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 The Evolution Of The God Gene Author: Nicholas Wade Source: New York Times Title: THE EVOLUTION OF THE GOD GENE In the Oaxaca Valley of Mexico, the archaeologists Joyce Marcus and Kent Flannery have gained a remarkable insight into the origin of religion. During 15 years of excavation they have uncovered not some monumental temple but evidence of a critical transition in religious behavior. The record begins with a simple dancing floor, the arena for the communal religious dances held by hunter-gatherers in about 7,000 B.C. It moves to the ancestor-cult shrines that appeared after the beginning of corn-based agriculture around 1,500 B.C., and ends in A.D. 30 with the sophisticated, astronomically oriented temples of an early archaic state. This and other research is pointing to a new perspective on religion, one that seeks to explain why religious behavior has occurred in societies at every stage of development and in every region of the world. | |
| Community Thoughts: There are 5 comments posted | Reverse Sort |
| God Gene? | Nov 16th. at 1:23:45 am EST |
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Ahr-Ohn (Bridgeport, Connecticut) - Email Me Is it Mutation or Selective Breeding, that leads to a particular class of ritualism, over another? I favor Nurture, where the natural progress of the interglacial age will influence the cumulative effect of individual forsight. Anyone, with the patience to stimulate past life perception, can get an edit of the past few glacial cycles, and so see how cultures develop. It's simple enough to examine, if you care to do the work. As it takes one to know one, no Gods can be known, but to the extent that those who speak of us are Gods. The Agrarian Gods would have been Agrarians, with a regard, if civilized, for Responsibility for Creation. The Hunter Gods would have hunted in Packs, likely up in the hills. Some cultures have beaurocratic or mathematical Gods, and the Zoroastrians have Conceptual Gods. What, then, is this God Gene? Does belief in a particular fantasy somehow increase average viability? Do people who worship at other altars than Science somehow need Ethnic Cleansing? These people had better believe rightly, or I will cast dolls, in their image, into the laps of Black People with pointy objects. Arawn Graalrd |
| Why Not An "imagination Gene"?.... | Nov 15th. at 5:38:37 pm EST |
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bigcat (peoria, Illinois) - Email Me Religion seems to be a by-product of the imagination that was necessary when the discovery of fire finally freed humanity to develop cooking, an oral history, better ways of hunting and protection and to ask questions about their origins and their environment for which there was yet no ready answers. I seriously doubt that there was any real "god gene" to begin with. Early humans were faced with many of the same coincidences that we encounter today, and all through history. A person on the brink of death suddenly recovers and is well again, a person may find good fortune- or dies suddenly with no known cause, lightning or other death might strike an individual, or escapes from tragedies of one kind or another which leads some people to believe in luck, fate or providence. With the expansion of consciousness and the awareness of the environment, it comes as no surprise to find that those who felt they had little if any control would develop a religious system of one kind or another designed to placate those spirits they felt were in control of their lives- or religious arguments and wars about which group or system was better later on. |
| Its Interesting | Nov 15th. at 12:24:10 pm EST |
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Ken Ra (Minneapolis, Minnesota) - Email Me It is interesting that they are seeing a group incentive to evolution, where all I have heard before is a purely individual one. Karrie you are sooo much deeper into this one that I cant follow you. |
| Courtesy And Respect Is A Multidisciplined Thing | Nov 14th. at 7:39:18 pm EST |
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karrie9 (Kenosha, Wisconsin) - Email Me - Web Mmmm individual-favoring-equalitarian-hunter-gatherer vs. group-favoring-abusive-religions-of-war is a false dilemma. It reeks of scientism. There simply is a lot more to the discussion. Respect is more likely to come from a multidisciplined approach rather than from a God Gene as religious evolution (groups vs. individual) angle that reeks of myopic flawed scientism too tedious to address in any comment section. If you’re going to have a more excellent and productive discussion about religion, science, and the various attitudes between them, an excellent place to start would be to distinguish religion from religionism, science from scientism, and scientism vs. religionism (a false dilemma) from functional pluralism. Follow that with some examples of religions that are not at odds with science. Some forms of Neopaganism, for example. You’d also have to include a robust discussion regarding the Equality power metaparadigm and the one of Power and Control (abuse, inequality) . Follow that with: • Defining what orthodoxy and what orthopraxy are and how their foci may translate into functional or dysfunctional differences. • Why religion =/= dogma (dogma is often at odds with science) . Give examples of religions that require no dogma. * Why some religions don’t just tend toward abuse/war (favoring groups) but actually instruct to war in their texts. • Why and how other religions may be in various stages of at least trying finding their way toward **favoring both Equality and groups** and why the process is so difficult, what's involved (multidisciplined emotional, intellectual, and social excellence) . Include discussion of false dilemmas such as Apollonian and Dionysian, God vs. Godless, and individual-favoring-egalitarian-hunter-gatherer religions vs. group-favoring-religions-of-war-and-abuse. You may want to include a history of dualism and it's relationship to religion while you're at it. Also crucial would be a resounding discussion of ethics and functional virtues as far more active, proactive, perhaps even visionary than merely self-restraint and denial (systems of legalism, essentially) . Briefly describe the different religions (monotheism, polytheism, pantheism, panentheism, monism, nontheism (e.g. Buddhism) , orthodoxy, orthopraxy…) . Now you are starting to have somewhat of a sufficient base to intelligently discuss attitudes that different scientific and religious communities may have toward each other, why, and what the options are because addressing it within the context of the God Gene theory falls short. By a lot. |
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