Post by Elliot Kane on Dec 28, 2009 10:08:46 GMT
Social Evolution: Religion
Religion is rather like television. It begins by reflecting the society it was created to serve, progresses to becoming a ubiquitous part of it and then moves on to exerting an influence over it. Not that this is unique to either television or religion, of course. It is simply the way of strong social trends to create what amounts to a feedback circuit within their societies, wherein they grow from the society and then affect the growth of that society.
Unlike television, however, religion has always been intended to do that.
It is not the goal of this article to explore whether any religion is more or less factual than any other; whether any deity or deities exist or otherwise, not how (or if) they tie into any religions. This article concerns itself only with the evolution of human religions over time and how those religions reflect and inform their societies, before falling into the dust of history. The why of that last being obvious, it will also be dealt with.
Religion would appear to have begun, according to many historians (With whom I am disinclined to argue, as their ideas here make sense
) with Animism: the idea that inanimate objects, such as stones or trees or streams, have their own guiding spirit. For a primitive society which is close to nature, this obviously makes a great deal of sense. If there are spirits in all things, you are careful and respectful of all things, because you don't want to draw the wrath of the spirits down upon your head. To a simple people, this explains the inexplicable (Why did Ug get struck by lightning? Must be spirits!) and also serves the added purpose of making them move around more quietly (No snapping tree branches, throwing stones into rivers, etc) which helps both in the hunt and in avoiding predators. It also imbues the society with a certain natural awareness of their environment, which is most certainly an excellent survival trait for any small tribe surrounded by a hostile environment.
Time passes and human knowledge grows. Human power relative to other species increases and the size od human tribes grows with it. We have tools and are developing more complex social structures. The point is reached where Animism no longer answers the questions the people are asking and in some ways becomes downright inconvenient. We need logs for primitive cabins, stones must be shaped for tools, metals are discovered and worked. If they all have spirits, that's an awful lot of spirits to appease, so the new religion needs to be able to do that for us. Spirits are no longer powerful enough in our minds that we must heed them, so the first pantheons of gods are discovered/created.
A pantheistic approach has a number of very obvious advantages. It sets out a social hierarchy that may be emulated, including both families and rulers. The members of the pantheon serve as exemplars to the people and also provide specific deities to entreaty for specific things. There will be deities for important crafts - such as smithing and farming. Deities of life, death and childbirth; of war and justice (Though it must be noted that Justice is rather a johnny-come-lately and is most unlikely to appear as such in earlier pantheons. The judge of the dead appears to be ubiquitous, however). Stories about the deities are used to instruct the children of the society in correct social behaviour and to guide the adults when they are unsure of the correct course. Religion as a strong binding force is born.
Of course, religion as a strong dividing force is also born, with certain deities being considered more or less important in areas nominally under the same religion, whilst any clash of culture is surely exacerbated by religious differences. The idea of using religion as an excuse to raid the neighbouring tribes is certainly born at this point.
It is worth noting as a side point that while religion has been given as the excuse for wars without number throughout history, any close examination of the wars in question will quickly show that religion is the excuse used by the rulers to motivate their peoples rather than the real reason. You'd be amazed at how many 'religious' wars have been fought over conveniently placed mines or other resources, or as a distraction from internal strife. Even wars within religions are more usually about the balance of power held by one side or the other (Is anyone truly naeieve enough to think the Pope ordered the destruction of the Cathars, as one example, for any other reason than that he felt they were a threat to his temporal power? I should hope not!).
So religion is both exemplar and excuse; educator and guide. It is a relief valve for the people's fear of death, and a uniting force within the tribe but a dividing force within humanity as a whole. A thing of extremes indeed!
But human society evolves, of course, growing ever more complex and developing more and more situations that are not really covered by the current religion. Neighbours are discovered with whom one might live at peace, on the basis that they are as brutal and ruthless as one's own tribe and the certainty of actually winning any war with them is just that bit too UNcertain for comfort. besides which, trade between them and you is lucrative for all concerned and wars are expensive. They may well be the wrong religion, but they have silk rugs and you don't. Somehow those differences are seeming a lot less important...
Human society grows ever more complex. New discoveries are made, the march of science advances and things that made sense to the distant ancestors of a couple of centuries ago are far less sensible now. The growing sophistication means it takes a lot more to impress us and a more complex set of social instructions needs to be born. For a while, a complicated enough pantheon might do the job, but sooner or later most socieites discover either Dualism or Monotheism.
The setup for both is quite simple: there's a Good Guy and a Bad Guy. A good member of society is on the side of the Good Guy and will be rewarded for it. A bad member of society is on the side of the Bad Guy and goes to serve him when they die, which is no fun as the Bad Guy enjoys torturing those silly enough to side with him. For eternity! Dualism makes the mistake of setting the two on an equal level, which is why it ultimately failed to take the place of pantheism. No guaranteed victory for the Good Guy, you see? Who wants to risk being on the losing side?
