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Explaining the success of karmic religions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 March 2016

Claire White ,
Paulo Sousa  and
Karolina Prochownik
Claire White
Affiliation:
Department of Religious Studies, California State University, Northridge, CA 91330. claire.white@csun.eduhttp://www.csun.edu/humanities/religious-studies/faculty
Paulo Sousa
Affiliation:
Institute of Cognition & Culture, Queen's University, Belfast, BT7 1NN, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom. p.sousa@qub.ac.ukhttp://www.qub.ac.uk/schools/InstituteofCognitionCulture/Staff/
Karolina Prochownik
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy of Law and Legal Ethics, Jagiellonian University, 31-005 Krakow, Poland. karolina.prochownik@uj.edu.pl
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Abstract

One of the central claims of Norenzayan et al.’s article is that supernatural monitoring and intergroup competition have facilitated the rise of large-scale prosocial religions. Although the authors outline in detail how social instincts that govern supernatural monitoring are honed by cultural evolution and have given rise to Big Gods, they do not provide a clear explanation for the success of karmic religions. Therefore, to test the real scope of their model, Norenzayan et al. need to seriously engage with questions concerning the evolution of karmic prosocial religions.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 39 , 2016 , e28
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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016 

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