literature. With the help of this hypothesis one can understand, for example,
why God’s eternal existence or endless knowledge are more easily conceptu-
alized in the Bible than God’s (or Jesus’) omnipresence: whereas existing for
recursively longer periods of time or knowing recursively more things can be
understood from everyday experience, being at more than one places at the
same time (a clear violation of ontological expectations discussed above)
cannot. In Genesis 11, God descends to Babel (that is, moves in space) to
examine the tower that people have built and to confuse their language. In the
Gospel of Matthew, Jesus says,“Where two or three are gathered in my name,
I am there among them”(Matt. 18:20). One way of imagining omnipresence is
to use analogies from gasses andfluids, such as in John 3:7–8 and 7:37–39.
Theorizing about recursion to explain abstract features of religious concepts
shows that the use of evolutionary theory in the study of religion is by no
means restricted to studying“primitive”or“folk”versions of religions.
2.2.6 EmotionsEmotions have a long evolutionary history and are present in some form in
many animals. At a basic level, emotions equip animals with quick and
automatic behavioral responses to stereotypical situations, such as attraction
to things and situations that increase theirfitness (such as in pair-bonding)
and repulsion from ones that decrease it (such as in spider phobia). Human
emotions comprise a complex system of physiological, cognitive, and behav-
ioral elements (Eysenck, 2004, pp. 154–68). Fear is arguably the most archaic
emotion (Ward, 2012, pp. 81–5) and contributes to many aspects religion,
from human interaction with gods and spirits to morality and the transmis-
sion of religious ideas (e.g., sections 4.6 and 8.1). Recent contributions in
Biblical Studies explored the role of emotions in Jewish law (Kazen, 2012) and
ethnic thinking (Shantz, 2013).
2.2.7 Adaptations for CooperationHuman existence is unthinkable without cooperation. In general, everyone in
a group is better off doing many things jointly rather than individually. For
example, hunting large animals in hunter-gatherer societies provided invalu-
able food resources but was impossible without cooperation. However, the
logic of natural selection at the level of the individual seems to undermine
cooperative efforts. If there is a trait that helps an individual benefit from the
cooperative behavior of others (eat a juicy steak) without contributing a fair
share (lagging behind at the hunting expedition), it will provide the individual
with a surplus of resources that can be invested into more and healthier
36 Cognitive Science and the New Testament