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Evolution of Religion

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Abstract

The evolutionary perspective on religion aims to provide a naturalistic foundation for religious behavior, as observed both in recent cultures and in the cultural remains of our ancestors. Theoretical approaches vary from “positive” positions that describe religion as an adaptation to certain human needs and conditions during the evolution of social behavior to “negative” positions that develop nonadaptive stance, side-product theories, or simply talking religion down. In a longer perspective, adaptive features can be described as emergent features of cultural evolution (mysticism, ethics, myth, and ritual as domains of religion). The focus on religious cognition as mental architecture provides tools for the solution of enduring problems in the understanding of (ancestral?) hominids. As paradigmatic presuppositions may change (revalidation of group selection), and novel hypothesis is generated (superorganism, cognitive niche construction), recent theoretical work on the evolution of religion is enlarging our perspective on a tremendously complex topic that has mainly excited discussion of its cognitive aspects (cognitive science of religion). The vast bio-cultural complexity of gene-culture coevolution must be in the focus of any theory of the evolution of religion.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Philosophisches Seminar, Bergische Universität Wuppertal, Gaußstr. 20, 42119, Wuppertal, Germany

    Matthias Herrgen M.A., Dr. Phil.

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  1. Matthias Herrgen M.A., Dr. Phil.
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Correspondence to Matthias Herrgen M.A., Dr. Phil. .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Inst. Anthropologie, Universität Mainz FB 10 (1050), Mainz, Germany

    Winfried Henke

  2. American Museum of Natural History Division of Anthropology, New York, New York, USA

    Ian Tattersall

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Herrgen, M. (2014). Evolution of Religion. In: Henke, W., Tattersall, I. (eds) Handbook of Paleoanthropology. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-27800-6_71-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-27800-6_71-1

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