minor adjustments, ritual costs could be increased dramatically. Applying
such changes to ritual behavior, costs could be adjusted relativelyflexibly, at
least in small-scale communities. Thisfits the historical picture suggested
above, that is, a process of re-calibrating ritual costs to deal with multiple
commitments and optimally allocate one’s limited resources. In sociological
terms, of course, the demands of the Matthean text imply that one loosens
one’s ties with the local community, where one will be less likely tofind
support when in need. Thus we have to assume that the Christian congrega-
tion (and possibly its larger social network) could compensate for this loss.
This is, however, a topic that we will discuss in Chapters 8–9.^8
In his theory of“charismatic signaling,”Joseph Bulbulia (2009; Bulbulia &
Sosis, 2011) addresses the problem of cooperation in large-scale societies.
Bulbulia suggests an evolved bio-cultural system that automatically elicits
cooperation from members of the society. The theory connects a number of
traditional biological and social psychological research areas (e.g., synchrony,
biased transmission, observer effect, minimal group theory) and its detailed
evaluation would surpass the limits of this chapter. All these factors, according
to Bulbulia, support the creation of a human evolutionary niche (that is, a
culturally altered environment in which evolution takes place, see Chapter 2,
this volume) that pressures humans toward cooperation. The ambitious scope
of Bulbulia’s theorizing makes it difficult to judge at the moment whether the
connection of these areas results in a coherent new theory. Various aspects of
evolution, transmission, and morality covered by Bulbulia are addressed in
other chapters of this book. There is one topic, however, that needs to be
mentioned before we conclude the discussion of ritual as a tool of social
coherence, aspects of which also feature in Bulbulia’s theory. In thefinal
part of this section, we will turn our attention to synchrony.
In simple terms, scientists speak ofsynchronywhen“the same things
happen at the same time” (Strogatz, 2003, p. 2). In a more technical
sense, things that operate in synchrony are“coupled oscillators”(p. 3). For
example,“groups offireflies, planets, or pacemaker cells are all collections of
oscillator-entities that cycle automatically, that repeat themselves over
and over again at more or less regular time intervals”(p. 3). Interestingly,
synchrony is quite widespread in human behavior. Even before the multidis-
ciplinary research on synchrony started to emerge in the natural sciences,
this human propensity had caught scholars’ attention. Why do armies
train soldiers to march in step, in spite of the fact that doing so on a
(^8) The question can be raised if individual prayer performed out of the sight of others could
result in believers simply skipping prayers, which would mean a reduction of the costs of group
membership. Arguably, the influence of the gods on human life was so inevitable in Mediterra-
nean antiquity that few if any would risk such frivolous cheating. Nevertheless, this is a
possibility that can be further analyzed in terms of costs and benefits, including subjective
factors.
104 Cognitive Science and the New Testament