An Ecological Approach to Stopping Fundamentalism - David Sloan Wilson

Complete video at: http://fora.tv/2009/11/17/Great_Issues_Forum_What_Is_Religion

The best way to stop fundamentalism? Change the environment that created it, says evolutionary biologist David Sloan Wilson. "If we want to eradicate fundamentalism, there's actually one way - and only one way - to do it: make the world more existentially secure."

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The Forum's year-long exploration of religion launches with a program featuring distinguished philosopher and cognitive scientist Daniel Dennett and noted evolutionary biologist David Sloan Wilson.

They are joined by additional participants to discuss questions such as: What is the nature and purpose of religion? Is it a product of our evolution and something we can now do without? Is it a system of belief and practice that humans require in order to build communities and construct meaning for their lives? What in human make-up renders religion possible? How has religious belief developed and changed over the years, and how does it continue to do so? - CUNY

David Sloan Wilson uses evolutionary theory to explain all aspects of humanity in addition to the rest of life, as he recounts for a general audience in Evolution for Everyone: How Darwin's Theory Can Change the Way We Think About Our Lives (Bantam 2007). He is a distinguished professor of biology and anthropology at Binghamton University, part of the State University of New York.

He publishes in anthropology, psychology, and philosophy journals in addition to his mainstream biological research. His academic books include Unto Others: The Evolution and Psychology of Unselfish Behavior (with Elliott Sober, Harvard 1998), Darwin's Cathedral: Evolution, Religion, and the Nature of Society (Chicago, 2002), and The Literary Animal: Evolution and the Nature of Narrative (co-edited with Jonathan Gottschall, Northwestern 2005). Wilson also directs EvoS, a campus-wide program that uses evolutionary theory as a common language for the unification of knowledge.

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[felixthehuman]

Every time I watch this I hear Sam Harris saying "How many more architects and electrical engineers must fly planes into buildings before we realize that the problem of Muslim extremism is not merely a matter of education?"

[blackiron60]

This guy is more or less saying what socialists have been saying for two hundred years - unless people are materially secure, superstition, sectarianism and violence will reign. Nothing new here.

[2787mh]

@felixthehuman yeah the problem is the American army protects dictatorships for oil money (pakistan, saudi arabia, egypt, etc), and the only people who seem to be able to remove these dictatorships are islamists. google: operation ajax. find out what the iranian revolution 1979 was about. If you think religion is the only reason for these attacks, you are missing the point completely.

[puncheex]

@variablast: The access to and ownership of wealth has not stopped fundamentalism in modern countries from shooting doctors or allowing children to die from basically well understood and completely controllable circumstances, such as the child recently dead from diabetes whose parents refused medical help. This goes beyond education.

[Neanderthalcouzin]

*existential insecurity

[Neanderthalcouzin]

@Johnenglemann ...he's talking about existential security, not material hardship, as an ecological niche for fundamentalism. I think he's definitely on to something, but again this does not mean that a fundamentalist can't carve out a niche, or continue practices, etc, in a very foreign setting. Also, finally, 'western values' are not really about force as protection, but are about rationality, secularism, science, and social liberalism. Understanding the underlying root causes is protective.

[Neanderthalcouzin]

@Johnenglemann I agree with him that environment is crucial, and in regards to culture and behavior this is a fundamental fact. What I'm getting from your comment is a very relevant concern that fundamentalism can be supplanted in new environments, i.e. Scandinavia, and that's undeniable. When D.S.W talks about environment, he means the socioecological environment, which comprises the social one that we create. Furthermore...

[Neanderthalcouzin]

@felixthehuman Wilson was talking about the wider environment. That quote from Sam Harris does not refute that. 

[Johnenglemann]

environment is completely false. Take for example muslims who are now living in safe scandinavian countries who continue with their fundamental religion and the barbaric practices of honour killing and female circumcision. Also consider that many muslim terrorists come from very wealthy and educated backgrounds. I myself am a fundamentalist christian but have been grown up with very little hardship. Western values are only weak if not protected.

[Johnenglemann]

@sciencemile You are exactly right. The man who is speaking is an evolutionary biologist who, as they tend to do, overestimate the environmental effect on humans. Other newer research in human evolution is confirming the fact that humans evolve very little because we have the intellegence to manipulate our environment to fit us instead of being manipulated (evolution) to fit the environment as is with all other organisms. The idea that fundamentalist ideologies arise purely as a product of .....

[szilviabartalos]

Would we even be ready to change nature and ecology in order to exercise believes on another land??? that is just hugely sad !!!!

[sciencemile]

Another thing to note is that Humans are one of the species which molds the environment to be well adapted to themselves, more so than any other species.

So not only is fundamentalist behavior encouraged in an existential insecure environments, it seeks to create this environment, perhaps.