I could have picked a different group of animals sharing a common adaptation, but since you already started on sharks, carnivores were handy.

Jonathan Blake: “Mormon mores regarding masturbation are actually a counterexample to your hypothesis.”

To be fair to me, I’d include masturbation among the “accumulated squicks” that I mentioned, especially since it obviously isn’t a behavior that would need to be restricted on account of lack of birth control. Also, the case of Kip Eliason is an example of Mormon sexual mores being maladaptive. He certainly isn’t in a position to beget or convert more Mormons himself, nor is his suicide of much use in encouraging potential converts.

Offhand, it seems that the sexual mores that are common across most religions are carryovers from the days before effective birth control, plus some accumulated squicks, and these have persisted more because of inertia than of any functional benefit to religion.

Mormon mores regarding masturbation are actually a counterexample to your hypothesis. The Mormon attitude to masturbation is rooted historically to the erroneous belief that masturbation led to insanity which arose in the 1700s. Masturbation wasn’t such a concern until that time. In fact, Mormon church leaders didn’t say anything on the topic until 1870, forty years after Joseph Smith organized his church. Repression of masturbation is a relatively recent innovation.

My personal experience confirms that guilt keeps people coming to certain churches. You should be skeptical, but for those of us who’ve lived it, there are no doubts about the power it has over people’s lives. People have committed suicide over the Mormon attitudes to masturbation.

On March 2, 1982, Kip Eliason, age 16, distraught and filled with self-hate over his inability to stop masturbating, committed suicide. Before asphyxiating himself, Kip left his father a note:

“Dear Dad,
I love you more than what words can say. If it were possible, I would stay alive for only you, for I really only have you. But it isn’t possible. I must first love myself, and I do not. The strange feeling of darkness and self-hate overpowers all my defenses. I must unfortunately yield to it. This turbulent feeling is only for a few to truly understand. I feel that you do not comprehend the immense feeling of self-hatred I have. This is the only way I feel that I can relieve myself of these feelings now. Carry on with your life and be happy. I love you more than words can say.
—Your son, Kip”

Guilt killed Kip Eliason. It should come as no surprise that it had the power to keep me in the pews for decades.

Actually, it’s more like saying that sharp teeth aren’t adaptive for eating meat because there isn’t much evidence that there is a predominance of sharp teeth in carnivores, even though selection pressures would lead to such predominance if sharp teeth did have such an advantage. (This, of course, isn’t true for carnivores.)

Offhand, it seems that the sexual mores that are common across most religions are carryovers from the days before effective birth control, plus some accumulated squicks, and these have persisted more because of inertia than of any functional benefit to religion.

That’s an interesting idea, but it’s like saying that shark teeth aren’t adaptive because fish are all over the map on the teeth/no-teeth question. Religions that appeal to guilt and shame occupy a niche. Not all religions thrive through guilt. Some people are resistant to guilt, so there’s a niche for guiltless religion to attract those people. Other people are prone to guilt, so there are religions to take advantage of that trait. I think you’ll agree that treating all religion as the same is clumsy and often wrong.

This all reminds me of a joke an Episcopalian friend told me once. She defined Episcopalianism as “Catholicism light”, all the sin and half the guilt.

What I’m not convinced of is that broad-brush statements like this,

Jeff: “Organized religion fears people freely choosing their own behavior or getting back to their more basic animal nature.”

Siamang: “Which is the real goal of religion, to build up a ton of guilt with which they can control you.”

are justified. As I noted before, they read like conspiracy-theory crap, and when I’ve pressed on Siamang, what I’ve gotten is watered-down claims that still look like half-truths. That some religious groups manipulate people with guilt to at least some degree is a given. However, Jeff and Siamang have implied that religious groups are overwhelmingly concerned with guilt and control, and the reality is that religious groups are all over the map on this. Furthermore, try as Siamang might, claiming that there is no implication that religious leaders aren’t consciously attempting to control their members through guilt doesn’t wash. Who’s the “they” in “they can control you”? If “they” is a metaphor, it’s an awfully obscure one.

Nor does the idea that religions evolved, in Darwinian fashion, rules about sex such that the adherents stay in the fold, or that they spread themselves through their adherents’ children, really wash. For that idea to work, such rules would have to be effective, so that selection pressures would favor them. Yet these rules, as I noted before, have been double-edged swords rather than effective adaptations. And what we see is the consequence: religions are all over the map with regards to how hung up they are about sex.

