The state-run Saudi news agency announced that a woman named Amina bint Abdulhalim Nassar was publicly beheaded because she claimed to be a healer who could cure ailments for a fee of $800. The religious police arrested her for practicing “witchcraft,” which in this case sounds like a euphemism for faith healing outside of Wahabbist orthodoxy. In Saudi Arabia it is perfectly acceptable to pray to Allah for healing but it is a death sentence to appeal to any other kinds of spirits or forces for healing.

In an interview with Bikya Masr, a Saudi activist complained: “It is wrong and disgusting to kill anyone in this way. Doing this just gets people thinking we live in the Dark Ages.” It apparently would be better if the unorthodox faith healer had been executed in some other less disgusting way. Saudis are living in a high-tech version of the Dark Ages, even if executions remain low-tech.

At the same time Science reports the Saudis are pumping billions of dollars into flagship universities “to help the country move from an oil-based to a knowledge economy.” It goes without saying that only certain kinds of narrow scientific and technological knowledge are acceptable.

This, however, hasn’t deterred at least 60 scientists from accepting yearly stipends of $72,000 for doing little more than naming Saudi universities as affiliate institutions on all their academic publications. Such listings result in higher rankings for Saudi universities.

Scientists can rationalize this however they want and when money is being offered, they will. Neil Robertson, a mathematics professor at Ohio State, commented:

It’s just capitalism. They have the capital and they want to build something out of it. Yes, visibility is very important to them, but they also want to start a Ph.D. program in mathematics. I’m thinking this might be a breath of fresh air in a closed society.

Robertson is “hopeful that outside influence” will help accelerate social reforms in the Kingdom. Unless Robertson can devise equations which prove that beheading a woman for unorthodox beliefs is wrong, I can’t see it happening. Scientists and other academics should think hard about selling their souls to the Saudis.

When fully modern humans left Africa around 75,000 years ago, they almost certainly carried some form of shamanism with them. It is even possible that humans they encountered along the way — those whose ancestors had left Africa during earlier migrations (such as Neanderthals and Denisovans) — were shamanic. We know that some of these encounters involved genetic mixing; they also probably involved ritual mixing. Indeed, having sex with different looking and sounding strangers may have been richly imbued with ritual.

Whatever the case, one thing is certain: wherever humans went, so too did shamanism. It is found throughout Africa, Near East, Europe, Asia, Oceania, Australia, Arctic, and Americas. If you look at any map which shows migration routes from Africa and colonization of the world, the map shows not just the movement of people over tens of thousands of years: it also shows the spread of shamanisms.

All humans were hunter-gatherers and shamanic until the advent of agriculture some 12,000 years ago. But wherever agriculture takes hold in any kind of intensive way, shamanism is transformed into something that looks more like what we today call “religion.” It becomes, in other words, more organized, systematic, and doctrinal. The primacy of individual supernaturalism, a hallmark of shamanism, gives way to collective supernaturalism or formal religions.

In isolated areas where foraging and small-scale horticulture persisted for longer periods of time, so too did shamanism. Traditional shamanism exists today primarily in small-scale societies such as those found in the Amazon and New Guinea. As an ancient practice which many deem to be closer to the “primordial supernatural source,” it is hardly surprising that it has been appropriated and commodified for global use. Commercial neo-shamanism thrives in places like New York, Paris, and Tokyo.

Traditional shamanism was not, however, wholly replaced by Neolithic religions created to meet the needs of agricultural and large-scale societies. As Robert Bellah frequently observes when discussing the history of religions: “nothing is ever lost.” There is in other words a bit of shamanism in all religions today. Ideas about souls, spirits, gods, other-worlds, after-lives, possession, prophecy, and divination were all developed within shamanism and existed for many thousands of years before the earliest religions formalized and systematized them.

