[7] In other words, religious beliefs are thought to frequently involve solutions, insofar as evolved cognitive equipment can build them, to social and natural environmental problems faced by a given population.
[3][8][9] Most claim that a capacity for religious thoughts is not a modular adaptation itself, but an evolutionary byproduct of multiple integrated mechanisms that arose independently and are designed for different functions.
These modules are co-opted to give rise to religious thinking patterns, and they include theory of mind, essential psychology and the hyperactive agency detection device.
In a potential predator situation, humans are forced to interpret an object's ontological features, infer agency or non-agency, and execute a behavioral response.
[18] The integration of ToM, hyperactive applications of agency and essential psychology ultimately renders a cognitive tendency for humans to interact with the naturalistic processes of the world with the intentional stance.
[2] Successfully transmitted religious concepts typically involve minimally counterintuitive violations of the intentional stance, which serves a cognitive constraint of cultural evolution.
[14][23] Cross-culturally, representational models of gods' minds take an array of diverse forms, such as anthropomorphic or zoomorphic figures, abstract forces, or some combination of these.
[29] These models are robust across certain conditions likely relevant to the Pleistocene,[30] but cooperation is easily eroded in large-scale, complex societies with frequently anonymous interactions between strangers.
When distant strangers of the same religion were paired in a game, their sharing behaviors were significantly more generous if their common beliefs involved Big God concepts.
The researchers of this study argue that this supports the hypothesis stating that widespread beliefs in omniscient, morally punitive Big Gods may have contributed to the expansion of prosocial behavior.
[2] An example of this effect has been alluded to by anthropologist Marvin Harris, who wrote about the economic reasons that Hindu beliefs, holding cows as sacred and forbidden from slaughter, were adaptive.
According to Harris, the long-standing and stable benefits derived from many Hindu peoples' use of cows for labor and sources of fuel and fertilizer seemed to outweigh the costs of not eating them.
[45] Another ethnographic example of an adaptive use of animal resources was described by Roy Rappaport in 1984, who considered the reasons for ritual pig sacrifice in Papua New Guinea during times of intergroup conflict.
[46] Furthermore, human behavioral ecology researchers have more recently studied burning practices among the Australian Martu people and the consequential increases in local biodiversity.
These structures demarcate local territories in which spirit masters reside, and the expectation to stop and give prayer offerings out of respect to cher eezi is embedded in peoples' beliefs about them.
[41][44] More recently, Tyva people have begun facing new challenges associated with urbanization (e.g., pollution, alcohol abuse), and the cher eezi have been more frequently believed to be concerned about these same problems.