R
Religion
Vania Rolon
Brunel University London, London, UK
Synonyms
Belief; Faith; Religiosity; Worship
Definition
A system of faith and worship typically composed
of animism of inanimate objects and sometimes of
a superhuman controlling power that may or may
not be a personal God or gods and with its own set
of moral injunctions.
Introduction
Despite the wide array of both past and present
cultures and the incredible variety among them,
religion seems to be part of our evolutionary heritage (Schmitt and Fuller 2015; Wilson 2002).
Granted, some religions are monotheistic whereas
others are polytheistic, and some religions,
although not all, believe in a high god creator of
the universe. Nevertheless, despite this apparent
variability, religions do share some near universal
features. Explaining the existence of these beliefs
has been a goal of the interdisciplinary field
known as the cognitive science of religion, a
field that encompasses both the evolutionary psychology and evolutionary anthropology of religion. The major question regarding the field is
whether religion itself is a mechanism selected
by natural selection to solve a particular adaptive
problem, or if it is merely a by-product of a lion of
different psychological mechanisms such as
agency detection. This section will explore the
main theories regarding the evolutionary origins
of religion. It is important to bear in mind that
specifics of different religions will not be
addressed. Instead, only near universal features
of religion will be discussed.
Near Universal Features of Religion
When one hears the word “religion,” it is instinctive to think about Christianity, Islam, Judaism,
Hinduism, or other of the most well-known religions. These are known as world religions, and
they actually have more in common than meets
the eye. Most cultures and their respective religions share a common narrative about the origins
of humanity, invoke supernatural agents, signal
in-group loyalty through organized public affirmation of religious beliefs, ascribe animistic
agency to nonhuman, mysterious sources, and
distinguish between morally sacred and morally
profane thoughts, beliefs, and actions (Schmitt
and Fuller 2015). Nevertheless, it seems not all
of these near universal characteristics evolved
# Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature 2018
T. K. Shackelford, V. A. Weekes-Shackelford (eds.), Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_342-1
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simultaneously. We do not know if some of these
are sufficiently ancient for biological evolution to
have shaped them for a particular purpose. In
other words, some religion-related adaptations
may have evolved before the emergence of organized religion as we know it, whereas others are
modern inventions (Kirkpatrick 1999). For
instance, Peoples et al. (2016) found that animism
was the oldest trait of religion across a wide sample of hunter-gatherer societies. Other traits such
as belief in the afterlife followed by shamanism
emerged shortly after and were still present in
most societies. Ancestor worship, which appeared
later, was no longer found in many of the societies
studied. Finally, belief in high gods was the most
recent and least common characteristic,
suggesting that these were absent in early humans.
This emergence of religious characteristics over
different periods of time makes it even harder to
distinguish whether some aspects of religion are
indeed adaptations selected through natural selection to solve a particular problem, or if they are
by-products of other psychological mechanisms.
Given that the debate is still ongoing, this section
will describe both stands on religion, that which
argues religious belief is an adaptation and that
which argues it is a by-product.
Religion as an Adaptation: Society as
Organismic
The main theory arguing for religion as an adaptation views religion as organismic (Wilson
2002). Religious believers often compare their
communities to a single organism that can work
similar to individuals in the harmony and cooperation of their parts. Simply put, religious groups
may work like social insect colonies. Organisms
are a product of natural selection that acquires
properties that enable them to survive and reproduce through variation. If religious groups are
organismic in this sense, particular groups may
have evolved because their properties proved
more adaptive than the properties from other
groups.
For instance, imagine a flock of birds. Selection at the level of the gene would involve birds
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varying in the degree to which they alert other
birds of approaching predators. An individual
bird does not gain anything by alerting other
birds of danger, unless the surrounding birds
are kin and share genes with the caller. Instead, a
hypervigilant bird may be detracted from feeding
by spending more time scanning the horizon,
and by drawing attention from predators. As a
result, these callers are less likely to survive and
reproduce than non-caller birds. Generations later,
the remaining birds are the descendants of
non-callers.
