How Religion Evolved: And Why It Endures by Robin I. M. Dunbar

How Religion Evolved: And Why It Endures Reviews

• 
  Rossdavidh

  Robin Dunbar (he of "Dunbar's number" fame) has decided to take on one of the trickiest topics for any scientist: religion. He does better than most.
  
  You might think that I say religion is a tricky topic, because of the numerous clashes science and religion have had over the last few centuries, from Galileo up to Richard Dawkins. But, while that is certainly part of it, the real problem (nowadays) is not the religious authorities' problem with science, but the scientists' problem with religion. In order to study a topic, it is important to have an interest in it, but one should also be able to think dispassionately about it. There are not very many scientists today who are up to the task.
  
  Because religion is on the short list of any catalog of cultural universals, right up there with language, music, storytelling, and clothes, it is sometimes a bit embarrassing to see otherwise clever and intelligent men and women go through endless mental contortions trying to convince themselves that it's all a mistake. One is reminded of when Stephen Pinker said that music was "auditory cheesecake", an evolutionary accident of no great import. Most scientists have gone one further in religion's case, and tried to make the case that religion is more of a disease, a mental parasite that impairs our ability to think rationally and get along peacefully.
  
  Well, that would explain why atheistic societies like the French Revolution under Robespierre, German Fascism, the Soviet Union under Stalin, or modern North Korea all have such abnormally rational and peaceful societies, eh? Oh, wait. Getting rid of those pesky religions does not appear, on the whole, to lead to an outbreak of desirable behavior. The opposite might be true; people living in abnormally wealthy and peaceful societies tend (with one or two generations' delay) to drift away from religion, but every attempt to forcibly remove religion from society seems to lead to bad things. It's enough to make you wonder if there might be some evolutionarily desirable characteristics of religion, but only if you're not a modern mainstream scientist, because no reputable scientist would be caught dead saying anything that seems to suggest religion might sometimes have a beneficial impact on people's behavior.
  
  Oh, wait, hold on, I'm wrong. Ladies and gentlemen, Robin Dunbar.
  
  This doesn't mean he's advocating any particular religion, or even religion in general. However, Dunbar does appear to be able to look at religion objectively, and (as with music, language, storytelling, etc.) try to figure out why it is so widespread. He takes it one further, and puts forth a fairly well developed taxonomy, in which different sorts of religion appear at different stages in a society's growth. The needs of a hunter-gatherer society with groups around 50 (well under Dunbar's number) are very different from the needs of a society with large scale agricultural infrastructure and cities with populations over 10,000. The needs change again as you get up to empires in the millions.
  
  They also change as humanity's capacity for higher degrees of intentionality increases. From first degree ("I believe that rain is falling") to second ("I believe that you think rain is falling") up through fifth degree ("I believe that you think that we both know God exists and intends to punish us"), our capacity for abstraction in religion increased, and hence our ability to use it as a tool for getting increasingly large groups to get along. In this theory, the reason human sacrifice disappeared might be that it was no longer necessary to terrify people by showing them what would happen if they did not behave; we all agreed to terrify ourselves by imagining it, and trusting only others who we believed were terrifying themselves in a similar fashion ("God-fearing").
  
  Is it true? I don't know, but it sounds plausible, far more than the alternative explanation of "bad memes infected people's brains". It shows both a reason why religion exists, and a reason why it has evolved over the last few millennia in the ways that it has. It suggests why modern moralizing religions (sometimes called "Big Gods" religions) appeared when they did (human societies had become large enough to need them). It suggests why we don't see it among other species (unless you're willing to stretch the definition of 'religion' to the point where it holds little meaning): because they don't make large societies in the way that we do (social insects, etc. rely on instinct rather than conscientious behavior), they don't need religion to encourage cooperation.
  