J. J. Ramsey said: And I can tell you that people are great at remembering the hits and forgetting the misses, and that people are likely to exaggerate the negatives of the things that they have rejected.

While that’s true, how does one determine whether or not they’re doing that (confirmation bias)? After a careful, rational analysis of my past religious beliefs and practices, I can confidently state that it was confirmation bias that was part of what was keeping me the in the fold (in my early twenties). Also, a sense of community, warm personal relationships with caring church members, a drive for truth and meaning, desire for approval, and a misguided belief that so many Christians couldn’t possibly be wrong about the facts. Both good and bad reasons, aside from guilt, for belonging to a group.

In my earlier years, it was mainly parental guidance that put me in church (staying home on a Sunday, or not attending my Christian school, wasn’t an option). Peer pressure and tradition was a motivator for both myself and my parents: good people follow the rules of life, and you learn those rules in church. Period.

I’ve also been involved in multi-level marketing organizations, and discussed with others their experiences with certain self-improvement schemes, and they use a number of the same psychological elements as religions in their recruitment and retention methods. It’s a marketplace of ideas and faiths in the U.S.; competition can be fierce.

So your reassurance that “they’re actually pretty good at this stuff” doesn’t tell me a whole lot, especially in the face of other indications that they aren’t that good.

I think I’ve offered some greater detail than that in my previous posts, and above, for why people can coerce themselves into submitting to the authority of religious (and other) organizations. If you’re unconvinced about the effectiveness of the psychology involved in gaining and retaining adherents to a cause, perhaps you could tell us how you think it works? Certainly, as I’ve said, there’s more than simple guilt involved here. However, that guilt is a necessary (but not sufficient) element.

Steelman: “it seems that these methods of control can evolve through trial and error, without there necessarily being a great deal of sinister forethought”

True, but the implications of the original comments implied something more sinister.

I agree that anyone can make the mistake of painting others with a broad brush. Are you interested in moving the conversation forward (as I and Jonathan Blake have), or are you still focused on what Siamang said before he clarified his position?

And I can tell you that people are great at remembering the hits and forgetting the misses, and that people are likely to exaggerate the negatives of the things that they have rejected. So your reassurance that “they’re actually pretty good at this stuff” doesn’t tell me a whole lot, especially in the face of other indications that they aren’t that good.

Steelman: “it seems that these methods of control can evolve through trial and error, without there necessarily being a great deal of sinister forethought”

True, but the implications of the original comments implied something more sinister.

J. J. Ramsey said: Now are there organizations that control members through guilt? Sure. If this is what the Mormons and Catholics and evangelicals are doing, they are doing it in an incompetent fashion.

I was raised mostly in the Church of the Nazarene, attended Baptist and Lutheran parochial schools, am still on the roles of the Mormon church (I was involved with my parents, from about age 8 to 10), know a number of Catholics, and attended a Pentecostal church in my early twenties. I can tell you from experience, they’re actually pretty good at this stuff.

However, unlike money making, cultish, marketing schemes, religion is often less cynical in its application of guilt as a motivator. Keep in mind that it’s the promise of a glorious future (financial independence, heaven, freedom form shame and impurity, or just the satisfaction of being right or superior) that is paired with guilt to provide motivation for adherence to the cause, whatever it may be.

Jonathan Blake said: That doesn’t argue that there is necessarily a cabal of cynical leaders who exercise control consciously. Leaders can be duped by religious dogma just as much as their followers yet still manipulate people through religious guilt with only the best of intentions.

I agree with JB here. If you’ve read Daniel Dennett’s Breaking the Spell, it seems that these methods of control can evolve through trial and error, without there necessarily being a great deal of sinister forethought on the part of those who perpetuate the organizations which employee them. The Catholic church has certainly known for centuries now that guilt (and support/reward) is an effective tool for compliance, but it’s rationalized that using it is moral since it’s for the “best possible” cause. I think L. Ron Hubbard, on the other hand, had his carrot and stick in mind from the beginning.

BTW, in addition to having found Dennett’s book interesting and enlightening, I’m currently reading and can, so far, recommend Eric Hoffer’s The True Believer.

And now you’ve just moved the goalposts. The original remarks to which I responded were sweeping statements about religion in general, but now you are talking about a certain subset of the religious, namely the fundies.