Religion as Adaptation: The Role of Time Preference

0:00Why do human beings believe in God? The sacred approach to this question might well conclude because God wants us to. In contrast to the more profane approach of the natural and social sciences, this question has always presented a conundrum. Sociobiologists suggest that religious belief could only have been transmitted through generations if it enhanced survival or reproductive opportunities. Unfortunately, natural science has been unable to convincingly describe the source of such evolutionary benefits. I will argue that religion confers survival benefits on societies and individuals because it allows a general lowering of time preference, allowing for employment of capital in time-consuming roundabout means of production.

0:47Time preference is the desire to enjoy immediate gratification. For example, time preference is especially high in children who lack experience and maturity, and in individuals with low life expectancy. Time preference is also high for criminals and the poor, and the general lowering of time preference both facilitates and is facilitated by the development of civilization and the increase in complexity of social relationships. People with high time preference consume more of their income or output immediately, while those with low time preference save more. If an individual's time preference were zero, all the individual's income would be saved and available for investment. If an individual's time preference were infinite, no income would be saved.

1:33Time preference varies significantly across individuals. Often the increase in time preference occasioned by diminishing life expectancy accompanies an increase in interest in religion. From the perspective of sociobiology, religion has to confer survival benefits which should to be observable in order to be transmitted to future generations. Clearly religious societies dominate unless we view Western secular societies which emphasize tolerance and pluralism as having supplanted them. This is a plausible view, but I will take the view that religious societies have always and continue to dominate human civilization even if they are no longer as culturally monolithic as they may have been in the past.

2:20Religion poses a problem for sociobiology. It has existed from the dawn of known history so it almost certainly conferred or at least accompanied evolutionary benefits, but these benefits are difficult to identify from a secular perspective. Clearly one function religion served in primitive times, the explanation of natural phenomena has largely been superseded by science. Stephen Jay Gould suggested we inherited important ethical behaviors such such as empathy, reciprocity and peacemaking, because they were successful evolutionary adaptations which enhanced our ancestors' survival and reproductive opportunities, and that religion was transmitted as a byproduct of the ethical behavior regularities it accompanied. In this view, religion is at best a non-functional spandrel, to use Gould's expression, and at worst a negative inheritance.

3:15Atran and Norenzayan frame an argument around minimally counterintuitive narratives which a religion allows a community to adopt. Societies which can rapidly reach a consensus about responses to challenges and opportunities have an evolutionary advantage over societies which cannot commit to decisive action. Furthermore, the observance of mass communal rituals contributes to Social Cooperation and Coordination. Of course, from the perspective of religious belief, there is no problem to explaining why religion exists. It is divinely ordained and our observance of particular rituals is required to obey the deity or deities. Thus, I will emphasize the solution I will propose only addresses the secular dimension of this problem because it can only be considered a problem from a secular perspective.

4:10Basically, I am providing a solution or proposing a solution to a problem in sociobiology, not a problem in theology. There is no problem in theology. Does religion provide an evolutionary advantage? If not, how did it evolve as a human institution? If it did once provide evolutionary advantage, does it still, or have we outgrown it, as a species? Religion may have facilitated the coordination of preferences, including time preferences, and if this was a source of evolutionary advantage, this helps explain why monotheism supplanted polytheism. Religion may have served as a carrier of behavioral norms which conferred survival benefits such as empathy, reciprocity, social hierarchy, and peacemaking.

4:59I propose that the answer to these and other questions is found in the economics of time preference. Lower time preferences in patients, the desire for immediate want satisfaction or gratification. Lower time preference enables individuals to save, to plan for the future and to engage in entrepreneurial activity. Ceteris paribus, religious belief, allowed humans to have significantly lower time preferences and significantly longer planning horizons which accompany them. Recall that until the start of the Industrial Revolution, infant mortality approximated 100%, and in primitive times, life expectancy approximated 15 years for the survivors. This suggests that compared to modern humans, early humans should have had very high time preference.

