richard_dawkins_-_the_god_delusion

T H E R O O T S OF R K 1. i G I () N 163
THE DARWINIAN IMPERATIVE
Everybody has their own pet theory of where religion comes from
and why all human cultures have it. It gives consolation and
comfort. It fosters togetherness in groups. It satisfies our yearning
to understand why we exist. I shall come to explanations of this
kind in a moment, but I want to begin with a prior question, one
that takes precedence for reasons we shall see: a Darwinian question
about natural selection.
Knowing that we are products of Darwinian evolution, we
should ask what pressure or pressures exerted by natural selection
originally favoured the impulse to religion. The question gains
urgency from standard Darwinian considerations of economy.
Religion is so wasteful, so extravagant; and Darwinian selection
habitually targets and eliminates waste. Nature is a miserly
accountant, grudging the pennies, watching the clock, punishing
the smallest extravagance. Unrelentingly and unceasingly, as
Darwin explained, 'natural selection is daily and hourly scrutinising,
throughout the world, every variation, even the slightest;
rejecting that which is bad, preserving and adding up all that is
good; silently and insensibly working, whenever and wherever
opportunity offers, at the improvement of each organic being'. If a
wild animal habitually performs some useless activity, natural
selection will favour rival individuals who devote the time and
energy, instead, to surviving and reproducing. Nature cannot afford
frivolous jeux d'esprit. Ruthless utilitarianism trumps, even if it
doesn't always seem that way.
On the face of it, the tail of a peacock is a jeu d'esprit par
excellence. It surely does no favours to the survival of its possessor.
But it does benefit the genes that distinguish him from his less
spectacular rivals. The tail is an advertisement, which buys its place
in the economy of nature by attracting females. The same is true of
the labour and time that a male bower bird devotes to his bower: a
sort of external tail built of grass, twigs, colourful berries, flowers
and, when available, beads, baubles and bottle caps. Or, to choose
an example that doesn't involve advertising, there is 'anting': the
odd habit of birds, such as jays, of 'bathing' in an ants' nest or