Organized religion - The Birth

[aqualights]

Prehistoric species of man had no idea of god or religion as it is today. Evidence shows that the very first religious signs were intentional burials of Neanderthals with their goods in the Middle Paleolithic period up to 300,000 years ago.
The history of religion is as amazing as it is full of violence. It evolved from simple burials, to rituals, cults, and finally into organized religion as we have today.
If Maslow’s hierarchy is to be considered, there should be no need or reason to have religion (in any of its forms) without fulfilling the physiological and safety needs of early human species. This can explain the late appearance of organized religion begging with the ancient Egyptian religion or even older organized religions and ending with relatively new ones such as Islam.

The appearance of organized religion is very late considering that human species have been roaming the earth for over 2 million years ago, while organized religion appeared only several thousand years ago.

For millions of years, humans lived in small bands hunting, scavenging and perhaps even collecting plants for their diet. Early tools developed by humans show that they mostly depended on scavenging dead corpses killed by other predators, only later on they had suitable tools or weapons to be able to hunt prey effectively. Fulfillment of the physiological needs was always a problem for early human species, which might also explain why all of them are now extinct except homo-sapiens. It is hard to imagine that early humans had an abundance of food and water. Had they had enough food and water, they would have most likely remained in Africa and they would not have been extinct by now.

In addition to the physiological problem, there was a safety problem. Early humans and their cousin species were not all in peace. There certainly were skirmishes between the different species of humans over territory and food sources. Other than that, predators that are extinct now were also a threat to early humans who had mostly primitive scavenging tools. All this had them constantly fearing for their safety and perhaps on the move.
So we can agree that one of the main reasons of the late appearance of organized religion is the non-satisfaction of these 2 basic needs according to Maslow. These needs were gradually satisfied throughout thousands of years as humans turned from a hunter-gatherer nomad-like society into a more sedentary society that could generally cover its physiological and safety needs with the appearance of agriculture and farming.
Where exactly does organized religion as a need belong on Maslow’s hierarchy?

If we are to generalize and put all organized religions (especially modern religions) in one basket, they will probably belong in all 3 of the remaining needs in various degrees – Belonging/love, Esteem and Self-actualization.
The exact answer depends not only on the need of a particular kind of religion, but also on the current state of this particular religion as a whole which is influenced by the geo-political and economic environment. Most religions though share the 3rd level of needs – Belonging. However, many religions after their appearance, took a more aggressive approach that had them digging down back to the 2nd level of Safety. It should also be noted that many religious systems offer both peaceful and violent teachings at the same time, the deciding factor whether the religion is violent or peaceful largely depends on how society decides to use the religious system and its interpretation.

Take Christianity for example. In the middle ages the religion was very violent compared to nowadays. People were persecuted, burned alive, and wars were fought in the name of the religion. An average person in medieval Europe would need to be a Christian if he is to ensure his own safety and perhaps even his physiological needs are met first and foremost. Once those 2 basic needs were satisfied, the person had to involve Christianity into the Belonging level of needs in order to at least have a functioning family, friendships, or other relationships within the society of medieval Europe.

Nowadays Christianity is much more a pacifist religion than the middle-ages. There is no longer a need to be Christian in Europe to satisfy your physiological and / or safety needs. Christianity has moved to a higher level in the hierarchy. Now it ranges between Belonging to Self-actualization depending on many other factors that affects the individual that range from psychological state to the socio-economic status in society.
Another example is Islam. Islam as whole has not refused its violent doctrine as Christianity did. This might be one of the main reasons why Islam’s position in the hierarchy includes almost all the stages. Nowadays the position of Islam as a need for the individual depends on which culture and country he or she belongs to.
An extreme example would be a person living the tribal region controlled by the Taliban. This person has to first of all be a Muslim, but in the case of the Taliban this is most likely not enough. The person has to adhere to the violent side of Islam. This is at least to satisfy his basic needs of safety, food and water. Other Muslims in developed countries can freely choose to adhere to Islam or not and therefore the need for Islam for them is higher on the hierarchy.

Unlike Christianity, Islam is not centralized. There is no real center of power such as the Catholic or Orthodox Church; therefore Islam seems to be moving in many different directions at the same time with no clear leadership or vision. While some preach Islam as a religion of peace, suicide bombs and killings are happening in the name of it. This is again due to lack of clear vision and patriarchy that can direct the progressive path of the religion.

It should also be noted that the appearance of religion as a whole cannot be only associated with psychological factors, but also physiological. Brain power has a great role not only in technological advancement but also in the evolution of religion. Without the evolution of brain power starting from Homo erectus up to the modern Homo sapiens, there is little doubt that religion would exist. The leap forward in religion might have started with the agriculture, but its appearance and development up to the leap forward could be attributed to the development of brain power amongst human species and the appearance of modern man.

