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LINK Which came first: society or a fear of god? | PBS NewsHour

FTA: Moreover, if the moralizing god hypothesis was right, then social complexity should increase more rapidly after “Big Religion” came to town — but the Seshat databank revealed the opposite for 12 diverse regions. From ancient Rome to Egyptian gods to Indian buddhism, moral faiths followed after social constructs and population growth.

“Most of the time it was right around that million-person mark, where this transition seemed to happen,” Savage said. That’s when simple rituals morph into those driven by moral gods or supernatural beliefs that punish.

zblaze 7 Mar 26
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9 comments

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1

Animistic religions preceded the rise of the first horticultural civilizations.

2

In the end, I think it's fair to say, it's all bullshit snyway.

1

Seems about right that a society has to be sufficiently large for the moralizing god to take shape.

JCII Level 5 Apr 1, 2019
2

Religion is all about control, it is useful for governments to utilise it when you want people to start policing themselves and each other.

2

society of course. there would be no concept of god without a society to create one.

g

Not necessarily.

@Storm1752 yes necessarily.

g

@genessa If you count a small tribe as a "society." Many examples of that. I think even individuals can believe in "god " but no theology. Over time one develops through oral tradition, handed down through generations, eventually to hardem into an orthodoxy. At what point does a ",religion" solidify from these disparate elements? Who can pick an exact time?

@Storm1752 why wouldn't a small tribe count as a society?

an individual can believe in a god but it's usually a god someone else created. theology or no theology, that doesn't matter. the question was about fear of god, not organization.

g

@genessa is that true. Defined broadly enough, "god" can be anything. The sun. The universe. RELIGION comes from a collective memory born of oral traditions,: heroic stories, mixed with creative imaginative embellishment and exaggeration and whatnot. But the original impulse to try to explain the unexplainable might be there in everyone.

@Storm1752 i don't think you and i are talking about the same thing. i stand by what i have said, at any rate.

g

1

As humans evolved more of a clan structure rather than merely nomadic family type groups I'd lean towards the idea that society arose long before any religious based belief system/s.
Most mammals congregate in groups/herds for protection, etc, i.e. they are socially based groups, for example, our closest primate 'relatives', the apes all congregate in what maybe deemed as clans/groups with an obvious social order but NONE exhibit a religious, or seemingly religious base to those groups/clans.
Ergo, and psychologically speaking here, religion/s must have been invented well after societies evolved and with the probability that one or more of the more members of each society, possibly through either sheer laziness or self-interest, discovered that by portraying him/herself as a 'conduit' to the spirits/god/gods then he/she could live a far better and easier life by catering to gullibilities of his/her fellow group members and accepting their adorations and offerings as such a 'condiut.'

@Matias There I disagree with because I have 8 domestic hens and 1 Rooster, 2 of them ARE the original females whilst 6 are the off-spring of the 2 females and 1 Rooster, they have a social order, they are related, they have no need of religion but they form their own social structure.

So how do you explain that?

@Matias Yes, but modern studies are usually done using MODERN Ideologies as the base point, are they not?
For example, An Archeologist digs up an object that may or may not have been a votive offering from perhaps 3,000 years ago.
The object is cleaned, examined, compared to similar objects found elsewhere in that region and, quite naturally, 1+1 is mentally added together and, voila, it suddenly becomes an item offered to a God/Goddess simply because that is what the modern trend leads towards.
We really have little or no actual idea as to how, what and why our earlier predecessors did, thought and behaved, we are simply guessing, slightly educated, based on modern behaviours, trends and assumptions derived from them.
One salient point that comes to mind is the one, recorded by Champilon himself btw, was when he announced he had "found the key to unlock the writings on the Rosetta Stone" he was handed by the Archbishop of Paris a Papal Edict ORDERING him to NOT publish any translations that could be harmful to the Church, modern beliefs, etc, and he MUST ensure that his translations of Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphs MUST paint the view that the Egyptians were little more than barbaric Heathens. IF he didn't do as ordered his entire family would be excommunicated and he would be imprisoned for life.
This, like numerous other ideologies, has had and still has reverberations and influences throughout the Archeological world continuing to this very day.
So, I hope that you see the point I'm trying to get across here, WE do NOT know precisely the truth about our most ancient of ancestors/predecessors, we merely guess based upon what influences prevail at the time.

Agreed.

@Matias An "explanation?" That's a strange way of putting. It. Religion "explains" the existence of a city? A city forms for commerce at a place where goods are exchanged. Religion can "explain" why people exist to begin with, but the free-enterprise system, which must predate even religion, explains the existence of complex societies much better!

@Storm1752 Religion only offers up a completely unfounded and unbased hypothesis as to WHY people began to exist, etc, etc.
To even claim religious commentaries are 'anecdotal' is, imho, a vast STRETCH of anyone's imagination.
It is extremely similar to the old 'Telephone message experiments' where I tell you a particular thing and you then tell someone else, etc, etc, down along the line and through a hundred or more mouths it goes and grows until the original because embellished that it cannot be sifted from the fictional embellishments when the whole thing finally comes back to its point of origin.
It is an experiment really worth trying and the result almost always turn out the same.

1

I'm no expert but . . .

I've always been a fan of the idea that religion arouse and advanced in concert with a kind of Priest class - that it's rise was rooted in the rise to power of it's "priests". Historically it seems to me to have been used as a means to subjugate one group to the will of another in the name of some unquestionable absolute whose "interpreters" (the priest class) always enjoyed an elevated status.
Again, no expert so feel free to present counter examples.

Religion comes first, then some manipulate it. Religion begins as oral traditions passed down and AT SOME POINT is codified. As a fluid body of songs, poems, old hero stories, etc., it is always changing with the times. Once it is written down. It solidifies. At that point it csn be interpreted into law and msnipulated. It's no different than a gun used by a righteous warrior ir a mass murderer: same gun, much different result.

3

I would think society came first. It seems more logical.

Societies don't just appear out of thin air. As societies absorb peoples, they co-opt their religious belief systens into the dominant religions, like Christianity took existing myths, mystery religions, zoroastrianism, greek and roman pagan dieties, and many others, threw them all in a pot with Judaism, and voila! The water walker appeared! Later they mixed in northern European gods and traditions. As time went on they continue to change.But after the Councils of Trent and Nicea, not as fast.
So as societies grow, theur religions change to accomodate those whom they absorb.. To a point.

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Fear of society

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