Richard Sosis – författare

Religion and violence share a complex and enduring history. Viewing violence and religion from an evolutionary perspective situates both within a broader framework of aggressive, affiliative, and signaling behaviors across species. In this work the authors review genetic, epigenetic, and environmental factors that influence violence, distinguishing two types of aggression that differ in underlying physiology and intent. The use of communicative signals to delimit aggression across species is surveyed and the emergence of human symbolic ritual as a signaling system for creating alliances and promoting in-group cooperation is proposed. Using Wallace's typology of religion, this Element explores differences across religious systems in relation to socioecological variation and examines the underlying mechanisms by which religion 'works'. The use of violence as both an 'honest signal' and a mechanism for inculcating religious belief is discussed, and the use of religion to incite, validate, and justify violence is reviewed.

The scientific study of religion has made significant advances in recent decades, explaining how the mind produces religious ideas, the motivations underlying religious behaviour, and the transmission of religious cultures within and across generations. In Religion Evolving: Cultural, Cognitive, and Ecological Dynamics, Purzycki and Sosis argue that further progress requires integration of isolated research findings on the various components - ritual, supernatural agent belief, myth, taboo, and so forth - that constitute religion. Religions, they contend, need to be understood as adaptive systems. Drawing from a wealth of ethnographic and experimental evidence, they situate religious systems within their local socioecological contexts, showing how religious culture adaptively responds to economic, environmental, and human health problems, as well as costly threats to cooperation and reproduction. Based in the evolutionary, cognitive, and anthropological sciences, Religion Evolving offers a holistic approach that attends to the complex, interacting features of religious systems.