Rdos blog

The excellent book The biology of Religious Behavior edited by Jay R Feierman provides an excellent framework on how to understand the biology and evolution of religion.

Viewed from a neurodiversity-perspective, there are certain troublesome aspects of religious behaviors:

1. Shamanism and delusions seems to be related to neurodiversity
2. Prosocial behaviors, submission and cooperative behaviors seems to be neurotypical

The Neanderthal Theory proposes that neurodiversity-traits are of neanderthal origin. So how could the current religious behaviors have evolved? Since major components seems to be recent, but of different origin, it is probably necesary to analyze African/Asian modern humans separately from Neanderthals, and try to figure out what was common before the split of humans into Eurasian Neanderthals and African/South Asian Homo, what evolved later in African/South Asian Homo, what was introgressed from Neanderthal, and how this admixture contributed to today’s religious behaviors.

We today know from many finds in Africa that symbolism, ornamentation and similar behaviors evolved there at the time of the emergence of modern humans. These behaviors group with neurotypical compulsion in Aspie-quiz, and also contain status, reputation and  gossip. These are clearly the prosocial dimension of religious behavior described in the book. It works just as well to differentiate an ingroup based on cloth or ornamentation as on supernatural beliefs. In fact, cloth and music taste  are the behaviors that often define groups in secular societies. So, it is logical to propose that pre-hybrid modern humans evolved the prosocial dimension of religious behaviors, but probably not in the context of supernatural beliefs, but more likely based on possessings and ornamentation.

When it comes to supernatural beliefs and music, the evidence is in favor of a Neanderthal origin. All the questions in Aspie-quiz about supernatural beliefs cluster together, and when the groups in Aspie-quiz were reduced to six neurotypical and six Aspie groups (with the same names), the supernatural group was merged into Aspie perception. These traits have no relation at all to the prosocial behaviors in neurotypical compulsion.

Aspie perception contains a wide range of more sensitive senses and reduced pain sensitivity. This increased sensitivity developed as a natural adaptation to Neanderthal passive hunting (Aspie hunting). Aspie hunting is closely related to Aspie perception, and contains traits like mimicking animal sounds, making traps and alike. Neanderthal hunting, unlike the group hunting of modern humans, would be conductive to developing a very fine-tuned psychology of the prey animals, including mimicking their sounds and understanding their behaviors. This is called animanism in the book, and it is clearly a neurodiversity trait. It is also the case that stims (called self-stimulatory or repetitive behaviors by psychiatry, but related to Aspie communication in Aspie-quiz) are strongly related to Aspie hunting. Mimicking animal sounds fits both as a stim and as an passive hunting trait. Thus, we might presume that the nonverbal communication behaviors of Neanderthals evolved to be useful for passive hunting and to trick prey animals. This has some interesting predictions regarding mirror neurons that are also described in the book. More likely, the relevance of mirror neurons is not for neurotypicals, but for the Aspie variant of mirror neurons, as it was Neanderthals that adapted their mirror neurons to be extra sensitive to their prey animals, and not modern humans.

When it comes to music, the first musical instruments are found in Europe, not in Africa. These are flutes. Flutes and musical instruments fits well with tricking animals. They still functioned in this way in pastoral settings in Sweden only a century ago.  They have no obvious function in relation to the prosocial behaviors of modern humans.

So, it makes sense that highly sensitive senses, musical ability and superior understanding of animal behavior and communication were Neanderthal traits that introgressed into modern humans. These abilities proved useful in their new context, and as a consequence some of the bearers were recruited as shamans, witch-doctors and healers. Later, these “mystical” traits were exaptated into the prosocial behaviors as belief in supernatural things, as people could not understand the extra-sensitive abilities of these people.

Adding to the evidence is that fasting and enduring pain are also neurodiversity-traits. These were traits associated with the shamanistic phenotype.

Building character is an interesting publication that can be found here: link.

While most people (including myself) agree that “good character” is an important trait, and that this is a highly wanted outcome for a child, the test used to measure this (SDQ) seems to be highly inappropriate. The SDQ-test is necesarily highly negatively correlated with ADD/ADHD, ASCs and neurodiversity in general. By using this test they will not measure character traits in neurodiverse people in a meaningful way. Still, it is evident that at least some of the traits in SDQ are not inherited traits, but negative outcomes for being neurodiverse and having a bad upbringing, so it could still be relevant for neurodiverse children as long as the objective is not to measure neurodiverse children against neurotypical children.

That said, here are some of the main conclusions:

1. Attachment has a large positive effect on outcome
2. Rules and rule inforcement has a smaller effect on outcome, but it has a large negative effect when lack of rules is combined with weak attachment
3. High self-esteem and sense of control is a strong predictor for good outcome
4. Depression is a strong predictor of poor outcome
5. There are extra-sensitive children with “negative temperament”

I think it is a given that attachment and warmth (in contrast to hostility) is a major factor in parenting any child, neurodiverse or not. This could have increasing importance for the neurodiverse child.

It also seems that the section about negative temperaments could very well describe the neurodiverse child which has a strong dislike for authority. They do not elaborate and compare this group of children’s outcomes between the rule-not rule dimension of parenting, which otherwise would be pretty interesting.

High self-esteem, sense of control and depression are things that parents acquire because of their own childhood, environment and life experience, and thus this is a factor that could be transfered from parent to child without being genetic. Problems in this area are also frequently associated with neurodiversity. This is thus a confounding factor that is not genetically related to neurodiversity, but to the discrimination / bad behavior against  neurodiverse people. It is also important to note that improper attitudes from social authorities towards neurodiverse people in some countries like Sweden and Norway could create negative feedback loops when social authorities implement unwanted “help” and persecution of neurodiverse people.

Rules and enforcement of rules is a special case. It is not obvious from the design how the rules are implemented. They only ask participants about how many rules they have, and if they are strictly enforced. This misses out on a very important aspect of rules related to dislike of authority that is related to neurodiversity. At some other place they mentioned a study of consistent use of reward and punishment combined with encouraging autonomy in the child being related to positive outcomes. This research also do not answer the question about only reward and punishment (and especially in relation to dislike for authority).

That reward and punishment is not effective on children with dislike for authority is almost a given. Especially not if rules are made up arbitrarily. In order to make a child with dislike for authority to accept rules, it is necesary for the child to understand the rule, to understand why it exists, and on its own accepting the rule as valid and good. Only when this procedure is used will the child accept the rule, and it will then need no reward or punishment in order to follow it. If it doesn’t accept the rule, no level of reward or punishment can make it accept it, and the child will become difficult and argumentative instead, which could affect the primary parameter of attachment. The best parents of children with dislike for authority tend to be parents that have good attachment and few rules and low enforcement, or that have many rules that the child accepts and few rules the child doesn’t accept.