E.O. Wilson was a remarkable biologist because he tackled questions others don’t think about.
For example: What is religion? Where does it come from? And why do most human populations have some form of it? What purpose does it serve?
Such questions didn’t come up when I was in school. But Wilson took at a stab at the topic. Here’s the short version:
Religions are analogous to organisms. They have a life cycle. They are born, they grow, they compete, they reproduce, and, in the fullness of time, they must die. In each of these phases religions reflect the human organisms that nourish them. They express a primary rule of human existence: Whatever is necessary to sustain life is also ultimately biological.
Wilson was interested in biological competition. In some species, an individual will dominate within a group: he will get the lion’s share of the food and take whatever mate he wants. He passes his genes on because he is strong — and selfish.
But among eusocial animals such as ants and humans, the group is more important than the individual. A group of selfless team players can compete against a collection of great individual fighters who can’t cooperate — that is, stifle their individualism sufficiently to fight as a unit.
Wilson thought that religion came from that tension between what’s best for the individual and what’s best for the group. He thought that religions developed during the period when human beings were evolving in tribes. Religions were a kind of adhesive that kept individuals together as a group.
Human moral reasoning is still loaded with the freight of tribal biases. Moral questions often reduce to “Us” vs. “Them,” and “Us” is always morally right.
Wilson held that religion makes it easier for the individual to serve the group. We live better, as a group, when everyone follows the received religion, which is often a law believed to be divine, and thus not challenged.
• Source: The quotation is from Edward O. Wilson, “The Biological Basis of Morality,” April 1998.
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