This process of incorporation and domestication did not completely subsume shamanism. Strands of shamanism persisted in more traditional forms, especially in rural areas, and elements of it continued to be practiced at the margins under different names: oracles, mediums, healers, diviners, psychics, seers, clairvoyants, sorcerers, and witches. Within more established religions, people who privileged and cultivated the shamanic substrates of those traditions are known as mystics, sages, gurus, prophets, and saints. Shamanism runs as deep as it does wide, and a splendid book on the shamanic aspects of Christianity is begging to be written.

While waiting for this genealogy of shamanic Christianity, it may be less threatening to trace the transformational course of shamanic practice in Japan, where supernatural syncretism has long been the norm. Where syncretism prevails, it is easier to acknowledge borrowings and debts.

In 1975 Carmen Blacker published The Catalpa Bow: A Study of Shamanistic Practices in Japan and highlighted the prevalence of Japanese “folk” beliefs that run alongside and mix with official Shinto and temple Buddhism. In “Witch Animals” (open), Blacker examines belief in animals who have spirits that can be cultivated as household guardians. This is a common idea among hunter-gatherers in general and Amerindians in particular; the latter famously sought visions to identify an animal whose spirit would become a lifelong companion and protector. In “Exorcism” (open), Blacker examines the belief that physical-mental illnesses are caused by spirit maleficence or possession, the cure for which is exorcism. Similar beliefs are found in nearly all shamanic societies, with the cure being a ritualized extraction or casting out.

Blacker is aware of these shamanic connections and suggests in early chapters (open) that Japanese “folk” practices are rooted in an ancient hunting and gathering past. That such practices have persisted is remarkable in light of Meiji period (1868-1912) efforts to modernize Japan, one programmatic aspect of which was to root out shamanic “superstitions” and create a national tradition which conformed to the Western concept and category of “religion.”

Although such superstitions were by the time of the Meiji period identified mostly with Buddhism, this had not always been the case. When Buddhists first arrived in Japan around 550 CE, they encountered an intensely spiritualized landscape that was deeply informed by indigenous Japanese shamanism. This shamanism arose in conjunction with the Jomon peoples, who hunted and gathered in Japan from 14,000-300 BCE, a spectacularly long run during which they built permanent settlements, made pottery, and developed rituals.

As Buddhism developed in Japan it did so not by displacing traditional beliefs developed over 14,000 years, but rather by incorporating and accepting them. This meant that over the centuries Japanese Buddhism developed into a distinctive amalgam described here by Jason A. Josephson:

During the Tokugawa period [1603-1868] the vast majority of interaction between priests and parishioners was for the purpose of practical, this-worldly benefits (genze riyaku 現世利益) or memorial rituals for the dead (kuyō 供養). The day-to-day life of Buddhist priests of all sects was filled with the performance of exorcisms, funerals, distributing healing charms, and spells for rain.

Many of these rituals were intended for apotropaic purposes, banishing monsters, limiting their negative effects, or transforming the curses of ancestors and kami into blessings. Hungry ghosts (gaki 餓鬼) and demons (oni 鬼 or ma 魔) were an integral part of the worldview promoted by the Buddhist establishment; and one of the main benefits of seemingly unconnected activities such as lay ordination rituals, for instance, was to manage these sorts of supernatural entities. Despite later revisionism, both demons and this-worldly magic were fundamental to Buddhism—in canonical texts and in daily practices.

While Buddhist priests were performing these ancient (shamanic) rites during the medieval Tokugawa period (1603-1868), this had not always been the case. For centuries prior, Buddhist priests had been learning this craft from female shamans known as miko. In a recent article on spirit mediums or miko in pre-Tokugawa Japan, Lori Meeks observes that miko were often ensconced in or around temples where they performed a variety of services that were much in demand but were not on official Buddhist offer:

[W]e can find many examples of miko who engaged in a variety of closely linked spiritual services, such as the transmission of oracles from gods and bodhisattvas, which was thought to occur through divine trance; channeling spirits of the dead; divine petition, which sometimes involved exorcism; fortune-telling; rituals and blessings for romantic relationships and childbirth; and physical healing.

