Genealogy of Religion

Exploring the Origins, History and Future of Religion

Entries Tagged as 'Evolution'

Tricksters, Selfishness & Altruism

April 16th, 2011 · 4 Comments · Evolution, Evolutionary Byproduct, Hunter-Gatherers, Philosophy

In evolutionary biology, few issues have caused more debate than altruism or what appears to be altruism. It is generally accepted that selection operates on individual organisms and that these organisms are selfishly interested in their own survival and reproduction. Another way of stating this is that individual organisms are interested solely in passing along [...]

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Pair Bonding & Ritual Marriage

March 18th, 2011 · 6 Comments · Ecology, Evolution, Ritual

Over the past few years, something like a perfect storm has been brewing over human pair bonding and the profound impacts it has wrought on human social structure. This is a welcome development in a field that has long been dominated by those who wish to root the relatively modern idea of marriage in ancient [...]

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Sizing Up Kinship: Larger Groups Win

March 16th, 2011 · 8 Comments · Evolution, Evolutionary Adaptation, Evolutionary Byproduct, Hunter-Gatherers

There are a number of scholars who claim that “religion” evolved as an adaptation. What kind of adaptation? A group level adaptation. The story usually goes like this: at some unknown time during the middle or upper Paleolithic, certain groups of hominins developed proto-religious beliefs. These beliefs supposedly caused group members to dance, sing, and [...]

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The Magic of Contagion

March 11th, 2011 · 1 Comment · Cognition, Emotions, Evolution, Ritual

What makes people pay large sums of money for apparently mundane objects such as JFK’s golf clubs ($772,500 at auction) and rocking chair ($453,500)? Although a portion of the price is related to investment value, this cannot account for the exorbitant amounts paid for these items. Something else is at work. According to a recent [...]

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The Art of Geology

March 8th, 2011 · No Comments · Archaeology, Evolution

At a fundamental level, evolutionary religious studies depend on geology. While this sounds a bit strange – What do rocks have to do with religion? — Darwin relied heavily on the work of pioneering geologists James Hutton (1726-1797) and Charles Lyell (1797-1875). Indeed it is safe to say that without Hutton and Lyell, Darwin might [...]

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Interrogating Richard Dawkins

March 2nd, 2011 · 2 Comments · Atheism, Cognition, Cultural Evolution, Evolution

Over at Spiegel, Markus Becker and Frank Patalong have posted an interview with Richard Dawkins, whose latest book — The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution — has just been published in German and given an awful title: “The Creation Lie: Why Darwin is Right.” Two things come immediately to mind.
First, it is [...]

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Proto-Religious Foragers v. Non-Religious Foragers

February 9th, 2011 · 3 Comments · Archaeology, Evolution, Evolutionary Adaptation, Evolutionary Byproduct, Hunter-Gatherers

In a recent post on group level selection and the evolution of religion, I observed that if we assume such selection was operating on human groups during the Paleolithic, three factors play a major role in determining which groups come out on top. These three factors are: (1) group size, (2) technology, and (3) language. [...]

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The Religion Gene (III)

January 29th, 2011 · 2 Comments · Atheism, Cultural Evolution, Evolution, Evolutionary Adaptation

In my first post on Robert Rowthorn’s paper “Fertility, Religion and Genes,” I focused on its faulty premises and unrealistic assumptions; I also substituted the word “love” for “religion” in Rowthorn’s argument to show that nearly any beneficial and complex human behavioral trait could be explained using the same single gene model. In my second [...]

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The Religion Gene (I)

January 23rd, 2011 · 1 Comment · Evolution, Evolutionary Adaptation, Methodology

Last week, an unfortunate paper appeared in the Proceedings of the Royal Society, a leading academic journal. Its title is “Religion, Fertility and Genes: A Dual Inheritance Model” (open access). Despite being profoundly flawed in its premises and assumptions, the paper garnered major attention from the press. My local paper ran this headline: “Scientist: Religion [...]

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Group Level Selection? The Non-Evolution of Religion

January 16th, 2011 · 15 Comments · Evolution, Evolutionary Adaptation, Evolutionary Byproduct, History, Ritual

There are a number of scholars who claim that “religion” evolved as an adaptation.  What kind of adaptation? A group level adaptation. The story usually goes like this: at some unknown time during the middle or upper Paleolithic, certain groups of hominins developed proto-religious beliefs. These beliefs, which are rarely if ever specified, somehow gave [...]

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