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Religious People Live Healthier, Longer Livesâ€"While Atheists Collect Mutant Genes

http://www.newsweek.com/religion-healthy-atheism-mutant-genes-756984

Religious people tend to live healthier, longer lives than atheists.This trend has puzzled academics for some time, but social scientists may have discovered the reason why.

Research published in Evolutionary Psychological Science has linked a rise in atheism to increasingly prevalent mutant genes.
Lead author Edward Dutton from the Ulster Institute for Social Research explained the research to Newsweek. He says: “Maybe the positive relationship between religiousness and health is not causalâ€"it's not that being religious makes you less stressed so less ill. Rather, religious people are a genetically normal remnant population from preindustrial times, and the rest of us are mutants who'd have died as children back then.”

Changing societal norms are reflected in our genetics. According to natural selection, behaviors across a species will work to improve its survival chances. Social deviations, therefore, are sometimes associated with unfit genetic mutations.
Since the industrial revolution, the hold of natural selection on humanity has weakened. “We developed better and better medical care, easier access to healthy food and better living conditions. Child mortality collapsed down to a tiny level and more and more people with more and more mutant genes have survived into adulthood and had children,” Dutton says.
Atheismâ€"which was once a deviation from the normâ€"is becoming more and more common. As it becomes normal, the burden of associated unfit genes could grow.

Dutton and colleagues tested for left-handedness among religious people and atheists. Left-handedness is a good marker of a high mutational load. They found higher levels of left-handedness in atheists than in followers of most major religions.

Explaining the behavior behind these results, Dutton says: “Religiousness makes you more pro-social, and you become more religious when you're stressed. Religious people would have been sexually selected for because their pro-social, moral, unstressed nature would be attractive.”

The authors argue that certain kinds of religious belief involving the worship of moral gods can thrive as societies develop. “Once groups become relatively complexâ€"developing farming and then citiesâ€"you find yourself dealing with strangers more and more,” Dutton says.
Holding similar moral beliefs gives individuals an incentive to mingleâ€"and reproduceâ€"with new people. This creates large “ethnocentric” groups, bound by religion, who come to dominate others. “They win the wars and kill off the other groups,” Dutton explains.
As selection against mutation becomes less intense, the indirect selection for religiousness also becomes less frequent. “Precisely because it was selected for so long it is associated with all the 'normal' instincts which were selected for in the past,” Dutton tells Newsweek. “Accordingly, while the religious are outbreeding the non-religiousâ€"but, their percentage of the population is shrinking because selection is so weak.”

Earlier this year, Dutton and colleagues identified a link between intelligence and atheism. He predicts that, in the end, intelligence and atheism will be both undone by a gradual return to natural selection.

Dutton explains: “We will be taken over by a more religious society which is more ethnocentric than us. In that our intelligence is decreasing, I suspect civilization will go backwards, Natural selection will return and we will become more religious once more. This seems to be a rule of history.”

I haven't had the flu in 50 years and not a cold once.  Beat that.

I was plagued by colds and allergies before I lost my faith.
I am plagued by colds and allergies now.
But truly sick? Hardly ever.

Also, as long as we get to choose; I pick being Donatello.

Am I the only one who thinks the authors have combined a couple of pieces of data and a lot of assumptions to make some spurious predictions? They don't seem to even consider how gene editing and computer technology will influence intelligence in the future.

"In that our intelligence is decreasing, I suspect civilization will go backwards, Natural selection will return and we will become more religious once more. This seems to be a rule of history.”

A rule of history? I am unfamiliar with this rule.

Quote from: Mr.Obvious on December 24, 2017, 05:52:10 AM
I was plagued by colds and allergies before I lost my faith.
I am plagued by colds and allergies now.
But truly sick? Hardly ever.

Also, as long as we get to choose; I pick being Donatello.

Eat more sprouts and fewer waffles ;-)  Sounds like you need to be on an allergy diet ;-)

Quote from: Cavebear on December 23, 2017, 03:51:56 PM
I haven't had the flu in 50 years and not a cold once.  Beat that.

Ah, but you are The Mule, from Asimov's Foundation Trilogy.  You are here to disrupt the careful calculations of the historians of the future (it was a con, the historians were manipulating popular opinion behind the scenes).

Quote from: Baruch on December 24, 2017, 07:57:03 AM
Eat more sprouts and fewer waffles ;-)  Sounds like you need to be on an allergy diet ;-)

I already have the green part down dude. ;)

Quote from: Mr.Obvious on December 24, 2017, 08:01:19 AM
I already have the green part down dude. ;)

Well maybe per EU Schengen, move to a different biome.  They have to take you as long as you aren't an Ant Twerp ;-)  Giant praying mantises are probably allowed.

