Abstract
A review essay of three recent publications that focus in different ways on the evolutionary basis of religion. Asma (2018) focuses on the ways in which “religion” energizes the emotional needs of humans. Torrey (2017) pays close attention to the evolutionary stages of brain development that are necessary for the emergence of religious concepts and the attitudes that accompany them. Finally, Turner et al. (2017) develop a complex theory of different types of selection that they regard as necessary in order to account for the institutionalization of religion: they think that biological natural selection, even though building human capacities, is insufficient to explain the sociological facts about religion.
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