''The Faith Instinct: How Religion Evolved and Why It Endures'' is a 2009 book about the evolution of religious behavior by ''

New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...

'' science reporter

Nicholas Wade Nicholas Michael Landon Wade (born 17 May 1942) is a British author and journalist. He is the author of numerous books, and has served as staff writer and editor for ''Nature'', ''Science'', and the science section of ''The New York Times''. ...

, in which the author argues that religious behaviours have evolved through

natural selection Natural selection is the differential survival and reproduction of individuals due to differences in phenotype. It is a key mechanism of evolution, the change in the heritable traits characteristic of a population over generations. Charle ...

. Wade argues that religious behaviour, through shared gods and beliefs, creates social solidarity, which is the driving force in making groups of people who are not related to each other by family, comply with and enforce shared norms and rules for social behaviour, that are not beneficial on an individual level, but beneficial for the tribe as a whole. Wade argues that the selection for religious behaviour began at least 50,000 years ago between African tribes, where tribes that benefited more from the unifying power of shared gods and beliefs, music and dance, outcompeted rivals and thus left more survivors, whereby genes underlying a brain-based “faith instinct” proliferated, which caused religious tendencies to be ingrained in the human brain.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Faith Instinct 2009 non-fiction books American non-fiction books Anthropology books Books about evolution Books about evolutionary psychology Books about sociobiology Books by Nicholas Wade English-language books Penguin Books books Sociology books