The Social Origins of Religion with a Focus on Christianity.

It is my suspicion and the suspicion of others that religion is social originated, as most if not all historical texts, from the elite minority(Monarchies) that have dominated society since civilization began.

This is a huge claim but bear with it until I at least offer some evidence.

My reasoning is as follows;

Premise # 1

Historically, Monarchies have always had to deal with two underlying threats to their power in relation to their subjects(peasants, slaves, workers, etc). Social rebellion and revolution and mutiny/military abandonment.

Note: The ruling class needs these two very important threats to be contained because you cannot rule those who rebel against you and wish to take violently what you have and you cannot spread your influence without a military.

Premise # 2

It is easier to psychologically manipulate/coerce a group of people to have less than you do(if you are a ruling class) than it is to physically suppress them. For example, instead of stopping a group of people from stealing the riches you have accumulated from THEIR LABOUR with physical force, it is much easier to tell convince them and condition them to believe that they will SUFFER THE WORSE PUNISHMENT FROM GOD.

Premise # 3

The ruling class were most likely, though not necessarily, those who were responsible for the transmission/passing of history from one generation to another.

Conclusion:

It is reasonable to suspect that the ruling class would employ religious dogma to mitigate rebellions and mutinies.

Here is some evidence in the NT and OT that characterizes and suggests that the ruling class are responsible for the bible.

Note: I am automatically assuming that the bible is simply a collection of historical accounts and spiritual theories.

Sirach 10

1 A wise ruler will educate his people, and his government will be orderly.2 All the officials and all the citizens will be like their ruler.3 An uneducated king will ruin his people, but a government will grow strong if its rulers are wise.4 The Lord sees to the government of the world and brings the right person to power at the right time.5 The success of that person is in the Lord's hands. The Lord is the source of the honor given to any official.


Obey the King

Ecclesiastes 8 OT

2Obey the king’s command, I say, because you took an oath before God. 3Do not be in a hurry to leave the king’s presence. Do not stand up for a bad cause, for he will do whatever he pleases. 4Since a king’s word is supreme, who can say to him, “What are you doing?”

5Whoever obeys his command will come to no harm,
and the wise heart will know the proper time and procedure.

6For there is a proper time and procedure for every matter,though a man’s misery weighs heavily upon him.

7Since no man knows the future,who can tell him what is to come?8No man has power over the wind to contain it;so no one has power over the day of his death.As no one is discharged in time of war,so wickedness will not release those who practice it.


Romans 13 1-7

A Christians duty to the state.


Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. 2 Consequently, whoever rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves. 3 For rulers hold no terror for those who do right, but for those who do wrong. Do you want to be free from fear of the one in authority? Then do what is right and you will be commended. 4 For the one in authority is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for rulers do not bear the sword for no reason. They are God’s servants, agents of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer. 5 Therefore, it is necessary to submit to the authorities, not only because of possible punishment but also as a matter of conscience.

6 This is also why you pay taxes, for the authorities are God’s servants, who give their full time to governing. 7 Give to everyone what you owe them: If you owe taxes, pay taxes; if revenue, then revenue; if respect, then respect; if honor, then honor.

 

Religion is multifunctional. It performs functions for elites, groups, governments, families and individual believers. Deciding which comes first or is more important is a classic chicken and egg problem, but the phenomenon goes back to the Neanderthals who didn't have much government or social stratification. In Breaking the Spell, Daniel C. Dennett gives a more sophisticated secular account of the social origins of religion without even getting into the "god gene" theory. Your account addresses only the governmental and hierarchical aspects which are not necessarily the most important ones. Religion has often served the cause of rebellion, e.g., the widespread dissatisfaction with the Herodians, Hashmoneans, Sadducees, Romans,etc., in Palestine during the first decades of the first century and earlier. The examples that you give are from the Christian tradition at a time when the early Christians were trying to convince the Roman authorities they weren't threatening. To understand the origins of religion, we need to go back a bit farther--say to paleolithic and neolithic times. I don't think religion originated from the elite, but they sure took advantage of it.

 

Both Books, except the one written by Paul were purportedly written 200-300 years before Jesus came into existence.

I cannot see how it is a christian tradition and there is also evidence that this tradition of associating a ruling class with gods intention and grace runs through other religion's such as Hinduism as well.

Take for example Samsara in respect to the caste system. According to Hindu Text's one is born into a caste on behalf of Karma that you have developed in a past life. So for example, if you are born into the untouchable's caste system, one always associated with a slave like existence, it is because of some Negative Karma that you accumulated in your past life and not simply because your parents themselves are of that class...

