Origin of religion

The origin of religion refers to the emergence of religious behavior during the course of human evolution. When humans first became religious remains unknown. However, there is credible evidence of religious behavior from Middle Paleolithic era (300-50kya).

Religion

Main articles: Anthropology of religion and Indigenous religion

Though religious behavior varies widely between the world's cultures, religion is a cultural universal found in all human populations. Common elements include:

• a notion of the transcendent, supernatural or numinous, usually involving entities like ghosts, demons or deities, and practices involving magic and divination.
• an aspect of ritual and liturgy, almost invariably involving music and dance
• societal norms of morality (ethos) and virtue (arete)
• a set of myths or sacred truths or beliefs

Primate behavior

Further information: Chimpanzee spirituality, Paleolithic religion, and Sociobiology

Humanity’s closest living relatives are common chimpanzees and bonobos. These primates share a common ancestor with humans who lived four and six million years ago. It is for this reason that chimpanzees and bonobos are viewed as the best available surrogate for this common ancestor. Barbara King argues that while primates are not religious, they do exhibit some traits that would have been necessary for the evolution of religion. These traits include high intelligence, a capacity for symbolic communication, a sense of social norms, realization of "self", and a concept of continuity.

Evolution of morality

See also Morality and Evolution of morality

Dr. de Waal and Barbara King both view human morality as having grown out of primate sociality. Though morality is a unique human trait, many social animals such as primates, dolphins and whales have been known to exhibit premoral sentiments. According to Michael Shermer, the following characteristics are shared by humans and other social animals, particularly the great apes:

attachment and bonding, cooperation and mutual aid, sympathy and empathy, direct and indirect reciprocity, altruism and reciprocal altruism, conflict resolution and peacemaking, deception and deception detection, community concern and caring ahout what others think about you, and awareness of and response to the social rules of the group.

De Waal contends that all social animals have had to restrain or alter their behavior for group living to be worthwhile. Premoral sentiments evolved in primate societies as a method of restraining individual selfishness and building more cooperative groups. For any social species, the benefits of being part of an altruistic group should outweigh the benefits of individualism. For example, lack of group cohesion could make individuals more vulnerable to attack from outsiders. Being part of group may also improve the chances of finding food. This is evident among animals that hunt in packs to take down large or dangerous prey.

All social animals have hierarchical societies in which each member knows its own place. Social order is maintained by certain rules of expected behavior and dominant group members enforce order through punishment. However, higher order primates also have a sense of reciprocity and fairness. Chimpanzees remember who did them favors and who did them wrong. For example, chimpanzees are more likely to share food with individuals who have previously groomed them.

Chimpanzees live fission-fusion groups that average 50 individuals. It is likely that early ancestors of humans lived in groups of similar size. Based on the size of extant hunter gatherer societies, recent paleolithic hominids lived in bands of a few hundred individuals. As community size increased over the course of human evolution, greater enforcement to achieve group cohesion would have been required. Morality may have evolved in these bands of 100 to 200 people as a means of social control, conflict resolution and group solidarity. According to Dr. de Waal, human morality has two extra levels of sophistication that are not found in primate societies. Humans enforce their society’s moral codes much more rigorously with rewards, punishments and reputation building. People also apply a degree of judgment and reason, not seen in the animal kingdom.

Religion is thought to have emerged after morality. Religion built upon morality by expanding the social scrutiny of individual behavior to include supernatural agents. By including ever watchful ancestors, spirits and gods in the social realm, humans discovered an effective strategy for restraining selfishness and building more cooperative groups. The adaptive value of religion would have enhanced group survival.

Prehistoric evidence of religion

See also: Paleolithic religion and Prehistoric religion

Paleolithic burials

The earliest evidence of religious thought is based on the ritual treatment of the dead. Most animals display only a casual interest in the dead of their own species. Humans are therefore unique in their treatment of the dead. Ritual burial thus represents a significant advancement in human behavior. Ritual burial represent an awareness of life and death and a possible belief in the afterlife. Philip Lieberman states "burials with grave goods clearly signify religious practices and concern for the dead that transcends daily life". The earliest evidence for treatment of the dead comes from Atapuerca in spain. At this location the bones of 30 individuals believed to be Homo heidelbergensis have been found in a pit.

