Home / Books / Supernatural Selection: How Religion Evolved

Supernatural Selection: How Religion Evolved

Book by Matt J. Rossano · 11 quotes · Evolution, Religion, Cognition

Browse quotes from Supernatural Selection: How Religion Evolved.

Book detail: Supernatural Selection: How Religion Evolved is presented as a focused source page for quotations connected with this book, collection, transcript, or source record.

Browse quotes from Supernatural Selection: How Religion Evolved.

The quotes below use the same card format as the rest of the site, including topics, source notes, copy actions, image creation, and sharing controls.

Filter quotes by topic

All Evolution Religion Cognition Cohesion Supernatural Mind Society God Homo Sapiens Life Morality Emotion Evolutionary Psychology Feelings Psychology Ritual Bias Comunity Crisis Death

Supernatural Selection: How Religion Evolved Quotes

“...doing right in life sometimes means that reason cannot be the sole light by which your moral compass is set.”

Life Reason Death Morality Wrong Right

Book:Supernatural Selection: How Religion Evolved

Source: Supernatural Selection: How Religion Evolved

“...religion is not philosophy. Philosophy is largely confined to ivory-tower seminar rooms, but religion can be found in nearly every living room -or just about anywhere else you might care to look. Religion is not just (or even primarily) an intellectual pursuit; it is emotional.”

God Feelings Religion Emotion Evolution Morality Cognition

Book:Supernatural Selection: How Religion Evolved

Source: Supernatural Selection: How Religion Evolved

“If religion represents a supernaturalizing of social life, then we would expect that the gods we envision would reflect the social worlds we inhabit.”

God Feelings Religion Emotion Society Evolution Morality Cognition

Book:Supernatural Selection: How Religion Evolved

Source: Supernatural Selection: How Religion Evolved

“The -natural- world included the -supernatural-, and religion (as we call it today) was simply the means by which that part of the social world was made accessible.”

Mind Religion Evolution Supernatural Cognition Cohesion

Book:Supernatural Selection: How Religion Evolved

Source: Supernatural Selection: How Religion Evolved

“People often find religion after grave personal suffering or tragedy. It was no different with our ancestors. The few humans who managed to survive this disaster did so by finding unprecedented ways to expand social cooperation.”

Mind Religion Suffering Evolution Crisis Supernatural Cognition Cohesion

Book:Supernatural Selection: How Religion Evolved

Source: Supernatural Selection: How Religion Evolved

“Religious ritual was essential to establishing and maintaining never-before-seen levels of social complexity. Furthermore, ritual behavior was the very mechanism by which we acquired our uniquely human capacity for symbolic thought. Thus, religious ritual made us human.”

Mind Religion Evolution Ritual Supernatural Cognition Cohesion

Book:Supernatural Selection: How Religion Evolved

Source: Supernatural Selection: How Religion Evolved

“The wealth of social rituals present among our primate cousins indicates that our hominin ancestors were preadapted for using ritual as a means of social bonding and could call upon a rich repertoire of them in their everyday lives.”

Mind Religion Evolution Ritual Supernatural Cognition Cohesion

Book:Supernatural Selection: How Religion Evolved

Source: Supernatural Selection: How Religion Evolved

“Religion is complicated- the emphasis here being on the verb -is-. Religion as we see it today is the product of many millennia of evolutionary history. Neither the Olympian pantheon nor the Roman magisterium was part of religion in our ancestral world. To understand religion as a cultural adaptation, we must understand what it was when it first emerged, and what kind of world it was born into.”

Life Religion Society Evolution Evolutionary Psychology Homo Sapiens Cognition Cohesion

Book:Supernatural Selection: How Religion Evolved

Source: Supernatural Selection: How Religion Evolved

“Humans are designed not with a specific adaptive religious module, but instead with a mind prepared to engage in the myriad social/emotional/cognitive activities that fall under what we call -religion-.”

Life God Religion Society Evolution Evolutionary Psychology Homo Sapiens Cognition Cohesion

Book:Supernatural Selection: How Religion Evolved

Source: Supernatural Selection: How Religion Evolved

“Religion is paradoxical. It emerged out of intergroup competition, yet it has a remarkable power to unite. It sets people apart from one another, yet can also draw vastly different people together. Long ago we envisioned relationship with spiritual beings. In one sense these relationships were very mundane -they served practical human needs. The practical side of these relationships is also the source of their power to divide us, to pit one group against another. The divine side is in their capacity to quietly but persistently call us to transcend ourselves and find common ground for trust.”

Religion Psychology Society Evolution Bias Homo Sapiens Comunity

Book:Supernatural Selection: How Religion Evolved

Source: Supernatural Selection: How Religion Evolved

“Religion is many things, but the relational element is at its core. Nonrelational religion, if it is religion at all, is hollow.”

Religion Relationships Psychology Evolution Supernatural

Book:Supernatural Selection: How Religion Evolved

Source: Supernatural Selection: How Religion Evolved