What were the costly sacrifices in hunter-gatherer tribes?
Is killing heretics typical in religions in general, or are theology-based exclusivist religions a relatively recent invention? My impression is that polytheism where it’s easy to add gods and customs was the human default for a very long time.
One of the functions of religion—maybe the main one—is that it forms an in-group where people are more likely to help each other. I don’t know why organizing around fantastic stories seems to be easier than organizing around practical purposes.
I don’t know why organizing around fantastic stories seems to be easier than organizing around practical purposes.
IMHO, this ought not be any more surprising than that our taste buds respond more strongly to certain artificial flavors than to natural ones. Once a receptor evolves naturally, I’d expect it to be possible to construct artificial super-stimuli that it responds to far more strongly than to natural stimuli. Humans have certain evolved characteristics that govern how we organize into groups, and we have developed narratives that make use of those characteristics to control how we organize in groups.
Another possibility is that fantastic stories are rightly felt to be more stable than practical purposes. If the important thing is maintaining cooperation, then a practical purpose could be accomplished or go badly wrong, but the fantastic story isn’t going away.
Also true. And after a couple of generations, the familiarity of stable centers-of-organization would make them easier to organize around than novel practical purposes.
That said, there are enough practical purposes that were consistent enough from generation to generation during the period that most of our religions evolved that in that case I would expect to see, say, farming exert the same kind of social-organizing influences that, say, Christianity did.
Which maybe it did… I don’t really know that much about the comparative roles of farming and Christianity in the social organization of the last couple of millenia.
What were the costly sacrifices in hunter-gatherer tribes?
Is killing heretics typical in religions in general, or are theology-based exclusivist religions a relatively recent invention? My impression is that polytheism where it’s easy to add gods and customs was the human default for a very long time.
One of the functions of religion—maybe the main one—is that it forms an in-group where people are more likely to help each other. I don’t know why organizing around fantastic stories seems to be easier than organizing around practical purposes.
IMHO, this ought not be any more surprising than that our taste buds respond more strongly to certain artificial flavors than to natural ones. Once a receptor evolves naturally, I’d expect it to be possible to construct artificial super-stimuli that it responds to far more strongly than to natural stimuli. Humans have certain evolved characteristics that govern how we organize into groups, and we have developed narratives that make use of those characteristics to control how we organize in groups.
Another possibility is that fantastic stories are rightly felt to be more stable than practical purposes. If the important thing is maintaining cooperation, then a practical purpose could be accomplished or go badly wrong, but the fantastic story isn’t going away.
Also true. And after a couple of generations, the familiarity of stable centers-of-organization would make them easier to organize around than novel practical purposes.
That said, there are enough practical purposes that were consistent enough from generation to generation during the period that most of our religions evolved that in that case I would expect to see, say, farming exert the same kind of social-organizing influences that, say, Christianity did.
Which maybe it did… I don’t really know that much about the comparative roles of farming and Christianity in the social organization of the last couple of millenia.