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

I'm a bit behind on reading here, but let me quickly toss in this lovely piece from the Guardian on our susceptibility to superstitious ideas and rituals...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/weekend/story/0,3605,858608,00.html

dupre

Thank you, not least for getting me to finally read something written by King.

I like Setanta's notion above that an eclectic set of tools is in order when studying and thinking about something as varied, though universal, as religious behavior.

I also like timber's idea that religious thought and behavior has been built upon certain predispositions and demands originating out of our social animal heritage.

How do we know elephants do not have religious instincts? How about primates? c.i.

Excellent article, blatham, and thanks for the link. I see the author going to the core of this discussion with his observation, "But even in the most prosperous and secure societies, there is still a kind of existential insecurity, and no amount of popularised science is going to give you answers to those kinds of emotional needs."

To my mind, "Superstition" is merely "Religion" unconfused by dogma.



timber

blatham: Great article. I was feeling mighty superior since I didn't seem to have ANY inclination toward superstitions, until the article mentioned horoscopes. I do like to read mine, if the paper happens to be turned to it!

c.i.: I would believe that elephants do have a sense of an afterlife, else, why the reverence to the remains?

Nobody yet has mentioned the very first deity, the Mother Goddess, thought to have originated in Iran and diffused in various forms throughout the world, even the New World. I found a link which linguistically takes her from Summer to Hungary and beyond. My book--rather simplistically, I might add--has her changing somewhat with the practice of agriculture followed by a knowledge of metals (copper and tin), and a more settled village life.

Here's an attempt to simplify Herbert Muller's first chapter <sigh>:

Seems that before agriculture women were the food gatherers (providing most of the food), the potters, and the weavers. Men were the hunters.

Also consider: infanticide is practiced more often in nomadic groups than in settled ones.

Then, they settle into agriculture, With the change of the weather, mammoths died out, bison moved on, but lavish pictures of them were still being drawn, possibly by the men to magically get the animals to return. Man's hunting wasn't going so well, so agriculture and a more settled village life became a better way to survive.

Priests emerge for the first time, with the surplus of food.

Then, with the introduction of metals, for the first time, a difference arises in class wealth (graves indicate some were wealthier than others). Private property becomes a concept for the first time.

Miners and metal workers emerge as the second and third type of "specialist." War is first recorded--not merely skirmishes between nomadic peoples--since there is an investment in a particular piece of real estate for the agriculture and also for their more settled homes.

Men took over the agriculture which was probably discovered by women, men traveled for supplies of metal and traded with other groups (there is evidence of trade in their homes, shells and such), men now made pottery with the wheels which were probably invented by women, and the women? Stayed at home and made babies (farming and protecting property requires a larger population). The Mother Goddess, while still retaining her deity, now acts as a wife and mother to her offspring, a son who lives, dies, and is reborn, celebrating and encouraging the cycle of life. He is the first immortal person, living on in various forms well past many "supreme gods" who followed him.

Since private property and a transferring of property to offspring was now an issue, men wanted to ensure that their children were really their offspring. That's supposedly when women lost their status in society and in religion and male deities emerged.

The above really does not do justice to his work and he is clear to say that societal evolution is not a linear pattern. He does clearly state that everywhere religion reflects the economic realities. In college I learned that often the religion will then linger somewhat when the economic realities change, that is, that religion changes more slowly than the economics, becoming out of date at times.

The next chapter takes the reader into Summer and the city-states.

dupre, I don't think only economic changes/realities brings religion to the surface. I think war also has the same effect, and many who are mortally wounded will cry for their mother or a god they never belived existed. c.i.

dupree: just a comment, current anthropological evidence seems to indicate that early hunter/gatherer societies were not gender specific regarding labour activities.

Well, the damned isp has lost yet another long post which it took me considerable effort to put together. So, i'll put this more bluntly, and ask Dupre not to take this as a personal comment.



Cultural diffusion is a bankrupt concept, based upon the semitic-centered prejudices of 19th century historians and archaeologists. An overwhelming weight of evidence exists for the concurrent and/or independent evolution of curtural artifacts/ideas in prehistory. I cannot accept the notion that any one idea only occurs to one person or group of people, and spreads slowly outward from a center. Darwin and Wallace provide the most dramatic example of concurrence in modern times.

Timber,
...I disagree with you on religion predating intellect. I say spirituality, and perhaps in a stretch, theism, may have preceded intellect, but the structural aspects of religion, would require intellect.

dyslexia: I'd heard something along those lines, too. I just called a friend who has a masters in anthropology. She says that the idea is that the division was considered equally valuable. If anything, the woman was probably more valuable in that she provided more food, more consistently, and probably only mated with the strongest males.

