Why do religious cultures evolve slowly? The cultural evolution of cooperative calling and the historical study of religions
Date
2014-04
Authors
Bulbulia, Joseph
Atkinson, Quentin
Gray, Russell
Greenhill, Simon
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Acumen Publishing
Abstract
Collective representations are the result of an immense cooperation, which stretches out not only into space but into time as well; to make them, a multitude of minds have associated, united and combined their ideas and sentiments: for them, long generations have accumulated their experience and their knowledge. A special intellectual activity is therefore concentrated in them, which is infinitely richer and complexer than that of the individual.
(Émile Durkheim, Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, [1912] 1965: 29)The languages and folkways of ancient peoples hold little relevance for us, except in one respect: the religions of the ancient world remain our religions. Though religions change, core features of the scriptures and rituals of the world's most popular religious traditions appear to have been conserved with remarkably high fidelity. We explain slow religious change from how religion facilitates cooperation at large social scales. At the end, we clarify how historians of religion, in collaboration with psychologists and computational biologists, might test and improve explanations such as ours.
Description
Keywords
religion, culture, evolution, history, study
Citation
Bulbulia, J., Atkinson, Q., Gray, R. & Greenhill, S. (2013). Why do religious cultures evolve slowly? The cultural evolution of cooperative calling and the historical study of religions. In I. Czachesz & R. Uro (Eds.). Mind, Morality and Magic: cognitive science approaches in biblical studies (pp.197-212). West Nyack, NY: Acumen Publishing
Collections
Source
Type
Book chapter
Book Title
Mind, Morality and Magic: Cognitive Science Approaches in Biblical Studies
Entity type
Access Statement
License Rights
Restricted until
2099-12-31
Downloads
File
Description