Both shrine miko and arukimiko also developed extensive repertoires of spiritual services meant to meet the needs of individual patrons: the conjuring of dead spirits, divination, love rites, and physical healing.

Although miko were tolerated, accommodated, and sometimes celebrated in medieval Japan, they were often viewed with suspicion by government officials attempting to impose control and maintain order in collaboration with more placid and malleable temple Buddhists. Miko were recognized as shamanic atavists and may have served as reminders of an unruly populace or anarchic past. The fact that miko carried drums and danced connects them directly to shamans, as does the fact they were healers.

When it comes to shamans or those who carry on aspects of shamanic tradition within larger-scale societies, the usual course is for shamanic functions to be co-opted by mainstream religious traditions or relegated to the periphery where they are denigrated as “superstition.” The latter epithet is euphemism for “supernatural beliefs not fitted within recognized religions or traditional doctrines.” From the priest to the palmist, all supernatural practitioners are indebted to the universal shaman.

References:

Meeks, Lori (2011). The Disappearing Medium: Reassessing the Place of Miko in the Religious Landscape of Premodern Japan
History of Religions, 50 (3), 208-260 DOI: 10.1086/656611

Josephson, Jason A. (2006). When Buddhism Became a “Religion”: Religion and Superstition in the Writings of Inoue Enryō Japanese Journal of Religious Studies, 33 (1), 143-168

Habu, Junko (2008). Growth and decline in complex hunter-gatherer societies: a case study from the Jomon period Sannai Maruyama site, Japan Antiquity, 82, 571-584

It is a thoughtful exchange but contains nothing new. Similar debates have been ongoing for well over a century without advance or resolution. Science and religion debates which take “God” as a starting point are myopic. They begin with the false assumption that humans throughout history have been preoccupied with the idea of God, and that the monotheistic concept of God is the starting point for this kind of inquiry. Such assumptions are usually embedded in a Whiggish or progressive religious history with “God” being the apotheosis of supernatural thinking.

The kind of “God” that Lightman discusses is a relatively recent idea, limited in time and space, that ignores religious history and diversity. We can see this in the definitions Lightman proposes:

For the purposes of this discussion, and in agreement with almost all religions, God is a being not restricted by the laws that govern matter and energy in the physical universe. In other words, God exists outside matter and energy. In most religions, this Being acts with purpose and will, sometimes violating existing physical laws (i.e., performing miracles), and has additional qualities such as intelligence, compassion and omniscience.

We can categorize religious beliefs according to the degree to which God acts in the world….Most religions, including Christianity, Judaism, Islam and Hinduism, subscribe to an interventionist view of God.

This is just wrong. It is not true that “almost all religions” have this particular conception of “God.” Nor is it true that “most religions” subscribe to an interventionist view of “God.”

Humans have believed in the supernatural for at least 45,000 years and perhaps longer. The anthropomorphic and interventionist kind of God to which Lightman refers is perhaps 3,000 years old. This particular conception of God is limited in time and space. It is a modern God that derives primarily from the Abrahamic faiths (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam). It is not a majority God and never has been.

Because Lightman frames his entire science/religion discussion around the God debates that take place within his own high culture salon, his definitions are not a problem so long as they are limited to that tiny arena. But they are not generalizable.

While Western intellectuals may arrive at resolutions or accommodations they find satisfying, these say little or nothing about debates that haven’t existed throughout most of human history and which huge numbers of modern people without God would never even consider.

Over at The Atlantic, Brian Mockenhaupt reports that US Marines are teaching a kinder, gentler kind of Islam than that which prevails among the Taliban. Who needs Mullah Omar’s conservative and bellicose version of Islam when you can have the Huffington Post’s progressive and peaceful version:

A chaplain since 1999, [Navy chaplain] Solomon had arrived for his first Afghanistan deployment ready to deliver sermons, lead Bible studies, and offer counsel about marital problems, fear, and the sharp grief of losing friends. He has performed those staples of military chaplaincy, but he and his colleagues have also increasingly found themselves in the unexpected role of counterinsurgent.

