[2008.08.02] 进化：为健康而祈祷

Evolution
进化

Praying for health
为健康而祈祷

Jul 31st 2008
From The Economist print edition

Religious diversity may be caused by disease
宗教多样性可能是由疾病引起

SOME people, notably Richard Dawkins, an evolutionary biologist at Oxford University, regard religion as a disease. It spreads, they suggest, like a virus, except that the “viruses” are similar to those infecting computers-bits of cultural software that take over the hardware of the brain and make it do irrational things.
有些人将宗教视为疾病，牛津大学进化生物学家理查德·道金斯称得上是这一派的代表人物。他们认为宗教象病毒一样蔓延，只不过这种”病毒”更像是侵袭计算机的病毒–就象一个个文化软件入侵大脑硬件，使硬件失控。

Corey Fincher, of the University of New Mexico, has a different hypothesis for the origin of religious diversity. He thinks not that religions are like disease but that they are responses to disease-or, rather, to the threat of disease. If he is right, then people who believe that their religion protects them from harm may be correct, although the protection is of a different sort from the supernatural one they perceive.
对宗教多样化来源问题，新墨西哥大学的科里·芬奇有着不同的假设。他认为宗教不是象疾病，而是面对疾病的反应–或者说是对疾病威胁的反应。如果他的假设成立，那么人们相信宗教可以保佑自己免受伤害或许就是有道理的，尽管这种保护是来自他们所信奉的超自然力量。

Mr Fincher is not arguing that disease-protection is religion’s main function. Biologists have different hypotheses for that. Not all follow Dr Dawkins in thinking it pathological. Some see it either as a way of promoting group solidarity in a hostile world, or as an accidental consequence of the predisposition to such solidarity. This solidarity-promotion is one of Mr Fincher’s starting points. The other is that bacteria, viruses and other parasites are powerful drivers of evolution. Many biologists think that sex, for example, is a response to parasitism. The continual mixing of genes that it promotes means that at least some offspring of any pair of parents are likely to be immune to a given disease.
芬奇教授的观点并不是说宗教的主要职责是疾病防御。就这一观点生物学家提出诸多假设，各不相同。并不是所有人都接受道金斯先生关于宗教的起源的病理学假设。一些人将宗教视为于乱世之中促进群体团结的途径，抑或是追求团结过程中的一个意外结果。这种团结促进说正是芬奇教授的理论基点之一。另一个基点是认为细菌、病毒及其它一些寄生物是推动进化的强大动力。比如说许多生物学家认为性就是对寄生病菌的一种反应。由此而来的基因多次重组就意味着任何一对夫妇至少有一些后代能够对特定疾病免疫。

Mr Fincher and his colleague Randy Thornhill wondered if disease might be driving important aspects of human social behaviour, too. Their hypothesis is that in places where disease is rampant, it behoves groups not to mix with one another more than is strictly necessary, in order to reduce the risk of contagion. They therefore predict that patterns of behaviour which promote group exclusivity will be stronger in disease-ridden areas. Since religious differences are certainly in that category, they specifically predict that the number of different religions in a place will vary with the disease load. Which is, as they report in the Proceedings of the Royal Society, the case.
芬奇教授和他的同事蓝迪·索契尔提出疑问：疾病会不会也是引起人类重要社会行为的诱因？他们假定在疾病泛滥的地区，为了降低传染风险，除非必要，各个群体之间一般不会彼此接触。因此，他们推断在疫区排他的行为模式将更加有力。宗教当然属于排他行为，他们还明确地预测出随着疫情轻重不同，某一地区的宗教数量也会不同。

Proving the point involved collating a lot of previous research. Even defining what constitutes a religion is fraught with difficulty. But using accepted definitions of uniqueness, exclusivity, autonomy and superiority to other religions they calculated that the average number of religions per country is 31. The range, though, is enormous-from 3 to 643. Côte d’Ivoire, for example, has 76 while Norway has 13, and Brazil has 159 while Canada has 15. They then did the same thing for the number of parasitic diseases found in each country. The average here was 200, with a range from 178 to 248.
证实这一观点涉及大量对以往研究的整理。甚至对于宗教组成的定义都是困难重重。但凭借使用一些公认定义，如独特性、排他性、自治及宗教相对优越性，芬奇和他的同事计算出每个国家的宗教数量平均为31个。跨度范围很大，从3到643不等。举例而言，科特迪瓦76个，挪威13个，巴西159个，加拿大15个。他们又以同样的方法统计了各国的寄生性疾病数量。平均值为200，区间为178到248。

Obviously, some of the differences between countries are caused by differences in their areas and populations. But these can be accounted for statistically. When they have been, the correlation between the number of religions in a place and how disease-ridden it is looks impressive. There is less than one chance in 10,000 that it has come about accidentally.
显然，地理位置和人口数量不同也是造成各国统计结果不同的原因。但这两个因素可以算做统计因素（予以消除–译者注）。芬奇二人得出的宗教数量与疾病轻重相关的结论让人印象深刻。仅有不到万分之一的几率说这一相关是偶然。

The two researchers also looked at anthropological data on how much people in “traditional” (ie, non-urban) societies move around in different parts of the world. They found that in more religiously diverse (and more disease-ridden) places people move shorter distances than in healthier, religiously monotonous societies. The implication is that religious diversity causes people to keep themselves to themselves, and thus makes it harder for them to catch germs from infidels.
两位专家也参阅了人类学数据，了解”传统”社会（比如说，城市出现之前）人们在世界各地迁徙的情况。他们发现，在宗教更为多样的（疾病更为严重）的地方人们迁徙路途要短于那些生活在较为健康，宗教单一的人群。这意味着宗教多样使人们少于他族接触，也就不易受到异族病菌的侵染。

Of course, correlation is not causation. But religion is not the only cultural phenomenon that stops groups of people from mixing. Language has the same effect, and in another, as yet unpublished study Mr Fincher and Dr Thornhill found a similar relationship there too. Moreover, their search of the literature turned up work which suggests that xenophobia is linked psychologically with fear of disease (the dirty foreigner…). Perhaps, then, the underlying reason why there is so much hostility between ethnic groups is nothing to do with the groups themselves, but instead with the diseases they may bring.
当然，相关关系并不是因果关系。宗教也不是唯一一个阻止人们接触的文化现象。语言也有此功效，在另外一篇由芬奇和索契尔撰写尚未发表的论文中，他们发现了相似的相关关系。而且，他们通过对文学作品的研究发现对外国人的憎恶感与心理上的疾病恐惧有关（肮脏的外国人……）。或许，少数民族之间敌意不减背后的原因不是由于民族特性，而是对异族可能带来疾病的憎恶。

译者：eirrac     http://www.ecocn.org/forum/viewthread.php?tid=13147&extra=page%3D1