Over at HuffPo Religion, Matt Rossano has written a thought provoking piece — which some may find surprising — on the relationship between war and religion. In Why Religion Does Not Equal War, Rossano begins with the common knowledge that religious differences often lead to war, or that religious differences are often used to justify [...]
Entries Tagged as 'Matt Rossano'
Religious Wars and Nationalism
July 18th, 2010 · No Comments · Cultural Evolution of Religion, Economy and Religion, History of Religions, Power and Religion, Religion as Evolutionary Adaptation, Religion as Evolutionary Byproduct
Tags:aggression·Arabs·Civil Religion·conflict·Cyrus the Great·Darius the Great·Egyptian pharaoh·God & War: An Audit & An Exploration·god-kings·Greek-Persian wars·Greg Austin·group cohesion·Israelis·Jews·kinship·Matt Rossano·Muslims·nationalism·religion·Religious War Audit·religious wars·Thom Oommen·Todd Kranock·war·Why Religion Does Not Equal War·Xerxes the Great
Non-Religious Chimpanzees Cooperate and War for Territory
June 28th, 2010 · No Comments · Cultural Evolution of Religion, Ecology of Religion, Economy and Religion, Evolution and Selection, History of Religions, Hunter-Gatherers and Religion, Neolithic Religions, Power and Religion, Religion as Evolutionary Adaptation, Religion as Evolutionary Byproduct, Shamans and Shamanism
There have been many articles over the past week reporting that an unusually large group (150 members) of chimpanzees in Kibale National Park, Uganda has been engaging in systematic territorial expansion by attacking and killing neighboring groups. The Nature article notes that this is “cooperative behavior” and then quotes from the New York Times story:
These [...]
Tags:aggression·Blackfoot·Cheyenne·chimpanzees·chimps·city-states·cohesion·Comanche·cooperation·Cree·Crow·David Sloan Wilson·ecology·Egypt·Flathead·foragers·Gros Ventre·group level selection·Kibale National Park·kinship·Kiowa·Lakota·Levant·Matt Rossano·Mesopotamia·Nicholas Wade·Plains Indians·power·religion·religious warfare·Sarsi·shamans·Shoshoni·territoriality·The Faith Instinct·war
“Religion Functions to Sustain the Moral Order” — Starkly Wrong
April 29th, 2010 · 2 Comments · Axial Age Religions, Cultural Evolution of Religion, History of Religions, Morality and Religion, Religion as Evolutionary Adaptation, Shamans and Shamanism
Many of the recent books and articles about the evolutionary origins of religion claim that natural selection targeted “moral” behaviors and that these behaviors coalesced into “religion.” This is a story told primarily by group level selectionists (who have the bad habit of confusing biological evolution with something they call “cultural evolution”) and evolutionary psychologists [...]
Tags:David Sloan Wilson·Edward Tylor·Frans de Waal·Marc Hauser·Matt Rossano·morality·morals·Nicholas Wade·Rodney Stark·shamanism
Religion as Evolved Adaptation — The Fallacy of Backwards Projection
April 11th, 2010 · 2 Comments · Archaeology and Religion, Religion as Evolutionary Adaptation
As I noted in yesterday’s post, Richard Dawkins calls David Sloan Wilson’s theory of religious evolution “perverse.” As you may recall, Sloan Wilson believes that religion originated as an adaptation giving some groups advantages over others. These supposed advantages arise from Sloan Wilson’s belief that religious groups are more cohesive, moral, and prosocial than non-religious [...]
Evolutionary Psychology Meets the Evolution of Religion — Evaluating the Claims
April 6th, 2010 · 1 Comment · Archaeology and Religion, Evolution and Selection, Religion as Evolutionary Adaptation
Matt Rossano, an evolutionary psychologist at Southeastern Louisiana University, has published several articles on the evolution of religion. Most of his articles are available online (open access). You can find “The Religious Mind and the Evolution of Religion” here, and “The African Interregnum: The Where, When, and Why of the Evolution of Religion” here. In [...]
Tags:evolution of religion·evolutionary psychology·hominids·Matt Rossano