McKay Ryan, Whitehouse Harvey
ARC Centre of Excellence in Cognition and its Disorders.
Institute of Cognitive and Evolutionary Anthropology, School of Anthropology, University of Oxford.
Psychol Bull. 2015 Mar;141(2):447-73. doi: 10.1037/a0038455. Epub 2014 Dec 22.
The relationship between religion and morality has long been hotly debated. Does religion make us more moral? Is it necessary for morality? Do moral inclinations emerge independently of religious intuitions? These debates, which nowadays rumble on in scientific journals as well as in public life, have frequently been marred by a series of conceptual confusions and limitations. Many scientific investigations have failed to decompose "religion" and "morality" into theoretically grounded elements; have adopted parochial conceptions of key concepts-in particular, sanitized conceptions of "prosocial" behavior; and have neglected to consider the complex interplay between cognition and culture. We argue that to make progress, the categories "religion" and "morality" must be fractionated into a set of biologically and psychologically cogent traits, revealing the cognitive foundations that shape and constrain relevant cultural variants. We adopt this fractionating strategy, setting out an encompassing evolutionary framework within which to situate and evaluate relevant evidence. Our goals are twofold: to produce a detailed picture of the current state of the field, and to provide a road map for future research on the relationship between religion and morality.
宗教与道德之间的关系长期以来一直备受激烈争论。宗教能让我们变得更有道德吗？它对道德来说是必要的吗？道德倾向是否独立于宗教直觉而出现？这些争论如今在科学期刊以及公共生活中持续不断，但常常受到一系列概念混淆和局限的影响。许多科学研究未能将“宗教”和“道德”分解为理论基础明确的要素；采用了狭隘的关键概念观念——尤其是对“亲社会”行为的理想化观念；并且忽视了认知与文化之间的复杂相互作用。我们认为，为取得进展，“宗教”和“道德”这两个范畴必须细分为一组具有生物学和心理学说服力的特征，揭示塑造和限制相关文化变体的认知基础。我们采用这种细分策略，构建一个全面的进化框架，以便在其中定位和评估相关证据。我们的目标有两个：一是详细描绘该领域的当前状况，二是为未来关于宗教与道德关系的研究提供路线图。
