A model for the evolutionary diversification of religions

TL;DR

This paper models the diversification of religions as a process driven by cultural meme dynamics, using epidemiological models to explain how different religions emerge and coexist through frequency-dependent selection.

Contribution

It introduces a novel application of host-pathogen epidemiological models to understand religious diversification and the emergence of distinct religions from common ancestors.

Findings

Frequency-dependent selection leads to coexistence of multiple religious clusters.

Model explains emergence of diverse religions from a single ancestral religion.

Religious diversification is driven by transmission and loss dynamics influenced by social interactions.

Abstract

We address the problem of diversification in religions by studying selection on cultural memes that colonize humans hosts. In analogy to studying the evolution of pathogens or symbionts colonizing animal hosts, we use models for host-pathogen dynamics known from theoretical epidemiology. In these models, religious memes colonize individual humans. Rates of transmission of memes between humans, i.e., transmission of cultural content, and rates of loss of memes (loss of faith) are determined by the phenotype of the cultural memes, and by interactions between hosts carrying different memes. In particular, based on the notion that religion can lead to oppression of lower classes once a religious society has reached a certain size, we assume that the rate of loss increases as the number of humans colonized by a particular meme phenotype increases. This generates frequency-dependent selection on cultural memes, and we use evolutionary theory to show that this frequency dependence can generate the emergence of coexisting clusters of different meme types. The different clusters correspond to different religions, and hence our model describes the emergence of distinct descendent religions from single ancestral religions.