Living in Europe, it is rather easy to assume that people around the world would share a perspective on the evolution of our species. But as I learned from some comments and mails, this is not the case. Therefore, I decided to present the scientific standard of knowledge about the evolution of homo sapiens before proceeding with the specific topic of the evolution of our religiosity and religions.

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Is there an unbridgeable enmity between science(s) and religion(s) - or will they reconvene as in concepts of evolutionary theism? From the perspective of evolutionary studies of religion, that's less of a philosophical question than an empirical one. COULD it happen may be a question of fruitless speculation. But DOES it happen is a question of scientific observation.

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For a long time, evolutionary studies have been dominated by Western male scientists. Maybe it is not that surprising that their main hypotheses about the specific pathways of our hominid ancestors focussed on competition, hierarchies, warfare, weapon-and-tool-making and hunting. Unfortunately, the most obvious differences between our species and our primate relatives went largely unnoticed: No chimpanzee or orang-utan could entrust her children e.g. to a birthday party or kindergarten in the hands of non-kin others (the biological term being "alloparental care" - childcare beyond mother and father). Their offspring would risk to be attacked and killed. Therefore, other primate mothers tend to carry and shield their offspring for longer stretches of time, which led to extended spans between births wile restricting times of childhood.

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Just reading "On the Origin of Stories. Evolution, Cognition and Fiction" by Brian Boyd, I would like to reflect about our human propensity to present facts in the form of narratives. In a sense, that seems to be a very basic universal, with those of us religious just extending the stories into the supernatural realms of mythology. For example, Richard Dawkins offered a retelling of the evolutionary process as "The Ancestor's Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution", quite obviously adopting religious terminology. From the very beginnings of scientific biology, scientists began to marvel at the "glory in plants".

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Now, the Darwin Year is over. In a sense, sadly so. It has been full of surprises. Think of it: How many people expected it to run as a kind of a climax in the Culture Wars between (some) Evolutionists and (some) religious Fundamentalists. But then, surprising things happened: Christian preachers as e.g. Michael Dowd thanked God for Evolution and more and more atheists, agnostics and believers discovered together, that evolutionary studies were a splendid way to discover new facts about religiosity and religions, building a new and shared, scientific perspective on the matter.

As I have done on the German Scilogs, I decided to endorse three very special books that helped to pave the way for a better understanding of evolution and religion(s).

1. Voland, Schiefenhövel (Eds.): The Biological Evolution of Religious Mind and Behavior

It is an expensive piece of scientific jewellery. And I am amazed everytime, when I browse and read through it. 19 chapters of evolutionary studies on religion, each a unicum in itself. There is e.g. the Chinese contribution in Neuropsychology of religious belief by Shihui Han or the multi-dimensional American theory about the "Where", "When" and "Why" of the Evolution of Religion (Matt Rossano). There is the captivating cross-check of evolutionary theories with ethnological observations in Melanesia (Wulf Schiefenhövel) and... well, see for yourself the list of contents!

As I had been part of the Delmenhorst-conference about Biology of Religion back in 2007, I had been impressed by the sheer, interdisciplinary dynamics of a bunch of courageous scholars. With "TBEoRMB", Eckart Voland and Wulf Schiefenhövel not only managed to distill this event, but to expand upon it. Although the book may be too special and too expensive to get a wider audience, it will sure be treasured (and used) by those dedicated to evolutionary studies of religion far beyond the Darwin Year.

2. Schaller, Norenzayan et al. (Eds.): Evolution, Culture, and the Human Mind

Well, the cognition and culture institute got the flair of this impressive and broad tome: "An enormous amount of scientific research compels two fundamental conclusions about the human mind: The mind is the product of evolution; and the mind is shaped by culture. These two perspectives on the human mind are not incompatible, but, until recently, their compatibility has resisted rigorous scholarly inquiry. Evolutionary psychology documents many ways in which genetic adaptations govern the operations of the human mind. But evolutionary inquiries only occasionally grapple seriously with questions about human culture and cross-cultural differences. By contrast, cultural psychology documents many ways in which thought and behavior are shaped by different cultural experiences. But cultural inquires rarely consider evolutionary processes. Even after decades of intensive research, these two perspectives on human psychology have remained largely divorced from each other. But that is now changing - and that is what this book is about." It is divided into three parts (1. How Evolution and Culture Fit Together., 2. Evolutionary Bases of Cultural Phenomena., 3. Evolutionary Universals and Cross-Cultural Differences.) with international and intercultural teams adressing these in captivating studies and chapters. Of course, I especially appreciated:
*S. Solomon, J. Greenberg, T. Pyszczynski, F. Cohen, D.M. Ogilvie, Teach these Souls to Fly: Supernatural as Human Adaptation.
* A.F. Shariff, A. Norenzayan, J. Henrich, The Birth of High Gods: How the Cultural Evolution of Supernatural Policing Influenced the Emergence of Complex, Cooperative Human Societies, Paving the Way for Civilization.
But other chapters e.g. about social selection or Baumeister's The Human Mind and the Evolution of Cultural Animals offered food for (scientific) thought for years to come.

