Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Our Gods: Variation in Supernatural Minds

  • Chapter
Essential Building Blocks of Human Nature

Part of the book series: The Frontiers Collection ((FRONTCOLL))

Abstract

In this chapter we examine variation in the contents of supernatural minds across cultures and the social correlates of this variation. We first provide a sketch of how humans are capable of representing supernatural minds and emphasize the significance of the types of knowledge attributed to supernatural agents. We then argue that the contents of supernatural minds as represented cross-culturally will primarily rest on or between two poles: knowledge of people’s moral behavior and knowledge of people’s ritualized costly behavior. Communities which endorse omniscient supernatural agents that are highly concerned with moral behavior will emphasize the importance of shared beliefs (cultural consensus), whereas communities which possess supernatural agents with limited social knowledge who are concerned with ritual actions will emphasize shared behavioral patterns (social consensus).We conclude with a brief discussion about the contexts in which these patterns occur.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
eBook
USD 16.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 69.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

References

  • Alcorta CS, Sosis R (2005) Ritual, emotion, and sacred symbols. Human Nature 16(4):323–359

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Atran S (2002) In Gods We Trust: The Evolutionary Landscape of Religion. Oxford University Press, Oxford

    Google Scholar 

  • Atran S, Norenzayan A (2004) Religion’s evolutionary landscape: Counterintuition, commitment, compassion, communion. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 27(6):713–770

    PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Baron-Cohen S (1997) Mindblindness: An Essay on Autism and Theory of Mind. The MIT Press, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  • Barrett JL (1998) Cognitive constraints on Hindu concepts of the divine. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 37:608–619

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Barrett JL (1999) Theological correctness: Cognitive constraint and the study of religion. Method and Theory in the Study of Religion 11:325–339

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Barrett JL (2002) Dumb gods, petitionary prayer, and the cognitive science of religion. In Pyysiänen I, Veikko A (eds) Current Approaches in the Cognitive Science of Religion. Continuum, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Barrett JL (2004) Why Would Anyone Believe in God? AltaMira Press, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Barrett JL (2008) Coding and quantifying counterintuitiveness in religious concepts: Theoretical and methodological reflections. Method & Theory in the Study of Religion 20:308–338

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Barrett JL, Keil FC (1996) Conceptualizing a nonnatural entity: Anthropomorphism in god concepts. Cognitive Psychology 31:219–247

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Bering JM (2002) The existential theory of mind. Review of General Psychology 6(1):3–24

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bering JM, Johnson DDP (2005) “O Lord : : : you perceive my thoughts from afar”: Recursiveness and the evolution of supernatural agency. Journal of Cognition and Culture 5:118–142

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bering JM, McLeod KA, Shackelford TK (2005) Reasoning about dead agents reveals possible adaptive trends. Human Nature 16:360–381

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Boyer P (1994) The Naturalness of Religious Ideas: A Cognitive Theory of Religion. University of California Press, Berkeley

    Google Scholar 

  • Boyer P (1996) What makes anthropomorphism natural: Intuitive ontology and cultural representations. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 2(1):83–97

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Boyer P (2000) Functional origins of religious concepts: Ontological and strategic selection in evolved minds. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 6(2):195–214

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Boyer P (2001) Religion Explained: The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought. Basic Books, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Boyer P (2002) Why do gods and spirits matter at all? In Pyysiänen I, Veikko A (eds) Current Approaches in the Cognitive Science of Religion. Continuum, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Boyer P, Bergstrom B (2008) Evolutionary perspectives on religion. Annual Review of Anthropology 37:111–130

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Boyer P, Ramble C (2001) Cognitive templates for religious concepts: Cross-cultural evidence for recall of counterintuitive representations. Cognitive Science 25:535–564

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Brown JE (1989 [1953]) The Sacred Pipe: Black Elk’s Account of the Seven Rites of the Oglala Sioux. MJF Books, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Bulbulia J (2009) Why ‘costly-signalling’ models of religion require cognitive psychology. In Geertz A, Jensen J (eds) Origins of Religion, Cognition, and Culture. Equinox, London

