Evolution, Religion, and Cognitive Science Critical and Constructive Essays

Fraser Watts is Fellow of Queens' College at the University of Cambridge,

Leon P. Turner is Senior Research Associate at the University of Cambridge.

1. Introduction: Pluralism and Complexity in the Evolutionary Cognitive Science of Religion, Leon Turner
2. The Cognitive Science of Religion, Ilkka Pyysiainen
3. Biologically Evolutionary Explanations of Religious Belief, Michael Ruse
4. The Evolution of Divine and Human Minds: Evolutionary Psychology, the Cognitive Study of Religion and Theism., Aku Visala
5. Extending Evolutionary Accounts of Religion beyond the Mind: Religions as Adaptive Systems, Benjamin Grant Purzycki, Omar Sultan Haque, and Richard Sosis
6. Skilful Engagement and the "Effort after Value": An Axiological Theory of the Origins of Religion, Nathaniel F. Barrett
7. Religion and the Emergence of Differentiated Cognition, Fraser Watts
8. From Empathy to Embodied Faith? Interdisciplinary Perspectives on the Evolution of Religion, Wentzel van Huyssteen
9. Neither Friends nor Enemies: The Complex Relationship Between Cognitive and Humanistic Accounts of Religious Belief, Leon Turner
10. The Cognitive Science of Religion from an Anthropological Perspective: Nature and History Reconciled?, Timothy Jenkins
11. Religion: the Dynamics of Cultural Adaptations, Leslie Newson and Peter Richerson
12. Artificial Intelligence Models of Religious Evolution, William Sims Bainbridge
13. Concluding Reflections, Malcolm Jeeves