Evolutionary theory provides a framework for understanding the nature of religion, along with all other aspects of the human condition. The Evolutionary Religious Studies (ERS) website is designed to promote the study of religion from an evolutionary perspective. It includes a “beginner’s guide”, a directory of scientists and scholars, and a model research project on religious conceptions of the afterlife from a cultural evolutionary perspective. It is funded by an Advanced Research Program grant provided by the John Templeton Foundation in association with the Metanexus Institute.

The evolutionary perspective provides a conceptual framework for organizing existing knowledge about religion and directing future inquiry.

It is important to stress that most religious scholars, regardless of their intellectual perspective, study religion as a human-created phenomenon. Religious scholars (as opposed to theologians) have no more use for supernatural explanations than do biologists. What’s new about the evolutionary perspective is that it provides a conceptual framework for organizing existing knowledge about religion and directing future inquiry. In short, evolutionary theory can do for the subject of religion what it has already done for the biological sciences. This kind of basic scientific understanding is essential for addressing the myriad public policy issues, positive and negative, posed by religion.

As with EvoS and the Binghamton Neighborhood Project, the ERS website and the EI are separate entities but are closely related and mutually reinforcing. For any focal topic that includes a consideration of religion, we can engage the interdisciplinary community of scientists and scholars studying religion from an evolutionary perspective.