Citing this article

A standard form of citation of this article is:

Dow, James (2008). 'Is Religion an Evolutionary Adaptation?'. Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation 11(2)2 <https://www.jasss.org/11/2/2.html>.

The following can be copied and pasted into a Bibtex bibliography file, for use with the LaTeX text processor:

@article{dow2008,
title = {Is Religion an Evolutionary Adaptation?},
author = {Dow, James},
journal = {Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation},
ISSN = {1460-7425},
volume = {11},
number = {2},
pages = {2},
year = {2008},
URL = {https://www.jasss.org/11/2/2.html},
keywords = {Religion, Myth, Deception, Empirical Reasoning, Rationality},
abstract = {Religious people talk about things that cannot be seen, stories that cannot be verified, and beings and forces beyond the ordinary. Perhaps their gods are truly at work, or perhaps in human nature there is an impulse to proclaim religious knowledge. If so, it would have to have arisen by natural selection. It is hard to imagine how natural selection could have produced such an impulse. There is a debate among evolutionary scientists about whether or not there is any adaptive advantage to religion at all (Bulbulia 2004a; Atran and Norenzayan 2004). Some believe that it has no adaptive value itself and that it is just a hodge podge of of behaviors that have evolved because they are adaptive in other non-religious contexts. The agent-based simulation described in this article shows that a central unifying feature of religion, a belief in an unverifiable world, could have evolved along side of verifiable knowledge. The simulation makes use of an agent-based communication model with two types of information: verifiable information (real information) about a real world and unverifiable information (unreal information) about about an imaginary world. It examines the conditions necessary for the communication of unreal information to evolved along side the communication of real information. It offers support for the theory that religion is an adaptive complex and it disputes the theory that religion is a byproduct of unrelated adaptive processes.},
}

The following can be copied and pasted into a text file, which can then be imported into a reference database that supports imports using the RIS format, such as Reference Manager and EndNote.


TY - JOUR
TI - Is Religion an Evolutionary Adaptation?
AU - Dow, James
Y1 - 2008/03/31
JO - Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation
SN - 1460-7425
VL - 11
IS - 2
SP - 2
UR - https://www.jasss.org/11/2/2.html
KW - Religion
KW - Myth
KW - Deception
KW - Empirical Reasoning
KW - Rationality
N2 - Religious people talk about things that cannot be seen, stories that cannot be verified, and beings and forces beyond the ordinary. Perhaps their gods are truly at work, or perhaps in human nature there is an impulse to proclaim religious knowledge. If so, it would have to have arisen by natural selection. It is hard to imagine how natural selection could have produced such an impulse. There is a debate among evolutionary scientists about whether or not there is any adaptive advantage to religion at all (Bulbulia 2004a; Atran and Norenzayan 2004). Some believe that it has no adaptive value itself and that it is just a hodge podge of of behaviors that have evolved because they are adaptive in other non-religious contexts. The agent-based simulation described in this article shows that a central unifying feature of religion, a belief in an unverifiable world, could have evolved along side of verifiable knowledge. The simulation makes use of an agent-based communication model with two types of information: verifiable information (real information) about a real world and unverifiable information (unreal information) about about an imaginary world. It examines the conditions necessary for the communication of unreal information to evolved along side the communication of real information. It offers support for the theory that religion is an adaptive complex and it disputes the theory that religion is a byproduct of unrelated adaptive processes.
ER -