Religion and Science-Sex and Society--论文代写范文精选

种群的生存和社会形式的联锁，种族主义)是人类进化心理学的核心方面。国家和社会最大的规模,形成多个区域文化。同样的问题出现在小国家，是什么力量构成他们的凝聚力和持久性。下面的essay代写范文进行详述。

Abstract
Religion has been in the past, and still is in a number of countries, the main cohesive force holding populations, particularly genetically disparate ones, together in one system. Patterns of sexual behaviour (often strongly influenced by religious beliefs and prescriptions) in different societies have determined the organisational character of the society - from the nuclear family (now apparently in decline) in most Western countries and the extended family of earlier periods. Both religion and patterns of sexual behaviour as cohesive forces have been radically challenged by science, both as a mode of thought and as the source of technologies which change the environment in which societies operate. A sociobiology of societies has to be founded on a sociobiology of the individuals forming the society and on a biologizing of sociology. The survival of populations (interpreted as gene pools) and of societal forms are interlocked; a sociobiology of societies can start to consider the conditions and forces which over long periods determine the relative success or failure of nations and social systems.

Introduction
Groupism (in some ways a preferable term to ethnocentrism) is a central aspect of human evolutionary psychology. Nations, societies, or states are in-groups on the largest scale, formed of multiple subsidiary in-groups and regarding other nations, societies or states as out-groups. The same questions arise for nations as in-groups as for smaller groups: what are the forces which constitute or underlie their cohesion and persistence. Consideration of smaller groups can throw light on the cohesion of the largest groups; even learned societies or other similar organisations, can be studied in a general process of understanding the evolutionary origin and significance of group formation, the benefits and drawbacks of any in-group which tends to treat consensus as truth. "Religion and Science: Sex and Society", the main title of this chapter, indicates the particular aspects of societal cohesion considered here. This is not to say that these are the only significant cohesive forces; there are other important ones discussed in an earlier European Sociobiology Society paper (Allott 1996) notably: language, genetic relationship, appearance, behaviour, interests.

A necessary project is how best to inject biology into sociology, or into the theory of the society. This seems to involve a number of questions not all of which can be dealt with adequately in this paper: the evolutionary origin of group feeling; from the mother/child relation to the nuclear family to the extended family to the group to the nation; the genetic basis for groupings: the only certainty about kinship exists for mother and child or child and mother - and perhaps not even in these cases nowadays; the genetic bases of cultural preferences and cultural change and their effect on the society's cohesion and survival (monozygotic twin studies are of particular interest); group preference as prior to kinship, or probabilistic indicia of genetic similarity as Rushton (1995)proposes; cohesion automatically implies division but not automatically xenophobia -- inter-group trading systems extend beyond economics but different forms of cohesion interact with one another and may generate conflict; group needs for behavioural predictability and compatibility.

In any discussion of ethnocentrism at the level of society in present times, one must be impressed with the urgency of the large-scale problems which require consideration from a sociobiological standpoint; perhaps an empirical approach might be profitable comparing the forms and processes of social cohesion in different countries. A second impression is that one may need to move to consideration of the structure of the mind, of perception of self and others, of social mapping in the individual, working outwards from individual biology and psychology, to the group, society, State. If a society wants to survive, it must understand, promote and defend cohesive forces operating within individual members of the society.

Cohesion
What is it that glues societies together and prevents them from disintegrating into chaos and war? What is it that enables people to predict each other's behaviour? What is it that enables them to cooperate with one another? These are questions asked by Jon Elster (1989) in his book The Cement of Society: A Study of Social Order. They seem to be the right questions but he offers no very specific answers. A society can be considered as an in-group but it is formed from a multitude of sub-groups; to survive and prosper a society depends upon a dynamic balance between forces of cohesion and division resulting from the interaction of the groups forming the society. Diverse groups - that is groups which exist in different functional areas of the society e.g. religion and politics - may contribute to cohesion but groups belonging to the same category which seek to cover the same functional area may be sources of division. A group in a society which extends to the whole society (for example, a national religion) is in itself not an active force of cohesion - rather, negatively, it is not a promoter of division unless it splits into sects - but can be a source of significant cohesion externally for the society in confronting other societies. The integration of diverse groups into the society is likely to be extremely complicated, particularly in modern Western societies; groups may be integrated hierarchically into supergroups or may cut across one another with individuals belonging in different capacities to different groups which sometimes may compete, sometimes cooperate or sometimes have no interaction. Every source of cohesion, every patterning of groups, within a society can be a source of division; while each form of group cohesion within a society or between societies automatically implies division and the potential for conflict, conflict is not the necessary outcome; as in economics in trade between nations there can, as a result of the concept of comparative advantage, be mutual benefits; the same is true for interaction between groups within a society, not only economically but culturally. There can be inter-group synergy.

