I'm again jumping off a thread in Natural Science that linked this article:
http://www.science20.com/writer_on_t..._a_joke-139982
http://www.science20.com/writer_on_t..._a_joke-139982
FEELING OF CONNECTEDNESS
There are other, more socially-oriented evolutionary purposes, too. Religious communities grow faster, since people behave better (referring to the general majority over the millennia, as opposed to minority extremists highlighted by the media on any given day).
Why is this so? Religious folk attend weekly lectures on morality, read portions of respected books about the subject on a daily basis and regularly discuss the subject in groups, so it would be inevitable that some of this guidance sinks in.
There is also the notion that the presence of an invisible moralistic presence makes misdemeanors harder to commit. Societies that chanced on the idea of supernatural surveillance were likely to have been more successful than those that didn't, further spreading religious ideas.
There are other, more socially-oriented evolutionary purposes, too. Religious communities grow faster, since people behave better (referring to the general majority over the millennia, as opposed to minority extremists highlighted by the media on any given day).
Why is this so? Religious folk attend weekly lectures on morality, read portions of respected books about the subject on a daily basis and regularly discuss the subject in groups, so it would be inevitable that some of this guidance sinks in.
There is also the notion that the presence of an invisible moralistic presence makes misdemeanors harder to commit. Societies that chanced on the idea of supernatural surveillance were likely to have been more successful than those that didn't, further spreading religious ideas.
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