The Evolution of Religion

Religion as an Adaption

Group Cohesion

Direct Fitness Benefits

Group Cohesion

Sosis, R.; Alcorta, C. (2003). "Signaling, solidarity, and the sacred: the evolution of religious
behavior". Evolutionary Anthropology 12 (6): 264274.

Direct Fitness Benefits

McGregor, I., Inzlicht, M., Hirsh, J., & Nash, K. (2009). Neural Markers of Religious Conviction.
Psychological Science, 20(3).

Decoupled
Cognition

Theory
of Mind

Attachment
Theory

Transference

Religion as a
By-product

Inferential
Reasoning

Intensionality

HADD

Attachment Theory

Granqvist, P., & Kirkpatrick, L. A. (2008). Attachment and religious representations and
behavior. In J. Cassidy, P. R. Shaver, J. Cassidy, P. R. Shaver (Eds.), Handbook of attachment:
Theory, research, and clinical applications (2nd ed.) (pp. 906-933). New York, NY US: Guilford
Press.

Hyperactive Agency
Detection Device

Gray, Kurt; Daniel Wegner (Feb 2010). "Blaming God for Our Pain: Human Suffering and the
Divine Mind". Personality and Social Psychology Review (Sage) 14 (1): 910.

Decoupled Cognition and

Theory of Mind

Grafman, J. (2009). Theory of Mind could help explain belief

in God. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,
21(9).

Explaining Moral
Religions
Nicolas Baumard & Pascal Boyer

Moralising Religions

Religion is associated with

moral teachings, particularly in
the Western world.

Moralising religions have only

appeared recently.

Most of our evolutionary history

we lived in small societies of
foragers and horticulturalists.

No unified doctrine about

spirits or gods and no
established religious
organisation or personnel.

Introduction

Organised religion with

ceremonies, doctrines and
hierarchies first appeared
around 6000 years ago.

However, these gods lacked a

moral conscience and
uninterested in human morality.

Classical Antiquity; Sumerians,

Egyptians, Romans, Greeks.

The gods only cared about

sacrifices and obedience.

Introduction

Moralising religions emerged during

the 1 millenium BCE.

These new movements connected the

belief in supernatural agents with
specific moral prescriptions e.g.
Buddhism, Jainsim, Christianity.

Emphasised the proportionality

between deeds and supernatural
rewards. And between sins and
penance.

Recent models of evolved

dispositions for fairness in
cooperation suggest that morality
based on proportionality is highly
intuitive to human beings.

Universal Similarities

Moralising religions share similar ideas

based on the principal of proportionality.

The Golden Rule.

Supernatural Justice; the universe is

intrinsically fair. Good deeds are rewarded
and misdeeds are punished either through
reincarnation or in the afterlife. e.g.
different realms of rebirth in Buddhism.

Sainthood and heroism; good deeds

beyond what is required have a special
status in moral religions. e.g. good karma
in Buddhism.

These similarities have not been properly

explained. Evolutionary dispositions for
cooperation may provide the answers.

The Golden Rule in Different Religions

Judaism
1200 B.C.E

That which is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow. That

is the whole Torah; the rest is the explanation, Talmud, m.
Shabbat 31a

Buddhism
600 B.C.E

Hurt not others in ways that you yourself would find

hurtful, Udanavarga 5:18

Confucianism
500 B.C.E

Never impose on others what you would not choose for

yourself, Analects XV:24

Taoism
200 B.C.E

Regard your neighbors gain as your own gain, and your

neighbors loss as your own loss, Tai Shang Ying Pian,
Chapter 4

Therefore all things whatsoever would that men should do

Christianity
1st century C.E. to you, do ye even so to them, Matthew 7:12, Luke 6:31
Islam
600 C.E.

As you would have people do to you, do to them; and

what you dislike to be done to you, dont do to them,
Kitab al-Kafi, Vol. 2, p. 146

Evolutionary Basis for Cooperation,

Distribution and Fairness.

For a long time, the situation used to model cooperation was similar to the
prisoners dilemma, where one cannot choose ones partner and must select
strategies to reduce the likelihood of defection.

Ignores the fact that foragers would have been able to choose their partners. A
better model is a form of biological market in which individuals use signalling
and reputation to convey that they are valuable cooperators.

Agents have to avoid excessive generosity to avoid being exploited but also
have to avoid excessive selfishness to avoid being abandoned.

This also allows for proportionality; if A does more work than B then A should
get more of the reward, if not then A will look for another partner, so it would be
in Bs interest to concede more of the reward to A.

Formal models show that when agents can select partners, evolutionary
dynamics converge towards mutually advantageous distributions.

The Evolution of Fairness by

Partner Choice

Cultural Transmission of
Religious Morality

This correspondence between universal intuitions and culturally

successful representations is an instance of biased cultural
transmission.

Our understanding of human cultures takes as a starting point the

fact that genetic evolution produced an array of psychological
dispositions typical of humans.

This genetic predisposition makes certain kinds of information easier

to acquire than others, leading to their recurrence in many different
places at different times.

Evolved moral intuitions provide a background against which certain

types of information e.g. religious and moral doctrines) are more
easily communicated than others.

How is religious morality

connected to human evolution?

Moral intuitions are the same in religious and non-religious people because they
occur automatically and precede conscious moral reasoning.

Adherence to a particular belief system does not significantly affect prosocial

behaviour.

However, at various historical times, moralising movements have emerged in which

people followed prescriptions towards a more intense adherence to intuitive moral
norms.

Interestingly, many of these movements appeared in several places across the world
at roughly the same time (the second half of the 1 millenium BCE).

Around this period there was a sharp increase in energy capture (how much energy
is extracted from the environment) which occurred at the same time in 3 places - the
Yellow-Yangzi Rivers, the Ganga Valley and the Eastern part of the Mediterranean.

These regions reached a production level of 25,000 kcal per capita per day,
surpassing that of previous societies.

Why did moral religions

emerge at the same time?

These 3 regions are precisely the places where moral religions emerged. e.g. Stoicism in the
Greek city states, Christianity in the Middle East, Buddhism in India, Confucianism in China.

This suggests that increase in the standard of living is followed by the spread of moral
religions.

Material prosperity allows people to detach themselves from material desire and there is an
evolutionary reformulation of the pyramid of needs.

People downplay the value of higher wealth and status when these needs are met and turn
their attention to other domains of evolved preferences like maximising personal wellbeing
and enjoying friendships.

Consistent with this, moralising religions recruited their first adepts among the affluent upper
classes e.g. Chinese Buddhism and Roman Christianity. They are both associated with
asceticism and self control techniques.

This new emphasis on explicit morality led to the emergence of new groups such as
Christianity and to changes in pre-existing groups like Judaism to become more ethically
focused.

Evidence suggests that religious

systems are more congruent with
our evolved intuitions because
they describe morality in terms of
the judgements of supernatural
agents who know everything and
who reason in ways consistent
with our own intuitive psychology.

By contrast, non-religious
movements (e.g. Stoicism) lack
this connection to intuition. They
engage in analytical thinking
which has been found to diminish
peoples religious commitment in
experimental settings.

Conclusion
Despite their differences,
religious and non-religious
movements owe their cultural
success to the fact that these
explicit accounts of moral
prescriptions are congruent with
universal, and much older,
evolved intuitions.