Simulating Religions as Adaptive Systems

Wood, Connor; Sosis, Richard

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-17090-5_12

Cited by 6 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 22 publications

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“…For example, Wood and Sosis (2019) recently developed a system dynamics model to assess the validity of the CAS approach to religion. They found that stable societies in their experimental simulations tended to have higher legitimacy—that is, agents perceived institutions as credible—than unstable ones, and that higher legitimacy leads to greater cooperativeness.…”

Section: Forming Connections To the Natural Sciences And Humanitiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Four advantages of a systemic approach to the study of religion

Sosis

2020

Archive for the Psychology of Religion

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There has been increasing interest in the evolutionary study of religion, but perfunctory fractionalization has limited our ability to explain how and why religion evolved, evaluate religion’s current adaptive value, and assess its role in contemporary decision-making. To move beyond piecemeal analyses of religion, I have recently offered an integrative evolutionary framework that approaches religions as adaptive systems. I argue that religions are an adaptive complex of traits consisting of cognitive, neurological, affective, behavioral, and developmental features that are organized into a self-regulating feedback system. Here I explore four advantages of this systemic approach to religion: it avoids definitional problems that have plagued the study of religion, affords a contextual understanding of religious belief, informs current debates within the evolutionary study of religion, and provides links to both the natural sciences and humanities. I argue that the systemic approach offers the strongest potential for real progress and broad application of evolutionary theory to the study of religion.

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Section: Forming Connections To the Natural Sciences And Humanitiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Four advantages of a systemic approach to the study of religion

Sosis

2020

Archive for the Psychology of Religion

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“…While all elements may not interact with each other directly, they do all interact with and through ritual, which lies at the centre of religious systems. Recent efforts have modelled how these core elements interact [16], but our understanding of these interrelationships remains limited.…”

Section: Religious Systemsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The last Talmudic demon? The role of ritual in cultural transmission

Sosis

2020

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

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Recent work on the evolution of religion has approached religions as adaptive complexes of traits consisting of cognitive, neurological, affective, behavioural and developmental features that are organized into a self-regulating feedback system. Religious systems, it has been argued, derive from ancestral ritual systems and continue to be fuelled by ritual performances. One key prediction that emerges from this systemic approach is that the success of religious beliefs will be related to how well they are connected to rituals and integrated with other elements of the religious system. Here, I examine this prediction by exploring the rich world of Jewish demonology. As a case study, I briefly survey the historical trajectory of demonic beliefs across Jewish communities and focus on one demon, a ruach ra'ah , that has survived the vicissitudes of Jewish history and maintained its relevance in contemporary Jewish communities. I argue that it has done so because of its linkage with a morning handwashing ritual and its effective integration into the core elements of Jewish religious systems. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Ritual renaissance: new insights into the most human of behaviours’.

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Challenges in modeling local manifestations of a global template

Lang

2023

Religion, Brain & Behavior

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Simulating Religions as Adaptive Systems

Cited by 6 publications

References 22 publications

Four advantages of a systemic approach to the study of religion

Four advantages of a systemic approach to the study of religion

The last Talmudic demon? The role of ritual in cultural transmission

Challenges in modeling local manifestations of a global template

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