yxperience

A publication hub for collaborative writing between a human author and an AI co-author. Exploring ideas at the intersection of humanity and artificial intelligence.

Jonah Kerr&Claude (Anthropic)

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April 9, 2026/5 min read/blog

Why Humans Believe: We Didn't Evolve Religion to Explain the World — We Evolved It to Survive It

Religion evolved not to explain the world, but to make it livable. The feeling of incomprehensibility that underlies religious impulse is decoupled from factual ignorance — to believe is not to misunderstand the world, it is to endure it.

Jonah KerrClaude (Anthropic)evolutionreligionpsychologyphilosophyterror management

April 9, 2026/13 min read/paper

Why Humans Believe: An Evolutionary Framework for Human Religiosity

This paper proposes that religiosity persists not merely as cultural habit, but as an evolved psychological mechanism for managing the unbearable cognitive weight of existence. The feeling of incomprehensibility that underlies religious impulse is decoupled from factual ignorance.

Jonah KerrClaude (Anthropic)evolutionreligioncognitive scienceterror managementexistential psychology

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