[iNow]

I challenge your key premise that religion exists as a need on Maslow's hierarchy at all. You asked, "Where exactly does organized religion as a need belong on Maslows hierarchy?" and my reply is both simple and true. It does not.

 

A great many people, myself included, exist quite well, quite successfully... complete with food, shelter, safety, a sense of belonging and surrounding community, self-esteem, mastery, and respect, and quite often actualization... and all without religion ever entering into the mix or being considered whatsoever. In short, religion does NOT exist as a need on Maslow's hierarchy.

 

With that said, I also think your explanation misses a lot about how religion truly evolved. You don't seem to reference how we evolved as pack animals with shared group norms and expectations, forms of communication that later became stories, and that the stories bound us together more tightly and taught others about what we found important and useful in survival.

 

My perspective (one shared with a number of others) is that religion actually hijacks existing neurocortical mechanisms that evolved for other purposes... Much like bacon and big macs hijack our evolved tendency toward high energy density foods rich in fats, sugars, and salts.

 

Humans evolved with not only a tendency to learn by watching those around them, but also with a strong tendency to actively teach our young, our kin, and other members of our pack. Humans who more quickly and simply acquiesced to the teachings of local tribal leaders and elders tended to have greater access to food, protection, and potential mates and so were more successful relative to their peers who went against the group teachings and expectations... their peers who would be mostly ostracized.

 

On top of this, humans evolved to always seek explanations for events we do not understand, and to fill in the gaps of our knowledge, even if the explanations we used to fill those gaps were mostly fictional or based on guesswork. Humans evolved the ability to rehearse interactions with unseen others so we would be better prepared for when those interactions actually took place. Both religion and belief in god(s) fit quite naturally into these tendencies that were selected for other purposes. In short, many things about the way we think and interact with others and imagine future possibilities lend themselves quite well to the myths and tradition found in so many religions and deity beliefs. Said another way, religion is quite like a virus of the mind that simply latched on to other existing processes and entities.

 

These ideas I just laid out strike me as far more explanatory than your OP. While much of what you shared has merit, and while I find it to be an interesting conjecture, IMO your central thesis that religion belongs anywhere at all on the hierarchy of needs is too easily disputed... and for that reason I struggle to give it much further consideration.

[aqualights]

iNow,

How religion evolved is another subject to be expounded on in detail, which hopefully will help me in answering the question - Why organized religion came to existence? Maslow's hierarchy can offer only one explanation which I believe to be a part answer to this question, but there are many other psychological and physiological factors that in my opinion have contributed to the appearance of organized religion which also deserve another topic.

Organized religion itself does not enter into the hierarchy of needs, people bring it into their own hierarchies. Many people nowadays keep it out of their hierarchy of needs due to it not being a requirement for satisfying those needs. But people in ancient times were not able to do so, and many people to this day are not able to keep organized religion out of their hierarchy of needs, as per my example about tribal regions in afghanistan.

It is also important to differntiate between cultural norms, ancient cults (animisim for example) and organized religion. While organized religion is probably a direct evolvement of those ancient cultures and cults, in my opinion there is a trigger that helped organized religioin come into existence. And this trigger is connected not only with mythology and norms inherited from these ancient nomad-like cultures, but also in my opinion to the discovery of agriculture, which in turn satisfied the physiological and to some degree the safety needs as opposed to a hunter-gatherer society. There are for sure other factors that contributed to the appearance of organized religion but agriculture and using it to satisfy the 2 basic needs is one of the biggest in my opinion. I am currently researching other factors, especially the evolution of the brain.
Questions like where do we come from? Where do we go when we die? are likely connected to the evolution of the brain. I think that these questions appeared with the Neanderthal's interaction with Modern man, as they once coexisted. There is also no evidence of any kind of rituals amongst earlier species in the genus homo. Again, another topic worth consideration.

 

As far as religion hijacking existing neurocortical mechanisms, it could be possible, and if so it means organized religion itself has evolved such as those mechanisms to be able to exlploit them. However I doubt that it is a reason of why organized religion came into existence in first place.

[iNow]

Organized religion itself does not enter into the hierarchy of needs, people bring it into their own hierarchies.

 

This is a good clarification. I think that's a fair point, but I remain firm in my position that it is a weak one since not everyone does this. Since (as you rightly stipulate) the need can be fulfilled in numerous other ways, I think it's inappropriate to suggest religion is required at all. It's not required. It's merely one mechanism among a great many that some people use.

