Michael Shermer with Agustín Fuentes - Why We Believe: Evolution and the Human Way of Being
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 4 ก.ค. 2024
- Listen to the Science Salon Podcast # 144 (audio-only):
bit.ly/ScienceSalon144
Why are so many humans religious? Why do we daydream, imagine, and hope? Philosophers, theologians, social scientists, and historians have offered explanations for centuries, but their accounts often ignore or even avoid human evolution. Evolutionary scientists answer with proposals for why ritual, religion, and faith make sense as adaptations to past challenges or as by-products of our hyper-complex cognitive capacities. But what if the focus on religion is too narrow? Renowned anthropologist Agustín Fuentes argues that the capacity to be religious is actually a small part of a larger and deeper human capacity to believe. Why believe in religion, economies, love? Fuentes employs evolutionary, neurobiological, and anthropological evidence to argue that belief - the ability to commit passionately and wholeheartedly to an idea - is central to the human way of being in the world.
The premise of the book is that believing is our ability to draw on our range of cognitive and social resources, our histories and experiences, and combine them with our imagination. It is the power to think beyond what is here and now in order to see and feel and know something - an idea, a vision, a necessity, a possibility, a truth - that is not immediately present to the senses, and then to invest, wholly and authentically, in that “something” so that it becomes one’s reality. The point is that beliefs and belief systems permeate human neurobiologies, bodies, and ecologies, and structure and shape our daily lives, our societies, and the world around us. We are human, therefore we believe, and this book tells us how we came to be that way.
Shermer and Fuentes also discuss:
• what it means to “believe” something (belief in evolution or the Big Bang is different from belief in progressive taxes or affirmative action),
• evolution and how beliefs are formed…and why,
• evolution of awe, wonder, aesthetic sense, beauty, art, music, dance, etc. (adaptation or exaptation/spandrel?),
• evolution of spirituality, religion, belief in immortality,
• Were Neanderthals human in the “belief” sense?
• human niche and the evolution of symbolism/language,
• evolution of theory of mind,
• how to infer symbolic meaning from archaeological artifacts,
• components of belief: augmented cognition and neurobiology, intentionality, imagination, innovation, compassion and intensive reliance on others, meaning-making,
• dog domestication and human self-domestication,
• Göbekli Tepe and the underestimation of ancient peoples’ cognitive capacities,
• the development of property, accumulation of goods, inequality, and social hierarchy,
• gender role specialization,
• monogamy and polyamory, gender and sex, and continuum vs. binary thinking,
• violence and warfare,
• political and economic systems of belief, and
• love as belief.
Agustín Fuentes is a Professor of Anthropology at Princeton University. He is an active public scientist, a well-known blogger, lecturer, tweeter, and an explorer for National Geographic. Fuentes received the Inaugural Communication & Outreach Award from the American Association of Physical Anthropologists, the President’s Award from the American Anthropological Association, and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
This dialogue was recorded on November 11, 2020 as part of the Science Salon Podcast series hosted by Michael Shermer and presented by The Skeptics Society, in California.
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His pushback on the waist-to-hip ratio didn't sound very convincing to me. Otherwise, this was a very interesting conversation.
Great to listen to while making Thanksgiving dinner, I learned a lot! Thanks Michael, and Agustin, I can't wait to read his book.
I really miss Frank Zappa 🦆
For science! Thank you, Michal, and Agustín.
meh
Thanks for a wonderful video. A good definition of belief by Augustine Fuentes.
I got a conservative to flip on climate change once by saying, "If climate change isn't real, then why are the Russians investing millions of dollars into exploring territory that's covered in ice? Could it be that climate change is real, and they know that the ice will melt, and they want what's underneath? And if climate change isn't real, why are we so concerned about it?"
You could sort of see the gears turning in his head.
really? I don't buy any of that as convincing.
I think that's a rarity though. Once you poison the well with "that's fake news", you open the way to justify any and all delusional thinking. Conservatives can, and will, just as easily wave off your line as yet another "fake globalist agenda DemoRAT Socialist Bill Gates PizzaGate $hillary Event 201" whatever.
Trying to understand how others think is fascinating. I am happy for you, and for us that you managed to help someone understand a vital reality about our planet, but I am not sure how the example you used was useful. In that we investigate beneath the earth surface all the time and if the ice was melting is it not simply a factor not the cause of removing what is in the way of a valuable resource given its value?