  Dunbar waits until the very end to, very briefly, discuss the question of whether or not we still need it, and I think that's wise. The sober and even-handed study of religion by science is not nearly a mature enough field to be answering any such question anyway, and a focus on asking and discussing it only reduces the chance of being able to make a proper study of the topic. Dunbar is not here to tell you what religion you should have, if any; he's here to make a good start on explaining why we had religion in the past, and how those reasons have changed over time. If you are capable of maintaining a calm demeanor while thinking about the topic, you may find this book a good step forward in our understanding of a cultural universal that has been too often shouted about and too seldom really studied.
• 
  Stefan Mitev

  Известният еволюционен биолог Робин Дънбар обяснява защо религията е продукт на човешката еволюция и защо е универсално разпространена в съвременните и минали общества. Homo sapiens е единственият животински вид, който е религиозен. Възходът на религиите става възможен след възникването на езика като метод за комуникация и внушение. В миналото хората са живеели в далеч по-малки общности, обикновено включващи около 150 индивида (число на Дънбар). Човешкият мозък е способен да изгражда социални връзки и да мониторира интеракциите между отделните хора, когато кръгът на роднини, приятели и познати е до около 150. Това число е многократно потвърдено при научни изследвания, включително и в модерния глобализиран свят. Ние просто нямаме когнитивния капацитет да изграждаме неограничен брой трайни социални взаимоотношения.
  
  С нарастването на размера и гъстотата на човешките общества (поради все по-благоприятни условия на средата) възникват сериозни проблеми - междуличностни конфликти, агресия към непознатите, беззаконие до степен на граждански войни. Религията решава именно проблемите, свързани с нарастващите популации и интеракциите между отделните членове. Религиозните общества са били по-сплотени, единни и устойчиви на външни и вътрешни заплахи. Участниците в тях са имали еволюционно предимство от гледна точка на оцеляване и репродукция спрямо конкурентни популации. Ние сме потомци на общества, които са успели да оцелеят в значително по-жестоки условия на средата в близкото и далечно минало.
  
  Книгата е сложна за четене, с многобройни цитирания на антропологични и биологични публикации. Изводите няма да се харесат на мнозина. Секуларните доктрини (напр. хуманизъм) нямат същата притегателна сила, както религиите, включващи крайно ирационални и невъзможни елементи (чудеса). Последните две глави са посветени на многобройни култове, секти, схизми и субкултури, които ясно демонстрират ползите (поне за отделни членове), но и рисковете от организираната доктринална религия.
  
  Заключението е донякъде песимистично - религиите няма да изчезнат дори в съвременното модерно общество. Религията е еволюционен феномен и продължава да изпълнява важна роля дори днес, особено при нарастващото отчуждаване в големите градове. Не се сърдете на религиозните си приятели, които вярват в "чудеса". Сляпата им вяра е заложена еволюционно.
• 
  Dave Stone

  This is the book I've been seeking for 30 years
  It's going to hard to avoid comparing this book to Germs, Guns & Steel. It's clear, concise, conversational, and fills in the blanks. After you read it, So much makes sense.
  There were so many eureka moments in this book where I said "OH! That's why!"
  This book looks at religion, all religion as a human phenomenon that fulfills biological, and neurological needs.
  Religion allows group sizes to increase with out increased social & physiological stresses by satisfying the primate need for social grooming and bonding through ritual. Secular attempts to recreate religion's successes have historically all fallen flat. Groups that successfully use religion outperform groups that do not. And yes, like all evolutionary traits, it can become maladaptive.
  If you've wondered, where did it come from? Why does it do what it does? Why do they all seem so similar? Why do they get under our skin? This is the book for you.
  Robin Dunbar lays it all out step by step in a way that makes sense, but doesn't make you feel small or hopeless.
  I loved this book. I fully expect to reread this book every few years like I do with GG&S by Jared Diamond, and The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas Kuhn.
• 
  Wendelle

