Routledge Handbook of Evolutionary Approaches to Religion

Yair Lior is Doctor of Religious Studies at Boston University, USA, and a research associate at the Center for Mind and Culture (CMAC), Boston, Massachusetts, USA. Justin Lane is co-founder and CEO at CulturePulse Inc. (USA/Slovakia), Scientific Advisor at DEKK Institute (Bratislava, Slovakia), and collaborates as a researcher with the Slovak Academy of Science (Institute of Ethnology and Social Anthropology).

"With more than thirty contributions spanning evolutionary psychology, cultural evolution, and synthetic approaches, the editors present a panoramic overview of how religion can be studied as a phenomenon shaped by both the brain and culture… The strengths of the volume lie in its breadth, its interdisciplinary ambition, and the quality of its case studies. It successfully illustrates how predictive processing theories, cultural macroevolution, and ecological approaches can enrich the cognitive science of religion… the handbook’s greatest contribution is to underscore that evolutionary accounts of religion are themselves evolving, increasingly moving toward pluralism and synthesis. By juxtaposing detailed empirical studies with theoretical reflection, it situates religion within broader debates on cognition, cooperation, and cultural complexity."- Tianji Ma, Research Foundation for Culture and Religion, Gießen in Religious Studies Review, Vol. 51 No. 4 (Dec 2025)

• 1 Introduction: Evolutionary Approaches to ReligionYair Lior and Justin LanePART 1Evolutionary Psychology 2 Introduction to Evolutionary Psychology Justin Lane and Yair Lior3 Child Development: The Effects of Ritual on Cognitive Development Veronika Rybanska4 Cognition and the History of Religion Luther H. Martin5 Evoked Culture: Cognitive Mechanisms of Religious Belief and Behavior E. Thomas Lawson6 Sacred Values: Identity Fusion, Devoted Actor Theory, and Extremism Kayla Bonnin and Justin Lane7 Sexual Selection: Long- term Mating Strategies and Religion James A. Van Slyke8 Minimally Counterintuitive Concepts: A Unified Theory in the Cognitive Science of Religion? Muhammad Afzal Upal9 Faces in Clouds and Voices in the Wind: Anthropomorphism, Agency Detection and Human Cognition Stewart E. Guthrie and Michaela Porubanova10 Social Brain Hypothesis: Dunbar’s Number and the Stability of Religious Social NetworksMichael J. Gantley, John P. McKeown and Ángel V. Jiménez11 Atheism: A New Evolutionary Perspective on Non-BeliefThomas J. Coleman, Kyle J. Messick, and Valerie van Mulukom12 Personality and Psychology in the Evolution of ReligionIgor Mikloušić and Boris Mlačić13 Hazard Precaution: Examining the Possible Adaptive Value of Ritualized BehaviorMartin Lang and Radim ChvajaPART 2Cultural Evolution14 Introduction to Cultural EvolutionArmin W. Geertz15 Cultural Group Selection and the Evolution of ReligionTaylor Davis16 Costly Signaling: The ABCs of Signaling Theory and ReligionRichard Sosis17 Credibility Enhancing Displays (CREDs): When They Work and When They Don’tHugh Turpin and Jonathan A. Lanman18 Dual Inheritance Theory: Religion, Narrative, and SelectionFrancesco Ferretti and Ines Adornetti19 The Co- evolution of Religion and Literate CultureDaniel Mullins20 Religion and Prosociality: The Naturalization of NormsConnor Wood21 Big Gods Theory: The Cultural Evolution of Social Complexity and Prosocial ReligionsYair Lior22 The Evolution of Ritual, Cognition, and Modes of Religiosity During the Agricultural TransitionMichael J. Gantley23 Meme TheoryJustin Lane24 Institutional Evolution: The Dynamics of Religious FormationsJonathan H. Turner and Armin W. Geertz25 Behavioral Ecology: Niche Construction and ReligionJohn BalchPART 3Synthetic Approaches26 Synthetic Approaches: At the Intersection of Evolutionary Psychology and Cultural EvolutionYair Lior and Justin Lane27 Religion Emerges: The Evolution of Language and ReligionPaul Cassell28 Cultural Cybernetics of Religion: Computation and Information Transmission in ReligionJustin Lane29 Major Transitions in Cultural Evolution: A Dynamic Systems ApproachYair Lior30 Cultural Epidemiology: Attractors and RepresentationsRadu Umbreș31 Differentiating Processes of Biological, Cognitive, and Cultural Selection: Implications for the Adaptation/ Byproduct DebateLee Kirkpatrick32 Synthesis and Explanatory PluralismWesley J. Wildman and David Rohr33 Concluding Reflections: An Evolutionary Approach to Comparative ReligionWilliam E. PadenIndex