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

ancestors hunted and gathered during the Pleistocene period (between
2.5 million and 12,000 years ago), most likely on the African savannah
(Silverman & Choi, 2005).^6 Whatever evolved cognitive traits helped them
produce healthy offspring were passed on and remained mostly unchanged to
our days. Evolutionary psychologists explain various aspects of human cogni-
tion based on that principle (Tooby & Cosmides, 2016). Naturally, we also
share these structures with people who lived in thefirst centuryCE. Evolu-
tionary psychology has been used to identify traits that specifically contributed
to religious thought and behavior. It is important to point out that the
respective cognitive traits can be studied directly with the tools of experimen-
tal psychology, even if identifying their exact evolutionary background often
involves dealing with complex interdisciplinary evidence and arguments and
remains debated. Let us review some evolved traits that have been brought into
connection with religion.

2.2.1 Hypersensitive Agent-Detection

When dealing with stimuli in the environment, it is a crucial skill to identify
self-propelling, intentionalagents, that perceive what is going on around
them, react to those events, have goals and form plans (Leslie, 1994, 1995).
The needs of both social life and predation might have contributed to

Table 2.1.Natural selection and cognitive theories of religion

Levels of Modes of inheritance
selection
Genetic Epigenetic Behavioral Symbolic

Replicator superstitious
behavior,
magical
practices

minimally
counterintuitive or
emotionally salient
ideas
Organism agent detection, ToM,
teleological reasoning,
fear, reciprocal altruism,
sexual selection,
recursion, altruism
towards kin

diet,

nutrient

utilization,

level of

aggression

habits,

attitudes,

religious

experience

explanation,

comfort, hope

Group moral instincts, empathy collective
rituals,
behavioral
code

artifact production,

symbolic markers,

altruistic ethics,

moral gods

(^6) Of course, our ancestors arrived into the Pleistocene with traits that evolved under previous
circumstances. Thus any“recent”adaptation has been constrained by previously evolved
adaptations (and other evolved traits).
32 Cognitive Science and the New Testament