replicator-level selection). However, such accidentally acquired traits can
become important in some situations, gaining a new function as symbolic
markers, which we will further discuss below.
2.5 SYMBOLIC INHERITANCE AND RELIGIONSymbolic inheritance is the dimension of evolution with which exegetes have
traditionally concerned themselves, although not many scholars thought
about textual tradition in terms of memetics. Perhaps the most interesting
contribution of the Cognitive Science of Religion to this area is the recognition
that much religious thought and imagery is the result of evolution at the
replicator level, irrespective of their influence on the reproductive success of
believers (understood here as any aspect of health, prestige, quality of life,
longevity, or fertility, which promotes the spread of the belief).^9 Even though
such ideas are sometimes called cultural“parasites”or“viruses,”they are not
any more parasitic than genes that increase in frequency due to inter-genomic
conflict or genetic drift. The recognition that ideas that are more interesting
and memorable will spread in a population more successfully than others
sheds new light on the success of some theological concepts in early Chris-
tianity as well as in other religions.
Since I will address the problem of the textual transmission in more detail in
Chapter 4, it will suffice to mention some of the main points at this place.
Increased memorability can result from two major sources. First, limited
violations of maturationally natural ontological categories (see in section
2.2.4) make ideas more memorable. That the resurrection of Jesus three days
after his death was not accepted by every early Christian believer is evident
from such early sources as 1 Corinthians 15:2, 11–12. If Jesus died just like any
other human being, however, hisfigure will fully match our expectations
attached to the category of human beings. In contrast, depicting him as the
resurrected one, who can suddenly appear before his disciples in a house with
closed doors, or disappear from them in the middle of a conversation (e.g.,
Luke 24:31; John 20:19, 26), adds limited counterintuitive traits to hisfigure
that make respective versions of the story more memorable and therefore
more successful in cultural transmission. Excessively counterintuitive versions
of Jesus’death and resurrection, such as in docetic tradition (e.g.,Acts of John
97 – 102), in contrast, will be difficult to remember and therefore disadvantaged
(^9) In the Cognitive Science of Religion, the above-mentioned process is explained in the
framework of the epidemiological model developed by Dan Sperber, which I mentioned briefly
in the introductory part of this chapter. In section 2.6 I will discuss the problem of epidemiology
(attraction) and selection in more detail.
Evolution 43