  This book is written by famous evolutionary anthropologist Robin Dunbar. Maybe out of motivation to condense space, this book is rather short on data and long on broad generalizations about religion, so how to conclude on the veracity of these assertions is unclear. There is a slim 'Notes' section but some of it is extraneous paragraphs or further claims, or self-references to his own publications, rather than sources.
  Some interesting information or claims from this book:
  I) the existence of profession of sin eaters: destitute elderly who had to eat bread and salt laid on corpses to absorb people's "sin", and then be ostracized and maligned
  Ii) binary categorization between shamanic and doctrinal religion is still valid.Perceived evolution from 1 form to another is also valid concept, in author's opinion
  Iii) accdg to evolutionary psychology, 1 possibility is that religion is a maladaptive byproduct of our heightened fear or caution of predation
  Iv) alternatively it maximizes cultural fitness
  V) no known genetic mechanisms for group selection, such as altruism that benefits group
  Vi) 5 longstanding theories for social benefits of religion include: "form of primitive science or understanding the world, medical intervention, enforcement of cooperation, marxian political oppression, and for community bonding."
  Vii) people are more likely to resort to shamans, religion or superstition during matters of life and death, than in events where benefits are minimal.
  Viii) "active religious involvement increased chances of being alive" in longitudinal study
  Ix) genetics will choose against altruism, because selfish individuals will freeride and ultimately win. Thus individuals learn to confine generosity-- " a community invaded by even a small number of freeriders will quickly become dominated by selfish individuals, or fragment into small inward looking subgroups. "
  X) humans are not naturally prosocial
  Xi) cooperation is driven by reputation and punishment
  Xii) the Moralizing HIgh God was devised to act as the omniscient enforcer for this cooperation
  Xiii) examples of empires that used religion as a tool of subjugation include the pharaonic egypt, the roman empire, the Aztecs, and early medieval Islamic empires. But this did not apply to other heterogrneous empires such as the british and the ottoman empires
  Xii) human sacrifice occurs in societies that are heavily stratified, with ruling elite, policing middle class, and the disposable masses . This include the aztecs in tenochtitlan that sacrificed 80 000 people in one year, 1487, from the ranks of war captives, slaves, and concubines
  xiii) religious institutions are also used to absorb surplus members of the population, such as 2nd sons and daughters
  Xiv) birds and most mammals form a dispersive herd of temporary convenience, while primates form bonded groups, thus suspicious of strangers
  Xv) friendships are prone to decay without substantial hours of investment
  Xvi) human sacrifice precedes stratification
  Xvii) the 7 pillars or determinants of friendship include: same language, same origin, educational trajectory, hobbies and interests, worldview or moral- political views, musical tastes, sense of humor. Strength of friendship is determined by higher similarity
  Xviii) seizures can trigger both extreme religiosity and a dysphoric, distorted sense of self
  Xix) extreme religious rituals include firewalking, self flagellation, crucifixion, Ashura, pursuit of stigmata
  Again, not sure which, if any, is just armchair theorizing, and which are backed by data.
• 
  Andrés Astudillo

  Cognitive science of religion is an awesome field. Well, since no one actually gives a single rat's ass about this kind of reviews, im not gonna go really long with this.
  
  I've read many books on this subject, because Im an atheist BUT i do not despise religion, as I despise ideology, violence, lack of empathy and deeply rooted ignorance. Trying to understand why people believe in something, is actually something really deep and comforting. It is a human feat, kinda unique in the whole world. Religion is an evolutionary by-product that was created by many factors: our unique brain, language, and evolutionary biases such as human relations and a whole other bunch of them. Pascal Boyer's masterpiece (at least it is to me) "Religion Explained" is more detailed when it comes to explain why certain concepts are rooted to religion. Fuller Tolley's "Evolving brains emerging gods" is a neurological explanation on religion. This guy, Dumbar is famous for the so called 'Dunbar's number', which is the notion that there exists a cognitive limit on human groups of about 150 individuals; the book explains religions on these grounds, based on cognition on human populations and theory of mind or "mentalization". It turns out that we as a species can mentalize up to five or maybe (some people nonetheless) six orders, and that creates the basis for doctrinal and ritualistic religion. Other primates lack this ability, they just get to second order, so, even though they are social animals, they lack religion.
  
  Just one word, AWESOME. There are many things that are only explained just in this book. Religion is a human feat, and such as sexual relations, we need to understand why we believe.
• 
  Ted Richards

  From renowned anthropologist Robin Dunbar, this was an interesting in the same way as sheep shearing or tree surgery might be.
  
