Andy Thomson of Dawkins Institute Speaks on the Roots of Religion

This month we feature a video of Dr. Andy Thomson, a psychiatrist with the Richard Dawkins Institute, giving a follow up talk on the Neurobiology of Religion to the 2010 American Atheists Convention. Unlike his earlier talk, this one focuses on the primacy of ritual in promoting religious loyalty and fanaticism. And his talk culminates in a live demonstration of his points: The participants sing four verses of “Amazing Grace” while having their arms around those next to them and swaying in rhythm. Following the experience they reported a greater sense of well being.

Andy begins his talk with: “There is only one religion. It is the religion of our hunter-gather ancestors… It is a religion based on … song, dance and trance...” You can “look at any religion anywhere and see direct or indirect echoes of that original hunter-gather religion.”

He contends that our ancestors unknowingly harnessed parts of our neurobiology. This created cultural devices that solved problems for them, such as courtship practices, the problem of freeloaders, punishment and the sublimation of selfish interests to group needs. He states, “We are an incredibly cooperative species, and one of the things we cooperate in particularly well in is war, and these religious rituals were crucial for that.”

Dreams provided the source of the early idea of the supernatural. “It was discovered that if you danced and sang all night long, you could induce a trance state that was a kind of waking dream in which you could communicate potentially with this supernatural world.” As the economy grew, cultures became more complex and we created a clergy which expropriated the access that everyone previously had to the supernatural. The clergy worked closely with the ruling elite to channel religious edicts to the benefit of the elite.

Finally Andy leads the hymn and then ties together the empirical results to his talk.

Of course there will be a discussion after the talk.

Afterwards we will go to dinner at King Dong Restaurant, 2429 Shattuck Ave. (near Haste) in Berkeley. Please join us.

When: Sunday, February 19th, 1:30 - 3:30 PM

Location: Berkeley Main Library, 3rd Floor Meeting Room, 2090 Kittredge St., One Block From Downtown Berkeley BART

BART Access: From the downtown Berkeley BART Station, walk 1.5 blocks south on Shattuck Avenue, then turn right on Kittredge. The library is a half block down the street on the left.

Parking: The city parking lot at Allston & Harold Way, a short block from the library, is $5 for the entire day on Sunday. If you don’t mind walking, take University to MLK, turn right and then instead of proceeding left on Allston to the parking lot, turn right. In several blocks you will see parking on the side streets.

Information: Larry Hicok, Coordinator: 510-222-7580

Ski Grabowski, Treasurer: 510-652-8350

info@eastbayatheists.org

Our next meeting will be in the library on Saturday, March 17th. Details to follow.