Evolutionary psychology is a theoretical approach in psychology that examines cognition and behavior from a modern evolutionary perspective. It seeks to identify human psychological adaptations with regards to the ancestral problems they evolved to solve. In deep conversation with Rahul Dewan, Edward Dutton evaluates Islam from the perspective of evolutionary psychology and the factors affecting a person’s Intelligence Quotient, a number used to express the relative intelligence of a person. According to him the ethnocentric societies, by making sure their kids are not highly intelligent, make them highly instinctive. Low intelligence corresponds to having more children. Overtly religious education and lack of scientific knowledge in turn makes them less adaptive and depend on Will of God.

About the Speaker: Edward Dutton is Adjunct Professor of the Anthropology of Religion at Oulu University in Finland and an independent scholar. He is ex-editor-in-chief of the journal Mankind Quarterly and calls himself the Jolly Heretic on social media. Dutton has a degree in Theology from Durham University and a PhD in religious studies from the University of Aberdeen. Later Dutton made the move to evolutionary psychology. Since then, Dutton has published in leading psychology journals including Intelligence, and Personality and Individual Differences. He runs a popular internet channel, The Jolly Heretic, in which he explores daring scientific research. Dutton is the author of many books, most recently, Witches, Feminism, and the Fall of the West (2021), Islam: An Evolutionary Perspective (2020) and Churchill’s Headmaster: The ‘Sadist’ Who Nearly Saved the British Empire (2019).