Al Owski’s Reviews > The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion > Status Update

“Religions are moral exoskeletons. If you live in a religious community, you are enmeshed in a set of norms, relationships, and institutions that work primarily on the elephant to influence your behavior. But if you are an atheist living in a looser community with a less binding moral matrix, you might have to rely somewhat more on an internal moral compass, read by the rider. ”

“if you look at the long history of humanity and see our righteous minds as nearly miraculous freaks of evolution that cry out for explanation, then you might feel some appreciation for the role that religion played in getting us here. We are Homo duplex; we are 90 percent chimp and 10 percent bee. Successful religions work on both levels of our nature to suppress selfishness, or at least to channel it…”

“The only thing that was reliably and powerfully associated with the moral benefits of religion was how enmeshed people were in relationships with their co-religionists. It's the friendships and group activities, carried out within a moral matrix that emphasizes selflessness. That's what brings out the best in people.”

“Whether you believe in hell, whether you pray daily, whether you are a Catholic, Protestant, Jew, or Mormon… none of these things correlated with generosity.”

“Putnam and Campbell put their findings bluntly: "By many different measures religiously observant Americans are better neighbors and better citizens than secular Americans—they are more generous with their time and money, especially in helping the needy, and they are more active in community life." ”

“So religions do what they are supposed to do. As Wilson put it, they help people "to achieve together what they can-not achieve on their own." But that job description applies by binding them together into superorganisms that can prey equally well to the Mafia. Do religions help their practitioners on or at least turn their backs on everyone else? Is religious altruism a boon or a curse to outsiders?”

“People bind together subjectively against external forces of evil… The dance draws everyone together. Whatever their relationship… they become a unit, singing, clapping, moving together in an extraordinary unison of stamping feet and clapping hands, swept along by the music. No words divide them; they act in concert for their spiritual and physical good and do something together that enlivens them…”

“In his book Darwin's Cathedral, Wilson catalogues the ways that religions have helped groups cohere, divide labor, work together, and prosper. He shows how John Calvin developed a strict and demanding form of Christianity that suppressed free riding and facilitated trust and commerce in sixteenth-century Geneva. He shows how medieval Judaism created "cultural fortresses that kept outsiders out and insiders in."”

“If Durkheim is right that religions create cohesive groups that can function like organisms, then it supports Darwin's hypothesis: tribal morality can emerge by group selection. And if Darwin is right that we are products of multilevel selection, including group selection, then it supports Durkheim's hypothesis: we are Homo duplex, designed…to move back and forth between the lower…and higher…levels of existence.”

“In other words, the very ritual practices that the New Atheists dismiss as costly, inefficient, and irrational turn out to be a solution to one of the hardest problems humans face: cooperation without kinship. Irrational beliefs can sometimes help the group function more rationally…”