The Emergence of Religion

Abstract

The communicative practices that comprise religions have their roots in human niche construction. But this is not a cognitivist argument that locates religion in particular regions of the brain, or a naturalist, biological reductionism that maintains the hegemony of the genes; rather, it contends that forms of communicative practice that are constitutive of religions, while being rooted in human biology, function at a cultural level that has autonomy from the cellular. Religions are niche constructions that create worlds of meaning through imagination within which people can live complete and competent lives and that function eschatologically to facilitate self-repair; their roots are in the pro-social emotions, language development, and ritual behaviour.