How Do We Explain The Evolution Of Religion?

NPR | CULTURE
By Barbara King

Mark Wilson/Getty Images

Religion is a cross-cultural universal, even though not every human being professes faith in God or some other supernatural being. Those of us who are atheist or agnostic make up 6 percent of the American population. A further 14 percent with any particular religion. But religiosity is found in every human culture and biologists, anthropologists, and psychologists keenly debate how it arose. Just like language, technology and bipedalism, religion too evolved over time. But how did that happen? The answer (researchers) Crespi and Summers favor is grounded in theory, as posited in 1964 by W.D. Hamilton. Kin selection turns on the concept of inclusive fitness, the idea that an organism's biological fitness derives not only from the direct production of offspring, but also from aiding the reproduction of its other relatives. [link]