Evolutionary accounts of religions, religiosity, or their traits have proliferated over the last 15 years.

These evolutionary proposals variously cite natural, sexual, or cultural selection in their explanations.

Not only might all of these proposals be consistent with one another, they might all be true.

Darwin’s theory of evolution has met with repeated episodes of its conspicuous rejection, from the celebrated 1860 debate between Bishop Samuel Wilberforce and Thomas Henry Huxley, to the sensational Scopes “Monkey Trial” in Dayton, Tennessee, in 1925, to court cases at the turn of the 21st century when certain American locales sought to require the teaching of either Intelligent Design or the putative controversy about human origins. Such ostentatious disavowals of Darwin’s theory and the development and success of institutions such as the Creation Museum and Ark Encounter (with well over 750,000 visitors a year) indicate that the intellectual turmoil is ongoing.

A second connection between evolutionary thinking and religions has emerged over the past few decades, which have witnessed a proliferation of evolutionary theories about religions and religiosity. Evolutionary thinkers of various stripes have set their sights on a variety of religious matters as the objects of their explanatory proposals.

Religions as Products of Natural Selection

Many theorists maintain that natural selection favors either religions or individuals’ religiosity. They construe them as adaptations that enhance the fitness either of those........

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