Seems like it was only a few months ago that the media had latched on to a story in New Scientist Magazine about a little study which suggested that our brains may be “hard-wired” for religious belief, and there was the expected round of resultant crowing from the Creationists and other looney religious types who saw this as legitimization, as well as some deft sociobiological rationalizations like this classroom lecture from Stanford anthropology professor Robert Sapolsky (the video in this link is quite long, so save it for some point where you have the time to watch), who offers a very good evolutionary rationale.
Now, however, comes the counter-argument that “hard-wired” is not necessarily the same as “deterministic”. A study by a different psychologist that was published last month considered the disparity in social dysfunction between the less-religious and more-religious countries in Europe and found that the more secular a society is, the less likely it is to suffer from various social ills such as high rates of homicide, teen pregnancy, and even unemployment. The argument thus made is the old nature-vs-nurture conundrum: we might be born with a predisposition to believe in religion, but we aren’t compelled to do so, particularly when acculturated otherwise.
On a slightly different, but thematically related, topic, the latest ish of Scientific American features a story about an emerging understanding of depression as an evolutionary adaptation. Depression and other mental illnesses are more clearly understood now in their physiological dimensions than they were years ago, but now are being looked at from an evolutionary perspective: i.e., what evolutionary value is there in the physical changes that occur in the brains of people with depression? The latest suggestion, according to this article, is that the state of depression acts as a counter-balance to our normally imaginative minds — in fact, the very sort of “normal” human mind that likes to believe in religion and other supernatural phenomena. People who are mildly depressed tend to have a more objective, analytical and realistic outlook on the world than either people with severe depression or “normal” affect. So, say the researchers involved in this study, mild occasional depression is almost like a mechanism for improved analytical ability or for a sort of “breather” for the brain to assimilate and assess the input it has received.
Dear Harvey, Pete, Barry, Kevin, and every other weathermonkey on Boston-area TV: Enough is enough. The fucking blizzard was THIRTY-TWO YEARS AGO. It’s time to stop trotting out the same blurry videotape of cars stuck on Rt. 128 that is older than some of the people who are actually on your broadcast, just so we [...]
It’s going to be a long two months waiting for the iPad to actually ship so that all the tech bloggers and their hangers-on will stop writing so much speculative bullshit about iT and turn their attention iNstead to some other thing that’s going to Change Life As We Know iT. Since you cannot click [...]
Please, please, PUH-LEEZE stop talking about “What do we call the last decade?” Nobody could come up with an acceptable choice ten years ago, and nobody’s going to come up with one now. “Aughties” and “Naughties” are contrived and stupid, and so is the very idea that anything wraps up all nice and neatly into [...]
So if I am to take Scientific American’s word for it, I am depressed because I am hyper-evolved? Cool.
Yes, EXACTLY!
thanks. just when i was starting to feel good about a few months without depression…