 

Many people nowadays keep it out of their hierarchy of needs due to it not being a requirement for satisfying those needs. But people in ancient times were not able to do so

 

This is a powerful assertion, but I suspect it lacks any evidence or corroboration. How exactly can you say with such certainty that people in ancient times were "not able to" satisfy their needs in other ways? I think they could, and the onus would be on you to support that they could not since you are the one making the positive assertion that they could not.

 

On another note, though... I think your idea of agriculture satisfying more basic needs is a very good one, but I would not place it as the root or foundation of religion's development as you have here. Instead, I might suggest that agriculture simply made the spread of organized religion much simpler. It did not, however, create it, IMO.

 

You are certainly correct, though, that since we were no longer spending our entire day scavenging for food or hunting for game or searching for shelter or defending against predators, we definitely had more time to consider the meaning of the universe around us and more of our energies could be spent focusing on the stories of our tribes and pack and the whims of our imaginations. I do not challenge that point at all, and couldn't agree with you more, actually.

 

There is also no evidence of any kind of rituals amongst earlier species in the genus homo. Again, another topic worth consideration.

 

I don't have time right now to follow-up on this, but I am pretty sure it is wrong. I would like to speak with some of my archaeologist friends for a quick answer, but I think you may be too quick to dismiss very real rituals that were practiced and that very certainly were present prior to both organized religion and agriculture. The easiest rebuttal to this point, I think, is how we find similar rituals in other non-human primates and non-ape mammals.

 

As far as religion hijacking existing neurocortical mechanisms, it could be possible, and if so it means organized religion itself has evolved such as those mechanisms to be able to exlploit them. However I doubt that it is a reason of why organized religion came into existence in first place.

 

When you have some time, here's a very excellent talk on the subject. I think you might enjoy it given how articulate you clearly are on the topic.

Cheers.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pHhweA8Zz04

Edited February 12, 2013 by iNow

[aqualights]

This is a good clarification. I think that's a fair point, but I remain firm in my position that it is a weak one since not everyone does this. Since (as you rightly stipulate) the need can be fulfilled in numerous other ways, I think it's inappropriate to suggest religion is required at all. It's not required. It's merely one mechanism among a great many that some people use.

 

 

This is a powerful assertion, but I suspect it lacks any evidence or corroboration. How exactly can you say with such certainty that people in ancient times were "not able to" satisfy their needs in other ways? I think they could, and the onus would be on you to support that they could not since you are the one making the positive assertion that they could not.

 

On another note, though... I think your idea of agriculture satisfying more basic needs is a very good one, but I would not place it as the root or foundation of religion's development as you have here. Instead, I might suggest that agriculture simply made the spread of organized religion much simpler. It did not, however, create it, IMO.

 

You are certainly correct, though, that since we were no longer spending our entire day scavenging for food or hunting for game or searching for shelter or defending against predators, we definitely had more time to consider the meaning of the universe around us and more of our energies could be spent focusing on the stories of our tribes and pack and the whims of our imaginations. I do not challenge that point at all, and couldn't agree with you more, actually.

 

 

I don't have time right now to follow-up on this, but I am pretty sure it is wrong. I would like to speak with some of my archaeologist friends for a quick answer, but I think you may be too quick to dismiss very real rituals that were practiced and that very certainly were present prior to both organized religion and agriculture. The easiest rebuttal to this point, I think, is how we find similar rituals in other non-human primates and non-ape mammals.

 

 

When you have some time, here's a very excellent talk on the subject. I think you might enjoy it given how articulate you clearly are on the topic.

Cheers.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pHhweA8Zz04

 

I do agree that religion is no longer required as I have mentioned in my examples about Christianity and Islam.However in ancient society I believe it was a requirement as to be not cast out as a heretic at the very least, and there are many incidents throughout history to prove it, starting from the pharoahs to the crusades and muslim conquests which I can expound upon. And up to this day, especially in many Muslim societies, refusing the religion could easily get you prosecuted and in some cases even executed.

 

Suppose that you are an atheist in medieval Europe, what are the chances of your neighbors and local priests calling you out as a heretic and taking some kind of action against you ?

I think there would be a clear risk of you being persecuted for heresy and perhaps even your imprisonment and torture. Now, doesn't that compromise your physiological and safety needs?

In this hypothetical situation, you are forced to ensure the safety of your own skin by adhering to Christianity. It is a forced need.

 

When I said there is no evidence of rituals, I meant earlier than Neanderthals. Not just earlier than agriculture. If you do know about evidence of rituals prior to Neanderthals I would be very much interested to know about it.

