Evolutionary psychology can help us move beyond violence

It's alarming that anti-Muslim sentiment is growing. On an NPR report on Friday, you could hear people in the background shouting ugly things like "we don't want you people here." I think it's important that we see this for what (I think) it is: ingroup vs. outgroup, and competition for resources. (And, obviously, stress among those who are unemployed, losing their home, etc., and wanting a scapegoat for that.) Evolutionary psychology tells us that we are only connected to our ingroup through our hatred of the outgroup: girls in middle school move up the social ladder by shedding friendships with less popular girls. It is by keeping others out that we form a cohesive group. We have to move past this, but I think people need to come to terms with our basic drives first.

I don't think it's about the religion, at its base. (I doubt many of the people shouting attend church. They just come from a Christian cultural heritage.) It's about ethnic rivalry. And "ethnic" refers more to our cultural group than to a biological group--because science shows that we can't be grouped by race--for example, see Race: The Power of an Illusion. (Although for one rebuttal click here.) I have read that the human species is less diverse than a population of chimps living on one mountainside! Humans had a recent bottleneck, a time when most of us died out, so that the remaining gene pool was very small. This was around 75,000 years ago. So all humans are closely related to one another, compared with other species.

Another obvious point is that most (all?) religions have engaged in horrific violence. Again, I don't think (as Dawkins, Hitchens, others do) that it's the religion itself causing the violence. The religion just defines the ethnic group that hates the other groups because they are competing for resources and because the cohesiveness of our ingroup is defined by our disdain of the outgroups. I think the groups would hate each other, religion or no religion. Obviously, most of our religions have used violence in trying to convert others or in competing for resources (such as land) with others. It is maddening when people suggest that Islam is a religion with violence at its core, because there is so much violence in the history of every Abrahamic religion. Every religion grew out of the point-of-view of an ancient people--people who wanted to preserve themselves at the expense of outsiders. In the Old Testament, Yahweh often told the Hebrews to slaughter other tribes. Steven Pinker points out (sorry, I constantly refer this same TED video) that hunter-gatherer groups would preemptively attack other groups, because they would assume the other group was planning to preemptively attack them. That's the culture we came from, and maybe that was still the norm in the time of the Old Testament. In fact, I think that's one thing Jesus was trying to get us to move beyond. (Then Christianity, like all human institutions, became more about preserving the institution than about loving one's neighbor.) Muhammad was trying to get the Arab tribes who were warring among themselves to unite, at least that's what I gleaned from Karen Armstrong.

I do hope that the mainstream churches are actively discouraging this violence toward Muslims.

For more on how quickly skin color can change in the human species click here.