    Google Scholar 

  • Bulbulia J (2008) Meme infection or religious niche construction? An adaptationist alternative to the cultural maladaptationist hypothesis. Method and Theory in the Study of Religion 20:67– 107

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bulbulia J (2004) Religious costs as adaptations that signal altruistic intention. Evolution and Cognition 10(1):19–38

    Google Scholar 

  • Bulbulia J, FreanM(2009) Religion as superorganism: On David SloanWilson’s Darwin’s Cathedral (2002) in Stausberg, M (ed) Contemporary Theories of Religion: A Critical Companion. Routledge, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Bulbulia J, Mahoney A (2008) Religious solidarity: The hand-grenade experiment. Journal of Cognition and Culture 8(3-4):295–320

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Call J, Tomasello M (2008) Does the chimpanzee have a theory of mind? 30 years later. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 12(5):187–192

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Cohen AB (2002) The importance of spirituality in well-being for Jews and Christians. Journal of Happiness Studies 3:287–310

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Cohen AB, Siegel JI, Rozin P (2003) Faith versus practice: Different bases for religiosity judgments by Jews and Protestants. European Journal of Social Psychology 33(2):287–295

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Cohen E (2007) The Mind Possessed: The Cognition of Spirit Possession in an Afro-Brazilian Religious Tradition. Oxford University Press, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Darwin C (2004 [1871]) The Descent of Man. Penguin Classics, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Deloria Jr. V (1979) The Metaphysics of Modern Existence. Harper & Row Publishers, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Deloria Jr. V (1992) God is Red: A Native View of Religion. Fulcrum Publishing, Golden

    Google Scholar 

  • DeMallie RJ (1987) Lakota belief and ritual in the nineteenth century. In DeMallie, RJ, Parks DR (eds) Sioux Indian Religion. University of Oklahoma Press, Norman

    Google Scholar 

  • Dennett DC (1971): Intentional systems. The Journal of Philosophy 68(4):87–106

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Dennett DC (1987) The Intentional Stance. The MIT Press, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  • Durkheim E (2001 [1915]): The Elementary Forms of Religious Life. Oxford University Press, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Feierman JR (2009) The Biology of Religious Behavior: The Evolutionary Origins of Faith and Religion. Praeger, Santa Barbara

    Google Scholar 

  • Fernandez JW (1965) Symbolic consensus in a Fang reformative cult. American Anthropologist 67(4):902–929

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Fodor J (1983) The Modularity of Mind: An Essay on Faculty Psychology. MIT Press, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  • Fodor J (2000) The Mind Doesn’t Work that Way: The Scope and Limits of Computational Psychology. MIT Press, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  • Frazer JG (2006) The Golden Bough: A Study of Magic and Religion. NuVision Publications, Sioux Falls

    Google Scholar 

  • Geertz C (1973) The Interpretation of Culture. Basic Books, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Gelman R, Durgin F, Kaufman L (1995): Distinguishing between animates and inanimates: Not by motion alone. In Sperber D, Premack D, Premack A (eds) Causal Cognition: A Multidisciplinary Debate. Plenum Press, Oxford

    Google Scholar 

  • Guthrie SE (1980) A cognitive theory of religion. Current Anthropology 21(2):181

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Guthrie SE (1995) Faces in the Clouds: A New Theory of Religion. Oxford University Press, Oxford

    Google Scholar 

  • Haley KJ, Fessler DMT (2005) Nobody’s watching? Subtle cues affect generosity in an anonymous economic game. Evolution and Human Behavior 26(3):245–256

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Henrich J (2009): The evolution of costly displays, cooperation, and religion: Credibility enhancing displays and their implications for cultural evolution. Evolution and Human Behavior 30(4):244–260

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Johnson DDP (2005): God’s punishment and public goods: A test of the supernatural punishment hypothesis in 186 world cultures. Human Nature 16:410–446

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Johnson DDP, Bering JM (2006): Hand of God, mind of man: Punishment and cognition in the evolution of cooperation. Evolutionary Psychology 4:219–233

    Google Scholar 

  • Kirkpatrick LA (2006) Religion is not an adaptation. In McNamara, P (ed) Where Man and God Meet: How Brain and Evolutionary Studies Alter Our Understanding of Religion. Vol. 1: Evolution, Genes, and the Religious Brain. Praeger, Westport

