Yosarian2 comments on A Failed Just-So Story - Less Wrong

11 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 05 January 2008 06:35AM

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Comment author: Yosarian2 30 December 2012 04:40:02AM 0 points [-]

Yeah, that's one common theory for the start of religious belief; basically, that we evolved a natural ability to both try and predict the future, and to predict what other people would do, and that religious thought and religious belief was a side effect of that, especially for dealing with unusual events that weren't obviously predictable based on what people knew at the time. That's quite possible.

What Eliezer was talking about is an entirely different theory; the theory that religious belief (or some genetic predisposition to religious belief) was actually itself something that was selected for by evolution; not as a side effect of some other trait, but as something that was directly selected for, something that gave individuals a fitness advantage.

I agree with him that the group selection argument doesn't really seem to work here, I just don't think that his theory (the "stone the heretic" hypothesis) makes sense either.