@@jaidev777 I'm sure Putin would accelerate climate change if he could to open up the Arctic sea. But weather modification is a "conspiracy theory". Actually, it's real, and written about in science papers.
In 1997, evolutionary biologist Keith Stewart Thomson wrote:
A matter of unfinished business for biologists is the identification of evolution’s smoking gun,”
and
“the smoking gun of evolution is speciation, not local adaptation and differentiation of populations.”
It would be interesting to see the context of this statement. As usual, it is not given.
Group selection does in fact occur at the atomic, molecular, and cellular level. Why wouldn't the same principles apply at the phenotypical level?
Lots to think about.
Nice discussion ,,from Indonesia !!
Nice indeed
Fuentes is the voice of our future, using science
Sounds like based on your model it really is hard to make sense of what took so long to develop farming
Didn't expect for people to go against Shermer for his scientific belief not matching the commenters ideology, but I guess it's what you get for being so known for antireligious stance.
Re: Altruism. Is your liver altruistic? It handles some pretty dirty jobs. I.e., we use the word altruism as if we understood what the word refers to. It is a word in our vocabulary and is useful in practical terms, but are we really "individuals" or are we part of a greater whole? Life has been growing over billions of years. Why would we not be as much a part of a greater whole as the liver is to our bodies?
The dot on his finger.. I can't not look at it..
Male/female attractiveness needs to be based on some degree of heterogeneous phenotypes to prevent inbreeding. I.e., if we all were attracted to some fixed set of attributes, the likelihood of inbreeding would be higher.
Are you alluding to Portland Oregon?
@22:00 christian disconnect. That christian disconnect reminds me of the Jim Jones followers. No one could convince them he was dangerous only that he was doing the right thing based off of their faith. No intelligence required.
Christian disconnect seems like a broad term, and I don’t believe it covers all people of faith. In addition faith based people are not the only ones who will lose a battle to win the war, that is a universal tactic.
@@13e11even11 battle? War? What? You sound disconnected.
@@generationalist was following the conversation and the speakers referred to the Christian speaker as following someone who was not espousing their principles but was going to fight for them. This is not a Christian but a universal tactic.
@@13e11even11 no such thing as a universal tactic. You might argue it's an evolved ape instinct but that's the best argument you can make. Human apes aren't exactly universal animals. I'll go back and listen again but based on what I think you're trying to say; your reasoning doesn't follow.
@@generationalist you may call it what you want I believe you understand the idea, it’s not difficult. The tactic being critiqued is not a result of simply Christian disconnect it is used in human interaction all the time, and by any group able to comprehend and employ it making it universal. However if we are so concerned with language then let’s return to my original concern with Christian disconnect. I think you are referring to an action by Christians, but given the fact that Christians are far from a homogeneous group in terms of belief and which percentage employ this tactic and there relative difference to its use and to that of other groups maybe we should be more specific.
Often forgot, we also love a redemption story. We pray for Trump. As we did for Obama.
You are praying? If so, speak for yourself.
Belief is based on the energetic sense of an individual self as being real. Self-identifying or the mystic sense of the I am is a trait unique to humans in that we are able to objectify that illusion of self and therefore, objectify all else in our environment as being real. Life is a mystery, yet humankind is obsessed with trying to figure it out due to our own hubris.
I'm confused about your comment. To imply life is a mystery also implies (like a puzzle would) solvability or at least the attempt to solve. Inquisition shows intelligence and to me, the idea that people can (or should strive to) NOT be inquisitive is to not be intelligent; to become a slave to those who are, in that scenario.
Maybe I need clarification of your view?
Interesting topic, boring conversation
I think that educated people like Shermer, should not use senseless and dumb terms like "pro life", or even crazier (not mentioned in the video), "honour killing"!
I find this irritating.
Sorry, added verbiage, not necessary. The many you knows, I means, ums, ahs, and likes are distracting.
Get over it.
@@IsaacAsimov1992 Okay like you know um like thanks and have um like ah like you know like nice day
Love (god) spent billions of years creating this paradise planet lifeboat so that her miraculous works of fine art called life have a beautiful place to "be".
Love didn't spend so much time creating this paradise planet lifeboat to be depreciated, hated, polluted and destroyed in a brief moment by alien vampires (greed) and thier ignorance (hate).
Why did she spend so much time on this, again? She could have just wished a much better place into existence. What a waste of suffering.