Overview
- Presents new scientific evidence for controversial hypotheses about religiosity
- Combines modern psychology and psychiatry with evolutionary biology, archeology, anthropology to explain religious phenomena
- Survival value of religious behavior is analyzed
- Questions whether similar mental states underlie spirituality, mysticism and delusions
- Includes supplementary material: sn.pub/extras
Part of the book series: The Frontiers Collection (FRONTCOLL)
Access this book
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Other ways to access
Table of contents (19 chapters)
-
Front Matter
Keywords
- Adaptive value of religion
- Anthropology and religion
- Charles Darwin
- Darwin
- Evolution
- Evolution of religious behaviour
- Evolutionary psychology
- Group selection
- Natural selection of religious behavior
- Propensity for religious behavior
- Religion
- Religion instinct
- Sociobiology and religiosity
- natural selection
About this book
In a Darwinian world, religious behavior - just like other behaviors - is likely to have undergone a process of natural selection in which it was rewarded in the evolutionary currency of reproductive success. This book aims to provide a better understanding of the social scenarios in which selection pressure led to religious practices becoming an evolved human trait, i.e. an adaptive answer to the conditions of living and surviving that prevailed among our prehistoric ancestors. This aim is pursued by a team of expert authors from a range of disciplines. Their contributions examine the relevant physiological, emotional, cognitive and social processes. The resulting understanding of the functional interplay of these processes gives valuable insights into the biological roots and benefits of religion.
Editors and Affiliations
About the editors
Wulf Schiefenhövel is professor for medical psychology and ethnomedicine at the University of Munich and head of the human ethology group at the Max-Planck-Institute in Andechs, Germany. His main research interests are human ethology and evolutionary medicine, within which he focuses on sexuality and reproduction, human birth behavior, early infancy, language and cognitive concepts as well as the genetic and oral history of Melanesian populations
Eckart Voland is professor for philosophy of life sciences at the University of Giessen, Germany. His main research interests are human sociobiology and behavioral ecology. In particular he is interested in the biological evolution of social and reproductive strategies in humans. Moreover, in pursuing the project of naturalizing the human mind and its achievements, he works on the philosophical implications of evolutionary anthropology as reflected in evolutionary ethics and aesthetics.
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: The Biological Evolution of Religious Mind and Behavior
Editors: Eckart Voland, Wulf Schiefenhövel
Series Title: The Frontiers Collection
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-00128-4
Publisher: Springer Berlin, Heidelberg
eBook Packages: Biomedical and Life Sciences, Biomedical and Life Sciences (R0)
Copyright Information: Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2009
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-642-00127-7Published: 02 September 2009
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-642-26016-2Published: 14 March 2012
eBook ISBN: 978-3-642-00128-4Published: 12 August 2009
Series ISSN: 1612-3018
Series E-ISSN: 2197-6619
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: X, 305
Topics: Evolutionary Biology, Modern Philosophy, Philosophy of Religion, Anthropology, Religious Studies, general