groups can overrule evolutionary pressures that influence selection at the level
of the individual. To put it simply, a tribe can manage to survive in a harsh
natural environment or defeat its neighbors in conflicts because of the self-
sacrifice of its members. The genes of this tribe will be then represented in
greater numbers in future human generations than the genes of the members
of its selfish rivals. Cultural group selection (see section 2.5), in turn, suggests
that some cultural traits became widespread because they enabled reliable
cooperation in groups.
The question of how cooperation is maintained in large groups of genetic-
ally unrelated (non-kin) humans lead to theories about the contribution of
religion (cf. section 5.3). More recently, a number of scholars drew on
evolutionary theory to revive Émile Durkheim’s idea that religion is the
foundation of large-scale human cooperation, including Donald Broom
(2003), David Sloan Wilson (2003), Ara Norenzayan (2013), and Dominic
Johnson (2015). These studies promote the view that beliefs in morally
interested gods, together with the prospect of post-mortem punishments
and rewards make people willing to cooperate with strangers, as well as
make them generally well behaved. Specifically, Norenzayan developed the
argument that beliefs in moralizing, punishing gods ushered in the transition
from small-scale, hunter-gatherer societies toward large states based on agri-
cultural production. Among others, Norenzayan drew on Klaus Schmidt’s
(2000) interpretation of the Neolithic excavation site of Göbekli Tepe. Schmidt
argued that some hunter-gatherer groups in the Middle East gathered for joint
worship periodically, which led to the formation of semipermanent settle-
ments. According to Norenzayan (2013, p. 120), this“suggests the idea that
early stirrings to worship Big Gods motivated people to take up early forms of
farming.”
Another group of theories focused on the connection between rituals and
group solidarity. Since we reviewed the relevant ritual theories in section 5.3, a
reminder to the most important points will suffice at this place. William Irons
(1991, 2001) suggested that religious behavior sends reliable signals of one’s
commitment to social cooperation, an idea that has been further elaborated on
by Richard Sosis (2000, 2006) and Joseph Bulbulia (2004; Bulbulia & Sosis,
2011). In various empirical studies, Sosis found that religious communes in
the United States (Sosis, 2000; Sosis & Bressler, 2003) as well as religious
kibbutzim in Israel (Sosis, 2000, pp. 82–4)flourished better than their non-
religious counterparts. It has been also suggested that rituals enhance group
cohesion by creating synchrony (such as in communal dances or processions;
Cohen et al., 2010; Konvalinka et al., 2011) as well as they can be used to
maintain unified beliefs and practices in large populations (Bulbulia, 2009;
Bulbulia & Sosis, 2011).
A look at the Hebrew Bible seems to support such a connection between
social cooperation and religion. The pages of the Hebrew Bible are replete with
178 Cognitive Science and the New Testament