This is tricky territory for chaplains, whose job is to facilitate religious expression, but not, as noncombatants, to participate in the prosecution of war. That’s an easy distinction on a battlefield: say prayers with the troops; don’t fight beside them. But what about when interpretations of religion can either feed violence or quell it?

The relative lack of education in rural Afghanistan complicates this challenge. Many of the area’s mullahs, the equivalent of small-town preachers, can’t read and write in Pashto, never mind Arabic, the language of the Koran. That makes it hard for them to deeply understand the Koran and the tenets of Islam, and easy for the Taliban to spread its version of both the duties of good Muslims.

Here, “deep understanding” is code for “our understanding.” Solomon and his Afghani assistant are giving “Koran lessons” so local citizens can understand “Islam’s true nature.” Islam does not have an essential  “nature.” Lacking any such nature, there can be no “true” Islam. There will always be many kinds of “Islams.”

All this aside, the Marines would get more bang for their proselytizing buck by teaching literacy in conjunction with reader response theory. And if the Marines really wanted to be subversive, they would hire Stanley Fish to revise his book and ask the locals: Is There a Koran in This Village?

While Weber surely was right to argue that religion and economy influence one another dialectically, few scholars accept his argument that capitalism was made possible by Calvinism. Although the Protestant Ethic remains a classic, its reputation has dimmed. Few have been more scathing in their criticism than Rodney Stark, who takes Weber to the woodshed in “Putting an End to Ancestor Worship“:

[E]conomic historians long ago dismissed Weber’s monograph as anti-Catholic nonsense on the irrefutable grounds that the rise of capitalism in Europe preceded the Reformation by centuries. Weber was aware that economic historians rejected his thesis on the basis of time order. Consequently, he progressively made his definitions finer in an attempt to restrict capitalism to “modern” Reformation business organizations. Clearly, Weber inserted the adjective “modern” in order to confound those who argued that capitalism was far older than Protestantism.

If Protestant ideals didn’t create capitalism, this doesn’t mean religion had no impact on the mercantilism and mindset that led to it. It simply means we should shift our temporal focus and look for earlier possible influences.

In “The Protestant Ethic and the Parsis,” Robert Kennedy does just this and suggests that Zoroastrianism — an ancestral monotheism — set the stage for Modernity, which encompasses not only capitalism but also science. Kennedy identifies five abstract values associated with Modernity: (1) an underlying order in nature, (2) sensory standard of verification, (3) material work is intrinsically good, (4) maximization of material prosperity, and (5) accumulation rather than consumption of material goods.

Zoroastrian and Parsi Symbol-Motif

Using historical data on the Parsis or Zoroastrian Persians who fled from Iran to India after the Islamic conquest in the 8th century AD, Kennedy examines their beliefs, culture, and society for correspondences. Finding many, Kennedy suggests that modern economy and science may have roots in Zoroastrian religion.

It is an unfortunate fact that we know less about Zoroastrianism than we would like. Although it was the official state religion of the Persian Empire for nearly seven centuries, the conquering Muslims attempted to eradicate every vestige of the faith. One thing is certain: Zoroastrian ideas and influences can be found in Judaism and Christianity. This raises an interesting possibility.

Nietzsche asserted that modern science arose in the West because the West was Christian. To make a long intellectual history short, Christianity’s obsessive search for sacred “Truth” turned on itself and (paradoxically) gave rise to a profane search for truth, which we now call science. If there is in fact a connection between Christianity and science, there may be an even deeper (or older) connection between Zoroastrianism and science.

References:

Stark, R. (2004). SSSR Presidential Address, 2004: Putting an End to Ancestor Worship Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 43 (4), 465-475 DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-5906.2004.00249.x

Kennedy, Jr., R. (1962). The Protestant Ethic and the Parsis American Journal of Sociology, 68 (1) DOI: 10.1086/223262

Interior Minister: But we also have to realize that the abuse of Islam by Islamist extremists has contributed to this.