Neanderthals are also contenders for the first homonids to intentionally bury the dead. They may have placed corpses into shallow graves along with stone tools and animal bones. The presence of these grave goods may indicate an emotional connection with the deceased and possibly a belief in the afterlife. Neanderthal burial sites include Shanidar in Iraq and Krapina in Croatia and Kebara Cave in Israel.. The earliest known burial of modern humans is from a cave in Israel located at Qafzeh. Human remains have been dated to 100,000 years ago. Human skeletons were found stained with red ochre. A variety of grave goods were found at the burial site. The mandible of a wild boar was found placed in the arms of one of the skeletons. Philip Lieberman states:

Burial rituals incorporating grave goods may have been invented by the anatomically modern hominids who emigrated from Africa to the Middle East 100,000 years ago.

The use of symbolism

The use of symbolism in religion is a universal established phenomena. Evidence of symbolism in the fossil record demonstrates a capacity for abstract thought and imagination. Abstraction is relevant as gods and many other spiritual beings are abstract objects that are often anthropomorphized. .

Artwork or the use of pigments is seen as evidence of a mind capable of religious thought. There is some evidence of ritual behavior from Middle Stone Age sites in africa such as one site in South Africa dated to 70,000 years ago. . Pigments are of little practical use to hunter gatherers, thus evidence of their use is interpreted as symbolic or for ritual purposes. Several MSA sites in Africa indicate increased use of pigments, which are thought to relate to ritual activity, dating back as far as 100,000 years ago.Upper paleolithic cave art provides some of the most credible evidence of religious thought from the paleolithic. Cave paintings at Chauvet depict creatures that are half human and half animal, an example of anthropomorphism and a phenomenon commonly associated among shamanistic practices.

The evolution of the brain

The religious mind is one consequence of a brain that is large enough to formulate religious and philosophical ideas. . During human evolution, the hominid brain tripled in size , peaking 500,000 years ago.

Much of the brain's expansion took place in the neocortex. This part of the brain is involved in processing higher order cognitive functions that are necessary for human religiosity. The neocortex is responsible for self consciousness, language and emotion. According to Dunbar's theory, the relative neocortex size of any species correlates with the level of social complexity of the particular species. The neocortex size correlates with a number of social variables that include social group size and complexity of mating behaviors. With chimpanzees the neocortex occupies 50% of the brain, whereas with modern humans it occupies 80% of the brain. Robin Dunbar argues that the critical event in the evolution of the neocortex took place at the speciation of archaic homo sapiens about 500tya. His study indicates that only after the speciation event is the neocortex sufficiently large enough to process complex social phenomena such as language and religion. The study is based on a regression analysis of neocortex size plotted against a number of social behaviors of living and extinct hominids -->

Tool use

Lewis Wolpert argues that causal beliefs that emerged from tool use played a major role in the evolution of belief. The manufacture of complex tools requires, firstly, creating a mental image of an object that does not exist naturally before actually making artifact. Furthermore, one must understand how the tool would be used, which requires an understanding of causalityAccordingly, the level of sophistication of stone tools is a useful indicator of causal beliefs. Wolpert contends use of tools comprised of more than one component, such as hand axes, represents an ability to understand cause and effect.

Language and religion

See also: origin of language and myth and religion

Religion requires a system of symbolic communication such as language to be transmitted from one individual to another. Philip Lieberman states "human religious thought and moral sense clearly rest on a cognitive-linguistic base," From this premise science writer Nicholas Wade states:

"Like most behaviors that are found in societies throughout the world, religion must have been present in the ancestral human population before the dispersal from Africa 50,000 years ago. Although religious rituals usually involve dance and music, they are also very verbal, since the sacred truths have to be stated. If so, religion, at least in its modern form, cannot pre-date the emergence of language. It has been argued earlier that language attained its modern state shortly before the exodus from Africa. If religion had to await the evolution of modern, articulate language, then it too would have emerged shortly before 50,000 years ago. "

Neolithic religions

Main article: Neolithic religion

Following the neolithic revolution in the Near East, religion took on many of the characteristics typical of modern religions. The shift from a hunter gatherer lifestyle 13,000 years ago to agriculture led to a worldwide increase in population density. Chiefdoms amd states arose and they allowed for division of labor, both socially and economically. Religions became more formalized and emerged as institutions in their own right. These religious institutions became active in the participation and support of political institutions and often justified the existence of social hierarchies..

Invention of writing

Following the neolithic revolution, the pace of technological development intensified culminating in the invention of writing 3500 years ago. Writing is thought to have been first invented in either Sumeria or Ancient Egypt.The first religious texts mark the beginning of religious history. The Pyramid Texts from ancient Egypt are one the oldest known religious texts in the world dating to between 3300 to 3150 BCE. It is these factors that led to the development of the world religions during the Axial Age.

