Cognitive Science and the New Testament A New Approach to Early Christian Research

Eva Jablonka and Marion Lamb (2005) argued that epigenetic processes form an independent inheritance system. They also extended ...

be manipulated in virtually endless ways, yielding creative cultural products in different media. Third, symbolic inheritance im ...

of genes is thought to be rare in genetic evolution, but it is arguably frequent between variants of memes in cultural evolution ...

of interactions and avoid helping anyone who failed to return the favor once received. We will discuss these models in more deta ...

ancestors hunted and gathered during the Pleistocene period (between 2.5 million and 12,000 years ago), most likely on the Afric ...

the development of mental modules that focus on agents in the environment (Barton, 2000; Boyer & Barrett, 2005). In our ance ...

2.2.3 Teleological Reasoning Ghosts and spirits seem perfect candidates to cause phenomena in the envir- onment that we intuitiv ...

born with such intuitions hard-wired in their brains, but the intuitions show up during child development in a wide range of env ...

literature. With the help of this hypothesis one can understand, for example, why God’s eternal existence or endless knowledge a ...

offspring. We have already mentioned three solutions to this kind of problems: kin-selection, reciprocal altruism, and group-lev ...

adaptation (cooperation was essential for survival especially under harsher climates), guilt was probably selected at the level ...

muscle mass and power are taken into account (Puts, 2010, p. 161). Men mature later (to have more strength when they enter the c ...

widely endorsed version of such evolution is kin-selection (or inclusivefitness; see 2.2.7). Further, it has to be noted that ki ...

in a society.^8 There could be connections between these epigenetically inherit- ed characteristics and some religious habits an ...

experience could evolve due to beneficial effects on the individual. Prayer as a genre constitutes a considerable part of the bi ...

replicator-level selection). However, such accidentally acquired traits can become important in some situations, gaining a new f ...

in the tradition (Czachesz, 2007b). Moderate emotional effects have been also shown to enhance the memorability of narratives, a ...

influenced the formation of Jesus’image as a highly symbolic, divinefigure. Paul was actively involved in defining the boundarie ...

memetics and defended his epidemiological model as a better explanation of cultural transmission. The two positions have been ou ...

Chinese food in Western Europe), in particular, show quite clearly how “inheritance with modification”shapes recipes.^11 We can ...