An organismic theory, on the other hand,
would argue that a group composed of mostly
non-caller birds could face possible extinction
and that natural selection would favor groups of
callers over groups of non-callers. In this case,
suppose there are two different flocks. The first
flock is the one described above, in which the new
generation is mostly composed of selfish birds
that will not alert others of predators. The second
flock is formed of mostly callers, with a few noncallers. When danger comes, the first group will
have few or no birds alerting. Even if there are a
few callers, chances are predators will get these
birds first since raising an alarm makes them an
easy, conspicuous target. At one point, the group
will be out of callers to raise alarms, and the
unsuspecting birds will become another animal’s
meals and go extinct. The second flock, however,
has better odds at surviving as a group. Because
most birds are callers, some will die when alerting
others, but some will also survive and further
reproduce. The “caller” genes will be passed on
to future generations, and the flock will likely
live on.
But how do flocks of callers and non-caller
birds compare to humans and religion? First and
foremost, it is important to remember that humans
are social animals. Our ancestors would not have
lived long had they not realized that cooperation
was a reliable method to survive. To support this
idea, Wilson (2002) mentions how current huntergatherer societies are strong units of selection and
egalitarianism. Meat is usually shared among all
members of the community, with the best hunter
and his family getting no more meat than others.
Additionally, it appears many hunter-gatherer
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societies do not have leaders, aside from those
who have earned the respect of other members
by being models of good conduct and advise.
Such egalitarian utopia seems counterintuitive to
the concept of the selfish gene, yet even members
in these societies are likely to have selfish
impulses. The reason why they do not act on
these impulses is because they are effectively
controlled by other members of the group, a
form of guarded egalitarianism known as reverse
dominance. In many animal groups, the strongest
individual is usually capable of dominating any
rivals, but in hunter-gatherer tribes, any individual
who attempts to dominate the rest is likely to
encounter combined resistance. Even the strongest individual would be no match for the collective strength of the group and could instead be
punished for these dominance attempts. Examples
of reverse domination range from gossip and ridicule to ostracism and assassination. With such
costly consequences, individuals are better off
by simply cooperating and following the group’s
social norms.
Mechanisms that promote the welfare of the
group as whole without demanding extreme sacrifice from its members would further reinforce
adherence to social norms. It is here where religion and superstitious beliefs come into place.
Wilson (2002) describes the case of the Chewong,
a hunter-gatherer tribe that resides in the rainforest
of the Malay Peninsula and that functions on
egalitarianism like many other hunter-gatherer
societies. Equal distribution of food and resources
is governed by a system of superstitions known as
punen in which not satisfying an urgent desire
results in calamity. Actions that may result in a
state of punen include not inviting someone to
share food brought back from the hunt, and not
sharing gathered goods when these were obtained
from far away regions or when these are scarce.
Belief in the punen system conveys great
advantages, and it is probably not by mere coincidence that the actions that may result in calamity
have to do with food sharing. If a gatherer had to
go very far to obtain a resource, then such
resource must be shared with everyone, whereas
if the resource is close to the settlement, individuals are allowed to keep whatever amounts they
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gather on their own. Such rules make perfect
sense from an evolutionary perspective; forcing
others to share resources that can easily be
acquired would not convey any advantages
because anyone would be able to gather these
anyway, whereas sharing resources that were
hard to obtain increases the chances of survival
for those individuals who would have never been
able to acquire these goods by themselves. Additionally, if all members truly believe that calamity
will befall those who do not share, then they are
more likely to obey any injunctions imposed by
the group.
Overall, fear in a higher, punishing force or
entity ensures compliance and obedience. Groups
with such altruistic beliefs like the Chewong
would have been more likely to cooperate and
aid each other than groups with selfish beliefs,
and because cooperation in a hostile environment
is essential for survival, tribes with selfish systems
would have disappeared. In this sense, like a beehive that works as one single organism because all
its parts work together to ensure survival, religion
serves as an adaptation that allows humans to
function as a coherent whole.
