Is religiousness a trait that is being selected for?
Is not believing in evolution theory an evolutionary advantage?
>>7662883
It could well be that religiousness increased inclusive fitness at the expense of individual fitness, by strengthening group cohesion and by making altruistic acts towards the group and spiteful acts towards competing groups seemingly rational even on the individual level (through blessings or an improved afterlife).
A bit like how psychopathy increasing individual fitness at the expense of inclusive fitness, would explain why we aren't all psychopaths.
religiousness is appeal to majority and has its benefits.
>>7662901
Wouldn't having a lot of children be an example of its benefits to individual fitness?
>>7662883
The problem with this idea is that it empirically doesn't work - religious people DO have more children, BUT each generation is all less religious than the previous. Because being raised religious doesn't mean you will stay that way as an adult.
>>7662961
>BUT each generation is all less religious than the previous.
Not necessarily true, as can be seen by the radicalised offspring of moderate Muslim immigrants in Europe.
No, that's retarded. Humans have stopped evolving through natural selection (excluding sexual selection) and there's no way such complex properties could be naturally selected so fast. Humans aren't changing genetically, they're changing culturally.
>>7662972
>Humans have stopped evolving through natural selection
This is literally impossible.
>>7662972
This statement
>Humans aren't changing genetically
Doesn't follow from this statement
>Humans have stopped evolving through natural selection
Humans still evolve through drift and relative differences in fertility between populations. Furthermore, absence of certain 'natural' (whatever the fuck that means) pressures is itself a type of pressure. As adaptations that were useful in the wild may be costly in society, they will be selected against, or simply not be selected for and disappear due to drift.
>>7662928
I fail to see what fertility has to do with religion. High fertility is beneficial regardless, especially if your ethnic group competes against other ethnic groups.
>>7662980
It's not literally possible, but it's figuratively impossible. I never claimed to mean it absolutely, only meaningfully. And in all practical terms we have. If you really think human behavior is changing at a rate that is in any way significant then I have to wonder if you believe in behavioral Lamarckism.
>>7662985
Selected for by what? Death rate prior to sexual maturarity is practically non-existent. And even if you really wish to contort definitions such that sexual selection is the same thing as "environmental advantage" in the evolutionary sense I fail to see how it has any relevance in something so culturally-determined.
>>7662972
You are the retard. Since the neolithic revolution (last 10,000 years or so), human adaptive evolution has occurred at a pace over 100 times higher than before. Humans have changed genetically at an unprecedented rate.
>>7663024
>human adaptive evolution
Genetic variance is not the same as "adaptive evolution." Fuck, it's like none of you even read Darwin (of course you haven't), or understood why it was such a revolution from the traditional understandings of biology as it applied to animal husbandry and race.
Well you can go on waving your hand and explain away every little thing that every person does with "evolutionary advantage", but your studies will continue to prove as fruitless and sensationalist as they have been for the last 60 years that pop psychology has been studying it. I wash my hands of it.
>>7663030
What are you even trying to say?
Adaptive evolution is the result of selection, which this thread is about.
You claimed:
>>7662972
>Humans have stopped evolving through natural selection (excluding sexual selection) and there's no way such complex properties could be naturally selected so fast. Humans aren't changing genetically, they're changing culturally.
Population geneticists have observed the opposite to be true. Humans are changing faster than ever genetically. This is due to selection, not genetic drift.
How much "time" would it take for such complex traits to evolve according to you? Because apparently you hold the equivalent of over a million years of typical human evolution to be impossibly short.
Or could it be that you have just been talking out of your ass the entire time?
>>7662966
The existence of anecdotal counterexamples are not relevant to the trend.
>>7663011
Religion is a meme that makes people make the most of their fertility rather than having few if any children.
>>7662883
>Is not believing in evolution theory an evolutionary advantage?
There are plenty of highly religious societies that don't rontradict evolution by natural selection, although they have their own superstitions.
The disdain for science is more of an Abrahamic thing globally
>Among those who had heard of Charles Darwin and knew something about the theory of evolution, 77% of people in India agree that enough scientific evidence exists to support Charles Darwin’s Theory of Evolution.[116][117] Also, 85% of God believing Indians who know about evolution agree that life on earth evolved over time as a result of natural selection.[116]
>In a survey carried among 10 major nations, the highest proportion that agreed that evolutionary theories alone should be taught in schools was in India, at 49%.[118]
>>7663069
>Population geneticists have observed the opposite to be true. Humans are changing faster than ever genetically. This is due to selection, not genetic drift.
[citation needed]
What a load of bullshit.
>>7663124
This is actually old news anon, but here you go. It's a good read.
>Neolithic and later periods would have experienced a rate of adaptive evolution >100 times higher than characterized most of human evolution.
http://pnas.org/content/104/52/20753.full
>>7663159
i do not understand the methodology well enough, but neutral mutation theory would already predict a greater number of beneficial SNPs... they would fix slower though
its also only 1 paper's methodology for discerning/calibrating for fixation times, which i don't understand with a quick read, so how is it 'proven'?
i mean it did get published in PNAS, but still where's the nature paper
>>7663159
That study shows that selection rates peaked thousands of years ago.
>>7662883
>science
>believing in evolution
You already fucked up, try again.
>>7663011
Allah say condom no good u kill bebes. No condom, must sex many and take all the gift from Allah he want give you, people who use condom must be kill because they offend.
Sounds familiar?
>>7663858
No, it doesn't. Read the study and try again. (The pretty pictures are explained in the text.)
>>7663940
god damnit explain the methods to me please i'm too stupid
>>7663970
The author, Hawks, has tried to explain it here (just scroll down):
http://johnhawks.net/tag/acceleration.html
Specifically:
http://johnhawks.net/weblog/topics/evolution/selection/acceleration/acceleration_rarely_asked_questions_2007.html
http://johnhawks.net/weblog/topics/evolution/selection/acceleration/accel_story_2007.html
>>7664000
thanks dude i'd really like to be up to date on this as it was my major
>>7663940
Yes it does retard. You don't even understand the paper you posted. Selection is low and variation is high (because of low selection and huge population), which is entirely expected by standard evolutionary theory.
>>7664034
its more the fact that you can't determine what the 'flux' of a gene is without spanned data that the 'selection' drops so quick
>>7664061
Then how can you argue anything about current selection? By current I don't mean anthropologically recent, I mean actually current.
>>7664069
trend obviously... mapped against population growth, projected for contemporary pop growth
>>7664082
That's idiotic. We're talking about human civilization from thousands of years ago. If the accelerated selection then was due to cultural environment as Hawks argues then we should not expect the trend to be the same at all.
>>7664118
what? he never gives credence to a cultural environment, nor did I, only a regionalism
>>7664129
to clarify i'm talking about contemporary society
the paper uses 'culture' as synonymous with technology (re: agriculture etc)