 

Thanks for the video ! I will be sure to watch it tonight.

Edited February 12, 2013 by aqualights

[immortal]

This might be a starting place to change some of our perspectives on how organized religion came into existence, much of what is said in the OP is wrong, it was not the physiological factors that gave rise to organized religion but it was the psychological factors which played a prominent role in the origin of organized religion.

New evidence tells an opposite story of the origin of human civilization.

Birth of Religion

Anthropologists have assumed that organized religion began as a way of salving the tensions that inevitably arose when hunter-gatherers settled down, became farmers, and developed large societies. Compared to a nomadic band, the society of a village had longer term, more complex aims—storing grain and maintaining permanent homes. Villages would be more likely to accomplish those aims if their members were committed to the collective enterprise. Though primitive religious practices—burying the dead, creating cave art and figurines—had emerged tens of thousands of years earlier, organized religion arose, in this view, only when a common vision of a celestial order was needed to bind together these big, new, fragile groups of humankind. It could also have helped justify the social hierarchy that emerged in a more complex society: Those who rose to power were seen as having a special connection with the gods. Communities of the faithful, united in a common view of the world and their place in it, were more cohesive than ordinary clumps of quarreling people.

Göbekli Tepe, to Schmidt's way of thinking, suggests a reversal of that scenario: The construction of a massive temple by a group of foragers is evidence that organized religion could have come before the rise of agriculture and other aspects of civilization. It suggests that the human impulse to gather for sacred rituals arose as humans shifted from seeing themselves as part of the natural world to seeking mastery over it. When foragers began settling down in villages, they unavoidably created a divide between the human realm—a fixed huddle of homes with hundreds of inhabitants—and the dangerous land beyond the campfire, populated by lethal beasts.

French archaeologist Jacques Cauvin believed this change in consciousness was a "revolution of symbols," a conceptual shift that allowed humans to imagine gods—supernatural beings resembling humans—that existed in a universe beyond the physical world. Schmidt sees Göbekli Tepe as evidence for Cauvin's theory. "The animals were guardians to the spirit world," he says. "The reliefs on the T-shaped pillars illustrate that other world."

"Twenty years ago everyone believed civilization was driven by ecological forces," Schmidt says. "I think what we are learning is that civilization is a product of the human mind."

 

Much of today's organized religion can be explained by evolutionary psychology and cultural evolution. If religion is full of violence and if it is indeed such a bad meme then why have these ideas survived in our meme pool, of course memes live forever and humans learn those ideas again and again where as a gene lost is lost forever but even then why has religion persisted to even this day?

 

Religion has persisted not because it helps in kin selection, not because it hijacks neo-cortical mechanisms, religious people aren't dumb or have not turned off their screening mechanisms when it comes to religion. Religion persists because the numinous has revealed itself to the human psyche throughout the history of humanity and religious experiences affect a person's day to day living in a great way and it is this supernatural force is the main reason why religion has persisted up until this day and it is going to continue to play an important part in shaping our human psyche.

 

 

[tar]

aqualights,

 

Organised religion, the birth, implies to me that religion itself, on a personal level might be already existent...then organised to suit larger populations.

 

Consider what binds families together, then what binds tribes, then what binds nations, then what binds an entire planet of humans together.

 

In this light, sorting through your own stories and workable solutions for themes and morays that are consistent with other workable human systems of beliefs is somewhat of a daunting task. To imagine a greater good that can be referenced, which the larger group is subject to, as well, is somewhat useful, as a guiding principle. And in this light, even the tenants of humanism have a religious overtone.

 

A personal theory of mine, is that God is a collective ideal, commonly held, and exists because the ideal is commonly held, on the one hand, and because we each contain an image of an unseen judge and parent/creator on the other, and the two mesh together in inseparable ways, when it comes to our collective approach to reality.

 

Where organized religions get into trouble, is when the ideal is promoted as actual external influence...that does not actually exist. But similarly humanism could get in trouble if proponents imagine there is principle that should bind all humans together, if such a principle does not actually exist.

 

And to your middle Maslow point. Belonging. We need that. We want to feel loved by and belonging to the groups with which we associate. Adherence to, and enforcement of the rules of the group, is a way to do this.

 

In Islam, the state and the religion are not separate. The rules of the one are the rules of the other. If you want to belong, you go along with Islam.

 

In secular societies you just need to go along with the state rules. Though the state rules may have embedded tribal rules.

 

In humanism you just have to be a human to be accepted, to belong, to be loved and respected, but is this enough without some additional, agreed upon rules of behavior, against which everyone can be fairly judged by the rest of us?

