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There is an ongoing debate in the contemporary studies on religion and society on whether religion is an evolutionary adaptation or a by-product of our human evolution. Taking the most convincing pros and cons into consideration I come to the conclusion that religion is both: as a set of universal norms and ethical regulations it is an adaptation functioning as a cybernetic homeostat; as a set of beliefs and imagined spiritual beings it is a culturally dependent by-product that enables the implementation of behavi...

Because of some, ideological rather than scientific, reasons, explanations of human behavior referring to culture as an all-encompassing nomos and as an axionormative matrix shaping all individuals, let alone those accounts referring to the genetic influence, are treated by many social and cultural scientist as reductionistic, deterministic, depersonalizing and reifying. These epithets are subsumed under relatively new term “essentialism” which has become, as Steven Pinker notices, “just about the worst thin...