The Evolutionary, Cognitive, and Socio-Historical Architecture of Religion: A Critical Analysis of Ontological Transmission and Doctrinal Consolidation in Early Islam

This research monograph presents a multi-disciplinary framework examining the etiology, cognitive transmission, sociological function, and doctrinal consolidation of religious systems, with an analytical focus on the emergence and codification of early Islam within the religious ecology of Late Antiquity. Integrating cognitive science of religion (CSR), evolutionary anthropology, developmental psychology, and historical-critical methodology, this study deconstructs religious phenomena into their functional biological components and historically situated sociopolitical iterations. The first movement explores the evolutionary scaffolding that renders homo sapiens vulnerable to supernatural ontology: the Hyperactive Agency Detection Device (HADD), decoupled Theory of Mind (ToM), teleological promiscuity, dualism as a default cognitive setting, and Terror Management Theory (TMT). We articulate how developmental psychology accounts for the rapid transgenerational acquisition of dogmatic schema via natural pedagogy, epistemic vigilance calibration, and CREDs (Credibility-Enhancing Displays). Subsequent movements analyze social cohesion, out-group derogation, terror-induced in-group conformity, and the high-cost mechanics of apostasy, alongside the sociological roots of patriarchal hegemony, reproductive monopolization, and sexual demarcation in arid pastoralist contexts. Finally, the study examines early Islam not as an ex nihilo theological eruption, but as an integrative synthesis emergent from Late Antique Near Eastern sectarian milieus, drawing structurally and conceptually upon Syriac Christian asceticism, rabbinic and sectarian Jewish jurisprudence, Zoroastrian eschatology, and pre-Islamic South and Central Arabian civic codes.