How do religions develop

It's not at all clear that the people studied by anthropologists would understand this distinction. They certainly don't understand it theologically. There is a good attack on these kinds of misunderstandings in Pascal Boyer's book The Naturalness of Religious Ideas , in which he points out that most anthropological accounts of "primitive beliefs" refer to something that does not actually exist: "They [are not] thoughts that occur to actual people; they describe thoughts that people might entertain, in the anthropologist's view, if they wanted to make sense of what they actually do and say.

Bellah, with his stress on ritual and on the embodiment of beliefs in wider systems of meaning, avoids this pitfall. You make sense of what you do and say by acting on it, and embodying it in a larger narrative, not by extracting it into a system. Yet systems do emerge, and they form a large part of what we now think of as religion. Although some form of healing ritual, and healing specialist, seems to have been among the very earliest precursors of religion, and of priesthood, the emergence of any kind of "religion" organisationally distinct from the rest of culture depends at the very least on agriculture, which provides enough of a surplus in fixed settlements.

It seems certain that religions, like other social forms, evolve: that is to say they arise from modifications of earlier forms. The trouble for historical inquiry is simply that without written records we simply have to guess what happened.

With written records, we need no longer guess, but can be authoritatively misled. I thought Bednar would provide a good learned explanation a few years ago when he addressed that very topic in general conference. But… nope. Nothing about why they were necessary for salvation. Now, when I saw that Ritual was a factor here in how religions develop it really struck me that ordinances are pushed so heavily by the church because they instill in its followers a sense of deep and somber commitment and obligation.

Your email address will not be published. Notify me of follow-up comments by email. Notify me of new posts by email. This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed. Q : Dear John — How do religions develop? In an ironic reality, we create our prophets by expressing our primal needs. Prophets simply tell us what we want to hear e. When you die you will go to a wonderful place with all your loved ones! As we signal these needs outwardly, an observant, charismatic leader emerges e.

Rituals : Religious rituals are formed by the prophet e. It is important to note that many most? They were created to give people a feeling of security in an insecure world, and a feeling of control over the environment where there was little control. The developing abilities of proto-humans were a double-edge sword:. During their evolution from proto-human to full human, they developed questions about themselves and their environment:.

Living in a pre-scientific society, people had no way to resolve these questions. Even today, with all of our scientific advances, we still debate about the second last question, and still have no way of reaching an consensus on the last. But the need for answers particularly to the last question were so important that some response was required, even if they were merely based on hunches.

Some people within the tribe started to invent answers based on their personal guesses. Thus developed:. These formed an oral tradition which was disseminated among the members of the tribe and was taught to each new generation. Much later, after writing was developed, the beliefs were generally recorded in written form. A major loss of flexibility resulted. Oral traditions can evolve over time; written documents tend to be more permanent.

Unfortunately, because these belief systems were based on hunches, the various religions that developed in different areas of the world were, and remain, all different. Their teachings were in conflict with each other. Because the followers of most religions considered their beliefs to be derived directly from God, they cannot be easily changed. Thus, inter-religious compromise is difficult or impossible.

Also, because religious texts are often ambiguous, divisions developed within religions. Different denominations, schools, or traditions have derived different meanings from the same religious texts. Thus were laid the foundations for millennia of inter-religious and intra-religious conflict. The first organized religions appear to have been based on fertility.

They were focused on the worship of the great Earth Goddess. Religion evolved to include male Gods who were gradually given increased importance by the priests. This development may have been caused by developing knowledge of the male's involvement in the process of reproduction.

Today, most people follow either:. However there is considerable historical evidence from ancient times that religions in the area from India to the Middle East shared many religious beliefs. One example of this are:. Religions were originally based on the particular beliefs of their founders and prophets.

Thus, there are few points of similarity among the various spiritual paths :. Some observers believe that modern-day religions remain largely a response to human fear.

Their main function is to provide their followers with a feeling of security while living in a dangerous environment in which a person can be injured, killed or murdered at any time due to natural causes, accidents or human hatred and intolerance. Religion is what we so often use to bank the fires of our anxiety. That is why religion tends toward becoming excessive, neurotic, controlling and even evil. That is why a religious government is always a cruel government.

People need to understand that questioning and doubting are healthy, human activities to be encouraged not to be feared.

