title: Explaining the success of karmic religions.
abstract: One of the central claims of Norenzayan et al.'s article is that supernatural monitoring and intergroup competition have facilitated the rise of large-scale prosocial religions. Although the authors outline in detail how social instincts that govern supernatural monitoring are honed by cultural evolution and have given rise to Big Gods, they do not provide a clear explanation for the success of karmic religions. Therefore, to test the real scope of their model, Norenzayan et al. need to seriously engage with questions concerning the evolution of karmic prosocial religions.
authors.affiliation: Department of Religious Studies,California State University,Northridge,CA 91330.claire.white@csun.eduhttp://www.csun.edu/humanities/religious-studies/faculty.
authors.forename: Claire
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: White
authors.affiliation: Institute of Cognition & Culture,Queen's University,Belfast,BT7 1NN,Northern Ireland,United Kingdom.p.sousa@qub.ac.ukhttp://www.qub.ac.uk/schools/InstituteofCognitionCulture/Staff/
authors.forename: Paulo
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Sousa
authors.affiliation: Department of Philosophy of Law and Legal Ethics,Jagiellonian University,31-005 Krakow,Poland.karolina.prochownik@uj.edu.pl.
authors.forename: Karolina
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Prochownik
mesh_terms: D003468:Cultural Evolution; D006801:Humans; D012067:Religion; D012919:Social Behavior