He writes:

The trouble is that the context of the biological evolution of human nature seems to have been hunter-gatherer societies. And certainly all the anthropological evidence suggests that religion had emerged in hunter-gatherer times, before the invention of agriculture. So I attribute the moral character of agrarian religion to cultural evolution, not biological evolution.

My take in all of this is, (and in many ways I agree with Robert’s take), the argument is omitting the real base of religion, namely the sense of the spiritual. If you add spirituality into the mix, then it can clearly be seen that in hunter-gatherer societies, a religious or spiritual occurrence would be more of a personal thing.

Now “spiritual” doesn’t necessarily mean something paranormal or supernatural. I mean it more in the way of the hormone-induced emotions one would feel when awed or inspired. In those times it wouldn’t take much to awe somebody, i.e. the poor fool who happened to be in the right place at the right time to see lightening strike a tree and produce fire.

Over time, these personal spiritual experiences may have been added to a collective and drawn upon by the community as a whole. This spiritual power then would come in handy as they moved more toward the agricultural, and thus needed something to protect their fields from both animal and human marauders.

In today’s societies, a sense of spiritual can still be felt in just about any experience from belonging to something with a clear path to success (religionism), to coming to the realization that we are basically alone and have the right to choose our own path (atheism).

But no matter what position we take, or where we draw our spiritual power from, its still a personal thing. Our leanings create our realities, and what awes us personally gives us the hormone-induced sense of the spiritual.

Who we choose to share this power with becomes our community and validation.

Technorati Tags: god gene, hunter-gatherer societies, Religion, spirit gene, spirituality