Has belief in deities helped or hindered human evolution?

Question

Explain your answer

Answer 1

It would be relevant as it would to some extent determine who was "selected" to continue ... think of all the "burnings at the stake" and "murdering" done in the past because groups of people couldn't decide who's imaginary friend was the right one and the people burnt at the stake etc. have more often than not, been the critical thinkers :/

Answer 2

Evolution has NO direction.  It has NO goal and it makes NO sense to speak of its hindrance.  

Answer 3

Beliefs are not genetically inherited characteristics, therefore have no influence on evolution.

Answer 4

I agree with Ken U. Belief in deities has been an outgrowth of lack of knowledge, therefore lack of explanation. It has been a side effect, not a cause or result. However, the need to convert others to ones believe has influenced man's development in a negative fashion through wars and stifling of learning that has disagreed with religious dogma.  

Answer 5

well considering evolution happens regardless..."belief" (in general) may have helped [modern] human SURVIVAL as believing in something tends to make people strive to be/live better.

Answer 6

As WinterOp says, the direction that scientific research has been able to follow has historically been stifled by religion. The dogged attachment to ideas that have been proven time and time and time again to be absolute fantasy has kept the entire Human Race from advancing.

Answer 7

Depends what you mean...

Many different churches regulate human reproduction in some way.

The Catholic Church, for example, forbids contraceptives. Therefore, adherents will tend to have more children, and their genes will become more frequent in the population than those of other religions, making them more evolutionarily successful.

Of course, Catholic priests are forbidden to marry or have children. So they will be much less evolutionarily successful.

Other religions have regulated reproduction in different ways. The Bogomils believed that all physical matter was intrinsically evil and only the spirit was pure. Therefore reproduction (creating more base matter) was evil. This made them evolutionary failures (and, incidentally, heretics who were wpied out by a crusade).

As an aside: in "The God Delusion" Richard Dawkins posits that the belief in deities is a *side-effect* of a feature of human evolution.

As a young child it is vitally important that you accept without question the facts that your parents, and other people in positions of trust, tell you: "Fire will burn you.", "Don't jump off that cliff", etc. are all vital lessons which you cannot safely figure out from first principles. Therefore, children who have a genetic predisposition to just believe advice without question will have an advantage over those who do not, and will be selected for by evolution.

But the child has no way of distinguishing true advice from fallacious advice. He/she cannot know that "Fire burns you" is good advice, while "You must sacrifice a bull to the sun god each month or the harvest will fail" is not.

So when "facts" like this are given as such advice, they tend to stick around.

Answer 8

Evolution is accomplished by natural selection.  Therefore, a belief in anything is not relevant to evolution.

Answer 9

I think that a belief in deities has helped mankinds evolution.  Most religeons lay down a set of rules, which tend to have been adopted into the legal systems of the various nationalities.  This helps to give a structural stability, without which a civilisation cannot stabilise itself.

Also religeon, gives a society a firm basis from which to grow, and a set of ideals for which to strive.  It also gives a focal point for communities,  and helped to establish a sense of comunitas.  A centralisation of the community spirit, and helped to establish a sense of belonging to something greater than the individual.

As to the legitimacy of the various religeons, that is a point in question, and something that I feel will never be resolved.

Answer 10

Failure to believe in the one true deity has caused people to become duped into believing that human evolution is true.

The evidence that humans have evovled from some ape-like ancestor is simply missing. (Well it exists only in the minds of those religionists, the atheists.)

Answer 11

hi evry one....whatever your belief....i happen to read a small funny story about human evolution which made a lot of sense!!

you can chk it out in...

http://treatortrick.blogspot.com/2008/08...