Here’s Jerry Coyne on the evolutionary roots of religion:

I like the “byproduct” hypothesis, if for no other reason than it’s almost self-evidently true. Surely every human behavior is in some sense a byproduct of genes that evolved for other reasons. And if religion, like music-making, jokes, and pornography, is an outgrowth of genes that have evolved for other reasons, then we need not make up adaptive stories favoring a “religion module” in the brain. That imposes some restraint against the injudicious production of untestable stories.

Every human behavior is a byproduct? What? When porn gets a prominent place in your list of human behaviors, I can sorta see how someone could say, but only by supposing that Coyne has forgotten about eating and heterosexual intercourse. After making this rather silly claim, Coyne abruptly switches course in the very next paragraph:

That said, I don’t see decisive evidence one way or the other. Pascal Boyer does make an excellent case for the “byproduct” hypothesis, but it is, after all, just an argument that sounds pretty good, without conclusive data. I’m not sure exactly what data would support one hypothesis over the other, and in the end, if you can’t settle the issue the question becomes scientifically uninteresting.

Okay: one minute, the “byproduct” hypothesis is a near-certainty, and the next minute it’s hard to say how we can even know what hypothesis is right? Did the same Jerry Coyne who wrote the excellent Why Evolution is True really just contradict himself so blatantly?

It amazes me how readily people who have a first-rate understanding of evolutionary biology can immediately begin saying such foolish things whenever the topic is the evolution of the human mind. Yes, many of the things said about the subject are speculative, and Daniel Dennett may be right that excessive speculation is a much bigger problem in the study of human behavior than in the study of animal behavior. And yes, some features of human behavior are byproucts, and religion may well be among them. But there’s a huge difference between these moderate observations and the absurd pronouncements that Coyne gives us examples of.

The only real explanation for such behavior is that some people just really dislike the idea that the human mind might contain adaptations, but why dislike that idea? I suspect most of it is just that if the human mind is adapted, then it’s adapted to pursue a rather selfish program of survival and reproductive success, and most people don’t want to accept that view of what human beings are like. In some cases, the problem may also be the conflict between evolutionary psychology and Marxist or feminist ideology, but most people don’t have such strong ideological commitments, so the selfishness issue looks like the best explanation in most cases. On the other hand, simple aversion to accepting that humans are generally selfish doesn’t seem like it should inspire anti-EP animosity quite as intense as is seen whenever the topic comes up. So I’m really not sure what the deal is.