of interactions and avoid helping anyone who failed to return the favor once
received. We will discuss these models in more detail in section 8.2.
Cultural evolution is easier to understand than genetic evolution at the level
of groups (Richerson & Boyd, 2005, pp. 197–211). For example, various
behavioral and symbolic features can identify group members (in larger
groups), demonstrate honesty and readiness to cooperate, and deter cheaters
from taking advantage of others’altruistic behavior. The concept of group
selection (genetic or cultural) has been criticized for different reasons
(cf. Kundt, 2015, pp. 35–49). One of the problems is that anyone who benefits
from cooperation but can manage to pay lower costs than others will acquire a
fitness advantage and thus the gene or meme that made him or her behave in
such a way will be passed on with greater frequency; that is, cheaters will be
represented in ever greater numbers in the population. Wilson and Wilson
(2007, 2008) addressed this issue by stating that sufficiently strong selection on
the group level will prevent the spread of free-riding on the level of the
individual organisms. Another problem concerns the group as a unit: what
is a social group and are groups producing offspring or dying out in suffi-
ciently great numbers to be units of selection? We will return to the problem of
group selection below (sections 2.2.9 and 8.3).
In sum, we identified four inheritance systems (genetic, epigenetic, behav-
ioral, symbolic), which enable evolution on three levels (that of the replicator,
the organism, and the group). Among the possible mechanisms of evolution,
we were mainly concentrating on natural selection, also mentioning forms of
neutral evolution. Table 2.1 shows aspects and components of religion that can
be connected to evolution in different modes of inheritance at different levels
of selection. In the remaining part of this chapter, we will briefly discuss each
of these components. Note that the table shows aspects of religion that have
been identified and discussed in different cognitive and evolutionary theories
of religion: it is thus not my claim that religion is a sum of these aspects or
components. The discussion of the table will give us an opportunity to
introduce some of the theories that will be used in subsequent chapters and
set the stage for the application of these theories to the study of the New
Testament.
2.2 GENETIC INHERITANCE AND RELIGIONSince genetic evolution is slow, it takes several tens of thousands of years for
beneficial variations to become widespread in a human population (Gibbons,
2010). There are some well-known exceptions when change occurred infive to
ten thousand years, to which we will come back below. As a consequence, the
structure of the human mind remained essentially unchanged since our
Evolution 31