Religion
Religion has been in the past, and still is in a number of countries, the main cohesive force holding populations, particularly genetically disparate ones, together in one system. Where they are still influential, in an ever more closely interacting world system, religions may create strife as much as they support group social structures. Religion has been a factor in group survival and success. It has been practically useful and central to human psychology:

"The predisposition to religious belief is the most complex and powerful force in the human mind and in all probability an ineradicable part of human nature" (Wilson, 1978, 169).


Religion as significant evolutionary force has been particularly important through its link with morality. Morality has an objective physiological and neurological basis in so far as it exists to moderate the expression of the array of genetically-derived emotional patterns. Religions might be seen as pragmatic experiments in coping with extra-scientific reality - a provisional attempt at scientific truth - but also serving an important purpose in maintaining social cohesion. Religion unites those who adhere to it; provides a shared view of life and death, of the situation of humanity in existence; it provides a prescription for the relationships of adherents to each other; it seeks to harmonise co-existence of its adherents and strengthens the group they form. Religion has been an important force in human evolution even in the narrowest physical sense, by its prescriptions affecting reproduction:

"Are religions adaptive? Do they help their members survive by promoting behaviours that are suitable in a particular environment? ... [religions] establish the right and wrong conditions for conception to take place, the rights and wrongs of abortion and infanticide; they control adolescent sexuality, they regulate marriage, divorce, remarriage and widowhood."(Reynolds, 1992, 206).

Religion can be seen as part of the evolutionary predisposition of the human mind satisfying the ache of not understanding; it has played a major role in guiding the development of human societies and even can be seen as an instrument of group selection between societies, a motivating force in struggles between groups, populations, nations. Regardless of the truth of their dogmas, at a minimum religions can be seen as catalysts.

Sex
Sexuality is the fundamental cohesive force in all societies and is a major influence on social structure and institutions. A society which does not reproduce itself ceases to exist; the sexual algorithm, the drive of male towards female resulting in the production of children who then have to be protected and nourished in order to survive, means that the forms taken by sexuality determine the success or failure of societies. Patterns of sexual behaviour (often strongly influenced by religious beliefs and prescriptions) give rise to social organisation and result in different group forms which move from the nuclear family (now apparently in decline in most Western countries) to the extended family still surviving over a large part of the third world. Sex has a reciprocal relationship with social institutions; there are relationships between sexual morals and social structure in different societies, most obviously in the relative social circumstances of men and women; it is claimed that strict sexual morals lead to a higher birth-rate in society as a whole - not smaller. However, the technological separation of sexual intercourse from reproduction, the growing use of abortion, the short duration of marriages, the growing use of artificial fertilisation, all operate to move patterns of reproduction away from those which operated in the distant evolutionary past and bring changes in the structure of societies, for example, smaller families, an increase in the proportion of single individuals, and a reduction in the contribution to societal cohesion made by family relationships. Further technological change is in prospect - asexual cloning of humans, now that it has been shown that mammals can be cloned, opens up startling possibilities for societal organisation and cohesion in the future. It seems likely that sexuality will over time be a less important source of societal cohesion.

Recent primate research (Schaik, 1996) has emphasised the importance of sexuality in social systems. To explain the variation in primate social systems, socio-ecology has focused on the role of ecological factors, ignoring male-female associations and relationships and the possibility that male behaviour modifies other aspects of the social system. The study of baboons shows that a causal mechanism connecting social conflict patterns with sexual behavior is indeed biologically possible. For another primate species, recently attracting a great deal of attention (de Waal, 1995), sex is said to be the key to the social life of the bonobo; sexual behavior is indistinguishable from social behavior. Bonobo males remain attached to their mothers all their lives, following them through the forest and being dependent on them for protection in aggressive encounters with other males. There are no indications that bonobos form humanlike nuclear families. The burden of raising offspring appears to rest entirely on the female's shoulders. In fact, nuclear families are probably incompatible with the diverse use of sex found in bonobos. In some modern Western societies one might, not altogether seriously, trace a pattern of sexual behaviour and associated social forms from the Victorian gorilla or orangutan to Sixties chimpanzees to Nineties Bonobos - in California!

The sexual algorithm, one might argue, was the evolutionary origin of group feeling, spreading from the mother/child relation on to the nuclear family and then from the extended family to the group and to the nation. The family can be seen as central to social relationships; it exists as a consequence of and for reproduction; for social life to continue, people need to be replaced; families accomplish this by having children. The family is the main instrument of socialisation, the induction of the individual into the society. In the family, children are taught values, beliefs, and norms, and learn their identity. Regulation of sexual behavior - sexual relations within marriage are the norm for appropriate sexual activity throughout the world. The family institution is the main socialising element in society. The tendency to the formation of groups, from the very small to the very large, seems to go way back in the evolutionary history of the species. It may have originated in the family group, the parents and children, which became necessary because of the altriciality, the helplessness and very partial development of the human infant. In human society, a number of factors can contribute to the unity of the group but empathy is essential. Empathy develops and is expressed above all in the family, in the solidarity of the family, which can be seen as the nucleus round which wider group feeling develops. This may not only be an evolutionary account of the origin of sociality but an explanation applicable for current societies.

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