Spiegel: Anders Breivik claims to have acted in the name of Christendom. In doing so, is he misusing Christianity in a way that’s similar to how Osama bin Laden misused Islam?

Interior Minister: Someone who disregards individuals’ life and limb, and their dignity as human beings, cannot invoke Christianity.

Islamists “abusing Islam”? Breivek “misusing Christianity”? Islamists can and do invoke Islam to support their views and actions, just as Breivek invoked Christianity to support his views and actions. It is textual and historical nonsense to assert there is only one way (i.e., the Minister’s neutered and progressive one) to understand Islam and Christianity.

While the Minister’s authenticity error is common enough and mildly risible, the interview shortly takes a turn for the bizarre:

Spiegel: On your first day in office as German interior minister, you famously said that the idea that Islam is part of Germany is something “that cannot be proved by history.”

Minister: I was talking about the issue of Germany’s identity. This identity is shaped by Christianity and the Enlightenment, not by Islam. I don’t have to qualify that.

Is he talking about the identity that resulted in the horrors of a world war and genocide? Onward, Enlightened German Christian soldiers.

In 1964 the sociologist Robert Bellah did just this in his classic paper, Religious Evolution. Taking as his premise Eric Voegelin’s idea that cultural history describes an arc that moves from “compact” to “differentiated” symbol systems over time, Bellah posits five stages in the history of religions: (1) Primitive, (2) Archaic, (3) Historic, (4) Early Modern, and (5) Modern. The kinds of religions that Bellah associates with each of these stages deserves a post of its own, but for our purposes the important points are that “Primitive” is shamanic, “Archaic” is diffuse cult polytheism, and “Historic-Modern” is textual and systematized. Most religions today are of the latter variety.

Despite cursory appearances, Bellah’s typology is neither progressive nor normative. As Bellah is at pains to emphasize, his is not a unilinear evolutionary model:

Of course the scheme itself is not intended as an adequate description of historical reality. Particular lines of religious development cannot simply be forced into the terms of the scheme. In reality there may be compromise formations involving elements from two stages which I have for theoretical reasons discriminated; earlier stages may, as I have already suggested, strikingly foreshadow later developments; and more developed may regress to less developed stages.

And of course no stage is ever completely abandoned; all earlier stages continue to coexist with and often within later ones. So what I shall present is not intended as a procrustean bed into which the facts of history are to be forced but a theoretical construction against which historical facts may be illuminated.

Because history is continuous and no stage is ever completely abandoned — each is incorporated into subsequent stages, we can find elements or traces of “Primitive” (i.e., earliest) religions in “Modern” (contemporary) religions. In concrete terms, this means that “modern” religions such as Christianity and Islam contain within them ideas and concepts characteristic of “primitive” religions, otherwise known as shamanisms. Shamanic beliefs and practices constitute the earliest forms of supernaturalism and prefigure all modern religions.

I was recently reminded of Bellah’s typology while reading about Sami shamanism and Phoenician polytheism. The Sami are (or were) hunter-gatherers living in the boreal forest areas of northern Scandinavia and Russia. They were known to the Roman historian Tacitus, who wrote about them in 98 AD. At some point, the reindeer hunting Sami domesticated the animal and many became pastoralists. They interacted extensively with the Vikings, and were subjected to aggressive Christian colonizing beginning in the 1500s. Although their traditional ways of life had largely been destroyed by the late nineteenth century, there are numerous accounts of Sami beliefs and practices. In Bellah’s scheme, these would be characterized as “Primitive” or shamanic.

