Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-94fs2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-03T04:06:06.853Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Explaining the success of karmic religions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 March 2016

Claire White ,
Paulo Sousa  and
Karolina Prochownik
Claire White
Affiliation:
Department of Religious Studies, California State University, Northridge, CA 91330. [email protected]://www.csun.edu/humanities/religious-studies/faculty
Paulo Sousa
Affiliation:
Institute of Cognition & Culture, Queen's University, Belfast, BT7 1NN, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom. [email protected]://www.qub.ac.uk/schools/InstituteofCognitionCulture/Staff/
Karolina Prochownik
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy of Law and Legal Ethics, Jagiellonian University, 31-005 Krakow, Poland. [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

One of the central claims of Norenzayan et al.’s article is that supernatural monitoring and intergroup competition have facilitated the rise of large-scale prosocial religions. Although the authors outline in detail how social instincts that govern supernatural monitoring are honed by cultural evolution and have given rise to Big Gods, they do not provide a clear explanation for the success of karmic religions. Therefore, to test the real scope of their model, Norenzayan et al. need to seriously engage with questions concerning the evolution of karmic prosocial religions.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 39 , 2016 , e28
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Baumard, N. & Boyer, P. (2013) Explaining moral religions. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 17:272–80.Google Scholar
Baumard, N. & Chevallier, C. (2012) What goes around comes around: The evolutionary roots of the belief in immanent justice. Journal of Cognition and Culture 12(1):67–80.Google Scholar
Baumard, N., Hyafil, A., Morris, I. & Boyer, P. (2015) Increased affluence explains the emergence of ascetic wisdoms and moralizing religions. Current Biology 25(1):10–15. doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2014.10.063.Google Scholar
Obeyesekere, G. (2002) Imagining karma: Ethical transformation in Amerindian, Buddhist, and Greek rebirth. University of California Press.Google Scholar
Watts, J., Greenhill, S. J., Atkinson, Q. D., Currie, T. E., Bulbulia, J. & Gray, R. D. (2015) Broad supernatural punishment but not moralizing high gods precede the evolution of political complexity in Austronesia. Proceedings of the Royal Society B 282(1804). doi: 10.1098/rspb.2014.2556.Google Scholar