  Dunbar has written an account of how religion has evolved on a global scale. He begins by setting out to argue that one of the reasons humanity is predisposed to religious beliefs is that there is something innately mystical in how we conceptualise the world around us. This is a poorly explained argument, and he struggles to cement this point beyond simply "because we do" type of arguments. He goes on to argue that another reason why religions develop to such an extent is that there are important health, social and economic benefits to individuals for meeting in congregation with one another. This is a much clearer argument and Dunbar draws on an impressive body of research to highlight each of these points in turn.
  
  It is chapter 4 where Dunbar's approach begins to have more personality. Dunbar goes over his popular argument that human's can only stomach around 100 to 200 social connections. This was not something I was familiar with, and Dunbar takes a rather cynical view of people as anti-social beings, who require a heavy amount of indirect instruction to actually cohabit peacefully within large groups like towns and cities. It's not something I agree with, but he does good job of arguing the point, and then applying it to religious congregations. His work comes full circle when, in the final chapter, he explains why so many religions fragment and dissipate, because of this inability for people to handle, control or supervise social connections beyond this 200 person threshold. It's certainly a novel point, and it is refreshing to read an analysis which is not theologically or historically focused, but instead works around cognition, neurology and human sociability.
  
  One of the biggest criticisms for this book, and Dunbar's chosen approach, is that by choosing not to focus on theological and historical trends or developments, the book as a whole is strikingly apolitical. There is a great deal of fretting over why religions tend to fragment, and indeed, a very good account of the Abrahamic religions fragmentation, as well as Sikhism and The Bahá'í faith. But there is no attention given to the political upheaval which accompanied these theological fragmentations. Some may say this would be too much to ask, or even that authors should not be mandated to bring up politics alongside religion. However, by leaving out the political motivations and consequences, the whole account feels overly intellectual and a simplification of religious history.
  
  Chapters 5-8 are where the book begins to come undone. Dunbar makes a distractingly unrelated argument about neurodivergent people's disposition to religious experiences and mysticism. It comes across a condescending and has little relevance to the rest of the book. The focus on moving away from theological and historical arguments becomes tough to stomach in chapters 5 and 8 particularly, because Dunbar applies quite a broad brush to human conditions across thousands of years and multiple societies. His psychological explanations for social bonding are interesting but they are only tangentially linked to religion, making the book feel as if it has taken a detour into an entirely different topic. Meanwhile in Chapter 8, the 'demographic shocks' and shift from mystical religion into doctrinal religions, feel weightless because Dunbar is working with such a vast canvass, so any point he makes feels vague and generalised. On top of this is that the audiobook format fantastically fails in chapter 8, where the narrator is having to make awkward references to accompanying pdfs. This problem came up a few times, but it seems as if the producers have cut around Dunbar's writing in order to work around the way he refers to tables. As it is, the final ten minutes of chapter 8 are distractingly difficult to listen to, even with the helpfully provided pdf in front of you.
  
  Chapter 9 was probably the best out of the hodgepodge set here. It concerns cults, personality's and charisma. It builds nicely into the final chapter and had some excellent, novel, accounts from a variety of religions. This was also where the focus on cognition worked best, because it concerned the actions and reactions between people, and how it affected them, rather than arguing that socialising is a conceptual practice to help people understand their group. The final chapter is fine, but it would have been nice for Dunbar to include a conclusion, just because his introduction was one of the best examples of signposting and methodology I've read in a while.
  
  On the whole, this is a fine book, but with the vast array of non fiction available it is by no means essential. There is an academic and intellectual appeal to seeing someone take such a different approach to religious studies, but nothing of consequence in the way people discuss, and think about, religion.
• 
  Maher Razouk

  في التقاليد الأوروبية الشمالية ، تتمتع الينابيع والآبار المقدسة بتاريخ طويل يعود إلى عصور القبائل السلتية والجرمانية. كان يُعتقد أن بعض الينابيع أو الآبار تتمتع بقدرات علاجية ؛ كان لبعضها الآخر خاصية القدرة على تلبية رغبات الناس . إن عادة إلقاء العملات المعدنية أو الأشياء الثمينة في الآبار أو البرك (وإبداء الرغبة أثناء القيام بذلك) لا تزال معنا ، حتى لو - في بعض الأحيان ولكن ليس دائمًا - تم تخفيف إيماننا بفاعلية هذه الممارسة بدرجة من الشك.
  
