Darwin's Cathedral
by David Sloan Wilson · first published 2002
80% recommend20% neutral
"From Calvinism in sixteenth-century Geneva to Balinese water temples, from hunter-gatherer societies to urban America, Wilson demonstrates how religions have enabled people to achieve by collective action what they never could do alone. He also includes a chapter considering forgiveness from an evolutionary perspective and concludes by discussing how all social organizations, including science, could benefit by incorporating elements of religion. Religious believers often compare their communities to single organisms and even to insect colonies. Astoundingly, Wilson shows that they might be
Affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
Related books
2020–2026Dominion
Tom Holland, Mark Meadows, Joan Eloi Roca
Recommended by 20 · mentioned by 2320 recommend · 23 mention20 recommend · 2320 recommend
2010–2026Philosophical investigations
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Recommended by 42 · mentioned by 11442 recommend · 114 mention42 recommend · 11442 recommend
2008–2026Bowling Alone
Robert D. Putnam
Recommended by 66 · mentioned by 15066 recommend · 150 mention66 recommend · 15066 recommend
Republic
Plato, Benjamin Jowett
Recommended by 50 · mentioned by 18650 recommend · 186 mention50 recommend · 18650 recommend
2007–2026The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
Thomas S. Kuhn, Dennis Holland
Recommended by 96 · mentioned by 21596 recommend · 215 mention96 recommend · 21596 recommend
2007–2026Brave New World
Aldous Huxley
Recommended by 202 · mentioned by 708202 recommend · 708 mention202 recommend · 708202 recommend
Preventing people from doing some of what they want is actually an important function of society. I made my peace with religions after reading Darwin's Cathedral by David Sloan Wilson. To me it explained very well how religions were a tool for organizing ever larger societies. We wouldn't be where we are as humanity if we hadn't had the power of religion. There…
on “China cracks down on religion, crosses burned at Christian churches” ↗"Darwin's Cathedral" by David Sloan Wilson allowed me to come to peace with religion. Now I have a framework to understand why religions do what they do. Reading "The True Believer" by Eric Hoffer and "Private Truths, Public…
on “Ask HN: What books changed the way you think about almost everything?” ↗…history. But the things that resonated or were useful have remained. Religion is the result of evolutionary processes and like all evolutionary processes it changes slowly and is not perfect. D.S. Wilson's Darwin's Cathedral is the go-to book for this argument and contains a beautiful section that goes like this: We look at a bird's wing and marvel that it is so wonderfully adapted for flying. But we do not scorn birds for…
on “Why “Trusting the Science” Is Complicated” ↗I asked many of these same questions when I lost my faith. I found compelling answers as to why I had a god shaped hole in D.S. Wilson’s Darwin’s Cathedral. It’s taken 15 years, but I also finally have plans about what the fuck we should be doing about it.
on “The upstream cause of the youth mental health crisis is the loss of community” ↗…we have nation-sized beings. And I notice that many successful societies have strong cultures of internal cooperation, though they might schism, e.g. Abrahamic religions. Anyway, I'm some way through Darwin's Cathedral (recommended to me by an LLM when I asked about this idea) and that book plus the story of this tribe have served to shove me firmly into the land of absolute belief in this idea haha!
on “Silverback Imfura took a chance, and ended up alone” ↗…literature research. An example of something where it worked like this is that I had some ideas around how tribes evolve and so on and wrote them as I could think of them and ChatGPT was able to find that Darwin’s Cathedral had a far better synthesis of various much more rigorous takes on the subject.
on “French physicist and media star loses doctorate after plagiarism investigation” ↗…thing I’ve recently been enamored of are effective world and coordination models that are not “true”. E.g. a tribe that believes the forest gets angry if they do not hunt united. Lots more like that in Darwin’s Cathedral. It might seem a bit free association-y but the topic itself is that. The reasoning tokens behind this comment: https://wiki.roshangeorge.dev/w/Blog/2025-10-12/Word_Magic
on “Is AI Reasoning Right for the Wrong Reasons?” ↗That religions are just mind-parasites has become a meme on its own. To me, the book "Darwin's Cathedral" made a very good case that we should look at religions as adaptations that allowed creating larger societies. And so I finally came to peace with religion. Will stay atheist, thank you for asking.
on “Stopping deepfake news with an AI algorithm that can tell when a face doesnt fit” ↗…nicely the geographical spread of Christianity by also clarifying what kind of transformations of religious symbols make it recognisable as Christianity across such different contexts. There's also "Darwin's Cathedral" [1] that analyses religion as group-organizing system, with a focus on Calvinism. Didn't go through it, but seems relevant. It was recommended by Robert Sapolsky in his Introduction to Human Behavioral…
on “The Spread of Christianity Animated” ↗…is real and that there is life after death even though time and again these phenomena turn out to have completely naturalistic explanations. If you want to go one level deeper I encourage you to read Darwin’s Cathedral where you’ll learn this tendency to believe in the supernatural is not a bug but a feature.
on “Gallup: U.S. church membership dips below 50% for first time” ↗Is this a goal to which we should aspire? I’m a former evangelical, now atheist and I thought that it was but now I’m not so sure. Darwin’s Cathedral made me rethink this position and I encourage you to read it.
…morning and it was very helpful. Turns out I misread the relationship Shen Zhuliang and Confucius had. 1: In fact, I'm of the opinion that pro-sociality is probably The Adaptive Trait. I recently picked up Darwin's Cathedral and am approximately 3 pages in and I already feel a kindred spirit behind that book. 2: Can we help it? Almost everyone has heard an expert or professor go "I believe that X is the most important thing…
on “The yoghurt delivery women combatting loneliness in Japan” ↗…selection" mightn't do a better job of explaining both individual and group behavior. (The idea of "memes" is an interesting metaphor, imo, and nothing more.) This reminds me of a book I had hoped to read, "Darwin's Cathedral."
on “Ask HN: Which books do you consider real gems in your field of work/study?” ↗