Article Discussion

An exciting new aspect of the ERS site involves “article discussion”.  Here, the aim is to provide an informal arena where advances within the enterprising field of evolutionary religious studies can be discussed, questions raised, issues clarified and much more.

“Featured” articles will be introduced regularly and listed below, starting with the most recent – simply follow the link to access the relevant conversation. To submit or suggest an article for discussion, please contact Ian MacDonald.

• Atran, S. & Henrich, J. (2010) The Evolution of Religion: How Cognitive By-Products, Adaptive Learning Heuristics, Ritual Displays, and Group Competition Generate Deep Commitments to Prosocial Religions. Biological Theory, 5 (1):18-30.
• Anderson, L., Mellor, J. & Miylo, J. (2010) Did the Devil Make Them Do It? The Effects of Religion in Public Goods and Trust Games. Kyklos 63(20): 163-175.
• Geertz, A.W. & Markússon, G.I. (in press) Religion is natural, atheism is not: On why everybody is both right and wrong. Religion, doi:10.1016/j.religion.2009.11.003
• Lauritzen, B. (2009) The Invention of God: The Origins of Religious and Scientific Thought (Kindle Edition). Amazon Digital Services.
• Blume, M. (2010) Von Hayek and the Amish Fertility. In Frey, U. (ed) The Nature of God – Evolution and Religion. Tectum 2010, pg. 159-175.
• Dennett, D.C. & LaScola, L. (2010) “Preachers who are not Believers“.  Evolutionary Psychology 8(1): 122-150.
• Pyysiäinen, I. & Hauser, M. (2010) The origins of religion: evolved adaptation or by-product? Trends in Cognitive Sciences 14(3): 104-109.
• Kapogiannis, D., Barbey A.K., Su, M., Zamboni, G., Krueger, F. & Grafman, J. (2009) Cognitive and neural foundations of religious belief. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 106: 4876–4881.
• Li, Y.J., Cohen A.B., Weeden, J. & Kenrick, D.T. (2009) Mating competitors increase religious belief. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, in press.
• Henrich, J. (2009) The evolution of costly displays, cooperation, and religion: Credibility enhancing displays and their implications for cultural evolution. Evolution and Human Behaviour, 30: 244-260
• Johnson, D. (2009) The Error of God: Error Management Theory, Religion, and the Evolution of Cooperation. In Levin, S. A. (ed) Games, Groups, and the Global Good (Springer Series in Game Theory). Springer: Berlin.
• Sosis, R. (2009) The Adaptationist-Byproduct Debate on the Evolution of Religion: Five Misunderstandings of the Adaptationist Program. Journal of Cognition and Culture 9: 315-332.

Please note that for the moment access is restricted to Directory members to avoid potential copyright issues.