experience could evolve due to beneficial effects on the individual. Prayer as a
genre constitutes a considerable part of the biblical tradition, and the study of
prayers can benefit from appreciating the behavioral component in addition to
understanding them only in terms of theological concepts or textual tradi-
tions. Rituals are thought to enhance group solidarity and cooperation, reviv-
ing Durkheim’s position and leading to the hypothesis that religion as a whole
is a group-level behavioral or even genetic adaptation (see sections 5.3 and
8.3). Instead of such sweeping claims, it might be more fruitful to concentrate
on possible evolved traits in individual aspects of rituals and ritual behavior.
For example, synchronized behavior was certainly adaptive for our ancestors
in evolutionary history, enhancing solidarity and increasing success in hunt-
ing, warfare, and other situations (McNeill, 1995; Merker, 2000). In different
contemporary settings, however, it can have adverse effects, such as reducing
participants’ability of critical reflection, of which mass ceremonies in totali-
tarian regimes provide well-known examples. Another important hypothesis
about the role of rituals in group-selection is that participants in rituals
produce hard-to-fake signals of commitment (Irons, 2001; Bulbulia, 2004).
We can note a certain tension between the two above-mentioned explanations
of the benefits of rituals for the group: on the one hand, synchronicity emerges
from neural processes that are largely unconscious and imitation can take
place inadvertently (the stickiness of yawning being a common example); on
the other hand, signaling theory requires that participants cannot easily
produce certain behavior (such as expressions of emotion) without being
honestly committed to the beliefs and values of the group. Perhaps a certain
typology of collective rituals will shed more light on the place of these two
distinct functional aspects.
The survival of a group can be supported not only by rituals but also by
other types of individual and collective behavior that are passed on by social
learning. Behavior related to agriculture and other technologies can be
inherited without explicit teaching, taken for granted as the way things
ought to be done. In the social sphere, eye-gaze and physical distance between
interlocutors (or people who just happen to be in the same physical space)
show intriguing cultural patterns (as anyone visiting Finland and Italy shortly
after one another can tell). For a scholar of antiquity, much of that interesting
information is lost, but some clues might be found in archeological material as
well as in Mediterranean anthropology. In general, many habits, behaviors,
and attitudes that are acquired by social learning support religion. It is often
impossible to give a rational account of them, although theologians as well as
folk-theories might compete in establishing etymologies of why groups do or
believe things in particular ways. It is important to recognize that one’s own
religiosity is not easily and entirely transparent to one’s conscious reflection,
theological scholarship included. In fact, habits can drift freely within and
across populations or spread as behavioral memes (falling under the rubric of
42 Cognitive Science and the New Testament