How Religion Evolved kindle paperwhite Dunbars academic and research career includes the University of Bristol University of Cambridge from 1977 until 1982 and University College London from 1987 until 1994 In 1994 Dunbar became Professor of Evolutionary Psychology at University of Liverpool but he left Liverpool in 2007 to take up the post of Director of the Institute of Cognitive and Evolutionary Anthropology University of Oxford Robin Ian MacDonald Dunbar FBA FRAI is a British anthropologist and evolutionary psychologist and a specialist in primate behaviour.
EPub How Religion evolved form Dunbar s academic and research career includes the University of Bristol University of Cambridge from 1977 until 1982 and University College London from 1987 until 1994 In 1994 Dunbar became Professor of Evolutionary Psychology at University of Liverpool but he left Liverpool in 2007 to take up the post of Director of the Institute of Cognitive and Evolutionary Anthropology University of Oxford site_link When did humans develop spiritual thought What is religion s evolutionary purpose And in our increasingly secular world why has it endured Every society in the history of humanity has lived with religion In How Religion Evolved evolutionary psychologist Professor Robin Dunbar tracks its origins back to what he terms the mystical stance the aspect of human psychology that predisposes us to believe in a transcendent world and which makes an encounter with the spiritual possible As he explores world religions and their many derivatives as well as religions of experience practised by hunter gatherer societies since time immemorial Dunbar argues that this instinct is not a peculiar human quirk an aberration on our otherwise efficient evolutionary journey Rather religion confers an advantage it can benefit our individual health and wellbeing but importantly it fosters social bonding at large scale helping hold fractious societies together Dunbar suggests these dimensions might provide the basis for an overarching theory for why and how humans are religious and so help unify the myriad strands that currently populate this field Drawing on path breaking research clinical case studies and fieldwork from around the globe as well as stories of charismatic cult leaders mysterious sects and lost faiths How Religion Evolved offers a fascinating and far reaching analysis of this quintessentially human impulse to believe How Religion Evolved And Why It EnduresThis book is written by famous evolutionary anthropologist Robin Dunbar Maybe out of motivation to condense space this book is rather short on data and long on broad generalizations about religion so how to conclude on the veracity of these assertions is unclear There is a slim Notes section but some of it is extraneous paragraphs or further claims or self references to his own publications rather than sources.
How Religion Evolved pdfescape Some interesting information or claims from this book I the existence of profession of sin eaters destitute elderly who had to eat bread and salt laid on corpses to absorb people s sin and then be ostracized and malignedIi binary categorization between shamanic and doctrinal religion is still valid.
Kindle How Religion evolved synonym Perceived evolution from 1 form to another is also valid concept in author s opinionIii accdg to evolutionary psychology 1 possibility is that religion is a maladaptive byproduct of our heightened fear or caution of predationIv alternatively it maximizes cultural fitnessV no known genetic mechanisms for group selection such as altruism that benefits groupVi 5 longstanding theories for social benefits of religion include form of primitive science or understanding the world medical intervention enforcement of cooperation marxian political oppression and for community bonding Vii people are likely to resort to shamans religion or superstition during matters of life and death than in events where benefits are minimal.