  تعتبر أشجار الأمنيات مثالًا آخر : انتشرت عادة إرفاق عروض أو رسائل نذرية بجذع أو أغصان شجرة معينة في جميع أنحاء الجزر البريطانية وأجزاء أخرى من شمال أوروبا. في الهند ، تُعرف أيضًا شجرة الأثأب (أحد أفراد عائلة التين) التي تقع في وسط كل قرية تقريبًا باسم kalpavriksha (شجرة تحقيق الرغبات). تشهد هذه الأنواع من الظواهر على الإيمان بعالم غامض متأصل بعمق في أنفسنا جميعاً.
  .
  Robin Dunbar
  How Religion Evolved
  Translated By #Maher_Razouk
• 
  Dominic

  Endorphin rush — How Religion Evolved and Why it Endures (Robin Dunbar)
  
  How Religion Evolved is a brief tour of the evolutionary history and advantages religion provides to individuals and at the group level. Dunbar takes an evolutionary approach, so expect a lot of discussion about community survival. We also talk a lot about the brain. I found that Dunbar explained everything well and the book itself is short and a pleasure to read, so I recommend that you pick it up.
  
  I harp on a lot about the epistemic frameworks used in books — it’s important, I think — and I was pleased here. It’s a very pragmatic, empirical approach where support for one hypothesis doesn’t rule out the value of any others (Dunbar talks about this in context of the ‘Four Whys’). The limitations of the research are pointed out wherever appropriate.
  
  My only criticism of the book is that the chapters can seem to lose their way a little bit or meld into each other. The book flows well and we are grounded from time to time by summary paragraphs but I would have appreciated a little more organisation of the argument.
  
  In my mind there are two important claims advanced by Dunbar. The first, that the “mystical stance” is the core of all religions, and it provides individual and group-level benefits. The second, that there is a “glass ceiling” model of religious development — by accretion — where religions (co?)evolve in stages to deal with problems presented by increasingly large, concentrated, and complex societies.
  
  On the mystical stance: it is the susceptibility to entering trance states (generally a feeling of euphoria, ecstasy, etc.), the belief in a transcendental or spirit world, and a belief we can call on hidden powers to help us. These three points are not necessarily closely related, and can vary in degree.
  
  This stance depends on the ‘mentalising’ ability, or a theory of mind to a given order (e.g. “I know that you know” is second-order). This all ends up being related to the Default Mode Network of the brain - our so-called “social brain” — which makes sense if you conceive of religion as a relationship between you and some higher power.
  
  This all gains force when we introduce social bonding and endorphins. Apes perform “social grooming”, essentially a slow stroking of another individual, triggering the endorphin system and leading to (a chemically and cognitively mediated) social bonding. We humans evolved ways to do this at scale: rather than touching each other (which still works, to be sure), we can laugh, sing, dance, tell stories, feast together, or perform rituals. Each of these activities triggers the endorphin system and allows us to bond with larger groups. Religions, in a sense, are strategies for triggering this system via shared ritual and synchronised activities, increasing social bonding. There’s some discussion in the book about secular alternatives not being quite as effective — perhaps it has to do with the mystical stance?
  
  These endorphins allow us to bootstrap larger communities (via friend-of-friend bonding cascades). They bring mental and physical health benefits (especially immunity), and they also predispose one to a prosocial attitude. All of this add up to solving commitment and coordination problems, enabling a higher level of social complexity and cooperation. It’s important to note that these aren’t being solved in the abstract: it’s pharmacological given the mystical stance.
  
  Our social brains are limited to roughly 150 people in our close network, strongly theoretically and empirically validated. This also happens to be roughly the optimal size of congregations. Like any organisation, religion relies on this, so here we have an explanation of the proliferation of cults, sects, and schisms. Centrifugal forces (e.g. disagreements not assuaged by direct social bonding) force large organisations apart.
  
  There’s a lot to think about here on the formation of identity too, and heuristics for trust (in a signalling framework) that is politically relevant.
  