I do believe and suspect that the real roots of religious thinking arose from Ruling Class because in societies they are the ones responsible for education and controlling what a person believes. Not only this, but also that the ruling class is always responsible for the transmission of history from one generation to the next.

Religion is definitely multifunctional but arose primarily out of a need to control and to maintain control throughout time.

 

That book is hugely criticized and easily debunked. There is clear evidence of many cultures in the world that never had any formal religion. Obviously, each culture has their own account of an afterlife, but views and interpretations such an important part of human existence can easily drawn from its impact on individuals within that group and not from some natural phenomena that draws us to form religious belief. Ever heard of the Papua New Guinea tribes and how they have been living for thousands of years without ANY FORM of religious belief. At most they have a view of an afterlife but no moral/ethical connection to it, as most religions have as a fundamental aspect; how do my actions affect my experiences in the afterlife? These peoples and they are numerous do not have and have never shown any perceptibly distinct cultural notion that compares to the veracity we find in major religions in the world. In their culture, there is no ruling class either. They are pockets of tribes ranging from 10-40 individuals that lead a nomadic existence.

I agree with that, however, how can we rule out that dissent was not planned and implanted intentionally by another ruling class wishing to take power from the one immediate ruling class that controlled to each of those groups of people??? Just because religion leads to rebellion, doesn't negate what I said, in fact it can be interpreted in favor of it.

 

What about societies that didn't have much of a "ruling class" to speak of: acephalous societies like the Dinka and Nuer, the egalitarian societies of the plains Indians, the Australian aboriginees, etc.? Religious rituals and beliefs are important to them. We also have evidence from Neaderthal and Cromagnon graves indicating awareness of an afterlife, and the Cro-Magnon cave art is thought to have religious significance. Hunter gatherer societies in Sungir were burying their dead surrounded by their wealth 25,000 years ago, and Cro-Magnon cave art flourished 40,000 years ago. I think that religion began when humans became aware of their own frailty and mortality, which was probably day one, and tried to cope with it. Humans are the only species we know of who can contemplate their own death and reflect on the deaths of their loved ones. They seek control over nature, yes, but not necessarily the hierarchical power over others you seem to be talking about. Samsara came rather late in the game, as a result of conquest. Admittedly, elites used religion to further their own ends (I said that earlier) but I don't think there's evidence that that's been the main factor.

 

But it did not, clearly this is the case because religious belief is not something that ALL CULTURES experience equally and thus claiming that religion naturally arises does no justice.

There is a huge difference between burying your dead and believing that if you have steal from the rich that you will land yourself in hell or in poverty in the next life.

It would be natural for humans to develop beliefs and rituals about death. It is an important and critical part of life.

But to think of some all powerful entity that judges you for sexual acts and seeking power can somehow exhibit itself naturally is a huge huge leap of faith.

In my opinion, these harsh and punishment based religions only arose when a class structure arose in a group of individuals. Most major religions in the world, are not by coincidence punishment based. Most small groups in the history of mankind on the other hand have had beliefs about deaths and rituals, but never did they implicate themselves as under the authority of a god with specific and outlandish moral requirements.

 

Historically, all known human cultures have developed religion. Whether or not they did so "equally" is probably an untestable hypothesis.

Yes there is: the difference between early religion and late religion. Belief in hell was a rather late development. The Egyptians had a form of it in the judgment of souls, but the Persians really refined the concept. Judaism throughout most of its history had no such concept until the Persian dominion, and the Sadducees continued to resist the notion of an afterlife when Jesus was alive. Judaism did, of course, have the concept of a wrathful punishing god, but the punishment happened in this world, not the next. Judaism is a special case, a patriarchal pastoral society with an alpha male Sky God characteristic of such societies. Goddess-centered fertility religions, which abounded in neolithic times and later around the world, had more nurturing deities. Heavily pregnant "Venus" figurines, found throughout Europe, date to c.25,000-15,000 BCE. Even among the ancient Israelites and Jews, the worship of Ashera continued alongside that of Yahweh until the Babylonian captivity, despite the best efforts of the Yawehist priests.

Yes. Its called religion .

You seem to be equating religious belief with belief in a punishing deity. Anthropologists would disagree. As for judging sexual acts, that wasn't really a thing for the goddess fertility religions. In fact, sexual acts and temple prostitution, both male and female, were the main feature of the worship service. The role of gods in policing moral codes is largely a Juedeo-Christian peculiarity.