Having not  bothered reading the OP doesn't stop me from stating that , yes, we are mutants. A few hundred million years ago we were small nocturnal rat-like critters. We've mutated a bit since then.

Quote from: Gawdzilla Sama on December 24, 2017, 08:16:23 AM
Having not  bothered reading the OP doesn't stop me from stating that , yes, we are mutants. A few hundred million years ago we were small nocturnal rat-like critters. We've mutated a bit since then.

Some of us are still rat-like.  Even shrewish (some women).

Quote from: Baruch on December 24, 2017, 08:02:55 AM
Well maybe per EU Schengen, move to a different biome.  They have to take you as long as you aren't an Ant Twerp ;-)  Giant praying mantises are probably allowed.

LOL, Well played.

Quote from: Gawdzilla Sama on December 24, 2017, 08:16:23 AM
Having not  bothered reading the OP doesn't stop me from stating that , yes, we are mutants. A few hundred million years ago we were small nocturnal rat-like critters. We've mutated a bit since then.

Well--some of us have--but witness congress--not much mutating there; still mainly rat-like critters.

I almost never get sick, maybe once every 3 or so years... if that. Maybe I'm not actually an atheist...

Quote from: Shiranu on December 24, 2017, 01:24:59 PM
I almost never get sick, maybe once every 3 or so years... if that. Maybe I'm not actually an atheist...

Saints don't get to be atheists.  I am sure you will end up doing extreme austerities to yourself or others, just for the Hell of it ;-)

Quote from: Mr.Obvious on December 24, 2017, 05:52:10 AMAlso, as long as we get to choose; I pick being Donatello.

Fine, but I'm taking Magneto.

Quote from: GSOgymrat on December 24, 2017, 06:52:26 AM
Am I the only one who thinks the authors have combined a couple of pieces of data and a lot of assumptions to make some spurious predictions? They don't seem to even consider how gene editing and computer technology will influence intelligence in the future.

"In that our intelligence is decreasing, I suspect civilization will go backwards, Natural selection will return and we will become more religious once more. This seems to be a rule of history.”

A rule of history? I am unfamiliar with this rule.

No, you are not the only one wondering about that.  Before I read your comment, I was pondering the same things.  They collected some data, and not a whole lot, and then started speculating about what it means, how it correlates, and lacking the necessary explanation, seemed to be making causations out of correlations. 

And the rule of history thing surprised me too.  Seems like it may have been conjured out of think air.

Quote from: Baruch on December 24, 2017, 07:59:12 AM
Ah, but you are The Mule, from Asimov's Foundation Trilogy.  You are here to disrupt the careful calculations of the historians of the future (it was a con, the historians were manipulating popular opinion behind the scenes).

The Mule was not a healthy individual.  He was non-threatingly small in stature in his true form.  His larger-than-life self was merely the presentation he created using his mind-powers enhanced via his instrument.  And, being sterile, he was a one-off.  The Seldon predictions went on just fine after his death.

Do you never tire of being wrong?

Quote from: Cavebear on December 26, 2017, 04:27:14 AM
The Mule was not a healthy individual.  He was non-threatingly small in stature in his true form.  His larger-than-life self was merely the presentation he created using his mind-powers enhanced via his instrument.  And, being sterile, he was a one-off.  The Seldon predictions went on just fine after his death.

Do you never tire of being wrong?

Do you ever tire of preferring one fiction over another?  Of thinking that your preferred fiction is true?

Quote from: Baruch on December 26, 2017, 09:06:43 AM
Do you ever tire of preferring one fiction over another?  Of thinking that your preferred fiction is true?

No.  But just admit you really botched it (again) and let's go on from there.

Quote from: Cavebear on December 26, 2017, 09:42:32 AM
No.  But just admit you really botched it (again) and let's go on from there.

I do analogy, not exact quotation.  Easier that way.

Quote from: Baruch on December 26, 2017, 09:44:16 AM
I do analogy, not exact quotation.  Easier that way.

Ah, analogies...  The last refuge of the imprecise!  Like...  (and you thought I was going to do an analogy here?)  That would be like cutting the cake before... (and you thought I would do it again), LOL!

Quote from: Baruch on December 24, 2017, 07:59:12 AM
Ah, but you are The Mule, from Asimov's Foundation Trilogy.  You are here to disrupt the careful calculations of the historians of the future (it was a con, the historians were manipulating popular opinion behind the scenes).

Ah, damn it! No spoiler alert!?

:shucks:







:neener:

I'm certainly the odd one out, everyone else in my family is religious.

