Neo-Darwinian Theories of Religion and the Social Ecology of Religious Evolution

We are grateful to Chris Chase-Dunn for stimulating email discussions of some of the issues in this paper, especially ancient polytheistic religions and political structures. He also usefully pointed us in the direction of Modelski’s data on ancient world city sizes. 1 Some neo-Darwinian theories of religion contend that the brain generates religious concepts as counterintuitive beliefs in supernatural entities, which often function as substitute attachment figures. Other neo-Darwinian theories explain religious rituals as “costly signals ” designed to function as indicators of religious commitment. This paper develops and applies insights from these theories, along with elements of Weberian and rational choice theory, to explain the long-term evolution of religion. It seeks to identify the social conditions that have interacted with the religious architecture of the brain to produce widespread religious variation. Early shamanic and communal religions focused heavily on the practical concerns of acquiring subsistence, curing illness, and avoiding danger. Ecclesiastical religions emerged in more economically and politically complex societies. The first ecclesiastical religions, which evolved in chiefdoms and archaic states, were polytheistic; here people worshiped an array of human-like gods given great reverence and legitimating state rule. Monotheistic religions, which evolved mostly in complex states with literacy, began to replace polytheistic religions during the first millennium BCE (the Axial Age) largely as the result of massive increases in warfare and urbanization. These changes disrupted people’s lives and led to heightened levels of ontological insecurity. A transcendent God capable of saving people’s souls and releasing them from suffering replaced the human-like gods. The paper concludes by sketching a long-term process of religious “abstractification ” that has been driven by the religious architecture of the brain in close interaction with a range of social, economic, and political conditions