5:46This would have limited opportunities for wealth accumulation or capital intensive roundabout means of production. Indeed, it appears that for numerous millennia, it had not yet occurred to any of our ancestors that agriculture could be more effective than hunting and gathering. The principal way religion lowers time preference among people with short life expectancy is because the deity or deities worshipped are immortal. Occasionally they are merely long live but this would still allow for lowering the time preference of their worshippers. I have in mind particularly the wooden Polynesian idols described by Herman Melville in his novel Taipi. The oldest of the island gods had been carved by priests about 50 years before the time of Melville's story and was rotten and being eaten by termites. It was The Islanders considered it a particularly venerable god both because of its age and more pointingly their realization that it would shortly depart this world, in their belief the god would be dead and beyond veneration.

6:45More typical categories of religious beliefs such as belief in an afterlife, life after death, spirit survival, reincarnation, etc. seem particularly suited to address humans with short life experiences. are suited to address humans with short life expectancy and, consequently, with high time preference, not to mention an obsession with death. These beliefs serve to lower time preference by expanding the individual's planning horizon, even to extend beyond their temporal lives. Early chapters of Genesis and the Gilgamesh epic mention Macrobians, people like Methuselah, who lived many centuries. Because it does not appear that any of our ancestors in fact live that long, it becomes interesting to speculate why such features were introduced into the narrative.

7:34I suggest they originated as artifacts of the introduction of lower time preference beliefs among people with initially high time preference. Time preference lends some light on the sacrifice of Isaac in chapter 22 of Genesis. In this narrative, Jehovah commands Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, and Abraham intends to comply, though Jehovah protects Isaac from harm. Human sacrifice is an extraordinarily expensive resource-wasting ritual practice, which is consistent with extremely high time preference. Reference. Basically, under the Semitic deities that demanded human sacrifice, they were in this particular practice basically contributing to a higher time preference among their believers and this helps explain why that practice died out in addition to, of course, its moral repugnance.

8:31It is less troubling that Jehovah asks for human sacrifice which was commonly given to to other deities, since having created the universe, he is the final arbiter of life, death and morality. We cannot ever be dead to Jehovah. It is more troubling that Jehovah apparently misleads Abraham about his desires and intentions. Jehovah can kill us without that being wrong. It is less clear that he can authorize us to commit murder. It is perfectly clear that he cannot lie. It is less that he is subject to our limited and defective moral judgment than that this is an act we simply cannot conceive of him doing. As Esqua says of Zeus, a far less perfect deity, the father knoweth not how to utter falsehood in all that he sayeth he will accomplish. Jehovah explicitly prohibits human sacrifice in chapter 20 of Leviticus and chapter 32 of Jeremiah.

9:23One tradition of medieval rabbinic commentary proposes that Jehovah's command was not real but a misinterpretation by Abraham, though this view is far from unanimous. Without glossing the text, we can observe that a more important evolutionary adaptation for primitive humans derives from obeying God, improving group cohesion than from loving Him. I will suggest further that from the beginning Abraham recognized Jehovah as immeasurably greater and more virtuous than the gods of his fathers, some of whom demanded human sacrifice. It is not a tremendous leap to imagine that in Abraham's mind this greater God called for a Greater Sacrifice, and I will skip unresolved problems and cut to the chase.

10:13Religion conferred survival benefits on our ancestors by promoting a lowering of their time preference and lengthening their planning horizon, allowing for increased use of time consuming capital intensive, saving based and roundabout means of production. This in turn enhanced the wealth, well-being and survival of the societies which adopted it. Today our longer life expectancy generally results in a sufficiently low time preference that the survival value of religion is lost. However, objectively we can still say religious belief may provide tangible benefits, that is lower time preference, among groups with high time preference, children, those with low life expectancy, the poor and criminals. The survival benefit of religious belief is mostly lost once life expectancy lengthens to the point where, as in modern society, it results in lowered time preference even in the absence of religious belief.

11:04The perspective of economics is particularly valuable to address evolutionary biology's inability to explain whether religion is a successful evolutionary adaptation or merely a useless byproduct of some other successful adaptations. Since religion contributes to lowering time preference and lowered time preference necessarily and the improved group survival opportunities, it should be clear that religion is a highly successful evolutionary adaptation.