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The development of religion (religiopoiesis) can refer to the gradual emergence of religious behaviour during human evolution out of pre- or proto-religious ritual (origin of religion), or to the "crafting of religion" as part of the history of religion within a given culture.
It is concerned with a variety of perspectives or models on the ways in which religions come into being and develop. Such models are not necessarily mutually exclusive. Multiple models may be seen to apply simultaneously, or different models may be seen as applying to different religions.[citation needed]
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Religion is a cultural universal that is found in all human populations including the most isolated populations.[citation needed] When European sailor first "discovered" Tasmania, they found that the Tasmanians already practiced several forms of religion. The Tasmanians may have been isolated from the rest of the world since settling from Australia 40,000 years ago. Hence scientists use the principal of a cultural homology to explain the ubiquity of cultural universals such as religious behaviour.
The evolution of religion is closely connected with the evolution of the human mind and behavioral modernity.The Religious Mind and the Evolution of Religious Forms 14.. “The interplay of religious evolution and mind reveals that even as religion and society evolve, the basic psychological functions of religion remain intact only expressed in different modes”
Some scholars have suggested that religion is hardwired into the human condition. One hypothesis referred to as the God gene hypothesis states that some human beings bear a gene which gives them a predisposition to episodes interpreted by some as religious revelation. One gene identified is VMAT2.
A number of scholars have suggested that the evolution of language was a necessary prerequisite for the origin of religion. Philip Lieberman states "[h]uman religious thought and moral sense clearly rest on a cognitive-linguistic base," and that the presence of burial and grave artifacts indicate that early humans had distinctive cognitive abilities different from chimpanzees. From this premise science writer Nicholas Wade hypothesizes that "religion must have been present in the ancestral human population before the dispersal from Africa 50,000 years ago."*"Wade, Nicholas - Before The Dawn, Discovering the lost history of our ancestors. Penguin Books, London, 2006. p. 8 p. 165" ISBN 1594200793Johansson, Sverker (2004). "Origins of language—constraints on hypotheses". doi:10.1017/S002222670629409X. “A related argument is that of Barnes (1997), who postulates language as a requirement for religion, for much the same reasons as for art — religion requires the ability to reason symbolically about abstract categories. M¨uller (1866) proposed instead a more direct role for religion in the origin of language, with religious awe as the root of the need for speech (Gans, 1999c).” However, the recent discovery in South Africa of what is believed to be a 70,000 year old ritual site may indicate the existence of symbolic ritual activity prior to the development of language or conversely a much earlier linguistic origin. Apollon: World’s oldest ritual discovered. Worshipped the python 70,000 years ago
This model holds that religion is the byproduct of the cognitive modules in the human brain that arose in our evolutionary past to deal with problems of survival and reproduction. Initial concepts of supernatural agents may arise in the tendency of humans to "over detect" the presence of other humans or predators (momentarily mistaking a vine for a snake). For instance, a man might report that he felt something sneaking up on him, but it vanished when he looked around.Faces in the Clouds, Stewart Elliot Guthrie, Oxford University Press (1995).
Stories of these experiences are especially likely to be retold, passed on and embellished due to their descriptions of standard ontological categories (human, artifact, animal, plant, natural object) with counterintuitive properties (humans that are invisible, houses that remember what happened in them, etc.). These stories become even more salient when they are accompanied by activation of non-violated expectations for the ontological category (houses that "remember" activates our intuitive psychology of mind; i.e. we automatically attribute thought processes to them). http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/anthro/bec/papers/boyer_religious_concepts.htm, Functional Origins of Religious concepts, Pascal Boyer
One of the attributes of our intuitive psychology of mind is that humans are interested in the affairs of other humans. This may result in the tendency for concepts of supernatural agents to inevitably cross connect with human intuitive moral feelings (evolutionary behavioral guidelines). In addition, the presence of dead bodies creates an uncomfortable cognitive state in which dreams and other mental modules (person identification and behavior prediction) continue to run decoupled from reality producing incompatible intuitions that the dead are somehow still around. When this is coupled with the human predisposition to see misfortune as a social event (as someone\'s responsibility rather than the outcome of mechanical processes) it may activate the intuitive "willingness to make exchanges" module of the human theory of minds resulting in the tendency of humans to try to interact and bargain with their supernatural agents (ritual). Religion Explained: The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought, Pascal Boyer, Basic Books (2001)
In a large enough group, some individuals will seem better skilled at these rituals than others and will become specialists. As the societies grow and encounter others, competition will ensue and a "survival of the fittest" effect may cause the practitioners to modify their concepts to provide a more abstract, more widely acceptable version. Eventually the specialist practitioners form a cohesive group or guild with its attendant political goals (religion).
Though disputed, evidence suggests that the Neanderthals were the first homonids to intentionally bury the dead. It appears that the corpses were placed into shallow graves along with stone tools and animal bones. The presence of these grave goods may indicate an emotional connection with the deceased and possibly a belief in the afterlife.EARLY HUMAN BURIALDeath and Relition. Neanderthal burial sites include Shanidar in Iraq, Kebara Cave in Israel and Krapina in Croatia. The earliest known evidence of intentional burial dates to some 300,000 years ago. Sites such as at Atapuerca in Spain, bones of over 32 individuals are found in pit within a cave.When Burial Begins. These burials however have been disputed by other scholars who argue that the bodies may have been disposed of for other reasons other than intentional burialEvolving in their graves: early burials hold clues to human origins - research of burial rituals of Neanderthals.