Certainty is a vice not a virtue. Insecurity is something to be grasped and treasured. A true and healthy religious system will encourage each of these activities. A sick and fearful religious system will seek to remove them. David C. James, rector of St. Religion, on this interpretation, is akin to a vestigial organ.

Or perhaps religious beliefs are the result of psychological mechanisms that evolved to solve ecological problems unrelated to religion. Something that was merely a by-product of a blind evolutionary process could well be taken up by human beings to perform a specific function or solve a specific problem. Read about what the future of religion could be like.

Muslim worshippers perform the evening Isha prayers at the Kaaba. Emotions such as awe, loyalty, and love are central to many religious celebrations Credit: Getty.

This can be true for many behaviours — including music — but religion presents a particular puzzle, since it often involves extremely costly behaviours, such as altruism and, at times, even self-sacrifice.

For this reason, some theorists such as Dunbar argue that we should also look beyond the individual to the survival of the group. An example is cooperative hunting, which enables groups to catch bigger prey than any members could catch as individuals.

Bigger prey means more for me, even if I have to share the meat since the animal being shared is already larger than anything I could catch alone. If we are to understand religion, then, we first need to look back into your deep history to understand how human ancestors evolved to live in groups in the first place. Our ape line evolved from our last common ancestor around 19 million years ago. Orangutans broke away about million years ago, while the gorilla line branched away about million years ago.

The hominin line then branched into two about million years ago, with one line leading to the chimpanzees and bonobos, and the other leading to us. The similarities between humans and chimps are well known, but one important difference has to do with group size. Chimpanzees, on average, can maintain a group size of about 45, says Dunbar. The reason for this, says Dunbar, is that humans have the capacity to reach three times as many social contacts as chimps for a given amount of social effort.

Human religion emerges out of this increased capacity for sociality. How come? As our ape ancestors moved from receding forest habitats to more open environments, like the savannahs of eastern and southern Africa, Darwinian pressures acted on them to make them more social for increased protection from predators and better access to food; it also made it easier to find a mate. So how did nature achieve this socialisation process?

Although the neocortex figures prominently in many theories of the evolution of religion, Turner says the more important alterations concerned the subcortical parts of the brain, which gave hominins the capacity to experience a broader range of emotions.

These enhanced emotions promoted bonding, a crucial achievement for the development of religion. Complex religious feelings are often the combination of many emotions. Awe, for instance, is a heady mix of fear and happiness Credit: Getty. The process of subcortical enhancement Turner refers to dates to about 4. Initially, says Turner, selection increased the size of their brains about cubic centimetres cc beyond that of chimpanzees, to about cc in Australopithecus afarensis.

For the sake of comparison, this is smaller than later hominins — Homo habilis had a cranial capacity of cc, while Homo erectus was slightly larger at Modern humans, in contrast, boast a brain size much bigger than any of these, with a cranial capacity of up to 1, cc. Brain size is measured by an endocast , but Turner says these do not reflect the subcortical enhancement that was occurring between the emergence of Australopiths around 4 million years ago and Homo erectus 1.

Notice anything about that list? Three of the emotions are negative. But the promotion of solidarity requires positive emotions — so natural selection had to find a way to mute the negative emotions and enhance the positive ones, Turner says. The emotional capacities of great apes particularly chimpanzees were already more elaborate than many other mammals, so selection had something to work with. At this point in his argument, Turner introduces the concept of first- and second-order elaborations, which are emotions that are the result of a combinations of two or more primary emotions.

So, for example, the combination of happiness and anger generates vengeance, while jealousy is the result of combining anger and fear. Awe, which figures majorly in religion, is the combination of fear and happiness. Second-order elaborations are even more complex, and occurred in the evolution from Homo erectus 1.

Guilt and shame, for example, two crucial emotions for the development of religion, are the combination of sadness, fear, and anger. As selection worked on existing brain structures, enhancing emotional and interpersonal capacities, certain behavioural propensities of apes began to evolve. Some of the propensities that Turner lists as already present in apes include: the ability to read eyes and faces and to imitate facial gestures; various capacities for empathy; the ability to become emotionally aroused in social settings; the capacity to perform rituals; a sense of reciprocity and justice; and the ability to see the self as an object in an environment.