 

And if we, as a planet, should arrive at such a code...would it not be an organized religion?

 

Regards, TAR2

[aqualights]

This might be a starting place to change some of our perspectives on how organized religion came into existence, much of what is said in the OP is wrong, it was not the physiological factors that gave rise to organized religion but it was the psychological factors which played a prominent role in the origin of organized religion.

 

New evidence tells an opposite story of the origin of human civilization.

 

Birth of Religion

 

 

"Twenty years ago everyone believed civilization was driven by ecological forces," Schmidt says. "I think what we are learning is that civilization is a product of the human mind."

 

Much of today's organized religion can be explained by evolutionary psychology and cultural evolution. If religion is full of violence and if it is indeed such a bad meme then why have these ideas survived in our meme pool, of course memes live forever and humans learn those ideas again and again where as a gene lost is lost forever but even then why has religion persisted to even this day?

 

Religion has persisted not because it helps in kin selection, not because it hijacks neo-cortical mechanisms, religious people aren't dumb or have not turned off their screening mechanisms when it comes to religion. Religion persists because the numinous has revealed itself to the human psyche throughout the history of humanity and religious experiences affect a person's day to day living in a great way and it is this supernatural force is the main reason why religion has persisted up until this day and it is going to continue to play an important part in shaping our human psyche.

There is no proof that Göbekli Tepe was built before agriculture appeared.

[tar]

There is no proof that Göbekli Tepe was built before agriculture appeared.

 

aqualight,

 

It looks like from the carbon dating that most of the structures predated agriculture, the wheel, and metalurgy.

 

I personally think the places look like animal traps. I'm thinking they might not have been religious but utilitarian structures. Considering folk around then did not have much more than brains, rocks and clubs to kill prey with.

 

Consider this theory. Folks got together, found a terrain with steep cliffs and slopes that they could lure or drive an animal or a group of animals into, funneled them into one of these structures, where they could be contained, and folks standing on the tops of the Ts threw rocks or what ever they had at the animals until they knocked them out or until the animals trampled each other in panic. Then they ate 'em.

 

They maybe were still working on the bottom three tiers of the needs pyramid. They banded together, and planned, and built traps, so they could eat.

 

Regards, TAR2

 

Actually, not a bad theory. It also addresses the mastery and fullfilment and completes the needs pyramid.

[immortal]

There is no proof that Göbekli Tepe was built before agriculture appeared.

 

There is ample evidence that the people who built the temple Gobekli Tepe were foragers and were not people who had a settlement to do agriculture and all. First came the intent to worship and agriculture(civilization) originated has a consequence of that and hence the origin of organized religion was due to psychological factors and not due to physiological needs as you have stated in your OP which is plainly wrong.

[tar]

Immortal,

 

I don't know...what do you think of my "trap" theory.

 

Consider this. Part of the human's ability to rise above other lifeforms on Earth, was our ability to use tools. To extend our pysiological control of our own bodies, to effect and modify and use, the reality around us for survival. Having not the speed and strength, tooth and claw of other animals, we had to outsmart them. Modify the stone and terrain to our benefit.

 

If the stone arrangements in Turkey, that we are talking about, had the purpose I am suggesting, other things might be explained by it as well. Perhaps, when a herd or small group of animals were trapped in such fashion, and all killed, and skinned, there was more meat than could be eaten before it spoiled. Perhaps some animals were trapped but NOT killed. Meat on the hoof, so to speak. The differents rings may have been a system of corrals, where animals could be kept alive by watering and throwing in grasses and vegetation and the inedible, unwearable, and untoolish, portions of the kill. (specially if wild boar were involved in the capture). This practice could have spawned a little animal husbandry, and the retension for longer periods of time, animals that were more managable. The runt and less viscious boars, might have been kept longer, and eventually bred, leading to domesticated pigs. Likewise with the sheep and goats and cattle.

 

It might also explain that Genisis question I have, of why God favored the meat offering over the grain offering. The first "agriculture" might have been arranged to feed the beasts that were going to be eaten later, and grasses and grains were not primarily the food of man, but of their captives.

 

And since it would probably have taken quite an enterprise to get those large stones into position, there may have been use of captive "others" whether man or beast, employed. Hence the "slavery" in the Bible. And some ancestor worship, since once built these "traps" could probably have been used for generations.

 

Such a magnet might explain agriculture and settlement development.

 

Not a psychological need for God...but a partial mastery of objective reality. Arranging objective reality, for our own benefit.

 

Not separate from reality, but having power over it, due to having arrangements with it.

 

Just a thought.

 

Regards, TAR2