Here again, you're using a private definition of religion. Consider the following:

Don Swenson: "Religion is the individual and social experience of the sacred that is manifested in mythologies, ritual, ethos, and integrated into a collective or organization."
Robert Bellah: "a set of symbolic forms and acts that relate man to the ultimate conditions of his existence."
William James: "the belief that there is an unseen order, and that our supreme good lies in harmoniously adjusting ourselves thereto."
Paul Connelly; an attempt to represent and order beliefs, feelings, imaginings and actions that arise in response to direct experience of the sacred and the spiritual. As this attempt expands in its formulation and elaboration, it becomes a process that creates meaning for itself on a sustaining basis, in terms of both its originating experiences and its own continuing responses."

I'd agree that punitive religions (if we include karma in that concept) coincided with the development of centralized governments--relatively late in human history. I think there were two factors involved. The emergence of despotic "hydraulic societies" emphasizing mass co-ordination for agricultural irrigation; and invasions by patriarchal pastoral nomads, with their alpha male sky gods.

For a more balanced perspective, I'd again recommend Denett's Breaking the Spell. Or you might try Karen Armstrong's The Great Transformation, which shows that the development of many world religions (Confucianism, Taoism, Buddhism, Hinduism and Judaism) in the so-called "Axial Age" from 900 to 200 B.C., B.C., developed in revulsion to violence in society (contrary to a common atheist notion that religion causes violence). In any event, further reading in the rich literature on the origins of religion would result in a less simplistic view of its social origins.

 

If it is an untestable hypothesis, it would be impossible then to assert that human culture naturally assumes a religious point of view. How can religion be a natural phenomena when it doesn't influence all human's equally.??

I should have made more clear and although I thought it might have already been, but I am saying that the 'major religions' of the world have were create by a ruling class for the purposes of exerting and extending their power through time and through all cultures.

I wouldn't consider a belief in a fertility god a 'religion' however, I can see why you think that and concede that it is the better way of defining the concept. Nonetheless, I never made an attempt to describe the origins of these types of religions, but rather the major ones we have come to generally believe in, with particular mention of christianity.

This makes me think we agree because my post was about major religions that instill fear in the minds of its subjects with concepts such as the subordinate relationship humans have with god, hell and heaven, etc.

However, I doubt it had and has to do with irrigation but rather controlling rebellion and ensuring mutiny was not a prevalent modality for the general populace.

 

I was responding to your statement that "religious belief is not something that ALL CULTURES experience equally and thus claiming that religion naturally arises does no justice." I'm afraid I might not understand what this means. All cultures experience religion. The religions they experience are not identical, and some differ markedly from others. We have animism, ancestor worship, monotheism, polytheism, etc. Apples and oranges. But they all naturally arose from human needs.

[/QUOTE]My problem with your whole thesis is that it selects an aspect of religion and presents it as the whole thing. Then and now, most people turn to religion because it meets needs in their lives, to explain reality, to give them a sense of control over reality by prayer, to give them hope of an afterlife where they'll be united with departed loved ones, etc. Politicians have always expolited this. As Gibbons said of Rome, the people thought all religions were equally good, the intellectuals thought they were equally wrong, and the politicians thought they were equally useful. Religion can be a subversive force for the political and religious establishment. It was with the Prophets of Israel. Jesus was considered sufficiently threatening that he was nailed up. He railed against the rich and championed the poor and society's rejects. Yes, Constantine achieved a brilliant victory in enticing the bishops to get in bed with him. Christianity hasn't been the same since. The Republican Party achieved a similar cozy arrangement with the religious right. But it's only part of the picture.

 

the social origins of religious belief go back tens, even hundreds of thousands of years, before christianity was even a twinkle in anyone's eye.

even if the origins of religious belief are actually 'divine' or even not strictly limited to human society, they STILL go back tens, possibly even hundreds of THOUSANDS of years before christianity.
if, lets say, christ, were actually someone whom a real god, even THE real god, if we assume that, chose to be channeled by, a not all that unreasonable proposition, and essentially the one put forth by baha'u'llah and even mohammid, christ would be only the 23rd of these, adam being the first, making mosses the 22nd, mohammid the 24th and the bab and baha'u'llah, the 25th and 26th respectively, although together the last could be considered a single revelation through two channelers. those are roughly thousand year intervals, give or take a few hundrend, so that even by christianity's own bible's own account, humanity WITH divine guidance, goes back AT LEAST 25,000 years. which incidentally is only about human spirituality, and not about the mineral substrate of the planet, or even other life forms.

(it is also the "focus on christianity" that i seriously question the legitimacy of, in any broader discussion of religious belief)

 

I agree with that definiton of religion. I realize now that I am talking about modern religion, particularly the 5 major religions of the world while offering evidence for the largest one without getting into much detail of the other four.

The evidence is quite compelling especially when you consider the quotes I posted directly from the new and old testament.