1 Why We Believe: Religion as a Human Universal

Note. This manuscript draws from a theoretical paper that is currently in press: Norenzayan, A., & Shariff, A. F. The origin and evolution of religious prosociality. Science. 2 Why We Believe: Religion as a Human Universal In a species with tremendous cultural diversity, the suite of propensities we call “religion ” tops the list of species-specific human universals. Most people in most cultures throughout history are, and have been deeply religious, yet evolutionary science is only beginning to catch up with this phenomenon that is both a product and a shaper of the human mind. In this chapter, I argue that religion is not an evolutionary adaptation, but a recurring by-product of the complex evolutionary landscape that canalizes the cultural transmission of religious beliefs and behaviors into convergent yet culturally distinct pathways. This means that religious beliefs are the product of cultural transmission constrained by evolutionary psychology. The core cognitive feature of religion--belief in supernatural agents—itself a byproduct of the naturally selected disposition for detectin