Gods of War: Does Religion Promote Combat Effectiveness?

Adaptive theories of religion tend to focus on its “positive” outcomes, such as health,cooperation, or group solidarity, while non-adaptive theories tend to focus on “negative” outcomes, such as ethnocentrism, violence, or blind faith. By contrast, I argue that many of religion’s negative outcomes are adaptive. Religious beliefs and practices offer a number of potential advantages that would have improved combat effectiveness in human evolutionary history (and still do so today). For example, ethnocentrism promotes within-group cooperation and demonization of the enemy. Violence promotes the preservation of one’s own group by the destruction, deterrence, or pillaging of competitors. Blind faith promotes ritual, discipline, commitment, confidence, perseverance, a higher purpose, moral justification, reduction of fear, perceived supernatural protection, and a belief in ultimate victory. Religion turns out to have many properties that make it an excellent adaptation for war. This is evident among eras and societies spanning Aztec warriors, Roman legionaries, Islamic terrorists and U.S. Marines. Perhaps this is an accident. Alternatively, perhaps religion is so effective for surviving and winning inter-group competition because it was designed for exactly this purpose. After all, why do so many societies have gods of war?...<READ MORE>