Is There a Particular Role for Ideational Aspects of Religions in Human Behavioral Ecology?

Abstract

In their book The Biology of Religion, Reynolds and Tanner present the argument (also in the current discussion of existing biological origins of religion) that religions do indeed induce adaptive behavior. The content of religions is accordingly developing through natural selectionnatural selection and will be considered maximizing as a cultural extension of genetic fitnessfitness. The essay at hand is intended to show that instead, religions are the result of signal evolution and are to be considered as an all-purpose-cooperationcooperation tooltool, with which direct adaptive benefits do not otherwise necessarily have to be connected. Many ideational aspects of religion are not behavior-relevant. Nevertheless, behavior-relevant aspects can be reproductively disadvantageous. Religion evolved through its potential to create trust and to increase the willingness for cooperation among believers. In order to achieve this, religion utilizes hard-to-fake signals and supernaturalsupernatural witnesses. It thereby allowed individuals to present themselves as reliable cooperation partners. The alleged adaptive information is, on the one hand, tied to the time of origin of the religious concept and, on the other hand, it presents a marginal phenomenon, since religion addresses not only the cognitive and psychobiological inference systems but also the cultural values-conducted inference systems.