I guess everything alive on the planet is a mutant, one way or another. So we're in good company.

QuoteExplaining the behavior behind these results, Dutton says: “Religiousness makes you more pro-social, and you become more religious when you're stressed. Religious people would have been sexually selected for because their pro-social, moral, unstressed nature would be attractive.”

So...stress makes people more religious, but religious people are unstressed, therefore...

QuoteHe predicts that, in the end, intelligence and atheism will be both undone by a gradual return to natural selection.

Didn't intelligence evolve via natural selection in the first place?   :headscratch:

Quote from: Hydra009 on December 26, 2017, 06:28:41 PM
So...stress makes people more religious, but religious people are unstressed, therefore...

Didn't intelligence evolve via natural selection in the first place?   :headscratch:

Yes, the first part is contradictory.  And the second part I don't believe ... natural selection is about sex and successful child rearing.  And I don't see much connection between those and intelligence ;-)

Quote from: GSOgymrat on December 24, 2017, 06:52:26 AM
Am I the only one who thinks the authors have combined a couple of pieces of data and a lot of assumptions to make some spurious predictions? They don't seem to even consider how gene editing and computer technology will influence intelligence in the future.

"In that our intelligence is decreasing, I suspect civilization will go backwards, Natural selection will return and we will become more religious once more. This seems to be a rule of history.”

A rule of history? I am unfamiliar with this rule.

Yeah, that conclusion seemed to come out of thin air.  In the first place, if/when atheism and rationality come to predominate over religion and woo, that solves the social grouping issue he's leaning on because the largest group -- even if heterogeneous -- will be the 'mutant' group of rationalists, with the analogous social constructs to support them as the religious group have in their groups.

What I really wish I could find fault with was his argument that intelligence is decreasing... alas, there's plenty of evidence to support that conjecture.

Quote from: GSOgymrat on December 24, 2017, 06:52:26 AM
Am I the only one who thinks the authors have combined a couple of pieces of data and a lot of assumptions to make some spurious predictions? They don't seem to even consider how gene editing and computer technology will influence intelligence in the future.

"In that our intelligence is decreasing, I suspect civilization will go backwards, Natural selection will return and we will become more religious once more. This seems to be a rule of history.”

A rule of history? I am unfamiliar with this rule.

I actually don't disagree with the "rule," but I do disagree that it can't be broken. As it has been said, "history doesn't repeat, but it does rhyme a little"...

The problem is, stack enough slant rhymes (as history does), and you eventually end up with something completely different.

...The rule is evidenced by the continuous growth and collapse of civilisations, empires, etc. Growth -> Prosperity -> Decay. I'd suggest evolution, at least in humans, operates closely along the same lines: Growth = Reducing selective pressure; Prosperity = Increasing mutational load; Decay = Reinstating selection, removing most of the detrimental mutations.

The caveat is that history doesn't show a return to the same baseline. To the contrary, it shows the baseline changes--sometimes slightly, sometimes a lot--with each repetition.

The same cycle also applies to nonhuman species when we look at carrying capacity, population crashes, and even biologically-produced mass extinction events (e.g. oxygen catastrophe). The idea that mutations are bad and always selected against is just ascientific nonsense.

Quote from: trdsf on December 27, 2017, 12:54:35 PM
What I really wish I could find fault with was his argument that intelligence is decreasing... alas, there's plenty of evidence to support that conjecture.

You my be thinking of the idea that "The intelligence of the planet is finite, and the population is growing".

Quote from: Cavebear on January 18, 2018, 06:41:14 AM
You my be thinking of the idea that "The intelligence of the planet is finite, and the population is growing".

Zero Sum Game

Quote from: SGOS on January 18, 2018, 08:31:54 AM
Zero Sum Game

Yeah, but the population IS growing. 

Everyone knows mutant genes make you hot.

(https://78.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lx811vxt4J1qctwuwo1_1280.jpg)

Quote from: Munch on January 22, 2018, 06:08:26 PM
Everyone knows mutant genes make you hot.

(https://78.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lx811vxt4J1qctwuwo1_1280.jpg)

Why do superheroes always wear spandex?

Quote from: Cavebear on January 24, 2018, 01:24:33 AM
Why do superheroes always wear spandex?

You and I don't.  Proof we aren't buff enough to be superheroes ;-)

Quote from: Baruch on January 24, 2018, 01:57:51 AM
You and I don't.  Proof we aren't buff enough to be superheroes ;-)

See, you aren't reality-oriented.  Superheroes don't wear loose-fitting costumes because that would give the villains something to grab!  And don't even TALK about capes!