Epstein Secrets

o talking teacups, but reli- gion is much more than that. "Deriving belief from the architecture of the mind is neces- sary but not sufficientr says Norenzayan. He favors an additional class of explana- tions for why religion is so prominent in every culture: It promotes cooperative behavior among strange

supernatural agents, to something like a god," says experi- mental psychologist Justin Barrett of the Uni- versity of Oxford in the United Kingdom. Barrett and others see the roots of reli- gion in our sophisticated social cognition. Humans, they say, have a tendency to see signs of "agents"—minds like

o talking teacups, but reli- gion is much more than that. "Deriving belief from the architecture of the mind is neces- sary but not sufficientr says Norenzayan. He favors an additional class of explana- tions for why religion is so prominent in every culture: It promotes cooperative behavior among strange

n supernatural agents, to something like a got says experi- mental psychologist Justin Barrett of the Uni- versity of Oxford in the United Kingdom. Barrett and others see the roots of reli- gion in our sophisticated social cognition. Humans, they say, have a tendency to see signs of "agents"—minds like

Bressler, E.R. (2003). Cooperation and commune longevity: a test of the costly signaling theory of religion. Cross-cultural Research, 37(2), 211-239; Norenzayan, A, & Shariff, A. F. (2008). The origin and evolution of religious prosociality. Science, 322(5898), Hauser Chapter 1. Nature’s secrets Sl HOUSE_OV

tics and Religion: A Large-Scale Web-Based Study. Journal of Cognition and Culture, 10, 253-281; Henrich, J., Ensminger, J., McElreath, R., Barr, A., Barrett, C., Bolyantz, A., Cardenas, J. C., Gurven, M., Gwako, E., Henrich, N., Lesorogol, C., Marlowe, F., Tracer, D., Ziker, J. (2010). Markets, religion,