The Attraction of Religion A New Evolutionary Psychology of Religion

Religion is an evolutionary puzzle. It involves beliefs in counterfactual worlds and engagement in costly rituals. Yet religion is widespread across all human cultures and eras. This begs the question, why are so many people attracted to religion?

In The Attraction of Religion, essays by leading scholars in evolutionary psychology, anthropology, and religious studies demonstrate how religion may be related to evolutionary adaptations because religious commitments involve fitness-enhancing behaviours that promote reproduction, kinship, and social solidarity. Could it be that religion is wide-spread, at least in the modern world, because it helps to facilitate cooperative breeding? International contributors explore the philosophical and theoretical arguments for and against the use of costly signalling, sexual selection, and related theories to explain religion, and empirical findings that support or disconfirm such claims. The first book-length treatment that focuses specifically on costly signalling, sexual selection, and related evolutionary theories to explain religion, The Attraction of Religion will be an important contribution to the field and will be of interest to researchers in the fields of evolutionary psychology, religion and science, the psychology of religion, and anthropology of religion.

D. Jason Slone is Associate Professor of Psychology and Humanities at the School of Arts and Sciences, Tiffin University, USA.

James A. Van Slyke is Assistant Professor of Psychology at Fresno Pacific University, USA.

List of Figures
Acknowledgements
Introduction. Connecting Religion, Sex, and Evolution, Jason Slone (Professor of Cognition and Culture, School of Arts & Sciences, Tiffin University, USA) & James Van Slyke (Assistant Professor of Psychology, School of Humanities, Religion & Social Sciences, Fresno Pacific University, USA)
Chapter 1. Why Don't Abstinence Programs Work? (and other Puzzles), James Van Slyke (Assistant Professor of Psychology, School of Humanities, Religion & Social Sciences, Fresno Pacific University, USA)
Chapter 2. Religion and Parental Cooperation: An Empirical Test of Slone's Sexual Signaling Model, Joseph Bulbulia (Associate Professor, School of Art History, Classics and Religious Studies, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand), John Shaver (Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Laboratory for Experimental Research of Religion, Masaryk University, Czech Republic), Lara Greaves (NZAVS Lab Manager, School of Psychology, The University of Auckland, New Zealand), Richard Sosis (Professor of Anthropology, University of Connecticut, USA) & Chris Sibley (Associate Professor, School of Psychology, University of Auckland, New Zealand)
Chapter 3. How Is't With Thy Religion, Pray? Selection of Religion among Individuals and Groups, Michael Blume (Lecturer in Religious Studies, Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Germany)
Chapter 4. Losing My Religion: A Life-History Analysis of the Decline of Religious Attendance from Childhood, Jason Weeden (independent academic)
Chapter 5. Costly Signaling Theory, Sexual Selection, and the Influence of Ancestors on Religious Behavior, Craig T. Palmer (Associate Professor of Anthropology, University of Missouri, USA) & Ryan O. Begley (doctoral student in anthropology, University of Missouri, USA)
Chapter 6. When Religion Makes It Worse: Religiously Motivated Violence as a Sexual Selection Weapon, Yael Sela (doctoral student in psychology, Oakland University, USA), Todd K. Shackelford (Chair of Psychology, Oakland University, USA), & James R. Liddle (doctoral student in psychology, Florida Atlantic University, USA)
Chapter 7. The Dividends of Discounting Pain: Self-Inflicted Pain as a Reputational Commodity, Matthew Martinez (Researcher, Department of Anthropology, University of Nevada – Las Vegas, USA) & Pierre Lienard (Assistant Professor of Anthroplogy, University of Nevada – Las Vegas, USA)
Chapter 8. Religion and Marketing: The Attractiveness of Religion as a Moral Brand, Panagiotis Mitkidis (Researcher, Interacting Minds Center, Faculty of Arts, Aarhus University, Denmark) & Gabriel Levy (Associate Professor, Norwegian Univeristy of Science and Technology, Norway)
Chapter 9. Fathering, Rituals, and Mating: Exploring Paternal Stability and Sexual Strategies in Early Religion, David Bell (Lecturer, Department of Religious Studies, Georgia State University, USA)
Chapter 10. The Evolutionary Psychology of Theology, Andrew Mahoney (independent academic and Guest Lecturer, Victoria University, Australia)

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