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posted by chromas on Monday March 25 2019, @07:42AM   Printer-friendly
from the I'm-handing-out-infinite-punishment-for-finite-crime,-spread-the-word-and-take-donations dept.

Complex societies gave birth to big gods, not the other way around: study

"It has been a debate for centuries why humans, unlike other animals, cooperate in large groups of genetically unrelated individuals," says Seshat director and co-author Peter Turchin from the University of Connecticut and the Complexity Science Hub Vienna. Factors such as agriculture, warfare, or religion have been proposed as main driving forces.

One prominent theory, the big or moralizing gods hypothesis, assumes that religious beliefs were key. According to this theory, people are more likely to cooperate fairly if they believe in gods who will punish them if they don't. "To our surprise, our data strongly contradict this hypothesis," says lead author Harvey Whitehouse. "In almost every world region for which we have data, moralizing gods tended to follow, not precede, increases in social complexity." Even more so, standardized rituals tended on average to appear hundreds of years before gods who cared about human morality.

When ancient societies hit a million people, vengeful gods appeared

The God depicted in the Old Testament may sometimes seem wrathful. And in that, he's not alone; supernatural forces that punish evil play a central role in many modern religions.

[...] But which came first: complex societies or the belief in a punishing god?

The researchers found that belief in moralizing gods usually followed increases in social complexity, generally appearing after the emergence of civilizations with populations of more than about 1 million people.

"It was particularly striking how consistent it was [that] this phenomenon emerged at the million-person level," Savage said. "First, you get big societies, and these beliefs then come."

All in all, "our research suggests that religion is playing a functional role throughout world history, helping stabilize societies and people cooperate overall," Savage said. "In really small societies, like very small groups of hunter-gatherers, everyone knows everyone else, and everyone's keeping an eye on everyone else to make sure they're behaving well. Bigger societies are more anonymous, so you might not know who to trust."


Original Submission 1 | Original Submission 2

 
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  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday March 26 2019, @02:22AM (7 children)

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday March 26 2019, @02:22AM (#819858) Journal

    The problem with your "Communism murdered millions of people, therefore it's bad" trope is that it's not really true.

    What is true is that in both the Soviet Union and China millions died during periods of political upheaval, but when you assert "Communism killed them" you're over simplifying it.

    They wouldn't have starved under a capitalist system.

    You should also ask yourself why, if communism is such a bad idea, do we in the west invade countries that decide to try it? Why wouldn't we just leave them alone to figure out how bad it is by themselves?

    Because communists routinely steal the assets of the capitalists. Which works for the communists when they can executive said capitalsts, and doesn't work so well, when the capitalists were from a country with a powerful military.

    If you were a young man growing up in 1950's Nicaragua, you would be a communist, because the alternative would be living as a slave of the United Fruit Company. Brutal, corrupt dictatorships propped up by the West is one of the reasons communism is tried repeatedly. See also Cuba

    Presumably the subsequent grab-assing of the past few decades has cured Nicaragua of that false dilemma.

    which completely ignores the fact that in both Russia and China the communists won because they were not replacing people with a proven track record of success, they were replacing brutal, corrupt warlords or dictators.

    Who often happened to be more competent than the communists who replaced them. I don't buy, for example, that the Holodomor [wikipedia.org] would have happened under the Czarists.

  • (Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Tuesday March 26 2019, @07:02AM (4 children)

    by PartTimeZombie (4827) on Tuesday March 26 2019, @07:02AM (#819989)

    I don't buy, for example, that the Holodomor [wikipedia.org] would have happened under the Czarists.

    Why not? This one killed a third of the population. [wikipedia.org]
    This one contributed to the Czarist government's overthrow. [wikipedia.org]
    Let's not pretend the Czarist regime was anything but brutal and incompetent. They couldn't beat the Bolsheviks even with France, Britain and the US sending troops to help.

    No-one seems keen to explain why, if Communism is so bad that we have to kill people when they want to give it a try.

    • (Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday March 26 2019, @01:52PM

      by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday March 26 2019, @01:52PM (#820085) Journal
      Notice that in both your cases, we have actual weather to blame? Meanwhile for the Holodomor, one immediately has to go to Soviet agricultural policy to find the causes of the famine.

      Let's not pretend the Czarist regime was anything but brutal and incompetent.

      Brutal and incompetent is relative.

      They couldn't beat the Bolsheviks even with France, Britain and the US sending troops to help.

      Which is irrelevant for two reasons. The Czars were already dead and gone by the second year of the civil war. The Czarist advocates were only a part of a greater opposition, including a democratic component. Second, not winning a war doesn't indicate incompetence in agricultural policy.

    • (Score: 2) by Bot on Tuesday March 26 2019, @10:03PM (2 children)

      by Bot (3902) on Tuesday March 26 2019, @10:03PM (#820362) Journal

      > if Communism is so bad that we have to kill people when they want to give it a try

      Wait. AFAIK it's communists that have to kill people when they want to give it a try. Class struggle, remember? They only are half of the game? it's likely.
      Of course, the fact that some of them actively deny being involved in any killing for 40 years, when they are safely abroad, only to confess when caught, so that they get only 12 years for 4 homicides might have thrown you off.
      Happened yesterday BTW and one guy was killed in my town. Such a little world.

      https://uk.news.yahoo.com/italian-ex-militant-battisti-confesses-144316367.html [yahoo.com]

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      • (Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Tuesday March 26 2019, @10:19PM (1 child)

        by PartTimeZombie (4827) on Tuesday March 26 2019, @10:19PM (#820373)

        I was thinking about places like Chile, who elected a President who ran as a Communist, began to implement the campaign promises he made, then was shot during a CIA coup.

        Nicaragua is a particularly interesting one, as the people there also elected a communist government, perfectly legally, but the president of the US illegally sold guns to Iran to help fund actual death squads in an effort to overthrow them.

        • (Score: 2) by Bot on Wednesday March 27 2019, @06:15PM

          by Bot (3902) on Wednesday March 27 2019, @06:15PM (#820834) Journal

          Stopping two neighbours to be satellites of an URSS you are fighting against is fair game. They forgot to fix Venezuela, guess how it turned out.
          JK, the USA is a rogue state. Just not because of some illegal ops they got exposed doing. But I said half of the game.

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          Account abandoned.
  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday March 26 2019, @03:05PM (1 child)

    by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday March 26 2019, @03:05PM (#820105) Journal

    They wouldn't have starved under a capitalist system.

    I question your certainty. It's fair to say that we've not seen mass starvation under capitalism - I'll support you that far. But, I'm not willing to claim that it can't, or won't, happen.

    It is also fair to say that mass starvation wouldn't have happened under capitalism, in Russia. China is another story - and - I wonder. It's probably safe to say that if China had experienced all of the same catastrophes and disasters, including the invasion by Japan, capitalism would have served them better after the dust settles, and fewer people would have starved. Far fewer, actually.

    But, let us remember, the capitalist west had their own crisis during the 1930's. It was pretty touch and go for most of that decade.

    • (Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Tuesday March 26 2019, @10:24PM

      by PartTimeZombie (4827) on Tuesday March 26 2019, @10:24PM (#820376)

      Thanks for that balanced comment.

      I am trying not to defend communism, because I agree it is a much worse system of government, particularly the way the Soviets did it, but I am trying to make the point that when we in the West bomb people back to the stone age just because they choose a different system to us, maybe we ought to ask some questions?

      In my view maybe Vietnam was handled poorly in the 1940's and 1950's.