  The second claim Dunbar makes is of a “glass ceiling” model of religious evolution-as-problem-solving. Or, phenotypic adaption.
  
  The first stage, with group sizes around 100 we find religions that are purely animist and mystical, with no moral core and an exclusive focus on social bonding. The need to form larger groups like this may have triggered this evolutionary innovation, or perhaps it was a byproduct of bigger brains.
  
  The second stage involves specialist healers and diviners, or shamans, leading to a shamanic religion. They provide, among other things, psychological care.
  
  The third stage, occurring just after the Neolithic revolution, enabled us to deal with larger permanent settlements formed for collective defence. This involved more formal religion, with rituals and ritual specialists (priests), spaces, pantheons of gods (as opposed to spirits), etc. Socially, this allowed levels of coercive control and social stress management needed to enable collective defence due to increasing competition.
  
  The fourth stage, is a modern doctrinal religion, with higher complexity and organisational capacity. Moralising high gods make their appearance, and again all this supports social complexity on the level of city states and empires.
  
  Dunbar covers several other interesting topics throughout the book (e.g. charismatic cult leaders) that I don’t have time to cover. In summary, this book is excellent for a whirlwind religious tour through human evolution.
• 
  Ina

  Imprecise. Unrefined. Contradictory. Viewpoint is overly narrow.
• 
  Alan

  Terrific book. Insights, anecdotes, factoids, analyses... You name it, this book's got it. Interesting and unusual topic, well told.
• 
  L

  This is an odd book that was full of shocks and questions about evolution of society in general. There is much to consider, ponder and reflect on here. I especially found the graphic on page 83 a huge revelation and full of import. It includes rings of affiliation by cumulative size of connection for individuals and groups: 1.5 most intimate friends, 5 closest friends, 15 best friends, 50 good friends, 150 friends, 500 acquaintances, 1500 known names, 5000 known faces. The author has analyzed these numbers finding them back through history and then forward up to the present day social networks. The author believes these numbers are rigid, tied to the size out our brains, and to how we process relationship understandings which he calls “mentalizing competence,” which has to do with our ability to understand someone else’s intentions which could eventually lead to a way for a group to perceive a spirit world and then discuss it together using the past, present and future tenses of verbs. More on this is found in chapter 5 of the text (page 112) and is difficult to synthesize here. I found this mentalizing exercise difficult to do and questioned my intellectual abilities since these abilities are key to neuron network capacity and eventually indicates how many friendships one can manage.
  
  I also found p. 102 profound in its summary of what humans need in general for socialization, building trust and understanding our need for larger social bonds (leading eventually to religion), in order of possible evolutionary development: laughing, singing, dancing, emotional storytelling, feasting, and rituals of religion. It seemed to me that I am missing almost all of these in my current stage of life. I used to do one or more of these daily and they have nearly all fallen off through various stages of life, time obligations, and covid.
  
  On page 107 the author outlines what he calls the 7 pillars of friendship: sharing the same language, place of origin, educational trajectory, hobbies and interests, worldview (religious, moral, political) musical tastes, sense of humor. The more of these you have in common with another, the closer your friendship will be with the strongest indicator of friendship being: musical taste, political augment, morals and religion. How interesting that the joy of musical taste is in this grouping of other things that I would call staid or even dull. The author discusses this further in an evolutionary context in this part of the book.
  
  There were several times in the text where I wondered what another true scientist in the field or a related field would make of these conclusions. Many of them don’t seem backed by terribly scientific sounding studies, but there is no doubt the ideas are worth debate and discussion. And the mystery remains, why does religious ritual in general endure so steadfastly throughout humanity? There is some reason!
• 
  David

