ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the equally vital group aspects of human religion, from its social dynamics to the evolutionary functions of corporate religiousness. The sociology of knowledge, in particular, offers a powerful account of the social construction of reality that makes excellent sense of a host of group-level phenomena surrounding religion, including those pertaining to social control and social transformation. The insights generated by the sociology of knowledge describe high-level group phenomena that emerge from more basic group dynamics. The chapter takes up the theme of peculiar and bizarre behaviors that seem to defy all generalized theories of human religion in relation to group life. Ilkka Pyysiinen argues that religion has an evolutionary history similar to that of language in one important respect: both are products of gene-culture co-evolution. According to Terrence Deacon human language is an instance of the Baldwin Effect: it depends on three-way co-evolution of vocal-tract physiology, the cognitive capacity for symbolic reference, and communicative social environments.