    Google Scholar 

  • Kirkpatrick LA (2008) Religion is not an adaptation: Some fundamental issues and arguments. In Bulbulia J, Sosis R, Harris E, Genet C, Genet R, Wyman, K (eds) The Evolution of Religion: Studies, Theories, and Critiques. Collins Foundation Press, Santa Margarita

    Google Scholar 

  • Lahti DC (2009) The correlated history of social organization, morality, and religion. In Voland E, Schiefenhövel W (eds) The Evolution of Religious Mind and Behavior. Springer, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Lansing JS (2007) Priests and Programmers: Technologies of Power in the Engineered Landscape of Bali. Princeton University Press, Princeton

    Google Scholar 

  • Lansing JS, Kremer JN (1993) Emergent properties of Balinese water temple networks: Coadaptation on a rugged fitness landscape. American Anthropologist 95(1):97–114

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Levin T (with Süzükei V) (2006) Where Rivers and Mountains Sing: Sound, Music, and Nomadism in Tuva and Beyond. Indiana University Press, Bloomington

    Google Scholar 

  • McCauley RN, Lawson ET (2002) Bringing Ritual to Mind: Psychological Foundations of Cultural Forms. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Norenzayan A, Shariff AF (2008) The origin and evolution of religious prosociality. Science 322:58–62

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Norenzayan A, Atran S, Faulkner J, Schaller M (2006) Memory and mystery: The cultural selection of minimally counterintuitive narratives. Cognitive Science 30:1–30

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Plant J (1994) Heyoka: Die Contraries und Clowns der Plainsindianer. Berlag für Amerikanistik, Germany

    Google Scholar 

  • Powers WK (1975) Oglala Religion. University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln

    Google Scholar 

  • Premack DG, Woodruff G (1978) Does the chimpanzee have a theory of mind? Behavioral and Brain Sciences 1:515–526

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Purzycki BG (2006) Myth, Humor, and Ontological Templates: A Study of the Retention and Transmission of Mythical Religious Ideas. Unpublished MA thesis, University of Nebraska, Lincoln

    Google Scholar 

  • Purzycki BG (in press a) Humor as violations and deprecation: A cognitive anthropological account. Journal of Cognition and Culture 10(1/2)

    Google Scholar 

  • Purzycki BG (in press b) Spirit masters, ritual cairns, and the adaptive religious system in Tyva. Sibirica

    Google Scholar 

  • Purzycki BG, Finkel DN, Shaver J, Wales N, Cohen AB, Sosis R (submitted) What does God know? Supernatural agents’ perceived access to socially strategic and nonstrategic information

    Google Scholar 

  • Purzycki BG, Sosis R (2009) The religious system as adaptive: Cognitive flexibility, public displays, and acceptance. In Voland E, Schiefenhövel W (eds) The Biological Evolution of Religious Mind and Behavior. Springer, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Purzycki BG, Sosis R (in press) Religious concepts as necessary components of the adaptive religious system. In Frey U (ed) Evolution and Religion: The Natural Selection of God. Tectum Verlag, Marburg

    Google Scholar 

  • Pyysiäinen I (2004) Magic, Miracles, and Religion: A Scientist’s Perspective. AltaMira Press, Walnut Creek

    Google Scholar 

  • Rappaport RA (1999) Ritual and Religion in the Making of Humanity. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  • Rahula W (1974) What the Buddha Taught, revised edn. Grove Press, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Romney AK, Weller SC, Batchelder WH (1986) Culture as consensus: A theory of cultural and informant accuracy. American Anthropologist 88(2):313–338

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Russell B (1961) The Basic Writings of Bertrand Russell. Simon & Schuster, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Sanderson SK (2008) Religious attachment theory and the biosocial evolution of the major world religions. In Bulbulia J, Sosis R, Harris E, Genet R, Genet C, Wyman K (eds) The Evolution of Religion: Studies, Theories, and Critiques. Collins Foundation Press, Santa Margarita

    Google Scholar 

  • Sechrist GB, Stangor C (2001) Perceived consensus influences intergroup behavior and stereotype accessibility. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 80(4):645–654

