.
why do we have a societal need for shamans? because we are trying to explain he unexplainable.
see cause and effect that may not be there
1:11:45
take rats, and damage their hippocampus
with hippocampal damage, you have more trouble making causal sequential links
rats with more hippocampal damage are more vulnerable to superstitious conditioning
difficulty telling the difference between causally related events, and events that have no connection
individual differences in number of hippocampal neurons, amount of enzymes, amount of myelin, means some people are more likely to be superstitious than others.
(Note that this implies religiosity is a kind of brain disorder.)
1:13:04
epilepsy
epilectic seizures differ depending on the brain part where they originate
Temporal lobe epilepsy. This particular form of epilepsy originates in the temporal lobe. The temporal lobe contains the hippocampus, the amygdala, a big limbic area.
30 years ago, neurologist Geshwin at Harvard, described the Temporal Lobe Personality statistically correlated with Temporal Lobe Epilepsy, but not absolutely.
Temporal Lobe Personality
- extremely serious and humorless
- neophobia, don't like new things
- hypergraphia, begin to write obsessively
- obsessively interested in religious and philosophical subjects. Not becoming religious, but sincerely interested in the subject.
1:19:30
what I'm NOT saying
- you gotta be crazy to be religious
- most people who are, are psychiatrically suspect
It is fascinating that the same traits can be life-destroying in one setting. And in a religious setting be sanctioned, valued, rewarded. And there can be an underlying biology to this. And what do we do with this?