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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...

Human beings evince a natural tendency to perceive patterns like faces, figures or shapes in otherwise random phenomena. This well-known psychological phenomenon called “pareidolia”, “apophenia” or “clustering illusion” (depending on what we refer to) has a convincing evolutionary explanation. As a universal phenomenon it is therefore part of our human nature, although different cultural and/or religious factors can influence or even determine the sensitivity to detect hidden signs and patterns. The pr...

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...