How to Survive the Anthropocene: Adaptive Atheism and the Evolution of Homo deiparensis

Abstract

Why is it so easy to ignore the ecological and economic crises of the Anthropocene? This article unveils some of the religious biases whose covert operation facilitates the repression or rejection of warnings about the consequences of extreme climate change and excessive capitalist consumption. The evolved defaults that are most relevant for our purposes here have to do with mental credulity toward religious content (beliefs about supernatural agents) and with social congruity in religious contexts (behaviors shaped by supernatural rituals). Learning how to contest these phylogenetically inherited and culturally fortified biases may be a necessary condition for adapting to and altering our current natural and social environments in ways that will enhance the chances for the survival (and flourishing) of Homo sapiens and other sentient species. I outline a conceptual framework, derived from empirical findings and theoretical developments in the bio-cultural sciences of religion, which can help clarify why and how gods are imaginatively conceived and nurtured by ritually engaged believers. Finally, I discuss the role that "adaptive atheism" might play in responding to the crises of the Anthropocene.

Simulating Secularities: Challenges and Opportunities in the Computational Science of (Non)Religion

“…The practical aspect of this metaethical framework calls for the integration of the philosophical and scientific aspects in a way that avoids moral evasion (by, e.g., appealing to unfalsifiable supernatural revelations about a particular ingroup's moral code) and moral confusion (by, e.g., failing to account for the actual cognitive and moral equipment that is part of our phylogenetic inheritance). We cannot fully understand (much less address) most of the major challenges facing global society, including extreme climate change, excessive consumer capitalism, and escalating cultural conflict, without accounting for the role played by various forms of religious belief and behavior (Shults, 2015;Shults et al, 2018a). Adapting in the Anthropocene will require us to learn new ways to challenge cognitive tendencies that promote superstition and segregation, a task that may be facilitated by adopting depolarizing polices and debiasing strategies (Shults, 2020).…”

Human Simulation and Sustainability: Ontological, Epistemological, and Ethical Reflections

“…However, accommodating supernaturalist epistemologies within the scientific discourse about sustainability could be problematic for other reasons. Empirical research from a wide array of disciplines that contribute to the bio-cultural study of religion has shown that cognitive and coalitional biases related to supernatural worldviews interfere with sustainability movements, even when their proponents intend to help, by promoting superstitious beliefs and segregative behaviors that exacerbate rather than ameliorate the deleterious psychological and socio-economic conditions and can promote intellectual obstruction and moral paralysis in the face of globally relevant societal challenges such as climate change [95][96][97][98][99][100][101][102][103]. Supernatural beliefs and the ritual behaviors associated with them likely played a crucial role in helping humans survive in early ancestral environments, but today they have become maladaptive.…”

Why do the godless prosper? Modeling the cognitive and coalitional mechanisms that promote atheism.

“…The computer models described below incorporate empirical findings and theoretical developments from a variety of disciplines that study (non)religion, but we can explain their construction and experimental results within the context of a broader framework outlined by the first author of this article (Shults, 2014a, 2014b, 2015, 2018). Insights from a diversity of fields have converged to support the claim that gods (supernatural agent conceptions) are born(e) in the mental and social life of human beings as a result of naturally evolved, hyper-sensitive biases that activate inferences about hidden human-like forms and preferences for distinctive ingroup norms.…”