How Religion Evolved ebook reader Viii active religious involvement increased chances of being alive in longitudinal studyIx genetics will choose against altruism because selfish individuals will freeride and ultimately win Thus individuals learn to confine generosity a community invaded by even a small number of freeriders will quickly become dominated by selfish individuals or fragment into small inward looking subgroups X humans are not naturally prosocialXi cooperation is driven by reputation and punishmentXii the Moralizing HIgh God was devised to act as the omniscient enforcer for this cooperation Xiii examples of empires that used religion as a tool of subjugation include the pharaonic egypt the roman empire the Aztecs and early medieval Islamic empires But this did not apply to other heterogrneous empires such as the british and the ottoman empiresXii human sacrifice occurs in societies that are heavily stratified with ruling elite policing middle class and the disposable masses This include the aztecs in tenochtitlan that sacrificed 80 000 people in one year 1487 from the ranks of war captives slaves and concubinesxiii religious institutions are also used to absorb surplus members of the population such as 2nd sons and daughtersXiv birds and most mammals form a dispersive herd of temporary convenience while primates form bonded groups thus suspicious of strangers Xv friendships are prone to decay without substantial hours of investmentXvi human sacrifice precedes stratificationXvii the 7 pillars or determinants of friendship include same language same origin educational trajectory hobbies and interests worldview or moral political views musical tastes sense of humor Strength of friendship is determined by higher similarityXviii seizures can trigger both extreme religiosity and a dysphoric distorted sense of selfXix extreme religious rituals include firewalking self flagellation crucifixion Ashura pursuit of stigmataAgain not sure which if any is just armchair theorizing and which are backed by data 0241431786 Robin Dunbar he of Dunbar s number fame has decided to take on one of the trickiest topics for any scientist religion He does better than most.
How religion evolved and why it endures You might think that I say religion is a tricky topic because of the numerous clashes science and religion have had over the last few centuries from Galileo up to Richard Dawkins But while that is certainly part of it the real problem nowadays is not the religious authorities problem with science but the scientists problem with religion In order to study a topic it is important to have an interest in it but one should also be able to think dispassionately about it There are not very many scientists today who are up to the task.
How Religion Evolved kindle reader Because religion is on the short list of any catalog of cultural universals right up there with language music storytelling and clothes it is sometimes a bit embarrassing to see otherwise clever and intelligent men and women go through endless mental contortions trying to convince themselves that it s all a mistake One is reminded of when Stephen Pinker said that music was auditory cheesecake an evolutionary accident of no great import Most scientists have gone one further in religion s case and tried to make the case that religion is of a disease a mental parasite that impairs our ability to think rationally and get along peacefully.
Book How Religion evolvedids Well that would explain why atheistic societies like the French Revolution under Robespierre German Fascism the Soviet Union under Stalin or modern North Korea all have such abnormally rational and peaceful societies eh Oh wait Getting rid of those pesky religions does not appear on the whole to lead to an outbreak of desirable behavior The opposite might be true people living in abnormally wealthy and peaceful societies tend with one or two generations delay to drift away from religion but every attempt to forcibly remove religion from society seems to lead to bad things It s enough to make you wonder if there might be some evolutionarily desirable characteristics of religion but only if you re not a modern mainstream scientist because no reputable scientist would be caught dead saying anything that seems to suggest religion might sometimes have a beneficial impact on people s behavior.
Book How Religion evolvedids This doesn t mean he s advocating any particular religion or even religion in general However Dunbar does appear to be able to look at religion objectively and as with music language storytelling etc try to figure out why it is so widespread He takes it one further and puts forth a fairly well developed taxonomy in which different sorts of religion appear at different stages in a society s growth The needs of a hunter gatherer society with groups around 50 well under Dunbar s number are very different from the needs of a society with large scale agricultural infrastructure and cities with populations over 10000 The needs change again as you get up to empires in the millions.
Kindle How Religion evolved synonym They also change as humanity s capacity for higher degrees of intentionality increases From first degree I believe that rain is falling to second I believe that you think rain is falling up through fifth degree I believe that you think that we both know God exists and intends to punish us our capacity for abstraction in religion increased and hence our ability to use it as a tool for getting increasingly large groups to get along In this theory the reason human sacrifice disappeared might be that it was no longer necessary to terrify people by showing them what would happen if they did not behave we all agreed to terrify ourselves by imagining it and trusting only others who we believed were terrifying themselves in a similar fashion God fearing.
