Routledge Handbook of Evolutionary Approaches to Religion

<p>The past two decades have seen a growing interest in evolutionary and scientific approaches to religion. <i>The Routledge Handbook of Evolutionary Approaches to Religion</i> is an outstanding reference source to the key topics, problems and debates in this exciting and emerging field. Comprising over thirty chapters by a team of international contributors the handbook pulls together scholarship in the following areas:</p><ul> <li>evolutionary psychology and the cognitive science of religion (CSR)</li> <li>cultural evolution</li> <li>the complementarity of evolutionary psychology, cognitive science and cultural evolution</li> </ul><p>Within these sections central issues, debates and problems are examined, including: Cliodynamics, cultural group selection, costly signaling, dual inheritance theory, literacy, transmitting narratives, prosociality, supernatural punishment, cognition and ritual, meme theory, fusion theory, sexual selection, agency detection, evoked culture, social brain hypothesis, theory of mind, developmental psychology, emergence theory, social learning, cultural cybernetics, cultural epidemiology, evolutionary and cultural psychology, memetics, by-product and adaptationist theories of religion, systems and information theory, and computer modeling. </p><p>This Handbook is essential reading for students and researchers in religious studies and anthropology. It will also be very useful to those in related fields, such as psychology, sociology of religion, cognitive biology, and evolutionary biology.</p> <p>1 Introduction: Evolutionary Approaches to Religion<br><i>Yair Lior and Justin Lane</i></p><p>PART 1<br>Evolutionary Psychology </p><p>2 Introduction to Evolutionary Psychology <br><i>Justin Lane and Yair Lior</i></p><p>3 Child Development: The Effects of Ritual on Cognitive Development <br><i>Veronika Rybanska</i></p><p>4 Cognition and the History of Religion <br><i>Luther H. Martin</i></p><p>5 Evoked Culture: Cognitive Mechanisms of Religious Belief and Behavior <br><i>E. Thomas Lawson</i></p><p>6 Sacred Values: Identity Fusion, Devoted Actor Theory, and Extremism <br><i>Kayla Bonnin and Justin Lane</i></p><p>7 Sexual Selection: Long- term Mating Strategies and Religion <br><i>James A. Van Slyke</i></p><p>8 Minimally Counterintuitive Concepts: A Unified Theory in the Cognitive Science of Religion? <br><i>Muhammad Afzal Upal</i></p><p>9 Faces in Clouds and Voices in the Wind: Anthropomorphism, Agency Detection and Human Cognition <i>Stewart E. Guthrie and Michaela Porubanova</i></p><p>10 Social Brain Hypothesis: Dunbar’s Number and the Stability of Religious Social Networks<br><i>Michael J. Gantley, John P. McKeown and Ángel V. Jiménez</i></p><p>11 Atheism: A New Evolutionary Perspective on Non-Belief<br><i>Thomas J. Coleman, Kyle J. Messick, and Valerie van Mulukom</i></p><p>12 Personality and Psychology in the Evolution of Religion<br><i>Igor Mikloušić and Boris Mlačić</i></p><p>13 Hazard Precaution: Examining the Possible Adaptive Value of Ritualized Behavior<br><i>Martin Lang and Radim Chvaja</i></p><p>PART 2<br>Cultural Evolution</p><p>14 Introduction to Cultural Evolution<br><i>Armin W. Geertz</i></p><p>15 Cultural Group Selection and the Evolution of Religion<br><i>Taylor Davis</i></p><p>16 Costly Signaling: The ABCs of Signaling Theory and Religion<br><i>Richard Sosis</i></p><p>17 Credibility Enhancing Displays (CREDs): When They Work and When They Don’t<br><i>Hugh Turpin and Jonathan A. Lanman</i></p><p>18 Dual Inheritance Theory: Religion, Narrative, and Selection<br><i>Francesco Ferretti and Ines Adornetti</i></p><p>19 The Co- evolution of Religion and Literate Culture<br><i>Daniel Mullins</i></p><p>20 Religion and Prosociality: The Naturalization of Norms<br><i>Connor Wood</i></p><p>21 Big Gods Theory: The Cultural Evolution of Social Complexity and Prosocial Religions<br><i>Yair Lior</i></p><p>22 The Evolution of Ritual, Cognition, and Modes of Religiosity During the Agricultural Transition<br><i>Michael J. Gantley</i></p><p>23 Meme Theory<br><i>Justin Lane</i></p><p>24 Institutional Evolution: The Dynamics of Religious Formations<br><i>Jonathan H. Turner and Armin W. Geertz</i></p><p>25 Behavioral Ecology: Niche Construction and Religion<br><i>John Balch</i></p><p>PART 3<br>Synthetic Approaches</p><p>26 Synthetic Approaches: At the Intersection of Evolutionary Psychology and Cultural Evolution<br><i>Yair Lior and Justin Lane</i></p><p>27 Religion <i>Emerges</i>: The Evolution of Language and Religion<br><i>Paul Cassell</i></p><p>28 Cultural Cybernetics of Religion: Computation and Information Transmission in Religion<br><i>Justin Lane</i></p><p>29 Major Transitions in Cultural Evolution: A Dynamic Systems Approach<br><i>Yair Lior</i></p><p>30 Cultural Epidemiology: Attractors and Representations<br><i>Radu Umbreș</i></p><p>31 Differentiating Processes of Biological, Cognitive, and Cultural Selection: Implications for the Adaptation/ Byproduct Debate<br><i>Lee Kirkpatrick</i></p><p>32 Synthesis and Explanatory Pluralism<br><i>Wesley J. Wildman and David Rohr</i></p><p>33 Concluding Reflections: An Evolutionary Approach to Comparative Religion<br><i>William E. Paden</i></p><p>Index</p>