In my continuing effort to understand why so many atheists and agnostics (the people one would expect to be more science-friendly) deny any evolutionary basis for religion, I have searched for current and cutting-edge (not antique) scientific research that supports that view, without success.

I do realize that confirmation bias haunts us all, so I may not be as successful in my search as someone whose worldview is more aligned with that thinking and who may be more familiar with the relevant literature.

So I am hoping anyone who holds the evolution-free hypothesis of religious development will direct me to the scientific literature upon which they base their orientation. I also welcome input by my hominid cousins whose capacities limit them to chirping, grunting, ad hominem remarks, personal insults and feces-slinging, because it is always entertaining to watch how proudly they display their ignorance and churlishness.

For the rest of you (the majority I’m sure) I will share, in the spirit of reciprocity, my latest findings that appear to me to represent the current scientific thinking on the matter which goes some distance toward resolving the perceived conflict between a purely by-product stance and a purely adaptationist stance. But whether by-product or adaptationist or institutionalist, all of the current hypotheses that I have been able to locate are founded on an evolutionary basis rather than an it’s-just-a-bad-idea-that-won’t-go-away basis.

So please share some of those scientific papers that helped inspire your confidence that the development and continuance of religious behavior in humans for 60,000 years had nothing to do with evolutionary forces. Thanks!

PDF here:
[degruyter.com]

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