But Monotheism has the answer: the Good Guy will ultimately overthrow the Bad Guy at some future point, as he is SO much stronger, so obviously the smart money is on serving the Good Guy. Which means following the social rules laid down in the religion, making sure you are a good and productive member of society and in general fitting in well with your tribe. By remarkable coincidence, the rules of the religion adhere pretty strictly to the needs of the society as a whole and to the people within it (Whether they are smart enough to realise it or not). Because the deity is infinitely powerful, he can now cover pretty much any unexplained emergency so the nasty little slips are avoided (We know how lightning bolts really happens. There's no red-headed giant chucking the things. Sorry...).
This is why the rules of any religion are easily explicable if you only care to look at the time and place where the religion is born. Whether religion is the gift of a deity/deities or otherwise, it is nonetheless designed for the people and the society in which it first occurs.
There is one aspect of religion we have yet to really touch upon: the clergy. Almost every religion has its priesthood, however structured or otherwise that priesthood might be. Whether the 'priest' is a shaman, a hermit or wise man, a monk or any other of the many types of clergy, the function is essentially the same: to act as moral and social advisor to the people and to smooth out any problems they may have with the religion.
Where the job of govt is to provide a legal framework in which the society can grow and thrive, the job of the priest is to maintain social cohesion by soothing the fears of the people and encouraging them to be good citizens by following the rules of the religion. Think of clergy and govt as two horses trying to pull the same cart. If they are wise, they work together and do not try to usurp each other's domain, so that the cart moves smoothly and easily along its track, with the people inside not ever really thinking of the horses doing all the work. If the two horses are stupid, however, they either lose track of their own role and get distracted or they try to steal each other's proper domain. You can imagine the effects on the people in the cart when that happens...
So anyways, that's how religions fall in and out of favour over time. It's interesting to note that while the types of religion change as societies develop, the actual purpose of religion stays constant throughout. Always, religion is about social cohesion: a common set of values to unite a tribe in times of peril and smooth out the frictions between individuals when times are good. People who feel they are fully a part of their society are happier than those who do not.
***
For the curious, this is likely to be the first of a series of articles. It seemed the best place to start, as I'm not sure I've ever really addressed this in sufficient detail in the past...
Religion is rather like television. It begins by reflecting the society it was created to serve, progresses to becoming a ubiquitous part of it and then moves on to exerting an influence over it. Not that this is unique to either television or religion, of course. It is simply the way of strong social trends to create what amounts to a feedback circuit within their societies, wherein they grow from the society and then affect the growth of that society.
Unlike television, however, religion has always been intended to do that.
It is not the goal of this article to explore whether any religion is more or less factual than any other; whether any deity or deities exist or otherwise, not how (or if) they tie into any religions. This article concerns itself only with the evolution of human religions over time and how those religions reflect and inform their societies, before falling into the dust of history. The why of that last being obvious, it will also be dealt with.
Religion would appear to have begun, according to many historians (With whom I am disinclined to argue, as their ideas here make sense
) with Animism: the idea that inanimate objects, such as stones or trees or streams, have their own guiding spirit. For a primitive society which is close to nature, this obviously makes a great deal of sense. If there are spirits in all things, you are careful and respectful of all things, because you don't want to draw the wrath of the spirits down upon your head. To a simple people, this explains the inexplicable (Why did Ug get struck by lightning? Must be spirits!) and also serves the added purpose of making them move around more quietly (No snapping tree branches, throwing stones into rivers, etc) which helps both in the hunt and in avoiding predators. It also imbues the society with a certain natural awareness of their environment, which is most certainly an excellent survival trait for any small tribe surrounded by a hostile environment.Time passes and human knowledge grows. Human power relative to other species increases and the size od human tribes grows with it. We have tools and are developing more complex social structures. The point is reached where Animism no longer answers the questions the people are asking and in some ways becomes downright inconvenient. We need logs for primitive cabins, stones must be shaped for tools, metals are discovered and worked. If they all have spirits, that's an awful lot of spirits to appease, so the new religion needs to be able to do that for us. Spirits are no longer powerful enough in our minds that we must heed them, so the first pantheons of gods are discovered/created.
A pantheistic approach has a number of very obvious advantages. It sets out a social hierarchy that may be emulated, including both families and rulers. The members of the pantheon serve as exemplars to the people and also provide specific deities to entreaty for specific things. There will be deities for important crafts - such as smithing and farming. Deities of life, death and childbirth; of war and justice (Though it must be noted that Justice is rather a johnny-come-lately and is most unlikely to appear as such in earlier pantheons. The judge of the dead appears to be ubiquitous, however). Stories about the deities are used to instruct the children of the society in correct social behaviour and to guide the adults when they are unsure of the correct course. Religion as a strong binding force is born.
