Religious and atheist scholars agree: Modern life is mismatched with human nature.

Smartphones and urban anonymity are driving anxiety, loneliness, and declining trust.

Digital substitutes are weakening real relationships and intimacy across generations.

Restoring community, sacredness, and attention are key to human flourishing.

One of the virtues of a post-tribal outlook is that nearly everyone becomes a potential conversation partner. Rather than seeking opportunities to tout or distinguish one’s own views, the impulse is to find common ground with others, whatever their political, religious, or ideological commitments.

An encouraging (though troubling) example is the growing convergence between some religious and atheist scholars on the dangers of evolutionary mismatch—that is, the ways modern environments and technologies are increasingly out of step with human nature and human flourishing.

What Religious and Atheist Scholars Both Say About Modern Life

In Thriving With Stone Age Minds, Christian psychologists Justin L. Barrett and Pamela Ebstyne King examine human behavior through a lens not typically associated with theological scholarship: evolutionary psychology. They argue that our “Stone Age minds” come equipped with deep social needs that are increasingly mismatched with modern life. Their thesis resonates with arguments advanced by social psychologist Jonathan Haidt in The Anxious Generation and neuroscientist Debra Soh in Sextinction.

Evolutionary psychologists begin their examinations of human behavior by........

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