Abstract
We now turn to new evolutionary accounts of religion. As before, I invite you to look at the world and religion with new eyes, to suspend for a moment whatever religious or philosophical commitments you bring to this discussion. For the time being, we bracket the truth claims of religions and seek to understand only how religions function in human societies. To begin this review of the evolution of religion, we need to think in terms of human history and prehistory.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
McNeill and McNeill, The Human Web: A Bird’s-Eye View of World History (New York: W.W. Norton, 2003); Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies (New York: W. W. Norton, 1997, 1999).
Ian Tattersall, Becoming Human: Evolution and Human Uniqueness (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1998);
David Christian, Maps of Time: An Introduction to Big History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004).
In this discussion, I follow a similar overview presented by Pascal Boyer, Religion Explained: The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought (New York: Basic Books, 2001), 1–50.
See, for instance, John Cartwright, Evolution and Human Behavior: Darwinian Perspectives on Human Nature (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2000).
See Donald E. Brown, Human Universals (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1991).
When traced on the male side through the Y-chromosome, our earliest common male ancestor appeared about sixty thousand years ago. When traced on the female side through mitochondrial DNA, our earliest common female ancestor would be about 140,000 years old. “Adam” and “Eve,” if we want to be playful, did not know each other, not in the biblical sense or otherwise; and they would not have been lonely, as there would have been lots of other human around in their respective tribes. For more information on our common ancestors, see Richard Dawkins, The Ancestors’ Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2004).
Stanley H. Ambrose, “Late Pleistocene Human Population Bottlenecks, Volcanic Winter, and Differentiation of Modern Humans,” Journal of Human Evolution 34, no. 6 (1998): 623–51; Ambrose, “Volcanic Winter, and Differentiation of Modern Humans,” Bradshaw Foundation, http://www.bradshawfoundation.com/stanley_ambrose.php.
See William H. Durham, Coevolution: Genes, Culture, and Human Diversity (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 1992).
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species (1859). http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/2009.
See Edward J. Larson, Summer of the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America’s Continuing Debate over Science and Religion (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997).
See Edward O. Wilson, Sociobiology: The New Synthesis (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1975);
Wilson, On Human Nature (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1978).
Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man (1871). http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/2300.
Luke 10:29–37. See also Holmes Rolston, “The Good Samritan and His Genes,” Metanexus (1999), http://www.metanexus.net/Magazine/tabid/68/id/3021/Default.aspx.
Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976).
William D. Hamilton, “The Genetical Evolution of Social Behavior,” Journal of Theoretical Biology 7 (1964): 1–16.
Paul Ekman, Emotions Revealed: Recognizing Faces and Feelings to Improve Communication and Emotional Life (New York: Times Books, 2003).
Michael T. Ghiselin, The Economy of Nature and the Evolution of Sex (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974).
See Pitrim A. Sorokin, The Ways and Power of Love: Types, Factors, and Techniques of Moral Transformation (Conshohocken, PA: Templeton Foundation Press, [1954] 2002);
Stephen G. Post, Unlimited Love: Altruism, Compassion, and Service (Conshohocken, PA: Templeton Foundation Press, 2003);
Stephen G. Post et al., eds., Research on Altruism and Love: An Annotated Bibliography of Major Studies in Psychology, Sociology, Evolutionary Biology, and Theology (Conshohocken, PA: Templeton Foundation Press, 2003).
Mary Midgley, The Ethical Primate: Humans, Freedom, and Morality (New York: Routledge, 1994).
Daniel C. Dennett, “Review of Burkert’s Creation of the Sacred,”(1996), http://philpapers.org/rec/DENROB.
Two recent anthologies bring this literature and many of the scholars together in edited volumes. See Joseph Bulbulia et al., eds., The Evolution of Religion: Studies, Theories, & Critiques (Santa Margarita, CA: Collins Foundation Press, 2008).
Jay R. Feierman, ed, The Biology of Religious Behavior: The Evolutionary Origins of Faith and Religion (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2009).
Susan Blackmore, The Meme Machine (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999).
Richard Dawkins, Unweaving the Rainbow: Science, Delusion, and the Appetite for Wonder (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1998).
Richard Dawkins, A Devil’s Chaplain: Reflections on Hope, Lies, Science, and Love (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 2003).
Stephen Jay Gould and R. D. Lewontin, “The Spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian Paradigm: A Critique of the Adaptationist Programme,” Proceedings of the Royal Society of London 205 (1979).
Ilkka Pyysiäinen and Veikko Anttonen, eds., Current Approaches in the Cognitive Science of Religion (New York: Continuum, 2002).
David Sloan Wilson, Darwin’s Cathedral: Evolution, Religion, and the Nature of Society (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), 217.
Copyright information
© 2010 William Grassie
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Grassie, W. (2010). The Evolution of Religion. In: The New Sciences of Religion. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230114746_5
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230114746_5
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-0-230-10877-6
Online ISBN: 978-0-230-11474-6
eBook Packages: Palgrave Religion & Philosophy CollectionPhilosophy and Religion (R0)