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Complex Societies Gave Birth to Big Gods, Not the Other Way Around

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

mrpg writes:

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.

realDonaldTrump writes:

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."

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Original Submission 1 | Original Submission 2

• Re:Perhaps codification of societal standards? (Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday March 26 2019, @01:39PM

  by khallow (3766) on Tuesday March 26 2019, @01:39PM (#820082) Journal

  Nope, but starvation goes a long way to motivate you to do whatever is needed. And any individual that fails is eliminated from the gene pool, so if somebody "doesn't know how to survive", it's because we created a society so alien from the natural order that instinct is insufficient.

  Well, that's what technological and infrastructural advancement does. Fortunately, the alien nature is to make it easier to survive. So we can use that non-instinctual brain matter for figuring out what we really want instead of merely to survive. That's where things like work ethic can kick in.

  And I'm getting the feeling you didn't work your way up from staving on the street as a dark-skinned child.

  It's almost like my society figured out some shit already even though we didn't have a proper UBI, isn't it?

  I'm not alleging those flaws don't exist, nor that they contribute to poverty. But to someone born to such flawed and impoverished parents, no amount of hard work alone will ever make them ridiculously wealthy. You need a whole lot of good luck as well to be able to climb far up the social ladder. Less now than in eras past - but we're talking about past eras./quote> Did they want to be ridiculously wealthy? It seems absurd to talk about things that the vast majority of humanity doesn't try for even on a lesser scale as if everyone wants it. Bottom line, everyone wants lots of money, but the majority of them don't want the work it would take to get it.

  Conversely, most wealthy people are born into that state, and the only virtue implied by remaining there is a lack of irredeemable incompetence. A virtue shared by the majority of the population, who would be able maintain their wealth just as easily, had they been fortunate enough to be born into it.

  Or rather lose their wealth just as easy. We also have studies [brandongaille.com] (there's some contradictory studies such as 1% bankruptcy rate combined with supposedly 70% bankrupt at a future time, but the rate is much higher than the norm) which indicate people who get suddenly wealthy via lotteries or windfalls like high paying sports jobs, lose that money real quick with a high rate of bankruptcy.

  Parent