"THE ORIGIN OF RELIGION...A...DARWINIAN VIEW"

Intersting article. I see in it echoes of Julian Jaynes, in his unwieldly titled "The Origin of Consciousness In The Breakdown of The Bicameral Mind", a considerable work and over the quarter of a century since its publication, one which has become seminal in a number of Academic Disciplines.



timber

"The Origin of Consciousness..." appeals to me. Timber, do you remember any of the key concepts of the author?

Interesting article and topic, Mapleleaf. Perhaps this article is too short to adequately cover Wilson's point, but he seems to differ sharply with Rene Girard (Things Hidden since the Foundation of the World).

The main difference is that Wilson believes that religion acts as an equalizing force in communities and Girard asserts that religion acts to reinforce a hierarchy.

Girard bases his principles primarily on "acquisitive mimesis," which is an innate behavior in humans and other primates. If one person or primate reaches for an item, others near will also want that item, even if they had not wanted it before. People and primates have been seen to reach for an item after someone else has also done so. Two individuals cannot have the same item, so a system of who gets what evolves. That system establishes a hierarchy. Religion serves to legitimize the established system, thereby bring "peace" to the community.

Since there is an innate competition between beings, there is also an innate tension. To keep the community cohesive something has to play the role of the tension-maker, that is, someone has to be blamed and punished for causing the tension. When the community can all agree on who is to blame, then that person actually brings the community together. That person is usually either killed or symbolically killed, and then usually rises again from the dead, having borne the punishment for our sins. The sacrificial lamb is hailed as a peace-maker and is elevated to a godlike status.

Sometimes nationalism functions like a religion, with a whole country blaming a common enemy, thereby bringing the country together.

I did read an article recently that goes through the last 50 or so years of our dealings with the Arab world. It clearly shows how each faction within the Arab world benefits by perpetuating the MYTH that Americans are to blame for all of their woes. We are their scapegoat and that keeps them from blaming the real tension-makers.

I also really liked Herbert Muller's Freedom in the Ancient World, which, if I recall, attributes the rise of religion with the beginnings of a surplus of goods. The religious leaders were basically the weathermen, telling the farmers when to plant crops, hence the fascination with the stars and seasons. Of course, they extracted a price for their services and all was clouded in "religious" mystery.

I personally believe that the Aztecs slaughtered their victims in order to decrease the population--food was scarce--and they used the blood they collected to fertilize their intensive gardens (blood meal, bone meal, and trace elements.) It's clear they provided some sort of "magic" act or show to go along with their slaughters.

I'll fetch that link.

Fascinating...well-written...did you just jot that off?

http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20021101faessay9993/barry-rubin/the-real-roots-of-arab-anti-americanism.html

Yep. Thanks for the compliment. High praise from one so eloquent! <blush>

Jaynes postulates that humans became fully conscious a few thousand years ago, more or less as the upper cognitive functions of the left and the right brain developed. Heavy going for some, I suppose, but fascinating and thought provoking to any with interest in the matter of humankind's distancing itself from the rest of the life on the planet. Any Library or bookstore will have or may easily get the book. A googlesearch on either the Author or Title will yield more than suficient hits to provide at least a survey of the book, through excerpts and criticisms and the like. Amazon will surely have it ... and I should know about how one goes about linking to Amazon from this site ... but I don't know quite how it works.



timber

essentially from what i remember of Jaynes book is that prior to the development of the corpus colosum merging brain hemispheres, there existed a cognitive dissonance with the result of conceptual conflicts with sensory inputs. what we might very well describe as halucinations in which observable phenomona were easliy merged with "mystic/metaphysical" understanding.

dyslexia, that IS interesting. And to think all that time in college we spent studying the development of teeth which indicated what they were eating. I never really even considered a brain and sensory perception much different from my own.

BTW, if I recall, Herbert Muller makes a distinction between the early practice of magic (an effort to control nature) and the later religions (an effort to control people).

Yeah, Dys, pretty much. I found the development of the idea to have been quite well done, giving the work a highly plausible treatment of the matter.



timber

timberlandko: along those same lines of thinking although from an entirely different perspective is Arthur Koestler's "Ghost in the machine"

Curious, are any of you adherents to a religious group.

Yeah, Koestler is an interesting, almost parallell, work from which similar conclusions may be drawn. I would go so far as to say the two are nearly complimentary.



timber

Broad familiarity with, but no subscription to any, " Religion" here, Mapleleaf.



timber

i am a pretty straightforward atheist, never had any religious background so i would not say i was reactionary.

I live in NW Georgia. I seldom come across folks who would accept a discussion like this. Glad to be here.

Are we assuming, that religion evolved from man's inner needs which then took on the trappings of his perceptions as dictated by his emerging self-awareness?

I would say that "Religion" and "Authority" were at one time indistinguishable, a single, undifferentiated concept. Only comparatively recently, anthropologically speaking, did the two diverge. The first "Laws" were surely outgrowths of species and culture advancing basic "truths" ... don't kill one another, don't steal from one another, don't breed with close relatives, that sort of thing, forming societies structured to perpetuate themselves. Administrative authority over these societies as vested in individuals was initially wholly "Religious" in nature; if not a god per se, the shaman or king or pharoah or whatever was to be heeded by divine right, an individual carrying out the will of the god or gods. Looking at The Ten Commandments, for instance, the first few establish divine authority for the body, while the remainder are more or less about being a society. The concept of a government separate from and wholly without divine authority is a quite recent development. I suspect "Religion" to be instinctual, and at the root of the "rightness" of submitting to legitimate "Authority".

I also suspect I have expressed this opinion perhaps a bit less clearly than I believe myself to have thought it out. Oh, well, I'm no authority.


timber.

I suspect "Religion" to be instinctual, and at the root of the "rightness" of submitting to legitimate "Authority".

It has a ring of legitimacy about it. It is probably worth noting that early man operated within small groups and then clans. Consequently, it initially involved the psychology of dealing with small numbers of people as opposed to large populations.