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Sechrist GB, Stangor C (2007) When are intergroup attitudes based on perceived consensus information? The role of group familiarity. Social Influence 2(3):211–235

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Shariff AF, Norenzayan A (2007) God is watching you: Priming God concepts increases prosocial behavior in an anonymous economic game. Psychological Science 18:803–80

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Smetana JG (2006) Social–cognitive domain theory: Consistencies and variations in children’s moral and social judgments. In Killen M, Smetana J (eds) Handbook of Moral Development. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers, Mahwah

    Google Scholar 

  • Sosis R (2005) Does religion promote trust? The role of signaling, reputation, and punishment. Interdisciplinary Journal of Research on Religion 1(7):1–30

    Google Scholar 

  • Sosis R (2006) Religious behaviors, badges, and bans: Signaling theory and the evolution of religion. In McNamara P (ed) Where God and Science Meet: How Brain and Evolutionary Studies Alter Our Understanding of Religion. Vol. I: Evolution, Genes, and the Religious Brain. Prager Publishers, Westport

    Google Scholar 

  • Sosis R (2009a) The adaptationist-byproduct debate on the evolution of religion: Five misunderstandings of the adaptationist program. Journal of Cognition and Culture 9:339–356

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sosis R (2009b) Why are synagogue services so long? An evolutionary examination of Jewish ritual signals. In Golberg R (ed) Judaism in Biological Perspective: Biblical Lore and Judaic Practices. Paradigm Publishers, Boulder

    Google Scholar 

  • Sosis R (submitted) Why sacred lands are not indivisible: The cognitive foundations of sacralizing land

    Google Scholar 

  • Sosis R, Alcorta C (2003) Signaling, solidarity, and the sacred: The evolution of religious behavior. Evolutionary Anthropology 12:264–274

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sosis R, Bressler ER (2003) Cooperation and commune longevity: A test of the costly signaling theory of religion. Cross-Cultural Research 37(2):211–239

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sperber D (1996) Explaining Culture: A Naturalistic Approach. Wiley Blackwell, Malden

    Google Scholar 

  • Stark R (2001) Gods, rituals, and the moral order. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 40(4):619–636

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Swanson GE (1960) The Birth of the Gods: The Origin of Primitive Beliefs. University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor

    Google Scholar 

  • Walker JR (1917) The sun dance and other ceremonies of the Oglala division of the Teton Dakota. Anthropological Papers of the American Museum of Natural History XVI, Part II, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Walker JR (1991) Lakota belief and ritual. DeMallie RJ, Jahner EA (eds). University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln

    Google Scholar 

  • Wallace AFC (1966) Religion: An Anthropological View. McGraw-Hill, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Wallis WD (1996) Heyoka: Lakota Rites of Reversal. Lakota Books, Kendall Park

    Google Scholar 

  • Whitehouse H (2004) Modes of Religiosity. Alta Mira Press, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Wilson DS (2002) Darwin’s Cathedral: Evolution, Religion, and the Nature of Society. University Of Chicago Press, Chicago

    Google Scholar 

  • Wilson EO (1978) On Human Nature. Bantam Books, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Zou X, Tam K, Morris MW, Lee, S, Lau IY, Chiu, C (in press) Culture as common sense: Perceived consensus vs. personal beliefs as mechanisms of cultural influence. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. SSRN preprint. http://ssrn.com/abstract=1392170. Accessed 15 September 2009

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Anthropology, University of Connecticut, 354 Mansfield Road, Storrs, CT, USA

    Benjamin G. Purzycki & Richard Sosis

Authors
  1. Benjamin G. Purzycki
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Richard Sosis
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Benjamin G. Purzycki .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Center for Philosophy and Foundations of Science, University of Giessen, Otto-Behaghel-Str. 10, 35394, Giessen, Germany

    Ulrich J. Frey , Charlotte Störmer  & Kai P. Willführ ,  & 

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2011 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Purzycki, B.G., Sosis, R. (2011). Our Gods: Variation in Supernatural Minds. In: Frey, U.J., Störmer, C., Willführ, K.P. (eds) Essential Building Blocks of Human Nature. The Frontiers Collection. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-13968-0_5

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation