Os fundamentos cognitivo-evolutivos das crenças e comportamentos religiosos: a religião como uma “máquina de Rube Goldberg cultural”

Abstract

The neo-Darwinian literature on the evolution of religion has been recently divided by a fundamental debate between adaptation theories – which explain religious behaviors as products of selection for religion, because of its role in promoting cooperation – and nonadaptation theories – that explain religious beliefs as adaptive by-products, or products of cognitive systems whose adaptive value is based on other, non-religious functions. However, adaptationist and by-product accounts can be seen as not only consistent, but also as complementary parts of a single, unified theory. In order to illustrate this, and to explain how these theories are positively related – over and above mere consistency – a model of the religious phenotype, that has been offered independently by authors from both sides of the “adaptation vs. by-product” debate, will be extracted from the existing literature. On this view, the religious phenotype is best understood as a complex system composed of exaptated traits, i.e., assembled by (cultural) selection for religion, but using parts designed by selection for other, non-religious functions. Furthermore, by applying this model to an influential new theory of religious evolution based on cultural selection, it becomes possible to answer some basic questions that arise from the assumptions required for unifying these apparently conflicting approaches, and to explain how, from a logical point of view, their integration is actually supposed to work. Finally, it can be concluded that shared assumptions embodied in the exaptationist perspective of the religious phenotype are already sufficient for unifying adaptationist and by-product accounts, and for moving beyond the debate, towards a single, unified theory of the biocultural evolution of religion.