The Phoenicians were a trading and seafaring people who occupied the coastal areas of present day Syria, Lebanon, Israel, and North Africa (Carthage). Organized into city-states which at times were in alliance and others in conflict, the Phoenicians dominated much of the Mediterranean from 1200 to 500 BC. Carthage persisted until 146 BC, when it was destroyed by the Romans in the final Punic War. Although it is unclear whether Phoenicians considered themselves to be a distinct ethnic group, they spoke a common language and developed the first phonetic alphabet. They interacted extensively with all Mediterranean peoples, prominently including the Greeks. In Bellah’s scheme, their religion would be characterized as Archaic (cult polytheism).

In “Varro Muorra: The Landscape Significance of Sami Sacred Wooden Objects and Sacrificial Altars,” Ingela Bergman and colleagues provide an introduction to the Sami, who believed that all things — animals and landscapes in particular — were imbued with spirits or spiritual power. Although the authors characterize this as “animism,” it is actually a kind of pantheism coupled with beliefs in a variety of major and minor spirits. This is precisely the sort of thing we would expect to find among people who are nomadic hunter-gatherers, and is in fact characteristic of such peoples across time and space.

What is unusual, however, about Sami supernaturalism is their intensive use of varro muorra, a concept that exclusively denotes sacred wooden objects. These objects included scaffolds that functioned as offering platforms and carvings that represented or contained spirits. While other hunter-gatherers are known for using wooden scaffolds (usually for mortuary purposes) and wooden objects (in medicine bundles), widespread and intensive usage of these items is uncommon in shamanic practice. It certainly makes one wonder whether earlier contact with Norse pagans and later interaction with Scandinavian Christians influenced Sami ritualism. It also demonstrates Bellah’s observation that a particular religion may be “compromise formations involving elements from two stages,” which in this instance would be Primitive (shamanism) and Archaic (cult ritualism).

Another example of mixed element religious practice comes from “Phoenician Cult Stones,” an article published by Eugene Stockton in 1974. Before surveying the many instances of Phoenician temples and cult stones proper, Stockton observes that sacred rocks belong to a “primitive substratum” of religion; indeed, unusually shaped rocks have long been a part of sacred shamanic landscapes and forager medicine bundles. Such rocks were often considered to be the residing place of ancient spirits. More recently but still before Phoenician times, incipient and early agriculturalists erected megalithic structures for ritual purposes. This appears to be a vestigial practice carried over from shamanic formations.

It is hardly surprising, therefore, that the Phoenicians (and the Greeks) venerated stones, often erecting them in temples and other ritual spaces. Once in place and properly dedicated, the stones could either harbor deities or represent them. This is a practice with a deep history, one that manifests itself even in “Modern” religions. One need look no further than the ritual foci of Islam — the sacred Black Stone, embedded in the holy granite cube known as the Kaaba — to see this is the case. Indeed, the Black Stone most likely pre-dates Islam and was revered by nomadic Arabian pagans.

Where does all this leave us? First, it shows that Bellah’s stages are a useful heuristic for illuminating unsuspected or unnoticed connections between seemingly disparate religions. Second, it demonstrates that religious history is multilinear and diffusion works in two directions: from the “Primitive” to the “Modern” and vice versa. Finally, it attests to the fact that no religion is sui generis: all have a history and none stands alone.

References:

Bellah, R. (1964). Religious Evolution American Sociological Review, 29 (3) DOI: 10.2307/2091480

Bergman, I., Ostlund, L., Zackrisson, O., & Liedgren, L. (2008). Varro Muorra: The Landscape Significance of Sami Sacred Wooden Objects and Sacrificial Altars Ethnohistory, 55 (1), 1-28 DOI: 10.1215/00141801-2007-044

Stockton, Eugene D. (1974). Phoenician Cult Stones Australian Journal of Biblical Archaeology, 2.3, 1-27

Jeff Schloss and Michael Murray have written a “target article” in Religion, Brain & Behavior entitled: “Evolutionary Accounts of Belief in Supernatural Punishment: A Critical Review”. Schloss and Murray’s argument is as follows. In recent years a wide range of adaptationist, byproduct, and memetic explanations has emerged for various recurrent features of religious belief and practice. One feature that has figured prominently in adaptationist accounts of religion is belief in the reality of moralizing, punishing supernatural agents.

