The Elephant in the Room

Recent evolutionary accounts seek to explain religious belief and behavior in terms of native cognitive dispositions and culturally transmitted innovations that have persisted because they have adaptive value. Despite the often vitriolic evolution-religion debate, new evolutionary theories typically avoid challenging the truth of religious beliefs. In this paper we do three things. (1) We describe five new developments in evolutionary theory that have potential relevance to whether religious beliefs are truth-tracking or not: adaptive misbeliefs, error management theory, self-deception, signaling, and imitation. (2) We assess both their posited application to religious cognition and their possible entailments for the truth or warrant of religious beliefs. (3) We explore whether and under what conditions scientific explanations of religious belief should (a) remain neutral to the truth status of those beliefs or (b) render judgment about a belief's falsity – or truth – as important aspects of the phenomenon to be explained.