Religion as a By-product: From
Hyperactive Agency Detection to Mating
and Attachment
Though an interesting theory, Wilson’s (2002)
proposal of viewing society as organismic and
religion as an adaptation that allows groups to
function as a whole is not an idea that goes
unchallenged. Selection at the level of the gene
rather than within-group selection is a major key
idea in evolutionary studies. Furthermore, one
must consider other possible explanations and
assess which one can do a better job at explaining
the wider array of phenomena that religion has to
offer. As Buss (2002) states, “Explanations for
some religious phenomena, such as rituals and
rites, may fail to account for other phenomena
such as piousness or prayer.” In order for a
religion-specific mechanism to have evolved, it
would have had to solve a particular adaptive
problem faced by our ancestors, yet religion
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encompasses such a diverse amalgamation of
beliefs and behaviors that is highly unlikely that
it is the product of a single adaptation. Additionally, as discussed previously, many features of
religion are too recent to have been shaped by
natural selection and thus work as an adaptation.
Finally, any hypothesis on the evolutionary origins of religion should not assume the existence of
yet other unexplained mechanisms. An argument
that religion evolved to ameliorate fear of death
begs the question as to why humans would be
built to even fear death in the first place
(Kirkpatrick 1999). Finally, as Tooby and
Cosmides (1992) state, our cognition resembles
a confederation of hundreds of functionally dedicated computers, each designed to solve one particular problem faced during our evolutionary
history. There is not one single general purpose
computer capable of solving several adaptive
problems at once. It is unlikely that religion is
the computer in charge of creating cooperative
behaviors among social groups, solving humans’
fear of death, monitoring sexual conduct and
reducing promiscuity, preventing immoral
actions, and so forth. Instead, the idea that religion
is a by-product resulting from numerous domainspecific psychological mechanisms is perhaps
more plausible and could help explain the myriad
near universals that were described at the beginning of this section.
Because our minds evolved to process the
world in ways that are adaptive rather than truthful, our cognition is prone to the occasional systematic error. For instance, it seems humans come
equipped with mechanisms for categorizing and
reasoning about the natural world (Kirkpatrick
1999). These include reliably distinguishing
animate from inanimate objects, invoking different principles of inference such as causal reasoning, and ascribing goals, desires, and motives to
people and objects displaying certain patterns of
motion. Sometimes, these mechanisms may be
misapplied beyond their intended domains. For
instance, humans tend to have what is known as
a hyperactive agency detection device. This
device allows us to assume agency in inanimate
objects, which may have been adaptive during our
Pleistocene years, as confusing a rattling branch
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for a snake and avoiding it did not present costs to
survival, whereas ignoring a rattling sound could
lead to death if such sound did, in fact, turn out to
be a snake. It is generally safer to mistake an
inanimate object for an animate one, yet when
these mechanisms are taken a step too far, an
individual may ascribe agency and even anthropomorphize inanimate objects. As mentioned previously Peoples et al. (2016) found that animism
or attributing a soul to plants, inanimate objects
and natural phenomena was the oldest and most
common religious characteristic found across a
wide sample of current hunter-gatherer societies.
These findings suggest humans are particularly
prone to assign some form of life or essence to
objects.
Social exchange and kin-related mechanisms
are also manifested in religious beliefs and practices. Ancestor worship, reciprocal altruism, promotion of social cohesion and cooperation, and
subordination of individuals’ self-interest to that
of the group are other common characteristics of
religions (Kirkpatrick 1999). Worshipping dead
ancestors reflects kin altruism, as the living
attempt to help the dead in the afterlife by burying
artifacts and possessions while asking for help and
guidance with their own worldly affairs. Attempts
to enforce altruism do not end there, as many
religions promote prosocial behavior beyond
blood ties through the widespread use of kinship
terms such as calling other members “brothers and
sisters” or calling a priest “father.” Promoting
deities that monitor cooperation and altruism and
punish those who do not abide by these rules may
also be an encouraging method for promoting
prosocial behavior.
