The evolution of religiosity by kin selection

Stucky, Kerstin; Gardner, Andy

doi:10.1080/2153599x.2022.2076727

“…The third view is that some supernatural belief systems are doctrinal, and many invoke moralizing gods (Lang et al, 2019;Bendixen et al, 2021a). That is, a distinct pathway for supernatural beliefs to flourish among societies might involve appeals to moralizing gods who, especially in the long term, serve a community of believers by helping negotiate and resolve common resource management and other cooperative problems (Purzycki and McNamara, 2016;Bendixen and Purzycki, 2020;Fitouchi and Singh, 2021;Bendixen et al, 2021b;Lightner and Purzycki, nd;Stucky and Gardner, 2022). Our arguments do not eliminate the need for a religion concept because they are silent on systems that involve these more collective elements.…”

Section: Concluding Remarks Caveats and Future Directionsmentioning

confidence: 85%

All Models Are Wrong, and Some Are Religious: Supernatural Explanations as Abstract and Useful Falsehoods about Complex Realities

Lightner

¹

,

Hagen

²

2022

Hum Nat

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Many cognitive and evolutionary theories of religion argue that supernatural explanations are byproducts of our cognitive adaptations. An influential argument states that our supernatural explanations result from a tendency to generate anthropomorphic explanations, and that this tendency is a byproduct of an error management strategy because agents tend to be associated with especially high fitness costs. We propose instead that anthropomorphic and other supernatural explanations result as features of a broader toolkit of well-designed cognitive adaptations, which are designed for explaining the abstract and causal structure of complex, unobservable, and uncertain phenomena that have substantial impacts on fitness. Specifically, we argue that (1) mental representations about the abstract vs. the supernatural are largely overlapping, if not identical, and (2) when the data-generating processes for scarce and ambiguous observations are complex and opaque, a naive observer can improve a bias-variance tradeoff by starting with a simple, underspecified explanation that Western observers readily interpret as "supernatural." We then argue that (3) in many cases, knowledge specialists across cultures offer pragmatic services that involve apparently supernatural explanations, and their clients are frequently willing to pay them in a market for useful and effective services. We propose that at least some ethnographic descriptions of religion might actually reflect ordinary and adaptive responses to novel problems such as illnesses and natural disasters, where knowledge specialists possess and apply the best available explanations about phenomena that would otherwise be completely mysterious and unpredictable.

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“…The third view is that some supernatural belief systems are doctrinal, and many invoke moralizing gods (Lang et al, 2019;Bendixen et al, 2021a). That is, a distinct pathway for supernatural beliefs to flourish among societies might involve appeals to moralizing gods who, especially in the long term, serve a community of believers by helping negotiate and resolve common resource management and other cooperative problems (Purzycki and McNamara, 2016;Bendixen and Purzycki, 2020;Fitouchi and Singh, 2021;Bendixen et al, 2021b;Lightner and Purzycki, nd;Stucky and Gardner, 2022). Our arguments do not eliminate the need for a religion concept because they are silent on systems that involve these more collective elements.…”

Section: Concluding Remarks Caveats and Future Directionsmentioning

confidence: 88%

All models are wrong, and some are religious: Supernatural explanations as abstract and useful falsehoods about complex realities

Lightner¹,

Hagen²

2022

Preprint

0

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Many cognitive and evolutionary theories of religion argue that supernatural explanations are byproducts of our cognitive adaptations. An influential argument states that our supernatural explanations result from a tendency to generate anthropomorphic explanations, and that this tendency is a byproduct of an error management strategy because agents tend to be associated with especially high fitness costs. We propose instead that anthropomorphic and other supernatural explanations result as features of a broader toolkit of well-designed cognitive adaptations, which are designed for explaining the abstract and causal structure of complex, unobservable, and uncertain phenomena that have substantial impacts on fitness. Specifically, we argue that (1) mental representations about the abstract vs. the supernatural are largely overlapping, if not identical, and (2) when the data-generating processes for scarce and ambiguous observations are complex and opaque, a naive observer can improve a bias-variance tradeoff by starting with a simple, underspecified explanation that Western observers readily interpret as "supernatural." We then argue that (3) in many cases, knowledge specialists across cultures offer pragmatic services that involve apparently supernatural explanations, and their clients are frequently willing to pay them in a market for useful and effective services. We propose that at least some ethnographic descriptions of religion might actually reflect ordinary and adaptive responses to novel problems such as illnesses and natural disasters, where knowledge specialists possess and apply the best available explanations about phenomena that would otherwise be completely mysterious and unpredictable.

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“…The demographic model supporting the idea that cultural norms promoting altruism, especially among co-descendants, can enhance overall altruism acknowledges the potential complexity of reality. Assumptions such as the proportionality of expressed altruism and relatedness, female monogamy, and uniparental transmission of cultural traits offer valuable insights but underscore the need for exploring realistic scenarios considering demographic variability and individual factors (Stucky and Gardner 2022).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Family Dynamics in Colonial La Rioja: A Case Analysis of Five Generations

Villafañe

2023

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This study constitutes a preview of a broader research project on kinship, family, and society in colonial La Rioja. In this context, the results obtained from the study of five generations of the Villafañe and Guzmán family are presented. Various aspects such as family organization, inheritance system, conflicts between families, the construction of a distinct identity, and the strategies that allowed this family to preserve its heritage and maintain a prominent status in the local elite are examined and analyzed in detail.

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The evolution of religiosity by kin selection

Cited by 6 publications

References 79 publications

All Models Are Wrong, and Some Are Religious: Supernatural Explanations as Abstract and Useful Falsehoods about Complex Realities

All Models Are Wrong, and Some Are Religious: Supernatural Explanations as Abstract and Useful Falsehoods about Complex Realities

All models are wrong, and some are religious: Supernatural explanations as abstract and useful falsehoods about complex realities

Family Dynamics in Colonial La Rioja: A Case Analysis of Five Generations

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