Why do religious beliefs tend to persist in society at all? Do they confer any advantage? Dawkins deals with this paradigm in Chapter 4 of the God Delusion. However, physiological value of certain aspects of religion appears to be more than what Dawkins thinks it is:
Over last 2 decades, there have been certain reports suggesting psycho-social regulation of physiology. Specifically, there appears to be a physiological value to two main characters of any religion -
1) Group based subjective social support: Cole et al (genome biology, 2005) published the first indication that human genome-wide transcriptional activity is altered in association with a social epidemiological risk factor – subjective loneliness. They reported genome-wide transcriptional activity in people who chronically experienced high versus low levels of subjective social isolation (loneliness) alterating the activity of transcription control pathways that might contribute to increased adverse health outcomes in social isolates. DNA microarray analysis identified 209 genes that were differentially expressed in circulating leukocytes from 14 high- versus low-lonely individuals. This included impaired transcription of glucocorticoid response (GRE containing) genes and increased activity of pro-inflammatory transcription control pathways (regulated by NF-kB) including up-regulation of genes involved in immune activation, transcription control, and cell proliferation, and downregulation of genes supporting mature B lymphocyte function and type I interferon response. This provides a functional genomic explanation for elevated risk of inflammatory disease in individuals who experience chronically high levels of subjective social isolation. People who are socially isolated have increased risk of all-cause mortality and several specific infectious, neoplastic, and cardiovascular diseases. My point is that Religious groups may provide subjective social support that may have an inherent physiological, functional and adaptive value as suggested by this case.
2) Meditation: Meditation in one or the other form is another aspect of most of the religions that may have certain psychosomatic physiological value. Abstract from Spiegel, D., J. R. Bloom, et al. (1989). “Effect of psychosocial treatment on survival of patients with metastatic breast cancer.” Lancet 2(8668): 888-891, is quoted:
The effect of psychosocial intervention on time of survival of 86 patients with metastatic breast cancer was studied prospectively. The 1 year intervention consisted of weekly supportive group therapy with self-hypnosis (Imagining a ray is coming and killing the tumor cells – Meditation??) for pain. Both the treatment (n = 50) and control groups (n = 36) had routine oncological care. At 10 year follow-up, only 3 of the patients were alive, and death records were obtained for the other 83. Survival from time of randomisation and onset of intervention was a mean 36.6 (SD 37.6) months in the intervention group compared with 18.9 (10.8) months in the control group, a significant difference. Survival plots indicated that divergence in survival began at 20 months after entry, or 8 months after intervention ended.
Of course, we need to study the physiological effects of meditation in more detail but such a physiological advantage conferred by a meditation part of certain religions might also be a reason that people find certain meditative religious practices, particularly in Buddhism and Hinduism, comforting. This suggests a functional and physiological value to subjective social experiences and meditation – the two fundamental iterative themes that recur in a lot of religions.
It is noteworthy that we can still use these two functionally adaptive features of organized religion namely- i) subjective support and ii) meditation, to physiological advantage without taking metaphorical stories presented in religions, literally. As a matter of fact, taking those stories literally is the root of many problems currently faced by our world, continued war and violence for one.