EPub How Religion evolved form Is it true I don t know but it sounds plausible far than the alternative explanation of bad memes infected people s brains It shows both a reason why religion exists and a reason why it has evolved over the last few millennia in the ways that it has It suggests why modern moralizing religions sometimes called Big Gods religions appeared when they did human societies had become large enough to need them It suggests why we don t see it among other species unless you re willing to stretch the definition of religion to the point where it holds little meaning because they don t make large societies in the way that we do social insects etc rely on instinct rather than conscientious behavior they don t need religion to encourage cooperation.
Book How Religion evolved definition Dunbar waits until the very end to very briefly discuss the question of whether or not we still need it and I think that s wise The sober and even handed study of religion by science is not nearly a mature enough field to be answering any such question anyway and a focus on asking and discussing it only reduces the chance of being able to make a proper study of the topic Dunbar is not here to tell you what religion you should have if any he s here to make a good start on explaining why we had religion in the past and how those reasons have changed over time If you are capable of maintaining a calm demeanor while thinking about the topic you may find this book a good step forward in our understanding of a cultural universal that has been too often shouted about and too seldom really studied 0241431786 Homo sapiens 150 150 0241431786 Cognitive science of religion is an awesome field Well since no one actually gives a single rat s ass about this kind of reviews im not gonna go really long with this.
How Religion Evolved ebooks free I ve read many books on this subject because Im an atheist BUT i do not despise religion as I despise ideology violence lack of empathy and deeply rooted ignorance Trying to understand why people believe in something is actually something really deep and comforting It is a human feat kinda unique in the whole world Religion is an evolutionary by product that was created by many factors our unique brain language and evolutionary biases such as human relations and a whole other bunch of them Pascal Boyer s masterpiece at least it is to me Religion Explained is detailed when it comes to explain why certain concepts are rooted to religion Fuller Tolley s Evolving brains emerging gods is a neurological explanation on religion This guy Dumbar is famous for the so called Dunbar s number which is the notion that there exists a cognitive limit on human groups of about 150 individuals the book explains religions on these grounds based on cognition on human populations and theory of mind or mentalization It turns out that we as a species can mentalize up to five or maybe some people nonetheless six orders and that creates the basis for doctrinal and ritualistic religion Other primates lack this ability they just get to second order so even though they are social animals they lack religion.
How Religion Evolved ebooks online Just one word AWESOME There are many things that are only explained just in this book Religion is a human feat and such as sexual relations we need to understand why we believe 0241431786 This is the book I ve been seeking for 30 years It s going to hard to avoid comparing this book to Germs Guns Steel It s clear concise conversational and fills in the blanks After you read it So much makes sense There were so many eureka moments in this book where I said OH That s why This book looks at religion all religion as a human phenomenon that fulfills biological and neurological needs Religion allows group sizes to increase with out increased social physiological stresses by satisfying the primate need for social grooming and bonding through ritual Secular attempts to recreate religion s successes have historically all fallen flat Groups that successfully use religion outperform groups that do not And yes like all evolutionary traits it can become maladaptive If you ve wondered where did it come from Why does it do what it does Why do they all seem so similar Why do they get under our skin This is the book for you.
