
The Idea That Launched a Thousand Civilisations (2012) [pdf] - tokenadult
http://www2.psych.ubc.ca/~ara/Manuscripts/Norenzayan_NewScientist2012.pdf
======
narrator
I think the transition in human history from the age of Gilgamesh to the
Homeric Epics and The Old Testament was very abrupt. Gilgamesh described a
relatively peaceful society without much focus on lineage and vengeance where
the characters were at times remorseful for being violent toward monsters they
met in the forest for example. The Homeric epics and The Old Testament in
contrast are filled with constant warfare, and brutality and a pathological
focus on lineage. Has anyone else noticed this? It's not something that would
have ever occurred to me without actually reading a lot of ancient literature.

~~~
1123581321
Gilgamesh described a world in which men and gods were equally capricious, and
the strong took everything from the weak justly by virtue of their strength,
justly, because there was no concept of justice (again, only divine caprice.)

~~~
igravious
There was a concept of justice, if the pre-socratics are to be believed (and
if their view reflected the earlier views - which I conjecture it did).
Thrasymachus (the Sophist) gives his understanding of justice and injustice as
"justice is what is advantageous to the stronger, while injustice is to one's
own profit and advantage". So you are right in saying that "the strong took
everything from the weak justly by virtue of their strength" but this was seen
as justice being done (the weak having no right to do anything about it. Might
makes right, the law of the jungle, pre-Axial Age justice.

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guylhem
Passionating.

I see religions mostly as Conway's game of life - blips of colors fighting for
territory using various ways, sometimes removing the competition, sometimes
behing destroyed by competition, sometimes dying by themselves, etc.

It's like competition in a soul market :-)

But in what they do, they seem push humanity forward, to give a reason, a
hope.

Yet I would be worried if a religion achieved dominant status (monopoly) in a
way that could be used to eradicate newcomers and innovation.

We already have an oligopoly - see the problems it makes on a worldwide scale.

~~~
upquark
> But in what they do, they seem push humanity forward, to give a reason, a
> hope.

I'd argue that the surviving religions are more like the strongest viruses of
the mind, not really the most useful mutations for society. You could look at
the progress of societies and religions as the co-evolution of hosts and
parasites, rather than of a single species acquiring useful new features :)

~~~
wisty
A good parasite never kills its host.

I'd say the truth is somewhere in between. Religions _were_ a useful adaption.
But after being supplanted by more useful mind viruses (like philosophy, which
is itself becoming outdated; or formal justice systems), then their utility no
longer mattered - just their ability to cling on.

~~~
s_baby
The formal justice system is based on the Talmud. It's filled with "case
studies" of edge cases that were used to set precedent of interpretation.

~~~
simonh
Because what we really need right now is a "formal justice systems are a
Jewish conspiracy" meme going around.

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prewett
I don't agree with the assumption that religion is obviously man-made. Another
possibility is that religion is a response to something that is actually out
there. Primitive societies' interaction with the spirits is usually fear of
the spirits and/or trying to control/manipulate the spirits to get what they
want which they are unable to provide themselves. One explanation is that they
act out of ignorance. Another explanation is that they act out of some sort of
knowledge that we have written off.

Furthermore, religions claim to have a revelation of truth not discoverable by
the western, Enlightenment-based assumptions that the world consists of only
the physical reality. There could actually be a spiritual reality, and one of
the religions might actually be correct. For example, I personally think that
the Christian worldview that we are all selfish (in opposition to God, who is
giving, since he needs nothing) explains a lot of things: poverty, oppression,
why we can't stop fighting among ourselves, why communes fail, among others.

Religion might just be made up; some certainly seem to be. But, it might also
be that some are actually right, and if one of them is right, it might have
profound implications on how we live our lives. For example, if there really
is a God who loves us so much that he died so that we could eternally relate
to him as a child deeply loved by a father, we do ourselves a disservice by
assuming that it is just made up. Christianity might be wrong, some other
truth claim might be right, but until we have established that religions do
not reflect reality, we should at least remain open to that possibility.

~~~
1010011010
> one of the religions might actually be correct

How would you propose that we set about determining which religion or
mythology is "correct"?

> until we have established that religions do not reflect reality, we should
> at least remain open to that possibility.

The burden of proof is on the religious. If they can offer testable,
reproducible proof that a religion makes valid predictions in specific
circumstances, and explains how the universe operates, then they should do so.
Once they have, we can call it "science".

In the meantime, as Christopher Hitchens said, "that which can be asserted
without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence."

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zw123456
Interesting study <http://religions.pewforum.org/reports> suggesting that
there is a correlation between religion and birth rate, the obvious conclusion
is that religious people are more traditional. Another explanation is that as
humans evolved the ability to have rational thought, there needed to be a
mechanism to for people to feel that there was something larger than
themselves, otherwise, through sheer reason one would conclude that having
children would decrease their chance of individual survival. ,Although,
hormones probably also contribute to the suspension of reason at times as
well.