Of course, religion as a strong dividing force is also born, with certain deities being considered more or less important in areas nominally under the same religion, whilst any clash of culture is surely exacerbated by religious differences. The idea of using religion as an excuse to raid the neighbouring tribes is certainly born at this point.
It is worth noting as a side point that while religion has been given as the excuse for wars without number throughout history, any close examination of the wars in question will quickly show that religion is the excuse used by the rulers to motivate their peoples rather than the real reason. You'd be amazed at how many 'religious' wars have been fought over conveniently placed mines or other resources, or as a distraction from internal strife. Even wars within religions are more usually about the balance of power held by one side or the other (Is anyone truly naeieve enough to think the Pope ordered the destruction of the Cathars, as one example, for any other reason than that he felt they were a threat to his temporal power? I should hope not!).
So religion is both exemplar and excuse; educator and guide. It is a relief valve for the people's fear of death, and a uniting force within the tribe but a dividing force within humanity as a whole. A thing of extremes indeed!
But human society evolves, of course, growing ever more complex and developing more and more situations that are not really covered by the current religion. Neighbours are discovered with whom one might live at peace, on the basis that they are as brutal and ruthless as one's own tribe and the certainty of actually winning any war with them is just that bit too UNcertain for comfort. besides which, trade between them and you is lucrative for all concerned and wars are expensive. They may well be the wrong religion, but they have silk rugs and you don't. Somehow those differences are seeming a lot less important...
Human society grows ever more complex. New discoveries are made, the march of science advances and things that made sense to the distant ancestors of a couple of centuries ago are far less sensible now. The growing sophistication means it takes a lot more to impress us and a more complex set of social instructions needs to be born. For a while, a complicated enough pantheon might do the job, but sooner or later most socieites discover either Dualism or Monotheism.
The setup for both is quite simple: there's a Good Guy and a Bad Guy. A good member of society is on the side of the Good Guy and will be rewarded for it. A bad member of society is on the side of the Bad Guy and goes to serve him when they die, which is no fun as the Bad Guy enjoys torturing those silly enough to side with him. For eternity! Dualism makes the mistake of setting the two on an equal level, which is why it ultimately failed to take the place of pantheism. No guaranteed victory for the Good Guy, you see? Who wants to risk being on the losing side?
But Monotheism has the answer: the Good Guy will ultimately overthrow the Bad Guy at some future point, as he is SO much stronger, so obviously the smart money is on serving the Good Guy. Which means following the social rules laid down in the religion, making sure you are a good and productive member of society and in general fitting in well with your tribe. By remarkable coincidence, the rules of the religion adhere pretty strictly to the needs of the society as a whole and to the people within it (Whether they are smart enough to realise it or not). Because the deity is infinitely powerful, he can now cover pretty much any unexplained emergency so the nasty little slips are avoided (We know how lightning bolts really happens. There's no red-headed giant chucking the things. Sorry...).
This is why the rules of any religion are easily explicable if you only care to look at the time and place where the religion is born. Whether religion is the gift of a deity/deities or otherwise, it is nonetheless designed for the people and the society in which it first occurs.
There is one aspect of religion we have yet to really touch upon: the clergy. Almost every religion has its priesthood, however structured or otherwise that priesthood might be. Whether the 'priest' is a shaman, a hermit or wise man, a monk or any other of the many types of clergy, the function is essentially the same: to act as moral and social advisor to the people and to smooth out any problems they may have with the religion.
Where the job of govt is to provide a legal framework in which the society can grow and thrive, the job of the priest is to maintain social cohesion by soothing the fears of the people and encouraging them to be good citizens by following the rules of the religion. Think of clergy and govt as two horses trying to pull the same cart. If they are wise, they work together and do not try to usurp each other's domain, so that the cart moves smoothly and easily along its track, with the people inside not ever really thinking of the horses doing all the work. If the two horses are stupid, however, they either lose track of their own role and get distracted or they try to steal each other's proper domain. You can imagine the effects on the people in the cart when that happens...
So anyways, that's how religions fall in and out of favour over time. It's interesting to note that while the types of religion change as societies develop, the actual purpose of religion stays constant throughout. Always, religion is about social cohesion: a common set of values to unite a tribe in times of peril and smooth out the frictions between individuals when times are good. People who feel they are fully a part of their society are happier than those who do not.
***
For the curious, this is likely to be the first of a series of articles. It seemed the best place to start, as I'm not sure I've ever really addressed this in sufficient detail in the past...
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