The present article examines how people's belief in an afterlife, as well as closely related supernatural beliefs, may open an empirical backdoor to our understanding of the evolution of human social cognition. Recent findings and logic from the cognitive sciences contribute to a novel theory of existential psychology, one that is grounded in the tenets of Darwinian natural selection. Many of the predominant questions of existential psychology strike at the heart of cognitive science. They involve: causal attribution (why is mortal behavior represented as being causally related to one's afterlife? how are dead agents envisaged as communicating messages to the living?), moral judgment (why are certain social behaviors, i.e., transgressions, believed to have ultimate repercussions after death or to reap the punishment of disgruntled ancestors?), theory of mind (how can we know what it is “like” to be dead? what social-cognitive strategies do people use to reason about the minds of the dead?), concept acquisition (how does a common-sense dualism interact with a formalized socio-religious indoctrination in childhood? how are supernatural properties of the dead conceptualized by young minds?), and teleological reasoning (why do people so often see their lives as being designed for a purpose that must be accomplished before they perish? how do various life events affect people's interpretation of this purpose?), among others. The central thesis of the present article is that an organized cognitive “system” dedicated to forming illusory representations of (1) psychological immortality, (2) the intelligent design of the self, and (3) the symbolic meaning of natural events evolved in response to the unique selective pressures of the human social environment.

Simulation constraints cannot help in explaining afterlife beliefs in general because belief in an afterlife is a precondition for running a simulation. Instead, an explanation may be found by examining more deeply our common-sense dualistic conception of the mind or soul.

Research on religion can advance understanding of social cognition by building connections to sociology, a field in which much cognitively oriented work has been done. Among the schools of sociological thought that address religious cognition are: structural functionalism, symbolic interactionism, conflict theory, phenomenology, and, most recently, exchange theory. The gulf between sociology and cognitive science is an unfortunate historical accident.

The universal early experience of all humans, which means being totally dependent on caretakers who attempt to inculcate impulse control, should be considered as the psychological framework for the creation of significant supernatural agents. The same early experiences put us at the center of a moral universe, but there is no necessary connection between the two processes. We do not need disgruntled ancestors to make us behave; disgruntled parents will do.

This commentary criticises Bering on two counts. First, because we do not know what he attributes to natural selection and what he sees as derived representations. Second, Bering's ethnography of religion is inadequate. People who practise ancestor worship are not concerned with their own survival but with that of others. Many supernatural beings are not thought of as morally motivated.

Bering argues that belief in posthumous intentional agency may confer added fitness via the inhibition of opportunistic behavior. This is true only if these agents are interested parties in our moral choices, a feature which does not result from Bering's imaginative constraint hypothesis and extends to supernatural agents other than dead people's souls. A by-product model might handle this better.

This commentary suggests that understanding the “Folk Psychology of Souls” requires studying a problem articulating ontology with psychology: How do human beings, both as perceivers and thinkers, track and refer to (1) living and dead intentional agents and (2) supernatural agents? The problem is discussed in the light of the principle of the ontological commitment in agent tracking.

Religious beliefs, including those about an afterlife and omniscient spiritual beings, vary across cultures. We theorize that such variations may be predictably linked to ecological variations, just as differences in mating strategies covary with resource distribution. Perhaps beliefs in a soul or afterlife are more common when resources are unpredictable, and life is brutal and short.

Cotard's syndrome is a psychotic condition that includes delusion of a supernatural nature. Based on insights from recovered patients who were convinced of being immortal, we can (1) distinguish biographical experiences from cultural and evolutionary backgrounds; (2) show that cultural significance dominates biographical experiences; and (3) support Bering's view of a cognitive system dedicated to forming illusory representations of immortality.

Ample evidence for dualism in early childhood already exists. Young children have explicit knowledge of the distinction between mental and physical phenomena, which provides the foundation for a rapidly developing theory of mind. Belief in psychological immortality might then follow naturally from this mentalistic conception of human existence and thus require no organized cognitive system dedicated to producing it.

Missing from Bering's account of the evolutionary origins of existential reasoning is an explicit developmental framework, one that takes into account community input. If Bering's selectionist explanation was on target then one might predict a unique and relatively robust developmental trajectory, regardless of input. Evidence suggests instead that children's existential reasoning is contingent on their developing theory of mind.

For Bering, appreciating that people are objects is a developmental accomplishment. Baldwin and Piaget agree. However, for Piaget, an immanent conception of the divine is more developed than a separate transcendent God. Culture also matters. In Plato's Phaedo, Socrates' belief in immortality was a reasoned conclusion – not “built in” – for reasons similar to those still held by modern scientists.

Anecdotal evidence suggests that people with autism, with known impairments in mechanisms supporting a folk psychology of mind or souls, can hold a belief in an afterlife. We focus on the role language plays, not just in acquiring the specific content of beliefs, but more significantly, in the acquisition of the concept of life after death for all people.

Belief in souls is only one component of supernatural thinking in which individuals infer the presence of invisible mechanisms that explain events as paranormal rather than natural. We believe it is important to place greater emphasis on the prevalence of supernatural beliefs across other domains, if only to counter simplistic divisions between rationality and irrationality recently aligned with the contentious science/religion debate.

Bering's analysis is inadequate because it fails to consider past and present adult soul beliefs and the psychological functions they serve. We suggest that a valid folk psychology of souls must consider features of adult soul beliefs, the unique problem engendered by awareness of death, and terror management findings, in addition to cognitive inclinations toward dualistic and teleological thinking.

Bering's argument that human beings are endowed with a cognitive system dedicated to forming illusory representations of psychological immortality relies on the claim that children's beliefs in the afterlife are not the result of religious teaching. We suggest four reasons why this claim is unsatisfactory.

The fact that beliefs in the supernatural are useful to people who hold them does not necessarily mean that these beliefs confer an evolutionary advantage to those who hold them. An evolutionary explanation for any biological phenomenon must meet rigorous criteria, but the facts in this case, even when taken at their face value, fall well short of these criteria.

Bering's target article proposes that the tendency to believe in an afterlife emerged (in evolutionary history) in response to selective pressures unique to human societies. However, the empirical evidence presented fails to account for the broader social context that impinges upon researcher–participant interactions, and so fails to displace the more parsimonious explanation that it is childhood credulity that underlies the acquisition of afterlife beliefs through cultural exposure.

Bering makes a good case for turning attention to an organized system that provides the self with transcendental meaning. In focusing on the evolutionary basis of this system, however, he overlooks the self-organizing properties of cognitive systems themselves. We propose that the illusory system Bering describes can be more generally and parsimoniously viewed as an emergent by-product of self-organization, with no need for specialized “illusion by design.”

During an out-of-body experience (OBE), one sees the world and one's own body from an extracorporeal visuospatial perspective. OBEs reflect disturbances in brain systems dedicated to multisensory integration and self-processing. However, they have traditionally been interpreted as providing evidence for a soul that can depart the body after death. This mystical view is consistent with Bering's proposal that psychological immortality is the cognitive default.