However, there is at present no unified theory of what fitness-relevant feature of the selective environment this cognitive predisposition is adapted to. Schloss and Murray distinguish two divergent and often conflated approaches to supernatural punishment theory, which hypothesize that the adaptive value of beliefs in supernatural punishment arise either because they increase cooperation among group members (”cooperation enhancement”), or decrease the cost of incurring (real world) punishment for norm violations (”punishment avoidance”).

Although a number of scholars have provided comments to the Schloss and Murray article, Rodney Stark does not appear to be one of them. This is most unfortunate, given that Stark has written a classic article — “Gods, Rituals, and the Moral Order” — which directly addresses these issues and tests them with actual religious history (rather than abstract game theory).

Of supreme importance is the fact that “punishing, moralizing supernatural agents” (or gods) appear in very few religions, and those few in which they do appear are relative latecomers in religious history. Indeed, a strong argument can be made that a robust punishing, moralizing god originated with Judaism and is primarily associated with the Abrahamic faiths. Punishing and moralizing supernatural agents certainly are not associated with the many forms of shamanism that constituted the original “religions” of Upper Paleolithic humans.

If this is the case, it makes little sense to hypothesize about the “adaptive value” of the punishing and moralizing God of Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and successor sects such as Mormons and Jehovah’s Witness. While this localized and modern conception of God may make Jews, Christians, and Muslims more “cooperative” and “moral,” this says nothing about human evolution or the origins of “religion.”

Framing the issue in this way makes about as much sense as asking how the cognitive predisposition for nationalism (another late development in human history) is adaptive. I am not aware of any scholars who analyze nationalism by asking “what fitness-relevant feature of the selective environment it is adapted to.” Why? Because biological evolutionary mechanisms have minimal explanatory power in modern cultural and historical settings.

The adaptationist yearning for a “unified theory” results in an erroneous conflation of biological evolution with cultural history. The tools of the former are ill adapted to analysis of the latter.

While lab experiments may show that supernatural surveillance impacts behavior, this is precisely what one would expect in Western cultures permeated with the idea that God punishes moral transgressions. Such experiments tell us nothing about the evolution of cooperation or religion.

Reference:

Stark, R. (2001). Gods, Rituals, and the Moral Order Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 40 (4), 619-636 DOI: 10.1111/0021-8294.00081

In a dual review, Malise Ruthven covers Fred Donner’s Muhammad and the Believers: At the Origins of Islam and Bernard Lewis’ Faith and Power: Religion and Politics in the Middle East. Though not entirely believable, Donner’s book is essential reading for anyone interested in early Islamic history. Lewis has written better books but if you have not read any of his work, this is a lite introduction.

The first patient to enter his reception room was a young woman in red flowing garb typical of the rural inhabitants of eastern Kurdistan. The mother explained that the day her daughter became engaged to a relative, she had developed fainting fits, nightmares, foul moods and an inability to walk. She continued to faint at the talk of marriage.

[Mullah Eskandar] explained that the young woman was possessed by a jinn, one of the race of evil spirits that the Koran blames for sowing mischief and illness in the world — in this case, spreading discord in the young woman’s family by disrupting her marriage.

To banish the jinn, Mullah Eskandar prescribed a regimen of prayers, daily bathing and rosewater perfume. And he counseled the patient on the responsibilities of a daughter to marry and the happiness that awaited her once she had a family of her own.

You do not need to be Freud to know that the young woman was being perfectly sensible and acting out in the only way available to her given what appears to be an “arranged” (i.e., forced) marriage to a creepy cousin.

The mullah’s healing technique, though couched in the language of folk Islam, is no different from ancient shamanic methods: “blaming the jinn allowed the family to see the young woman’s misbehavior as aberrant and shifted responsibility from her to a supernatural being.”

There is no report on whether these euphemisms and fictions resulted in “healing” for this unfortunate young woman.