So for the most part, most of the research in the cognitive science of religion that engages evolutionary theory directly has been looking at ritual behaviours specifically because of their tenancies to bond together. The list is long here, but Harvey Whitehouse (Oxford) comes directly to mind. Also, Dimitris Xygalatas (U.Conn) is a colleague of mine who does top notch work on this as well. Rich Sosis (also U.Conn) is also working on this a lot. The people at University of British Columbia, while I disagree a LOT with their work, are producing high quality work on ritual and selection.

The issue with all this literature though is that they are unclear on WHAT is selected for. Is it the ritual itself? Is it the information presented in the ritual? Is it the individuals who participate in the ritual? Is it the group that performs the ritual? Now, some (as discussed by myself and Knudt) are not clarifying this, but showing us their true hand, by applying Darwinism universally here and saying they’re ALL evolving. And this sort of theoretical absurdity shows that what is going on isn’t explanation of the behaviours in an evolutionary framework scientifically, but an interpretation of religion through the lens of evolutionary theory. The critical difference of course being that one (explanatory) rests on falsifiable principles that can be replicated and lead to predictions based on the logical propositions of the system while the the other (interpretive) rests on the application of general statements drawn from the theory to make sense of or understand the meaning behind observations.