The Attraction of Religion: A New Evolutionary Psychology of Religion

Description

Religion is an evolutionary puzzle. It involves beliefs in counterfactual worlds and engagement in costly rituals. Yet religion is widespread across all human cultures and eras. This begs the question, why are so many people attracted to religion? In The Attraction of Religion, essays by leading scholars in evolutionary psychology, anthropology, and religious studies demonstrate how religion may be related to evolutionary adaptations because religious commitments involve fitness-enhancing behaviours that promote reproduction, kinship, and social solidarity. Could it be that religion is wide-spread, at least in the modern world, because it helps to facilitate cooperative breeding? International contributors explore the philosophical and theoretical arguments for and against the use of costly signalling, sexual selection, and related theories to explain religion, and empirical findings that support or disconfirm such claims. The first book-length treatment that focuses specifically on costly signalling, sexual selection, and related evolutionary theories to explain religion, The Attraction of Religion will be an important contribution to the field and will be of interest to researchers in the fields of evolutionary psychology, religion and science, the psychology of religion, and anthropology of religion. Cover Half-title Title Copyright Dedication Contents List of Contributors List of Figures Introduction: Connecting Religion, Sex, and Evolution 1. Why Don’t Abstinence Education Programs Work? (And Other Puzzles): Exploring Causal Variables in Sexual Selectionist Theories of Religion CSR and the Swiss army knife mind Religion as a variable Mating strategies Religion and mating behavior Religiosity and group-level effects Conclusion 2. Religion and Parental Cooperation: An Empirical Test of Slone’s Sexual Signaling Model Fidelity and social reputation Theoretical predictions Results Prayer and fertility Discussion Methodological contribution Theoretical contribution Limitations and future research Appendix 3. How Is’t With Thy Religion, Pray? Selection of Religiosity Among Individuals and Groups Cooperative breeding in human evolution Successful religious communities are strongly supported by women Social cognitions and signals Were early religious networks founded by women? Conclusion 4. Losing My Religion: An Analysis of the Decline in Religious Attendance from Childhood to Adulthood Reproductive religiosity Expanding the model The NLSY97 sample and variables The lifestyle context of young-adult religious transitions Conclusion 5. Costly Signaling Theory, Sexual Selection, and the Influence of Ancestors on Religious Behavior Costly religious behaviors that never pay off during the lifetime of the altruist The influence of ancestors and a solution to the puzzle of the Golden Rule Conclusion 6. When Religion Makes It Worse: Religiously Motivated Violence as a Sexual Selection Weapon Evolutionary psychological perspectives on violence Sexual selection, parental investment, and religiously motivated violence Future directions Conclusion 7. The Dividends of Discounting Pain: Self-Inflicted Pain as a Reputational Commodity The conundrum of extensive cooperation Costly signals Methods Findings Specific findings and exemplary study cases Discussion Conclusion 8. False Advertising: The Attractiveness of Religion as a Moral Brand 9. Fathering, Rituals, and Mating: Exploring Paternal Stability and Sexual Strategies in Early Religious Practices Paternal care Evolution and fathering Religion, rituals, and evolution Incentivizing behaviors—ritual as attraction Conclusion 10. The Evolutionary Psychology of Theology Theology as the product of evolutionary selection Adaptationism Spandrelism Towards a reconciliation of the adaptationist and spandrelist paradigms Conclusion Notes Bibliography Index