in the tradition (Czachesz, 2007b). Moderate emotional effects have been also
shown to enhance the memorability of narratives, as well (Laney et al., 2004;
Norenzayan & Atran, 2004). In early Christian tradition, emotional details are
often added to counterintuitive ones, such as in miracle stories or apocalyptic
texts (Czachesz, 2009a, 2012d, pp. 170–5, 2014).
Some religious ideas might also motivate people to transmit them, such as
the promise of Jesus’immanent return and millenarian expectations in gen-
eral. Other beliefs might spread due to their beneficial effect on people who
transmit them, which would put them under the rubric of cultural selection at
the level of the organism. Rodney Stark proposed different ways in which
joining Christianity could improve people’s lives, suggesting that the early
congregations functioned as some kind of ancient welfare society (Stark, 2004,
pp. 30–1). Empirical research confirmed that people in fact gain explanation,
comfort, and hope from religion, usually subsumed under the concept of
“coping”(Hood et al., 2009, pp. 459–76).
Finally, cultural group selection is probably one of the most debated and at
the same time most exciting areas of the evolutionary approaches to religion.
First, as I mentioned above, symbolic inheritance supports the production and
evolution of artifacts, which, in turn, increase the success of the groups using
them. Second, many artifacts themselves are vehicles of symbolic inheritance.
Artifactsfilled with meaning are found in virtually every religion, including
visual art, texts, music and architecture. We cannot automatically conclude,
however, that such artifacts also confer evolutionary advantages to the group.
The suggestion of some scholars of the Cognitive Science of Religion that
religion is a“spandrel”of evolution could apply to some religious artifacts,
literally.^10 Still at least some symbolic inheritance results in selective processes
(cf. section 2.6). In large groups, some artifacts are used as“symbolic markers”
that provide means of identification and enhance solidarity among people
who might never meet each other (Boyd & Richerson, 1987; Efferson et al.,
2008). For example (cf. Horrell 2007; Czachesz 2011b), members of the
Jesus movement could maintain face-to-face interaction in the beginning.
Although“the name”(Matt. 10:22; Mk 13:13; John 15:21; Acts 4:30, 10:43;
1 Cor. 1:10; etc.) or“the way”(esp. Acts 9:2, 19:9.23, 22.4, 24:14) were used to
refer to the movement, such shared symbols and self-designations were not
functioning as symbolic markers, strictly speaking. When the movement
expanded in both geographic and cultural terms in the middle of thefirst
century, symbolic markers emerged. Not surprisingly, they were especially
important for Paul, whose innovative ideas, more than anyone else’s,
(^10) Spandrels are ornamentsfilling space between arches in gothic architecture. Stephen
J. Gould and Richard C. Lewontin used the expression to describe by-products of evolution
(Gould & Lewontin, 1979). The term was applied to religion by Scott Atran (2002, pp. 43–9).
44 Cognitive Science and the New Testament