EVOLUTION AND RELIGION: DAVID SLOAN WILSON

Notes on David Sloan Wilson from Trinity Institute, 2013 (author of "Darwin's Cathedral")
From evolutionary standpoint- "a group of individuals who are good to each other have an advantage over a similar group who are not." GOOD="behave for the good of the group, not just the individual". This trait is called "Prosociality".
True in all biology, not just for humans. Evolution selects traits that support this. This occurs on the level of species, groups, and cultures as well. CULTURES EvOLVe as well as individuals. It occurs in a multi-level hierarchy, and traits that are "good" at one level may not be so at a higher level. Natural Selection occurs at the level of groups.
Major Evolutionary Transition is rare...social insects originated only a few times/places, but now 1/2 insects are social, and can form a "group mind" and "think" as a single individual.
Human ancestors, unlike other primates, "suppressed disruptive selective techniques" and passes on traits for hunting, child rearing, cooperation with non-relatives, and symbolic thought, and team work...ability to "transmit information across generations in symbolic forms" thus enabling "rapid cultural selection". The same species could, under different circumstances, "eat seeds or whales, and pass on information without a single book." Humans, by virtue of consciousness, have the capacity to CHOOSE THE COURSE OF THEIR OWN EVOLUTION before the fact. Or, at least, influence that course.
Culture receives environmental information as input like a body does in a landscape or a brain does in a head.
REDUCTIONISM tries to explain everything re individual self-interest.
What Geno-type is to individuals, Symbo-type is to cultures . [did I get this right? it seems like it would be important].
Epistemology- Factual (scientific) knowledge=accurately describes (in a provisional way) observed data
Practical knowledge- enables humans to survive and reproduce (factual or not). [is this Immanuel Kant revisited? He uses such language, I think, to describe "noumenal" realities that  can be inferred, but not observed]
"Adaptive Fiction" - versions of reality developed by human beings to cope with reality- without reference to facts. Not limited to religion...
Different forms of religion evolve in different environments and are adapted to those conditions.
SYMBOtypes for the future?
1) support behavior oriented toward highest planetary good and maximum degree of teamwork
2) small groups proliferate as people are most at home in these.
3) strong reliance on factual (scientific) knowledge... Avoid adaptive fiction. [questi on: how distinguish be tween "adaptive fiction" and "practical knowledge"? Or are they the same thing?]

NOTE: avoid the language of "divine intervention"...a THIRD WAY between theism/mechanism="adaptationism" not the same as 19th century Materialism=do justice to malleability/plasticity/generative quality of biological (and anthropological ) reality. [is this equivalent to "post modernist" and even "2nd Naivite" thinking? Just wonderin']