3. Robert Wright: The Evolution of God

Although Wright featured the E-word in the title, his book (sadly) doesn't recourse on many contemporary studies e.g. about the biological bases or biocultural effects of religiosity. Instead, Wright is presenting and discussing the cultural evolution of religions in the framework of Game theory. Well written, I have seen that some of my students and colleagues new to the field found Wright's approach very accessible and convincing. What's more, it's offering some ethnological and historical insight in the recent evolution of religious behavior and religions. If you are seeking a book for introducing someone in the perspective of evolutionary studies on religion without risk of drowning in divergent theories, Wright's book is a very good choice.

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For some years, a range of empirical studies (e.g. Inglehart & Norris in "Sacred and Secular", 2004) confirmed a global correlation of religiosity to societal levels of want and income inequality and (especially) insecurity. As respective publications have been made available at the internet for free, a wider public is getting the message. E.g., a sound example of a well-done study has been published by Tom Rees in the Journal of Religion and Society.

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As I did my doctorate thesis about religion & brain sciences in 2003 to 2005, it was possible to get an overview over the main body of relevant literature, although I had to invest some hundred Euros on books not yet available in libraries. But since then, there has been a tremendous growth of scientific publications concerning the evolution of religiosity and religions, ranging from archaeology to political sciences, from (evolutionary and cultural) psychology to sociology right into the various branches of (socio-, micro-, behavioral-, neuro- etc.)biology, theology, philosophy and many, many more.

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These last years, I have made a sad experience repeatedly: When it comes to the evolution of religiosity and religions, many self-reported "rationalists" tend to falter. Although Charles Darwin himself naturally assumed a successful, biocultural evolution of religious behavior (as with any other behavioral trait), many self-purported "scientifically" people are not even able to assess the respective hypotheses.

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Dr. Jonathan Sacks, Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations in the Commonwealth and Baron of Aldgate has been a theological speaker worth listening to for many years. Combining Jewish tradition, liberal philosophy and modern sciences, he targeted collective blind spots of society more than once. Speaking last week at the Theos think tank in London, Rabbi Sacks quickly induced a range (!) of intensive debates with a single lecture.

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Every human perception is shaped by underlying assumptions, of which we are aware only partially. For example, Western thinking has been shaped (at least since the classic Greeks) by a strong preference for dualisms: Human and Animal, True and False, Good and Evil, Body and Soul, Brain and Mind, Nature and Culture etc. Although the discovery of evolution clearly bridged these distinctions, they creeped back into place again and again, especially in Western perceptions of sciences. For example, we owe the discovery of distinct cultural traditions among non-human primates to Japanese primatologists (honoured in a beautiful book by Frans de Waal), whose Western successors i.e. as Jane Goodall nevertheless had to fight strong prejudices against giving chimpanzees individual names, attributing them emotions etc. to this day. 

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Among most scholars in the thriving field of evolutionary studies on religion, findings of burials are perceived as the first strong indicators of phenotypes evolving religiosity - that is: behavior towards supernatural agents (as ancestors, spirits or gods). Interestingly, these peculiar behaviors evolved not only in Homo sapiens, but also in Homo neanderthalensis.

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As the demographic implosion of secular populations and the higher birth rates of the religious especially among wealthy and educated are acknowledged by more and more people, two different sides of the medal are perceived. My research is focussed on the biocultural explanation and long-term biological effects of religion(s) on fertility, that is: The (ongoing, maybe even accelerating) evolution of religious behavior. But there are, of course, increasingly observable, short-term effects in the societal, cultural and political sphere, too. And there are bright young scholars exploring them as Eric Kaufmann, former research fellow in Harvard and currently Reader in Politics and Sociology, Birbeck, University of London, United Kingdom.

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Empirical studies on the evolution of religiosity and religions have been thriving these last years. These days, Springer's "Frontiers Collection" set a new standard. The Biological Evolution of Religious Mind and Behavior (BERMB) is rooted in the international Delmenhorst-conference on "The Biology of Religion" and has been expanded by contributions from other scholars. It is offering a broad picture of studies and models at the forefront of this scientifc field, which is tending toward interdisciplinary consesus on many subjects in surprisingly short time.

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The Bertelsmann Stiftung's RELIGION MONITOR is an instrument which looks at the issues of religion and faith to an unprecedented degree. It was developed by religious scientists, sociologists, psychologists and theologians and was first employed in 2007.

In a representative survey, 21,000 people from all continents and world religions were asked about their views on the world and the meaning of life, their religious practices and notions of God. The project will be repeated and expanded at regular intervals in order to carry out and produce an empirical study of the development of religiousness. For more information about the Bertelsmann Religion Monitor click here (pdf). (More)

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Few scientists have fuelled the contemporary dynamics of Evolutionary Religious Studies in the last years as anthropologist Richard Sosis from the University of Connecticut. With empirically driven studies ranging from US history to Israel and Ifaluk (in the Pacific Ocean), Richard observed and described how ritual behaviour toward supernatural agents enhanced cooperation.

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