Affluence Explains Rise of Moralizing Religions, Suggests Study

http://popular-archaeology.com/issue/fall-09012014/article/affluence-explains-rise-of-moralizing-religions-suggests-study ^ | Thu, Dec 11, 2014 | Cell Press News Release

[SunkenCiv]

The ascetic and moralizing movements that spawned the world's major religious traditions -- Buddhism, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, and Christianity -- all arose around the same time in three different regions... The emergence of world religions, they say, was triggered by the rising standards of living in the great civilizations of Eurasia...

It seems almost self-evident today that religion is on the side of spiritual and moral concerns, but that was not always so, Baumard explains. In hunter-gatherer societies and early chiefdoms, for instance, religious tradition focused on rituals, sacrificial offerings, and taboos designed to ward off misfortune and evil.

That changed between 500 BCE and 300 BCE -- a time known as the "Axial Age" -- when new doctrines appeared in three places in Eurasia. "These doctrines all emphasized the value of 'personal transcendence,'" the researchers write, "the notion that human existence has a purpose, distinct from material success, that lies in a moral existence and the control of one's own material desires, through moderation (in food, sex, ambition, etc.), asceticism (fasting, abstinence, detachment), and compassion (helping, suffering with others)."

...shows a sharp transition toward moralizing religions when individuals were provided with 20,000 kcal/day, a level of affluence suggesting that people were generally safe, with roofs over their heads and plenty of food to eat, both in the present time and into the foreseeable future...

The researchers say that this transition is consistent with a shift from "fast" life strategies, focused on the immediate problems of the day, to those focused on long-term investments. They say that it will now be interesting to test whether other familiar characteristics of modern human society, such as high parental investment and long-term monogamy, might stem from the same historical change.

[SunkenCiv]

Short topic so far, here’s one of the teapot tempests, and thanks Charles H. (The_r0nin) for taking a crack at it.

kcal to calories conversion
http://www.rapidtables.com/convert/energy/kCal_to_Calorie.htm

[SunkenCiv]

I think it’s wikipedia-sourced, probably there’s an explanation there. Probably third world, but I didn’t check.

[SunkenCiv]

Nice post, thanks!

[SunkenCiv]

Yeah, the 300 BC cutoff in this study antedates the rise of the medieval fascism of Islam by almost a thousand years.

And they didn’t mention Zoroastrianism.

[SunkenCiv]

In hunter-gatherer societies and early chiefdoms, for instance, religious tradition focused on rituals, sacrificial offerings, and taboos designed to ward off misfortune and evil.

Religion is one thing, standard of living is another. If there's an agenda in the paper, it's some kind of wackadoodle vegetarian crap.

During European colonization of much of the world, standards of living rose. The world population hit a billion around 1900, 408 years after Columbus set sail for the Americas (actually China and India, but he never seemed to figure that out). The crumbling of the remaining ruins of various civilizations and cultures didn't lead to wholesale rejection of precolonial religions or wholesale adoption of moralizing religions.

Buddhism is on that list, but the core idea behind it is to reject all attachment to material things -- the Buddha was a prince who went schizo, IMHO, but anyway, he abandoned his wife and child and his riches.

[OKSooner]

Recently a well known crypto-muslim fake Christian said “people in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones” and some other inanity about notes and planks...

I don’t recall him (oops) making an old testament reference in a Christian context though, not that he (oops again) wouldn’t be capable of it.

[left that other site]

That is a lot of calories!