~~~
stephengillie
I wonder how much that has to do with religious groups' dislike for
contraception and their leaders' urging followers to maximize reproduction.

~~~
harshreality
Google "quiverfull" if you haven't heard of it. It's an extreme position, but
ideologically consistent with much of organized religion.

~~~
stephengillie
I hadn't heard that term before, but it's exactly what I meant.

------
contingencies
Interesting article, thanks for sharing.

In particular I liked the numerous little tidbits such as _Even subtle
exposure to drawings resembling eyes encourages good behaviour towards
strangers_.

Perhaps changing the title to something more grabbing might help to generate
interest, eg. "Hacking Society: Religion and Surveillance".

~~~
6ren
I wonder what the impact is of reddit's look of disapproval: ಠ_ಠ?

~~~
tokenadult
A little off-topic, but I'm very impressed that when I selected, copied, and
pasted the emoticon into a Google search, Google gave me the explanation of
the emoticon

[http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/%E0%B2%A0_%E0%B2%A0-look-of-
di...](http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/%E0%B2%A0_%E0%B2%A0-look-of-disapproval)

as the top search result.

~~~
contingencies
I am also impressed but less surprised. Once you surpass a certain basic level
of search functionality with a monolingual frame of reference, you realise
that you are going to have to tackle such things; for example to facilitate
foreign language or mathematical search. Anything that exceeds such-and-such a
frequency as a 'word' object is going to be treated as such, even if its
traditionally-framed linguistic provenance is unknown.

------
dchmiel
In Guns Germs and Steel Jared Diamond states that "civilization is the result
of a chain of developments, each made possible by certain preconditions."
Interestingly religion never was one of those preconditions.

~~~
redwood
Religion seems more an emergent property of human experience. Or should I say
"spirituality" out of which religion emerges.

~~~
intended
I wonder if this is the best place to put it, but one of the better books I
read on religion (named literally: Religion explained) did a multi-factor
approach to religion and is one of the better books I've read on this subject.

Some of the reasons:

1) We're hard wired to remember and transmit some types of information - Want
to remember the X different types of blood vessels? Hard problem. Want to
remember a story about a mountain that eats people? Much Easier

2) Religion and religious structures provide order

3) Religious systems explain and help handle death

4) They provide a form of control against randomness (pray and your child will
not die.)

5) Religious systems as social moderators and interaction protocols

6) Act as the super set for superstition and offer explanations and systems to
handle unexplained events.

I may have missed or mixed a few points, (Its been a while.)

ALL these reasons combined, ensure that religion will be always be created,
and it fills, or ends up filling, multiple key niches human beings encounter

And finally because of our internal wiring, we will always end up remembering
and building on these traditions.

So as you say, religion for many reasons really is an emergent property of
human existence.

------
itsybaev
Faith always helped people in hard times, and it gave an opportunity to
explain things (like natural disasters) that the science couldn't explain
then. Indeed religion is an important part of human's history, but what really
launched civilizations was the imagination (which leads to creativity).

------
wutbrodo
"While atheists think of their disbelief as a private matter of conscience,
believers treat their absence of belief in supernatural surveillance as a
threat to cooperation and honesty".

Yeesh, that's sort of an insulting (and rather broad) conclusion to draw about
religious people. It seems akin to saying "Religious people are too simple-
minded to understand the concept of morality; They can only conceive of good
behavior enforced by the threat of torture/violence/all the other stuff that
hell entails."

~~~
danielharan
Are you arguing that it's false, or merely stating that it's not a nice thing
to say?

~~~
wutbrodo
Well I wouldn't presume to say whether it's false or true; just that it's a
pretty damning conclusion, if true.

------
brass9
Some of the other articles from the "God Issue" can be found here:
[http://www.forteantimes.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=1199197...](http://www.forteantimes.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=1199197&sid=43745c1d2e5d0a903d02f04d1d3ade56)

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stephengillie
If religion were a glue to bind disparate people, wouldn't religious communes
prove successful while secular ones failed? Yet both types fail.

~~~
s_baby
Communes are a tribal configuration. Religion is a source of success because
it lets people expand beyond tribal society.

~~~
1010011010
It's a way of extending the "tribe" to large numbers of strangers?

~~~
s_baby
Tribes max out in size around 50 people. They also tend to participate in
tribal warfare with those not of their kin. Religion lets people join together
around a common belief rather than a common bloodline.