How Religion Evolved kindle paperwhite I loved this book I fully expect to reread this book every few years like I do with GGS by Jared Diamond and The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas Kuhn 0241431786
Imprecise Unrefined Contradictory Viewpoint is overly narrow 0241431786 From renowned anthropologist Robin Dunbar this was an interesting in the same way as sheep shearing or tree surgery might be Dunbar has written an account of how religion has evolved on a global scale He begins by setting out to argue that one of the reasons humanity is predisposed to religious beliefs is that there is something innately mystical in how we conceptualise the world around us This is a poorly explained argument and he struggles to cement this point beyond simply because we do type of arguments He goes on to argue that another reason why religions develop to such an extent is that there are important health social and economic benefits to individuals for meeting in congregation with one another This is a much clearer argument and Dunbar draws on an impressive body of research to highlight each of these points in turn It is chapter 4 where Dunbar s approach begins to have personality Dunbar goes over his popular argument that human s can only stomach around 100 to 200 social connections This was not something I was familiar with and Dunbar takes a rather cynical view of people as anti social beings who require a heavy amount of indirect instruction to actually cohabit peacefully within large groups like towns and cities It s not something I agree with but he does good job of arguing the point and then applying it to religious congregations His work comes full circle when in the final chapter he explains why so many religions fragment and dissipate because of this inability for people to handle control or supervise social connections beyond this 200 person threshold It s certainly a novel point and it is refreshing to read an analysis which is not theologically or historically focused but instead works around cognition neurology and human sociability One of the biggest criticisms for this book and Dunbar s chosen approach is that by choosing not to focus on theological and historical trends or developments the book as a whole is strikingly apolitical There is a great deal of fretting over why religions tend to fragment and indeed a very good account of the Abrahamic religions fragmentation as well as Sikhism and The Bah faith But there is no attention given to the political upheaval which accompanied these theological fragmentations Some may say this would be too much to ask or even that authors should not be mandated to bring up politics alongside religion However by leaving out the political motivations and consequences the whole account feels overly intellectual and a simplification of religious history Chapters 5 8 are where the book begins to come undone Dunbar makes a distractingly unrelated argument about neurodivergent people s disposition to religious experiences and mysticism It comes across a condescending and has little relevance to the rest of the book The focus on moving away from theological and historical arguments becomes tough to stomach in chapters 5 and 8 particularly because Dunbar applies quite a broad brush to human conditions across thousands of years and multiple societies His psychological explanations for social bonding are interesting but they are only tangentially linked to religion making the book feel as if it has taken a detour into an entirely different topic Meanwhile in Chapter 8 the demographic shocks and shift from mystical religion into doctrinal religions feel weightless because Dunbar is working with such a vast canvass so any point he makes feels vague and generalised On top of this is that the audiobook format fantastically fails in chapter 8 where the narrator is having to make awkward references to accompanying pdfs This problem came up a few times but it seems as if the producers have cut around Dunbar s writing in order to work around the way he refers to tables As it is the final ten minutes of chapter 8 are distractingly difficult to listen to even with the helpfully provided pdf in front of you Chapter 9 was probably the best out of the hodgepodge set here It concerns cults personality s and charisma It builds nicely into the final chapter and had some excellent novel accounts from a variety of religions This was also where the focus on cognition worked best because it concerned the actions and reactions between people and how it affected them rather than arguing that socialising is a conceptual practice to help people understand their group The final chapter is fine but it would have been nice for Dunbar to include a conclusion just because his introduction was one of the best examples of signposting and methodology I ve read in a while On the whole this is a fine book but with the vast array of non fiction available it is by no means essential There is an academic and intellectual appeal to seeing someone take such a different approach to religious studies but nothing of consequence in the way people discuss and think about religion 0241431786 kalpavriksha .
How Religion Evolved pdfescape Robin DunbarHow Religion EvolvedTranslated By Maher_Razouk 0241431786 Terrific book Insights anecdotes factoids analyses You name it this book s got it Interesting and unusual topic well told 0241431786 Endorphin rush How Religion Evolved and Why it Endures Robin Dunbar How Religion Evolved is a brief tour of the evolutionary history and advantages religion provides to individuals and at the group level Dunbar takes an evolutionary approach so expect a lot of discussion about community survival We also talk a lot about the brain I found that Dunbar explained everything well and the book itself is short and a pleasure to read so I recommend that you pick it up.
EPub How Religion evolved definition I harp on a lot about the epistemic frameworks used in books it s important I think and I was pleased here It s a very pragmatic empirical approach where support for one hypothesis doesn t rule out the value of any others Dunbar talks about this in context of the Four Whys The limitations of the research are pointed out wherever appropriate.
How Religion Evolved kindle reader My only criticism of the book is that the chapters can seem to lose their way a little bit or meld into each other The book flows well and we are grounded from time to time by summary paragraphs but I would have appreciated a little organisation of the argument.
