Genealogy of Religion

Exploring the Origins, History and Future of Religion

Entries Tagged as 'demography'

The Religion Gene (II)

January 25th, 2011 · 3 Comments · Cognition, Definitions, Evolutionary Byproduct, Methodology

In his paper purporting to show that a beneficial, baby-making “religion gene” will sweep through a population and eventually make everyone religious, Robert Rowthorn ignores this inconvenient fact: nearly everyone in the world is already religious. Here is how it breaks down:

Because fifty percent of the “Non-Religious” group is theistic but not “religious,” we can [...]

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The “Sin” of Sodomy and Demographic Imperatives

July 13th, 2010 · 1 Comment · Ecology, Economy, Evolutionary Adaptation, History, Morality, Power, Ritual

When attempting to determine whether something is “natural ” (vis-a-vis yesterday’s post on Catholicism and homosexuality) one good way of investigating the issue is to use the genealogical method.  So far as I can tell, there are no hunter-gatherer or pre-Neolithic societies that had taboos against homosexuality.  We can therefore trace the history of the [...]

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Agriculture and the Apocalypse

June 15th, 2010 · No Comments · Cultural Evolution, Ecology, Economy, Hunter-Gatherers, Shamanism

By my reading of history, the turning (or tipping) point for humanity was the domestication of plants and animals, otherwise known as the Neolithic Revolution.  Before this occurred — at different places in the world at different times, beginning approximately 12,000 years ago and largely the dominant mode of production by 5,000 years ago — [...]

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