RT Article
T1 Gods Above: Naturalizing Religion in Terms of our Shared Ape Social Dominance Behavior
JF Sophia
VO 54
IS 1
SP 77
OP 92
A1 Wilkins, John S. 1955-
LA English
PB Springer Netherlands
YR 2015
UL https://ixtheo.de/Record/1565856171
AB To naturalize religion, we must identify what religion is, and what aspects of it we are trying to explain. In this paper, religious social institutional behavior is the explanatory target, and an explanatory hypothesis based on shared primate social dominance psychology is given. The argument is that various religious features, including the high status afforded the religious, and the high status afforded to deities, are an expression of this social dominance psychology in a context for which it did not evolve: high-density populations made possible by agriculture.
K1 Euhemerism
K1 evolution of religion
K1 Phylogenetic bracketing
K1 Social Dominance
DO 10.1007/s11841-015-0461-5