The existence of religion, at first, seems to be a quandary. How can feeling the urge to preform costly rituals and maintain conterfactual beliefs possibly be adaptive from an evolutionary perspective? Besides the ablity for religion to be a repository for the transmitted knowledge of a group, its remarkable power to organize people should not be overlooked. Think of any church group as an example. Organized religion creates an automatic circle of trusted allies and strongly deters defection to other groups. That many if not all of the beliefs that together constitute a religion are couterfactual, and the rituals considered bizarre by unbelievers, is actually essential to prove one's loyalty to the group and prevent changing allegiances. I would call this"incompatible counterfactual belief systems" or "Their god is not our god." The following article from Science also highlights the importance of the belief in "morally concerned deities" to enforce social cooperation when this could not be easily accomplished any other way.
From the journal Science:
"The Origin and Evolution of Religious Prosociality"
By Ara Norenzayan and Azim F. Shariff
ABSTRACT: We examine empirical evidence for religious prosociality, the hypothesis that religions facilitate costly behaviors that benefit other people. Although sociological surveys reveal an association between self-reports of religiosity and prosociality, experiments measuring religiosity and actual prosocial behavior suggest that this association emerges primarily in contexts where reputational concerns are heightened. Experimentally induced religious thoughts reduce rates of cheating and increase altruistic behavior among anonymous strangers. Experiments demonstrate an association between apparent profession of religious devotion and greater trust. Cross-cultural evidence suggests an association between the cultural presence of morally concerned deities and large group size in humans. We synthesize converging evidence from various fields for religious prosociality, address its specific boundary conditions, and point to unresolved questions and novel predictions.
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