Religious survival advantage resists explanation by individual or genetic selection

Evidence

It remains to be shown whether religious beliefs and practices have exerted enough selection pressures on the human genome for particular psychological traits that may be found in some cultural groups but not others. — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 853 (#contradicts, via linked claim)

Drawing together evidence from across the evolutionary, cognitive, and social sciences, the argument in this book offers this third path that locates the origins of prosocial religions in a powerful combination of genetic and cultural evolution. This alternative has three foundations. First, it builds directly on the cognitive approach, which provides important clues about how certain intuitions and cognitive biases push human minds toward some recurrent templates that support supernatural beliefs. Second, it combines cognitive tendencies with cultural evolution to explain how some cultural mutants of these beliefs spread in populations at the expense of rival mutants. Third, understanding the forces of cultural competition30 between groups helps us explain why groups that stumbled on such successful mutants spread and expanded. Therefore, one virtue of this “third way” is that it reconciles and consolidates important insights and observations from both social and cognitive approaches. — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 50 (#contradicts, via linked claim)

Categorization

Category: Factual Claims

Related

• Religious prosocial beliefs may have shaped human genetic evolution (similarity 0.90)
• Prosocial religious practices may have genetically altered their adopting groups (similarity 0.84)
• Cultural evolution favors religious groups that maximize reproduction (similarity 0.82)
• Religious practices may have genetically altered human populations through gene-culture coevolution (similarity 0.82)
• Demographic success of prosocial religions explains their global prevalence today (similarity 0.81)
• Religious groups expand through higher fertility rates, not just persuasion (similarity 0.81)
• Prosocial religions outcompeted rivals through group solidarity advantages in warfare (similarity 0.81)
• Prosocial religions outcompeted rival groups historically and scaled up human social organization (similarity 0.81)
• Situation beats stated religiosity in predicting selfishness (similarity 0.80)
• Cultural evolution has been the central driver of human genetic evolution for eons. (similarity 0.80)
• Religious fertility advantages are culturally transmitted, not genetically fixed (similarity 0.80)
• Religious belief stems from both intuitive cognition and cultural transmission mechanisms. (similarity 0.79)
• Religion drives intergroup conflict through three mutable pathways, not belief alone (similarity 0.79)
• Religious doctrines that boost fertility outcompete rival religious groups demographically. (similarity 0.79)
• Religious belief is a by-product of cognitive predispositions, not an evolved adaptation (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Religious practices may have shaped human genes, but proof is pending #contradicts (0.85) — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 853
• Religious prosocial beliefs may have shaped human genetic evolution #contradicts (0.80) — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 50
• Large-scale cooperation and religion’s endurance explain each other #contradicts (0.80)
• Cultural evolution fills in god content within evolved mentalizing constraints #qualifies (0.75)
• Religious behavior depends on situational context, observable action, and intergroup competition #qualifies (0.75) — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 19