Additionally, altruistic and kin mechanisms
can be observed not only in how people interact
with each other and with their ancestors, but also
in how they interact with the supernatural forces
that they believe control nature, be it a high god or
other entity. If a deity is perceived as kin, then
attachment mechanisms may become activated.
Perceiving God as a fatherly figure or as a caretaker plays on the attachment system by which
the caregiver is sought as a haven of safety, particularly during times of danger. If a deity is not
perceived as kin, interaction with it should be
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guided by the same principles of reciprocal altruism. Such seems to be the case given practices in
which individuals offer deities different forms of
offerings (e.g., impressive and massive monuments, works of art, and a variety of sacrifices)
with the intention of gaining favors (e.g., good
harvests, military victory, a place in heaven) from
these high-status forces. In general, supernatural
beings across religions tend to resemble humans,
albeit with some “super” characteristics added.
Deities may be ubiquitous or have the power to
control some aspect of nature, but they otherwise
display the full range of standard human emotions, desires, and motives, which is why interactions between humans and deities operate under
the same psychological mechanisms as interaction
amongst humans.
One final mechanism worth mentioning that
seems to come into play in religion relates to
mating and controlling others’ sexual behavior.
As Buss (2002) points out, religious doctrines
frequently target mating and sexual behavior.
When it comes to sociosexuality, religion has
tried to regulate aspects such as when conception
should take place, the age at which intercourse
should begin, how many sexual partners an individual is allowed to have, the moral standing of
premarital sex, and so on (Schmitt and Fuller
2015). According to the reproductive religiosity
model (Weeden et al. 2008), heightened religiosity is often adaptively used by religious groups to
discourage sexual permissiveness. Discouraging
unrestricted sex is beneficial for males in that it
decreases the chances of being cuckolded, and it
is also beneficial for females in that it helps ensure
their husbands will not abandon their long-term
commitments to themselves and their offspring.
Several studies suggest a link between religiosity
and measures of permissive sexuality. For
instance, Strassman et al. (2012) found that religions that were stricter in forcing females to signal
menstruation and had higher levels of mate
guarding had higher chances of paternity
certainty.
Another aspect of religion as a device for
mating is that religious leaders are often males
who hold power and resources, which are important for females when looking for mates. Buss
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(2002) explains that religious leaders use their
power to gain preferential access to fertile
women. In native Greenland, for example, a
woman would be considered fortunate if the
Angekokk or prophet offered his sexual caresses.
Similarly, the religious leaders among the
Tachtadshys in Lycia could have sexual intercourse with any women they fancied during the
yearly religious assemblies, and virgins among
the Zikris were believed to be cleansed if they
had intercourse with the high priest. These examples show how religious leaders had better access
to females than the average man, which in turn
increased their reproductive success.
Conclusion
The evolutionary origins of religion are still
unknown, and religion is composed of such a
plethora of phenomena that it is hard to separate
one aspect from the other. Although it is tempting
to believe religion is an adaptation, it seems to be
involved in one too many aspects of the human
psyche to have evolved to solve a particular adaptive problem. Additionally, several aspects of
religion seem to have evolved across time, with
some practices such as burying the dead emerging
before others such as belief in high gods or injunctions on moral sexual behavior. If religion did
evolve as an adaptation, it could be possible that
later components (e.g., belief in a punishing deity
to ensure compliance to norms imposed by the
group) were added to it because humans realized
the value in them.
Cross-References
▶ Joseph Henrich on Religion
▶ Religion and Morality
▶ Religion and Religious Beliefs
▶ Religion as a By-product
▶ Religion as an Adaptation
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