I was not proposing a model for the origin of religion, or of morals or of ethics. (I can do that, but I was not trying to do it here). Rather, I was falsifying Rue’s hypothesis about the centrality of myth and stories in, to use his words, “all religions,” by pointing out cases where a well informed examination shows that this is not happening.

In making this statement, I have noted possible other ways to think about this, but I am in no way making a formal proposal. Certainly not about maggots, but spontaneous generation may not be a bad model for certain psychosocial processes. (But I’m not up on the 17th century spontaneous generation literature…)

If religion “just sprung up,” how could we possibly go about accounting for religion’s causal chains?

What do we look for and and where do we look for it?

If I have understood it, Greg’s apparent research strategy is similar to the spontaneous generation of maggots.

Starting from Greg’s premise, I would be bewildered as how to proceed scientifically – i.e. as a naturalist/physicalist/materialist.

Determinism is always the issue!

The question remains; Is your clearly mentalistic theory about the causal chains explaining sociocultural similarities and differences the best way to do scientific anthropology?

Relying on psychological variables as primary & causal is surely open to debate.

(By the way folks, Jenny is the Taser Meister) … I noticed that. I was sitting there thinking “Hey, they should have let me keep talking….!”

Oh, and everyone, meet Gerald. He’s banned on almost every science blog out there. I wonder why…

… “the moral code in many cultures is derived from social and community level interactions. It is humanistic. The moral code in many cultures is derived from a humanistic base that in turn is based on understanding of the worth of fellow humans and the value of cooperative interaction, and this moral code is as useful and complex and adaptable as any other moral code.”

This is mentalistic clap-trap – a preposterous exercise in non-empirical ideaism as totally causal in observable material social structure and social organization..

“… DERIVED FROM A HUMANISTIC BASE…” conveys no operational information whatever.

the so-called humanistic base “is based on UNDERSTANDING of the worth of fellow humans…”

Lots of turtles on top of one another (the bases), but no prescriptive operations about how this idea game actually works – never mind how to find these critical foundational bases.

“LOVING UNDERSTANDING” AS IN THE “HUMAN SCIENCES” OF WILHELM DILTHEY, PERHAPS????

You are not doing any semblance of science.
You are a blatant practitioner of new-age sorcery.
Supposedly you learned this witchcraft baloney at HARVARD.
Your stated theory might wash as literature.
Science it ain’t.

Always money. I serve no other function for them than that. It does not matter that my long term objective is to provide electricity to them.

Well, why is that your objective? Why are you sacrificing your time and effort (and probably also your money) for those people?

If you wish to pour your water upon the sand, that’s your business. I just don’t understand your motives.

I am completely uneducated in all this, so I stand the chance of running down a path that is not only a dead-end, but is well known for it ;-). However, this is what I’ve arrived at after having been thinking this over for the past couple of years.

I think pursuing the concept of “morality” is the wrong approach, because it is an abstract that is defined too loosely. Instead, I think we’re better off looking at the core emotions to see how they might lead to a universal tendency towards morality (and, indeed, religion).

To me, I’m right in line with Dunc, above, but will simplify it to “empathy.” The ability to project ourselves into the plights or pains of another human being (or predecessor thereof – I imagine this happened millions of years ago) was one of the key factors towards a cooperative society. Cooperation allowed for hunting game, caring for our ridiculously inept infants, and fending off dangers. Later on, it worked well for agriculture (the transition from family or tribe, to clan or village) and village maintenance.

At roughly the same time period, I think the largest risks to survival stopped being the difficulty of finding food, or predation by the big cats et al, and became competition from our fellow species. A family/tribal unit with a stockpile of food is easy pickings, easier than hunting mastodon, and my guess is that the stockade followed very quickly on the heels of the tended field, since raiding parties would seem to be a logical step. Aggression and competition were already a necessary trait for both food and protection, and it isn’t hard to suppose that this could turn against our own species if it meant survival.

So, there’s a conflict: aggressive tendencies for the survival of the species against tough competition, versus the cooperation of many individuals to eke out a living. While they sound contradictory for a species to evolve with, they’re both readily observable today. What we seem to have developed is a method to differentiate “us” [good] from “them” [evil].

Maybe I’m oversimplifying, but this fits in with everything from religion to sports fans. And it helps explain why we feel more comfortable reducing every decision we can down to simple black & white. And one of the best ways to not be mistaken for an enemy is to establish yourself as a friend.

A few above have questioned where altruism fits in there, risking your life for others (and the subsequent risk to the gene pool). I would suspect that it is an excellent way of establishing trust among a tribal group, and also works on the obligation/indebtedness side of things (like the aforementioned beautiful woman’s pooch, or her flat tire). It isn’t so much a matter of saying, “I am good,” as it is of saying, “I am like you and can be trusted.”

My own hypothesis (yes, the uneducated one) is that religion sprung up not too long after the establishment of cooperative societies, especially villages or fixed farmland. In such a society, it becomes very possible for individuals to survive with no cooperation, being carried along by the efforts of others. Cultural interaction may have made it difficult to simply discard such an individual from society (because, let’s face it, it was probably the son of a village elder), and empathy might also fight against this. So the next step is to convince the lazy individual that it is in their own best interest to cooperate, and from there, you get to everlasting reward and everlasting torment in a very short period of time.

I don’t think this is the sole source of religion, not by a long shot. But I think this is where religion absorbed a moral code, and it worked hand-in-hand with the true source of religion, which is (I believe) insecurity, a survival trait to perhaps all higher species. Insecurity and outright fear lead to safe places to sleep, weapons for protection, food stockpiling, allegiances, and so on. As society developed enough to make survival almost a foregone conclusion, we still had the long-bred trait of insecurity, as well as aggression and empathy. And, of course, there would be a certain number of people who could recognize these traits and know how to manipulate them in others – they became the shamans, leaders, and priests. And of course, power is security too 😉

I’m not sure this fits for everything we can see, and stand to be corrected. But it seems to account for the development of morals without necessitating specifics, and explains why cultures can define moral/ethical behavior in radically different ways – it’s not a matter of what’s best, but what allows to individual to fit into their chosen culture [good]. I think that we, as a species, undergo near-constant conflicts among the cooperative and competitive aspects of our personalities, and these resolve in myriad ways.

laurisa, above, noticed that the morals of the villagers she works with seem more linked to money than to religion. I’m certainly not in a position to do more than speculate based on a very brief description, but I suspect that the issue revolves more around the desperate plight of the villagers than anything else. Survival is a strong instinct, and in circumstances where societal cooperation does not seem to work for survival, morals vanish (as study of criminal behavior has often shown). The man who worked with her one day and threatened her in a group the next seems to be facing a distinct dilemma: cooperation with one individual can result in money (necessary for survival to nearly all of us), but may also result in opposition, perhaps even robbery, from members of the village. I doubt there’s any kind of moral guidance there – I’d bet it’s attempting to survive in a difficult situation. Basically, short-term survival has to take precedence over long-term, for there to even be a long-term.

Just my thoughts. If anyone knows of research along these lines, even those that dispute it, I’d be happy to check it out.