Precis: Attachment, Evolution, and the Psychology of Religion

Abstract

In this summary of my recent book (Kirkpatrick, 2004), I outline a general theoretical approach for the psychology of religion and develop one component of it in detail. First I review arguments and research demonstrating the utility of attachment theory for understanding many aspects of religious belief and behavior, particularly within modern Christianity. I then introduce evolutionary psychology as a general paradigm for psychology and the social sciences, arguing that religion is not an adaptation in the evolutionary sense but rather a byproduct of numerous psychological systems that evolved for other adaptive purposes, of which the attachment system is just one example. I conclude by summarizing numerous advantages of this framework over other extant approaches to the psychology of religion.

Processes of believing — a review and conceptual account

“…However, these mental processes are bound to traditional cultural origins, are ill-defi ned operationally, and are often used interchangeably. In particular, there is a difference whether one practices a Christian, a Buddhist, or a secular type of meditation, which all are related to differences in the development of religious attachments (Kirkpatrick , 2005 ;Granqvist , 2010 ). Furthermore, there are differences between secular and religious processes of believing, although in both, one can fi nd reference to the concept of trust, a neurophysiological entity that was shown to be modulated by the neuroendocrine hormone oxytocin (Kosfeld , 2005 ;Neumann , 2008 ).…”

“Of And and Of : The Politics of Grammar and the Study of Religion”

“…Th is is the case particularly when dealing with theology and phenomenology, two positions that critics often charge with obfuscating prevarication (Wilson 1998: 263). All the same, the issue concerning the legitimacy of non-naturalism is, I believe, the sine qua non of a religious position that countenances social intercourse with nonhuman and/or disembodied agency (Guthrie 1993;Stark and Finke 2000;Boyer 2001;Atran 2002;Kirkpatrick 2005). It is here that distinctions may be drawn between religious naturalism (Goodenough 1998) and religious non-naturalism.…”

Big Gods and other watcher mechanisms in the formation of large groups

“…There, I listened to heated exchanges between ardent proponents of the (then) seemingly irreconcilable "by-product" and "adaptationist" approaches. Proponents of the former, which at the time included Norenzayan and most researchers associated with the cognitive science of religion (see, for example, Atran and Norenzayan, 2004;Boyer, 2001;Kirkpatrick, 2005), argued that "religion" was an unintended consequence (i.e., a by-product) of the evolutionary process, much like "spandrels" in medieval cathedrals were a "by-product" of gothic arches. David Sloan Wilson (2002), the most outspoken supporter of the competing view, argued that "religion" played a direct role in human evolution, specifically, that it had some sort of "adaptive" value.…”