Evolutionary psychology of religion

Main article: Evolutionary psychology of religion

There is general agreement among cognitive scientists that religion is an outgrowth of brain architecture that evolved early in human history. However, there is disagreement on the exact mechanisms that drove the evolution of the religious mind. The two main schools of thought hold that either religion evolved due to natural selection and has selective advantage, or that religion is an evolutionary byproduct of other mental adaptations. Stephen Jay Gould, for example, believed that religion was an exaptation or a Spandrel, in other words that religion evolved as byproduct of psychological mechanisms that evolved for other reasons. Sch mechanisms may include: the ability to infer the presence of organisms that might do harm (agent detection), the ability to come up with causal narratives for natural events (aitiology), and the ability to recognize that other people have minds of their own with their own beliefs, desires and intentions (theory of mind). These three adaptations (among others) allow human beings to imagine purposeful agents behind many observations that could not readily be explained otherwise, e.g. thunder, lightning, movement of planets, complexity of life, etc.

Genetics

Further information: God gene

Some scholars have suggested that religion is genetically "hardwired" into the human condition. One controversial hypothesis, the God gene hypothesis, states that some human beings bear a gene which gives them a predisposition to episodes interpreted as religious revelation. One gene claimed to be of this nature is VMAT2.

Literature

• Churchward, Albert. (1924) The Origin and Evolution of Religion (2003 reprint: ISBN 978-1930097506).
• Cooke, George Willis. (1920) The Social Evolution of Religion.
• Hefner, Philip. (1993) The Human Factor: Evolution, Culture, and Religion. Minneapolis: Fortress Press.
• Hopkins, E. Washburn. (1923) Origin and Evolution of Religion
• King, Barbara. (2007) Evolving God: A Provocative View on the Origins of Religion. Doubleday Publishing. ISBN 0385521553.
• Lewis-Williams, David (2002) The mind in the Cave: Consciousness and the Origins of Art. Thames & Hudson, ISBN: 0500051178
• Mithen, Steve. (1996) The Prehistory of the Mind: The Cognitive Origins of Art, Religion and Science. Thames & Hudson. ISBN 0-500-05081-3.
• McClenon, James (2002), Wondrous Healing: Shamanism, Human Evolution, and the Origin of Religion, Northern Illinois University Press, ISBN 0875802842 {Reviewed here by Journal of Religion & Society)
• Parchment, S. R. (2005) "Religion And Its Effect Upon Human Evolution", in: Just Law of Compensation ISBN 1564596796.
• Reichardt, E. Noel. (1942) Significance of Ancient Religions in Relation to Human Evolution and Brain Development
• Wade, Nicholas. (2006) Before the Dawn: Recovering the Lost History of Our Ancestors. The Penguin Press ISBN 1-59420-079-3.
• Alfred North Whitehead (1926) Religion in the Making. 1974, New American Library. 1996, with introduction by Judith A. Jones, Fordham Univ. Press.
• Wolpert, Lewis. (2007) Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast: The Evolutionary Origins of Belief. New York:W.W. Norton.

See also

• International Association for the Scientific Study of Religion
• Behavioral modernity
• Cognitive fluidity
• God gene
• Homo necans
• Hunting hypothesis
• Magical thinking
• Mickey Mouse Problem
• Neurotheology
• Paleolithic burial
• Psychology of religion
• Social Evolution
• Religion and mythology
• Sociology of religion
• Theories of religion
• Claims to the oldest religion

External links

• IACSR - International Association for the Scientific Study of Religion
• The Prehistory of the Mind The Cognitive Origins of Art, Religion and Science By Steven Mithen Reviewed by Andy Gorman
• "The Religious Mind and the Evolution of Religious Forms" (PDF).
• Religion, empathy and a Brookfield Zoo gorilla: An anthropologist Chicago Sun-Times, Feb 4,

• Stewart Guthrie Faces in the clouds A New Theory of Religion ISBN 0195098919].
• Evolutionary psychology of religion Steven Pinker.
• Adaptations, Exaptations, and Spandrels
• Attachment, Evolution, and the Psychology of Religion ISBN 1593850883
• Atran, Scott In Gods We Trust: The Evolutionary Landscape of Religion ISBN 0195178033
• Religious thought and behaviour as by-products of brain function Pascal Boyer
• Minds and Gods: The Cognitive Foundations of Religion By Todd Tremlin, 2006 ISBN 0195305345