Booman, I don't postulate that "Religion" predates intellect, but rather that intellect makes of some primal instinct what we perceive as "Religion". Spirituality and theism, being intellectual constructs, cannot predate intellect. The core of my hypothesis is that "Religion" and "Authority" are but codependent manifestations of this one primal instinct given intellectual handles by humans that they might grasp the concept.


timber.

You cleared that right up. I like the way you articulate.

dupre

On the point of 'fertility/mother/venus goddess' figurines and agriculture...there was, over the last two decades or so, a push from a certain part of the feminist studies quarter to find evidence for a pre-patriarchal past. As the period in question was pre-literate, evidence for this hypothesis was sought in archaeology and in linguistics. Venus figurines became something like 'exhibit A' for these folks.

A rather clear example is Marilyn French's writings on Catal Huyuk, an extraordinary neolithic site in Anatolia (Turkey) right at the beginnings of agriculture in that part of the world. I happened to read her book soon after doing some extensive study on this site, and found her inferences (based on burials, etc) unwarranted, and certainly they were not inferences which Mellart (in charge of the digs) had made except in one sentence where he said "possibly a matriarchal society". Venus figurines are found here, in association with grain storage as they commonly are elsewhere.

But plant and animal domestication and irrigation seem to arise in a number of disparate locations at approximately the same time. I'm not sure I can speak as confidently as Setanta does above (that cultural diffusion is 'bankrupt') but it certainly seemed, when I was studying this stuff, to not be the entire story. How, for example, would this knowledge diffuse to South/Central America?

DNA analysis is proving to be a very promising tool in providing complimentary evidence to the migrations of human populations, and the picture will likely become much clearer as regards arguments for and against diffusion.

Linguistic data and arguments are pretty sophisticated, and I'm not at all qualified to make judgements on them. But when we look back into this very misty past, even linguists aren't in uniform agreement about rather a lot (Indo-European speakers are broadly assumed to have come out of the steppes, but there is not total agreement on this...and earlier stuff is even more difficult). If you are interested in this stuff, check for Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza on google and you'll have some fun reading (I think it is anyway).

I've read that Matriarchal sociaties, were quite prevalent at one time in parts of Africa.

Booman

I think timber has it right. An example might be the classic touring hypnotist like Reveen. Let's assume, just for my point, that post-hypnotic suggestion is real. Reveen hypnotises a lady and tells her that when she goes back to her seat that she will brush off her left shoulder whenever he says the word 'pumpkin'. She goes back down, and each time he says the word, she brushes her left shoulder. Now, if you point this out to her, and ask her why she brushed her shoulder just now, she'll give you a reason, but it won't be the correct one.

We seem to be biological creatures with this cognitive overlay. And I think that much of what we do and think has it's genesis at levels we simply don't have access to.

Booman

Well, it depends on how one defines the term. There is a fair variation in how different groups organize themselves, for example, in whether it is the male or female parent's name the child carries and in other ways as well. I just thought I'd alert you to a particular skewing of evidence (or possible skewing) in this matter. I'm a big fan of much feminist interpretation as it happens, but it has some dubious corners.

You must have missed my last post, Blatham. But you do express the same point quite lucidly....Which brings me to the basis of my main beliefs about...exsistence. There are certain ideas or notions, that I come upon, by study, listening, or meditation... When they keep coming back to me in many forms from unrelated sources, I start to validify them.

My source, is "The African Orgin Of Civilization", by Cheihi Anta Diop...Transalated from french by Mercer Cook

timberlandko: I've been reading online about Jaynes and the bicameral brain. Thanks for tuning me in. Fascinating stuff. I do remember in grade school asking one of our reverends why God used to speak directly to his people and then, later, didn't. I'm still trying to remember his answer, but I do remember a passage in the Bible about Saul--who was mentioned in a reference to Jaynes's theory because he went to visit a medium because the Lord was no longer speaking directly to him--something like, "And the spirit of the Lord rushed upon him, and he was able to do what he knew to be right in his heart, since God was with him." An inidication of Jaynes's internalizing trait I read about. I now recall the reverend's answer, something like God sent his Holy Spirit to live in our hearts, but I always interpreted that as an after-the-resurrection happening. You know? Acts 2.

Not that I believe any of that now, but it's interesting to incorporate Jaynes with my own earlier questions about religion.

Interesting to me that Herbert Muller actually touches on this, calling people--at least where I am currently in his book, the beginnings of Sumer--at a "pre-logic" point in development. What Muller calls man's awakening to "freedom" Jaynes would call . . . I guess . . . the "breakdown."

Muller says people were not conscious of themselves as individuals. And were not free to choose. They did not see themselves as separate indenties from the group and were not free to ask themselves if they wanted to be part of the group they were members of.

Sorry if I'm redundant and wordy here.

Can you please define Jaynes's use of the word "breakdown"?