Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-dzt6s Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-01-02T19:48:01.425Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

High illness loads (physical and social) do not always force high levels of mass religiosity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 January 2012

Gregory S. Paul
Gregory S. Paul
Affiliation:
3109 N. Calvert Street, Baltimore, MD 21218. GSP1954@aol.com
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The hypothesis that high levels of religiosity are partly caused by high disease loads is in accord with studies showing that societal dysfunction promotes mass supernaturalism. However, some cultures suffering from high rates of disease and other socioeconomic dysfunction exhibit low levels of popular religiosity. At this point, it appears that religion is hard pressed to thrive in healthy societies, but poor conditions do not always make religion popular, either.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 35 , Issue 2 , April 2012 , pp. 90
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Barber, N. (2011) A cross-national test of the uncertainity hypothesis of religious belief. Cross-Cultural Research 45(3):318–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Delamontagne, R. (2010) High religiosity and societal dysfunction in the United States during the first decade of the twenty-first century. Evolutionary Psychology 8:617–57. Available at: www.epjournal.net/filestore/EP08617657_c.pdf.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Everett, D. (2008) Don't sleep. There are snakes: Life and language in the Amazonian jungle. Pantheon.Google Scholar
Fincher, C. L. & Thornhill, R. (2008b) Assortative sociality, limited dispersal: Infectious disease and the genesis of the global patterns of religious diversity. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, B: Biological Sciences 275:2587–94.Google Scholar
Gill, A. & Lundsgaarde, E. (2004) State welfare spending and religiosity. Rationality and Society 16:399–436.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Marlowe, F. (2002) Why the Hadza are still hunter-gatherers. In: Ethnicity, hunter-gatherers, and the ‘Other’, ed. Kent, S., pp. 247–81. Smithsonian Institution Press.Google Scholar
Marlowe, F. (2004) The Hadza. In: Encyclopedia of Medical Anthroplogy II, ed. Ember, C. & Ember, M., pp. 689–96. Plenum.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Marlowe, F. (2010) The Hadza: Hunter-gatherers of Tanzania. University of California Press.Google Scholar
Norris, P. & Inglehart, R. (2004) Sacred and secular. Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Paul, G. (2009) The chronic dependence of popular religiosity upon dysfunctional psychosociological conditions. Evolutionary Psychology 7:398–441. Available at: www.epjournal.net/filestore/EP07398441_c.pdf.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Paul, G. (2010a) Religiosity tied to socioeconomic conditions. Science 327:642.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Paul, G. (2010b) The evolution of popular religiosity and secularism: How 1st world statistics reveal why religion exists, why it has been popular, and why the most successful democracies are the most secular. In: Atheism and secularity, ed. Zuckerman, P., pp. 149–209. Praeger.Google Scholar
Paul, G. (in press) Why religion is unable to minimize lethal and nonlethal societal dysfunction within and between nations. In: The Oxford handbook on evolutionary perspectives on violence, homicide, and war, ed. Shackelford, T. & Weekes, V.. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Rees, T. (2009) Is personal insecurity a cause of cross-national differences in the intensity of religious belief? Journal of Religion and Society 11. Available at: moses.creighton.edu/JRS/2009/2009-17.html.Google Scholar
Ruiter, S. & Tubergen, F. (2009) Religious attendance in cross-national perspective: Multilevel analyis of 60 countries. American Journal of Sociology 115:863–95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Verweij, J., Ester, P. & Nauta, R. (1997) Secularization as an economic and cultural phenomenon. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 36:309–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Yao, X. & Zhao, Y. (2010) Chinese religion. Continuum.Google Scholar
Zuckerman, P. (2009) Atheism, secularity, and well-being: How the findings of social science counter negative stereotypes and assumptions. Sociology Compass 3/6:949–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar