Gods, Gains, and Genes

Vaas, Rüdiger

doi:10.1007/978-3-642-00128-4_3

Cited by 8 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 88 publications

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“…Thus, American baseball players are more superstitious than their Japanese counterparts because they attribute success more to chance than effort (Burger & Lynn, 2005). Although religion is more than a supernatural belief system, having ritual, ethical, and other dimensions (Vaas, 2009), the supernatural aspect of religious belief was hypothesized to respond to societal (or ecological) uncertainty in much the same way that superstition responds to individual-level uncertainty. This approach to societal adaptation is known as evolutionary social science, and Barber (2008) concluded that an adaptationist approach to societies requires us to employ such methodological individualism.…”

Section: Why Are Affluent Countries Becoming Less Religious?mentioning

confidence: 99%

A Cross-National Test of the Uncertainty Hypothesis of Religious Belief

Barber¹

2011

Cross-Cultural Research

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According to the uncertainty hypothesis, religion helps people cope psychologically with dangerous or unpredictable situations. Conversely, with greater control over the external environment due to economic development and technological advances, religious belief is predicted to decline (the existential security hypothesis). The author predicts that religious belief would decline in economically developed countries where there is greater existential security, including income security (income equality and redistribution via welfare states) and improved health. These predictions are tested in regression analyses of 137 countries that partialed out the effects of Communism and Islamic religion both of which affect the incidence of reported nonbelief. Findings show that disbelief in God increased with economic development (measured by lower agricultural employment and third-level enrollment). Findings further show that disbelief also increased with income security (low Gini coefficient, high personal taxation tapping the welfare state) and with health security (low pathogen prevalence). Results show that religious belief declines as existential security increases, consistent with the uncertainty hypothesis.

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Section: Why Are Affluent Countries Becoming Less Religious?mentioning

confidence: 99%

A Cross-National Test of the Uncertainty Hypothesis of Religious Belief

Barber¹

2011

Cross-Cultural Research

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“…For religion to influence genetic evolution it must convey some kind of selective advantage. Such an effect might come about through social bonding via ritual, formation of group identity through myth, honest signalling through participation in costly ceremonies and adherence to social norms through love or fear of God [20][21][22][23][24]. In most cases, religious individuals gain personal advantage from their activities or beliefs.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Religion, fertility and genes: a dual inheritance model

Rowthorn

2011

Proc. R. Soc. B.

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Religious people nowadays have more children on average than their secular counterparts. This paper uses a simple model to explore the evolutionary implications of this difference. It assumes that fertility is determined entirely by culture, whereas subjective predisposition towards religion is influenced by genetic endowment. People who carry a certain 'religiosity' gene are more likely than average to become or remain religious. The paper considers the effect of religious defections and exogamy on the religious and genetic composition of society. Defections reduce the ultimate share of the population with religious allegiance and slow down the spread of the religiosity gene. However, provided the fertility differential persists, and people with a religious allegiance mate mainly with people like themselves, the religiosity gene will eventually predominate despite a high rate of defection. This is an example of 'cultural hitchhiking', whereby a gene spreads because it is able to hitch a ride with a high-fitness cultural practice. The theoretical arguments are supported by numerical simulations.

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