The Utility of Religion...

Note: I have no intention to debate the existence or lack of existence of supernatural beings.  I acknowledge there are elements of existence that are not explained or even explainable as there is without debating the supernatural.

Many confuse the ideas of organizations and institutions.  Simply put, institutions are the sets of rules and norms that govern the behaviors of agents or people in a particular context.  These can be formal laws or merely suggestive norms.  Organizations, by comparison, are a combination of these institutions and a group of people.  

Institutions are often created and manipulated in order to solve problems.  For example, if you have a glut of poachers on a particular parcel of land, you may change the law to forbid hunting in that location.  If, later on, you needed to manage the population of, say, deer on the land, you might change the rules to allow regulated hunts.  You wouldn't generally create institutions de novo unless you had a problem to solve or expected a problem to need solving because rules usually have an associated cost.

The cost from institutions can be from several factors.  A simple one is enforcement--it costs resources or time to catch rule-breakers and to make it costly/less beneficial to break rules.  Even with no rule-breakers, institutions often have opportunity costs by restricting the agents' choices, potentially away from the most beneficial options.  The question of what options are most beneficial for who and in what context is a prime reason for using institutions to solve problems--they allow otherwise mismatched or inefficient solutions at one level to have a different benefit in another context.

A translation for that "socioeconobehavioral" jargon is illustrated by considering a speed limit on the road.  If I need to be at work where I earn money (benefit) and I'm late, the amount of time I spend on the drive in is costly.  The pay-off for me is to speed as fast as I can without crashing. 

However, my rate of speed increases the risk of accidents (cost) to everyone else and therefore the most beneficial outcome for everyone else would be for me to slow down.  Speed limits and the associated risk of fine (cost) alters my pay-off/risk by increasing the cost of speeding to such a point I slow down and benefit everyone else (and myself in certain ways).

But, what if it were 2am in the middle of nowhere with great lighting and no one else around?  The benefit to everyone else goes away, but I still incur the cost.

The problem in the what-if is the fact that institutions are often created based on a single or a set of closely related situations that may not be in effect all the time.  This means institutions can be very inefficient in variable environments.

So, where does religion tie into this?

Elinor Ostrom--a Nobel prize winner in economics--makes reference to something she calls the "Third generation problem".  Many institutions do not survive past a third generation.  My understanding of the problem is the following:

1. A problem exists and the "1st" generation creates an institution to rectify the problem.  Essentially, shifting the costs and benefits around to make their system work.
2. The "2nd" generation continues the institution because either they also experienced effects of the initial problem or they do so out of simple adherence to parental generation influences.
3. The "3rd" generation sees a different context where the institution isn't the solution, it's part of the context.  They proceed to create new institutions or dismantle the old in order to match their current context.

This is where religion comes in.  The convenience of religion is the shift of much of the costs and benefits away from the current context.  Decisions are often made based on the effects of something supernatural which--by definition--is beyond much of the influence of the current situation.  In turn, this makes decisions in the current, living context have different costs and benefits.

This means--if you can shift your institution into your religious institution--you can essentially stabilize a set of laws and rules beyond most of the effects of current contexts.  Essentially, your solution is "fixed" in place. Essentially, you have a solution for the Third Generation Problem.

The problem, of course, is the context and it's stability.  If you have a relatively consistent context, the convenience is you can lock in efficient solutions to problems.  When the context is variable, like the differences between a school-zone and west Texas between Fort Stockton and El Paso, you create inefficiency and risk maladaptation.

This is why many religions historically relied on a set of oral traditions and the ability for shamans or prophets to provide "updates" to the institution.  Religious institutions maintained in this manner allowed gradual, resisted adaptation across time as information about the context accumulated.  We see it in many religions, such as the differences between the Old Testament and New Testament in the Judeo-Christian religions. 

Things like dietary practices changed as many of the same primary food sources shifted with the way of life of typical practitioners.  A greater focus on cooperative living in inclusive populations show up in the New Testament as many Jews/Christians shifted from pastoralism to urbanism.  Because of the lack of widespread, literate access to religious texts of the time, this was accepted.

Since the advent of widespread access to the text and content of written religions, more overt conflict has developed because of a simple suppression of adaptation.  This isn't to say no adaptation has happened.  For example, the idea of "traditional marriage" no longer discounts the putative bride's input as the biblical version did.  Additionally, the idea of unilaterally putting non-believers to death isn't as commonly accepted in many religious circles. 

The benefit of locking in a general, institutional solution to a particular problem is falling behind the ability to understand and tailor solutions scientifically in many areas.  The exception, I think is the problem of local maximums in seeking optimal solutions.

Simply put, if you start looking for an optimal solution, there's a problem depending on your scope of knowledge.  To illustrate this somewhat figuratively, imagine you're lost in the middle of nowhere with a low-powered radio with a half-dead battery.  You know you can maximize the range of your radio by simply getting as high as you can before you make your call.  Imagine it's a somewhat foggy day, you have your walking shoes on and you're pretty much ready to walk, climb, and go anywhere.

Your initial solution would be to look around and pick whatever direction is uphill.  This should eventually lead you to the top of a hill or ridge.  You continue going, selecting whatever direction leads you uphill until you're on the acme of a hill and you can only go down.

Is this the best possible location to transmit?

You really can't tell until the fog clears.  When it does, you can tell whether you're standing on the highest peak in the area or you just happen to be on top of a small hill next to a huge mountain. 

The hill, in this case, is a local maximum.  In many cases, it's a useful height.  The problem is, you will incur added costs to shift to a more optimum location (like that huge mountain).  If you use a scientific rule to find it, you may limit your ability to go anywhere else.

However, if you use a religious rule where the only option is to make for the highest peak you know about... or just suspect...  you have the ability to shift beyond the local maximum.

(Alternatively, you just need a radar set to start with or a satellite phone to call for help with, but that's more scientific problem solving. *smirk*)

That is the utility of religion in a nutshell: irrational, out-of-current-context solutions to local maximum problems.

Now, all I need to do is prove it.