History of Moralizing Religion

* Book: Larson, Jennifer, Jenny Reddish, and Peter Turchin, eds. Forthcoming. The Seshat History of Moralizing Religion. Chaplin, CT: Beresta Books.

URL = https://peterturchin.com/research/current-research/cultural-macroevolution/

Description

Peter Turchin:

"Today, the world’s religious landscape is dominated by traditions like Christianity, Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism. These are moralizing religions: they postulate supernatural agents or forces that systematically reward virtuous behaviour and punish transgressions across a broad range of human affairs, ranging for example from sexual conduct to repaying debts and from respect for property to acts of charity. In deep historical perspective, they are relative latecomers, gaining in popularity after the turbulent warring polities and empires of the last millennium BCE. By contrast, we have evidence for communal ritual and the building of sacred monuments dating back to the end of the last Ice Age, many millennia before.

How and why have moralizing religions spread to all corners of the globe? What is the relationship between the rise of these traditions and the growth of social scale and complexity? These questions have been the focus of intense debate. However, progress has been limited by the availability of quantitative data to test competing theories, by divergent ideas regarding both predictor and outcomes variables, and by differences of opinion over methodology.

To address all these problems, we use quantitative analysis and the massive accumulation of historical data collected in the Seshat: Global History Databank. In addition to the Big Gods hypothesis, which proposes that moralizing religion contributed to the success of increasingly large-scale complex societies, we considered the role of warfare, animal husbandry, and agricultural productivity in the rise of moralizing religions.

Our analyses suggest that such beliefs did not drive the rise of social complexity. Rather, intergroup warfare, supported by resource availability, played a major role in the evolution of both social complexity and moralizing religions. The correlation between social complexity and moralizing religion seems to result from shared evolutionary drivers, rather than from direct causal relationships between these two variables.

To dig more deeply into the rise of moralizing religions in a nuanced, qualitative way, we are also working on a multi-author volume,the Seshat History of Moralizing Religion (edited by Jennifer Larson, Jenny Reddish and Peter Turchin). Incorporating perspectives from archaeologists, anthropologists, historians of religion and scholars of cultural evolution, the volume highlights specific regional trajectories while drawing out common patterns in the emergence and spread of beliefs about supernatural punishment and reward."

More information

Turchin, Peter, Harvey Whitehouse, Sergey Gavrilets, Daniel Hoyer, Pieter François, James S. Bennett, Kevin C. Feeney, et al. 2022. ‘Disentangling the Evolutionary Drivers of Social Complexity: A Comprehensive Test of Hypotheses’. Science Advances 8 (25): eabn3517. https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.abn3517.

Turchin, Peter, Harvey Whitehouse, Jennifer Larson, Enrico Cioni, Jenny Reddish, Daniel Hoyer, Patrick E. Savage, et al. 2023. ‘Explaining the Rise of Moralizing Religions: A Test of Competing Hypotheses Using the Seshat Databank’. Religion, Brain & Behavior 13 (2): 167–94. https://doi.org/10.1080/2153599X.2022.2065345.

Whitehouse, Harvey, Pieter François, Patrick E. Savage, Daniel Hoyer, Kevin C. Feeney, Enrico Cioni, Rosalind Purcell, et al. 2023. ‘Testing the Big Gods Hypothesis with Global Historical Data: A Review and “Retake”’. Religion, Brain & Behavior 13 (2): 124–66. https://doi.org/10.1080/2153599X.2022.2074085.