Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-p566r Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-28T13:20:26.128Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Moralizing religions: Prosocial or a privilege of wealth?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 March 2016

Scott Atran*
Affiliation:
CNRS, Institut Jean Nicod – Ecole Normale Supérieure, 75005 Paris, France. satran@umich.eduhttp://sitemaker.umich.edu/satran/home

Abstract

Today's major religions are moralizing religions that encourage material sacrifice for spiritual rewards. A key issue is whether moralizing religions gradually evolved over several millennia to enable cooperation among genetic strangers in the spiraling competition between increasingly large groups occupying Eurasia's middle latitudes, or whether they emerged only with the onset of the Axial Age, about 2,500 years ago, as societal wealth increased to allow privileging long-term goals over immediate needs.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Abusch, T. (2001) The development and meaning of the Epic of Gilgamesh: An interpretive essay. Journal of the American Oriental Society 121:614–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Atran, S. (2010b) Talking to the enemy: Violent extremism, sacred values, and what it means to be human. Penguin.Google Scholar
Atran, S. & Henrich, J. (2010) The evolution of religion: How cognitive by-products, adaptive learning heuristics, ritual displays, and group competition generate deep commitments to prosocial religions. Biological Theory: Integrating Development, Evolution, and Cognition 5:1830.Google Scholar
Atran, S. & Medin, D. (2008) The native mind and the cultural construction of nature. MIT Press.Google Scholar
Baumard, N., Hyafil, A., Morris, I. & Boyer, P. (2015) Increased affluence explains the emergence of ascetic wisdoms and moralizing religions. Current Biology 25(1):1015. doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2014.10.063.Google Scholar
Beit-Hallahmi, B. (1997) The psychology of religious behavior, belief and experience. Psychology Press.Google Scholar
Foltz, R. (2004) Spirituality in the land of the noble: How Iran shaped the world's religions. Oneworld.Google Scholar
Graeber, D. (2012) Debt: The first five thousand years. Melville House.Google Scholar
Hedrick, L., ed. (2006) Xenophon's Cyrus the Great. Saint Martin's Griffin.Google Scholar
Lawson, J. (2001) Mesopotamian precursors to the Stoic concept of Logos. In: Mythology and mythologies: Methodological approaches to intercultural influences. ed. Whiting, R. M., pp. 6891. The Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project.Google Scholar
Norris, P. & Inglehart, R. (2011) Sacred and secular: Religion and politics worldwide, second edition. Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Rappaport, R. A. (1999) Ritual and religion in the making of humanity. Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Roes, F. L. (1995) The size of societies, stratification, and belief in high gods supportive of human morality. Politics and the Life Sciences 14:7377.Google Scholar
Taylor, B. (2008) The encyclopedia of religion and nature, vol 2. Bloomsbury Academic.Google Scholar