All? No.

“In many cases, all the rules he is talking about come about long after that initial, moral and creative spark is lit by the founding revolutionary leader(s).”

[citation needed]

Or: doubtful.

I doubt any religion (except Scientology, which isn’t) has a specific starting point, least of all with a single individual. They all grow out of the ones that come before, and they all grew out of superstition and the need to explain the world.

I’m gonna go out on a limb and say that I highly doubt the first religions were super moral, or even contained any particular amount of compassion for fellow humans. I’d guess it was about worshipping the sun (or keeping it in the sky, at least) and food, and all the rules came as a result of pleasing, or keeping, the sun.

Either way, it’s moot. We can never know the details, beyond what we have learnt from the later (classical) religions.. and lots of those just don’t fit your description.

Men with mustaches rarely have children. I should know because I am the child of one.

If genetic, then no way to select against. Our ancestors bred much earlier than that. I wonder if data would point to a decline in schizophrenia in modern late-breeding cultures…

#19: “Nor is schizophrenia completely genetic–it does not occur equally in identical twins, for example.”

A ready source?— or should I begin a search? (Oh, for a touch of OCD.)

I was trained as a cultural determinist and am reflexively suspicious of psychologists poking around historical anthropology; but all of the ologies are welcome to the shindigs, especially the neurobiologist Sapolsky—he’s great.

Altered States (1980)

?

I may not be giving these ideas as much credit as they deserve. However, given our recent enlightenment and the our still overall narrow understanding I don’t see why these ideas can’t be continually debated. Unlike “global warming” where it is debate over. If you consider all cause-effect coming “ex nihilo” we would really be miraculous in being. My apologies if my comments offend the Professor or Stanford (Thank you providing this lecture).

Even in our modern society, there are a lot of people in the health industry who got their start in this way.

Still I think that this only explains how such outsiders remain part of society. After all, outsiders are always a minority. How about the majority, many of whom are very religious?

As for religious behavior, that’s may be a different thing. I’m not strongly religious, and I don’t have kids. However, I’ve noticed that other people who are more strongly Christian (Catholic or not) often have large families, and I assume that’s true for other large religions. Given the believers’ differential reproductive success over people like me, I don’t think one needs to invoke any special genetics to explain the success of religion. All that’s needed is for scientists to realize that “be fruitful and multiply” is good evolutionary advice if you’re willing to believe in and practice it.

The metaphor for shamanism that stuck with me, from my own limited perusal of the literature was that of the fisherman who could dip into the underwater (subconscious/universal mind) and come back above water. They could sort of go between two worlds.

Loved the lecture. How cool is it that we can sit here and watch a professor at Stanford give a talk from the comfort of our geographically disparate regions. Yay technology.

So yeah, we can see the Shaman’s place in society, but why does magical thinking have such a purchase in human modes of thinking in the first place?

That seems to me to be the riches vein of all. Why are we not evolved to be far more rational than we are? What advantages, if any, are there in magical modes of thinking?

Also, assuming that a committee better designs myths is haphazard at best…we’ve also had schizotypals and schizophrenics all around…think John Nash, Princeton! And pretty influential a nut he was…so it’s been ok but there are some gaps on Sapolsky’s narrative that unsettles me.

Additionally, what are the links between not just religiosity, but spirituality and mental disability or personality disorders?

I attend a UU congregation, but do not consider myself religious, though I do experience spiritual moments. How do these evolutionary traits apply to relatively spiritual people, who do not believe in the supernatural or hold common superstitious beliefs?

I tend to separate religion and, for lack of a better word, spiritual, while many are religious and/or superstitious, in my opinion, few are spiritual.

Coming from a background in paleolithic archaeology, I’m particularly suspicious of biological explanations for human behaviour; Rigidly deterministic models tend to be too simplistic and their predictions are almost impossible to test for genetically, let alone using historical or archaeological data.

It’s fascinating to look at some of the issues I deal with from the perspective of a neurobiologist. Food for thought indeed.

Incidentally, I’m glad he mentioned Xenocide; It was on my mind as I was watching. That book did a pretty good job of exploring the potential relationship between OCD and ritual behaviour (religious or otherwise).

Also, I love the superstitious pigeon experiment – made me chuckle.