  Most of the criticisms of this book seem to come from religious people objecting to the narrow definition of religion. They have a point, but Dunbar isn’t concerned with the individual religious experience. He touches on mystical experience, but he’s primarily concerned with religion as a social institution.
  Most interesting for me was the fact that endorphins are triggered by a number of social activities, one of which is emotional storytelling. How amazing that listening to a story can be the equivalent of having a hug, and that it can even raise your pain threshold!
  Dunbar discusses the importance of ‘theory of mind’, (the ability to understand that someone else is having thoughts/feelings that are different from your own). This is linked to the human proclivity to see intentionality in the world. Not only do we seek cause and effect in the world, we ascribe a certain level of ‘personality’ or ‘character’ to it. Surely this is the driver for Animism.
  Add our inherent need for story/drama to our tendency to personify the world and it becomes not just inevitable that we end up understanding everything in terms of gods, but it does start you wondering if an atheist world-view is even possible. Atheism is of course a broad church, but the problem with it tends to be that it’s a position that’s blind to it’s religious foundations. Dunbar makes similar assumptions. For example, he takes for granted that all or most religious experience involves experience of a transcendental reality, but his framework involves a model of a clearly defined ‘real’ world which can have a relationship with this other transcendental world. This very framework seems to owe a lot to the Platonic/Christian world-view. I’m not sure that a lot of religions, especially non-western ( a tricky term, I know) would define ‘transcendental’ in this way, as being separate from the so-called ‘real’ world.
  Anyway, I thought this book was great. The focus was narrow, as it has to be if you’re going to tackle such an enormous subject, and this meant that he had to leave a lot out. But sometimes this kind of simplification can lead to exciting ideas. I loved the explanation of the Axial Age as being down to simple economics.
• 
  Iel

  A very compelling evolutionary theory of religion. He introduces exactly enough theory and science to make his point about how religion evolved at various stages of society.
  
  A lot turns on scientific results-the Dunbar number-esque idea that religion thrives in communities of 100-200,, the idea of n-th order intentionality, the neurological response to religious rituals (e.g. chanting, singing etc). These forces allow us to bootstrap religious communities of 200 or so. But then he assumes religions are always fighting to expand beyond 200 without losing a community aspect. Sects always threaten to break free.
  
  There's also some interesting ideas about the axial religions-just far enough north of the equator so that disease risk falls, but not so far north that agriculture becomes hard. He then makes the basic teenage argument that religious morality of a single deity is a form of social control. But he combines it with an interesting point about n-th order intentionality, we need 5th in order to comprehend a judging god and that others comprehend one too.
  
  I dunno, it is a very good book but still it felt cheap not to explain why other theories failed. Why shouldn't we conclude that religions are parasitic (e.g. ideas have people)? Why didn't he explain where others who've tackled this topic went wrong.
  
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  Richard Subber

  I think this is a fair although much too brief summary of Dunbar’s conclusions: people created religion because it feels good and it works for human beings in many ways.
  Dunbar, an Emeritus Professor of Evolutionary Psychology at the University of Oxford, doesn’t deal with faith.
  How Religion Evolved explores the mental, emotional, social, and psychological dimensions of all the world’s religions, including the very early animist/shamanic religions and the more familiar doctrinal religions that dominate today.
  An element of his discussion is the social bonding process and a particular foundation of the “set of cultural criteria that function mainly as cues of community membership, and hence trustworthiness” that Dunbar labels "the Seven Pillars of Friendship." (p. 107)
  These are: sharing the same language, place of origin, educational trajectory, hobbies and interests, worldview (religious, moral, and political views), musical tastes, and sense of humor.
  Think about how your family members and friends match up with you on these scales.
  Dunbar concludes that religion—the long and the short of it, the wide and the narrow of it, the shallow and the deep of it—is naturally a part of human life.
  Read more of my book reviews and poems here:
  
  www.richardsubber.com
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  Roland M

  The author is trying to analyse, maybe a bit too scientifically ‘how’ religions appear.
  
  There is lot of facts, correlations, speculations. We learnt some interesting facts (some vaguely related to religion). But at the end… we still don’t know.
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  Michael Loveabudge

  Absolutely loved this. You can't understand human social psychology unless you understand religion. Endlessly fascinating subject. Thank you to the author
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  Nicholas Graham

  
  https://thejudascase.blogspot.com/202...
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  Sharyn Young

  Listened to audio book. Need to reference tables via PDF.
  Throughly researched - complex arguments but amazing breadth.
  I will read it again.
  It finished abruptly and religion persists.