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The Worth of an Angry God

#1
C C Offline
How supernatural beliefs allowed societies to bond and spread
https://nautil.us/issue/109/excavation/t...-angry-god

INTRO: A god who knows everything, is everywhere, and wields impossible power, is a potent fantasy. Allegiance to it animates the lives of billions worldwide. But this “Big God,” as psychologists and anthropologists refer to it, wasn’t dreamt from scratch but pieced together, over thousands of years, paralleling humanity’s move from small- to large-scale societies.

One burning question researchers want to answer is: Did humans need belief in a God-like being—someone who can punish every immorality we might commit—to have the big societies we have today, where we live relatively peaceably among strangers we could easily exploit?

Harvey Whitehouse, the director of the Institute of Cognitive and Evolutionary Anthropology at Oxford University, doesn’t think so. “Complex societies,” he and his colleagues declared in a March Nature paper, “precede moralizing gods throughout world history.” They relied on a massive historical database, called Seshat, which over a decade attracted contributions from over a hundred scholars.

With the database “finally ready for analysis,” Whitehouse and his colleagues wrote in The Conversation, “we are poised to test a long list of theories about global history,” particularly “whether morally concerned deities drove the rise of complex societies,” some hallmarks of which are more economic integration and division of labor, more political hierarchy, the emergence of classes, and dependence on more complex technology and pre-specialists. Whitehouse concluded that those deities did no such driving.

As he told Nautilus in a 2014 interview, as societies became more agricultural, what researchers see “in the archeological record is increasing frequency of collective rituals. This changes things psychologically and leads to more doctrinal kinds of religious systems, which are more recognizable when we look at world religions today.”

Joseph Henrich, chair of the Department of Human Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University, sees it differently. He contends that moralizing gods spurred societal complexity because belief in moralizing gods leads to success in intergroup competition. It increased trust and cooperation among a growing population of relative strangers, he said, and buttressed traits like bravery in warfare.

“The word ‘moralizing’ is not a useful term,” though, he added. “People use it casually, because people are interested in morality, but the theory specifies this very specific set of things that increase your success in intergroup competition. Most people want to call greater cooperation, helping strangers, things like that, moral. That’s just a Western preoccupation.”

I caught up with Henrich earlier this month to discuss the anthropological chicken-and-egg problem of whether gods or complex societies came first. He was gracious in defending his position that gods were the bonds that allowed societies to gain strength and grow... (MORE - interview)

RELATED (scivillage): Critique topples Nature paper on belief in gods
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#2
Syne Offline
(Dec 16, 2021 03:57 AM)C C Wrote: One burning question researchers want to answer is: Did humans need belief in a God-like being—someone who can punish every immorality we might commit—to have the big societies we have today, where we live relatively peaceably among strangers we could easily exploit?
...
As he told Nautilus in a 2014 interview, as societies became more agricultural, what researchers see “in the archeological record is increasing frequency of collective rituals.

Do you see where he's answering a different question than the one asked?
He's equating "belief in a God-like being" with "collective rituals." The two are not the same.
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#3
Magical Realist Offline
Sacrificing animals sort of assumes a God out there needing to be appeased doesn't it? Yahwe was said to enjoy the smell of a burning animal.
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#4
Syne Offline
People equating asexuality with being a hermit assumes that they are afraid of real life people or just can't get laid. It's said they're tomorrow's incels.
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#5
Secular Sanity Offline
Wow! You’re just oozing with integrity, aren’t you?
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#6
Syne Offline
(Dec 16, 2021 09:24 PM)Secular Sanity Wrote: Wow! You’re just oozing with integrity, aren’t you?

You've repeatedly proven you don't know what that word means. Just your usual vacuous and troll snark.
Anyone with half a brain would realize that I just gave tit for tat. But since you agree with the tat, you don't have the integrity to call it out.
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#7
Secular Sanity Offline
(Dec 16, 2021 09:35 PM)Syne Wrote:
(Dec 16, 2021 09:24 PM)Secular Sanity Wrote: Wow! You’re just oozing with integrity, aren’t you?

You've repeatedly proven you don't know what that word means. Just your usual vacuous and troll snark.
Anyone with half a brain would realize that I just gave tit for tat. But since you agree with the tat, you don't have the integrity to call it out.

MR’s comment wasn’t an attack on your character. He was attacking your position.
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#8
Syne Offline
(Dec 16, 2021 10:45 PM)Secular Sanity Wrote:
(Dec 16, 2021 09:35 PM)Syne Wrote:
(Dec 16, 2021 09:24 PM)Secular Sanity Wrote: Wow! You’re just oozing with integrity, aren’t you?

You've repeatedly proven you don't know what that word means. Just your usual vacuous and troll snark.
Anyone with half a brain would realize that I just gave tit for tat. But since you agree with the tat, you don't have the integrity to call it out.

MR’s comment wasn’t an attack on your character. He was attacking your position.

So you think mental issues, like being afraid of people, are a reflection on one's character, huh? Hear that, MR?
Notice how you can't muster a defense for any of your lack of integrity. All you can manage is tu quoque.

I don't believe god wants sacrifices, so it's not my position. It was a straw man mockery of belief in god. Since you don't seem to understand, belief in god is about one's character.

Now piss off with your usual "I can't hold my own in one thread, so let's lash out in another" bullshit. It's so predictable. No wonder you've been banned from other forums.
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#9
Secular Sanity Offline
(Dec 16, 2021 11:13 PM)Syne Wrote: So you think mental issues, like being afraid of people, are a reflection on one's character, huh? Hear that, MR?

Tomorrow's incels? Give me a break.
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#10
Syne Offline
(Dec 17, 2021 03:07 AM)Secular Sanity Wrote:
(Dec 16, 2021 11:13 PM)Syne Wrote: So you think mental issues, like being afraid of people, are a reflection on one's character, huh? Hear that, MR?

Tomorrow's incels? Give me a break.

That was a dig at all the times MR has already tried calling me an incel, except that an asexual hermit is much more prone to becoming one.

Or more succinctly...piss off hypocritical troll.
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