Zeiler, M.D.(2007).
On the reality of tooth fairies: A review of The God Delusion.
Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, 88, 435-443.
In The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins reviews the evidence for and against God. After considering arguments for a
divine power, he says the main current one is that the characteristics of living creatures must be attributed to
an all-powerful designer. Design is the only plausible account, because the excellent fit between each plant and
animal and its environment could not possibly have appeared in one stroke by pure chance. Dawkins agrees that
randomness could not have done the job, but he says that a designer is equally unlikely. The only viable
explanation is evolution by natural selection, a process that operates without plan or design. He then turns to
the adaptive value of religious belief. After failing to find any, he proposes that belief in divinities is the
by-product of a powerful tendency to learn from others, an adaptive strategy produced by natural selection. Adults
and other influential figures teach children many useful things, but they also train them to worship deities.
Religious devotion is established through education, and it is maintained over generations by the social learning
processes underlying all instances of cultural evolution. Dawkins’ arguments together with other problems
encountered in describing evolutionary processes highlight the importance of social learning. His discussion
leads the reviewer to assert that only by knowing the mechanisms of social learning is it possible to understand
how biological and cultural evolution interact to produce life as we find it.
Key words: God theory, natural selection, social learning, cultural evolution, altruism, Dawkins