How Religion Evolved ebook reader In my mind there are two important claims advanced by Dunbar The first that the mystical stance is the core of all religions and it provides individual and group level benefits The second that there is a glass ceiling model of religious development by accretion where religions co evolve in stages to deal with problems presented by increasingly large concentrated and complex societies.
EPub How Religion evolved form On the mystical stance it is the susceptibility to entering trance states generally a feeling of euphoria ecstasy etc the belief in a transcendental or spirit world and a belief we can call on hidden powers to help us These three points are not necessarily closely related and can vary in degree.
How Religion Evolved ebook reader g I know that you know is second order This all ends up being related to the Default Mode Network of the brain our so called social brain which makes sense if you conceive of religion as a relationship between you and some higher power.
Book How Religion evolvedids This all gains force when we introduce social bonding and endorphins Apes perform social grooming essentially a slow stroking of another individual triggering the endorphin system and leading to a chemically and cognitively mediated social bonding We humans evolved ways to do this at scale rather than touching each other which still works to be sure we can laugh sing dance tell stories feast together or perform rituals Each of these activities triggers the endorphin system and allows us to bond with larger groups Religions in a sense are strategies for triggering this system via shared ritual and synchronised activities increasing social bonding There s some discussion in the book about secular alternatives not being quite as effective perhaps it has to do with the mystical stance These endorphins allow us to bootstrap larger communities via friend of friend bonding cascades They bring mental and physical health benefits especially immunity and they also predispose one to a prosocial attitude All of this add up to solving commitment and coordination problems enabling a higher level of social complexity and cooperation It s important to note that these aren t being solved in the abstract it s pharmacological given the mystical stance.
PDF How Religion evolved Our social brains are limited to roughly 150 people in our close network strongly theoretically and empirically validated This also happens to be roughly the optimal size of congregations Like any organisation religion relies on this so here we have an explanation of the proliferation of cults sects and schisms Centrifugal forces e.
How Religion Evolved bookworm The first stage with group sizes around 100 we find religions that are purely animist and mystical with no moral core and an exclusive focus on social bonding The need to form larger groups like this may have triggered this evolutionary innovation or perhaps it was a byproduct of bigger brains.
How Religion Evolved pdf editor The third stage occurring just after the Neolithic revolution enabled us to deal with larger permanent settlements formed for collective defence This involved formal religion with rituals and ritual specialists priests spaces pantheons of gods as opposed to spirits etc Socially this allowed levels of coercive control and social stress management needed to enable collective defence due to increasing competition.
Book How Religion evolvedids The fourth stage is a modern doctrinal religion with higher complexity and organisational capacity Moralising high gods make their appearance and again all this supports social complexity on the level of city states and empires.
How Religion Evolved ebooks online
Robin Ian MacDonald Dunbar FBA FRAI is a British anthropologist and evolutionary psychologist and a specialist in primate behaviour, Book How Religion evolvedids Oh wait hold on I m wrong Ladies and gentlemen Robin Dunbar. How Religion Evolved epubor Robin Dunbar lays it all out step by step in a way that makes sense but doesn t make you feel small or hopeless. Book How Religion evolvedids This stance depends on the mentalising ability or a theory of mind to a given order e: Book How Religion evolvedids g disagreements not assuaged by direct social bonding force large organisations apart: How Religion Evolved booklet There s a lot to think about here on the formation of identity too and heuristics for trust in a signalling framework that is politically relevant: How Religion Evolved kindle paperwhite The second claim Dunbar makes is of a glass ceiling model of religious evolution as problem solving Or phenotypic adaption, Book How Religion evolved synonym The second stage involves specialist healers and diviners or shamans leading to a shamanic religion They provide among other things psychological care: PDF How Religion evolved Dunbar covers several other interesting topics throughout the book e: How Religion Evolved epubor g charismatic cult leaders that I don t have time to cover In summary this book is excellent for a whirlwind religious tour through human evolution 0241431786.