Most people (especially in very simple social environments, which is where this whole thing started) hold opinions for approximately good reasons. This is less true of very complex or infrequently occurring issues.
Nevertheless, individual opinions do constitute a certain degree of evidence. It strikes me as very likely that a mechanism for accepting second-hand, unverifiable information would provide a fairly substantial evolutionary benefit to a hunter-gatherer. For that matter, it provides some benefit to us today.
Religion is also a good source of individual motivation, if you don’t happen to have an elaborated system of reasoning and ethics and metaethics handy. People tell stories about events (not all of them religious in nature) to contextualize them and predict them. Though that doesn’t necessarily explain their tendency to spread in and of itself.
Most people (especially in very simple social environments, which is where this whole thing started) hold opinions for approximately good reasons. This is less true of very complex or infrequently occurring issues.
Nevertheless, individual opinions do constitute a certain degree of evidence. It strikes me as very likely that a mechanism for accepting second-hand, unverifiable information would provide a fairly substantial evolutionary benefit to a hunter-gatherer. For that matter, it provides some benefit to us today.
Religion is also a good source of individual motivation, if you don’t happen to have an elaborated system of reasoning and ethics and metaethics handy. People tell stories about events (not all of them religious in nature) to contextualize them and predict them. Though that doesn’t necessarily explain their tendency to spread in and of itself.