世界上最重要的进化论学者之一解决了进化论的一个基本谜团：为什么我们相信。
我们的物种在六百万到八百万年前从类人猿进化而来。从那时起，我们开始倾向于精神思考和仪式。这是如何、何时以及为什么发生的，最早的非正式萨满实践是如何演变成我们今天所熟悉的世界宗教的？宗教的进化目的是什么？有些人比其他人更倾向于宗教吗？
在《宗教是如何演变的》一书中，罗宾·邓巴探索了这些和其他问题，挖掘了经验宗教（最早的狩猎采集社会所实践的）与教义宗教（从犹太教、基督教、伊斯兰教到琐罗亚斯德教、印度教、佛教及其许多衍生宗教）之间的区别。
通过研究宗教的起源、社会功能、它对大脑和身体的影响，以及它在现代社会中的地位，邓巴对人类信仰的典型冲动进行了引人入胜和深远的分析。
How Religion Evolved: And Why It Endures by Robin Dunbar
One of the world’s foremost scholars of evolution tackles one of its essential mysteries: why we believe.
Our species diverged from the great apes six to eight million years ago. Since then, our propensity toward spiritual thinking and ritual emerged. How, when, and why did this occur, and how did the earliest, informal shamanic practices evolve into the world religions familiar to us today? What is the evolutionary purpose of religion, and are some individuals more inclined than others to be religious?
In How Religion Evolved, Robin Dunbar explores these and other questions, mining the distinctions between religions of experience–as practiced by the earliest hunter-gatherer societies–and doctrinal religions, from Judaism, Christianity, and Islam to Zoroastrianism, Hinduism, Buddhism, and their many derivatives.
Examining religion’s origins, social functions, its effects on the brain and body, and its place in the modern era, Dunbar offers a fascinating and far-reaching analysis of the quintessentially human impulse to believe.
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