Philip Lieberman states "burials with grave goods clearly signify religious practices and concern for the dead that transcends daily life" (1991) Uniquely Human. ISBN 0674921836. .
The earliest undisputed human burial comes from caves at Skhul and Qafzeh which have been dated to 100,000 years ago. Human skeletons were found stained with Red Ochre. A variety of grave goods were found at the burial site. The mandible of a wild boar was found placed in the arms of one of the skeletonsUniquely Human page 163.
The shift in culture following the invention of agriculture during the Neolithic revolution 11,000 years ago brought dramatic social changes to humans around the world. As people abandoned the hunter gatherer lifestyles and adopted agriculture, population densities increased significantly. The first settled societies came into existence that would later develop into the first states. It is during this stage that religion is transformed from traditional forms of ancestor worship and shamanism to the religious institution characteristic of state societies. Writing was invented 4000 years ago, and the first religious texts were written shortly after. The beginning of religion at the begining of the Neolithic
The earliest directly attested religions are polytheistic. The Late Bronze Age sees the gradual emergence of henotheism, by the Iron Age giving rise to monotheism. This Iron Age boost of religious thought, which forms the basis of today\'s world religion, has been called the "Axial Age" by Karl Jaspers.
The development of new denomination or cults out of earlier ones is somewhat divided from the question of the ultimate origins of religion in human evolution, already because the process can be observed in contemporary society.
Anthony F.C. Wallace proposes four stages in the emergence of an organized religion out of individual religious experience:
Rodney Stark & W. S. Bainbridge\'s in their book "Theory of Religion" and subsequent works present four models: the Psychopathological Model, the Entrepreneurial Model, the Social Model and the Normal Revelations model.
In the dogma selection model, religion is a set of beliefs which allow humans to encode useful survival tips and social structures. For example, early populations may not have understood microbes (germs), but thinking of illness as being caused by invisible demons that can hop on nearby people and possess them also supplies a mental model that reminds one to stay away from people that are coughing. The demon is an abstraction or approximation of germs and their infectious nature.
Dogma that increases the survival of a group will spread using a kind of Darwinian selection process (see Natural Selection; meme). The most useful dogmas spread because they keep the population that espouses them alive to bear more children. Over time good ideas may "mutate" as new generations or tribal branches alter them and the best variations spread using the selection process described above. Of course sometimes religious doctrine goes awry and ends up in large numbers of deaths, but it is the net benefits that count in the end.
Swami Vivekananda in London, 1896
Many religions have been deeply influenced by charismatic leaders, such as Jesus, Martin Luther, Saint Francis of Assisi, John Calvin, Joseph Smith, etc. These leaders are either the central teacher and founder of the religion (e.g. Muhammad, Jesus, or Gautama) or reformers or prominent persons. Failed or violent new religions were also founded by charismatic leaders, such as Jim Jones.
There is some similarity to the role played by charismatic figures in politics. See list of charismatic leaders.
Organized religion is subject to permanent tensions between tendencies of traditionalism (priestly ritualism) and personal spirituality, periodically unsettling traditionalist establishment in religious revivals inspired by charismatic leaders. Thus, Buddhism and Vedanta are reform movements of Vedic Brahmanism, Zoroastrianism was (probably) a reform movement of early Iranian religion, Gnosticism, Early Christianity and Mithraism were subverting established Greco-Roman paganism, High Medieval Catharism and related movements and the Early Modern Reformation were subverting Roman Catholicism, and Pentecostalism subverts mainstream Protestantism.
In A Study of History, Arnold J. Toynbee argues that as civilizations decay, they experience a "schism in the soul," as the creative and spiritual impulse dies. In this environment of spiritual nadir, a few prophets (such as Abraham, Moses, the Prophets, and Christ) are given to extraordinary spiritual insight, born of the spiritual decay in the dying civilization. He describes such prophets as "surveyors of the course of secular civilization who report breaks in the road and breakdowns in the traffic, and plot a new spiritual course which will avoid those pitfalls."
Thus, he argues, the "high points" in secular history coincide with the "low points" in spiritual history, and vice versa. He notes that the call of Abraham followed the defiance of God by the self-confident builders of the Tower of Babel; that the mission of Moses was to rescue God\'s chosen people from the fleshpots of Egypt; that the prophets of Israel and Judah were inspired to preach repentance from the spiritual backslidings into which Israel lapsed in its \'land flowing with milk and honey\' which Yahweh had provided for them; and that the Ministry of Christ, whose passion reflected the anguish of the Hellenic Time of Troubles, was the intervention of God Himself for the purpose of extending to the whole of Mankind the covenant he had made with Israel.
While these new spiritual insights allow for the birth of a new religion and ultimately a new civilization, they are ultimately impermanent. This is due to their tendency to deteriorate after being institutionalized, as men of God degenerate into successful businessmen or men of politics. He describes the worst corruption of all, however, as "idolizing the terrestrial institution in which the Church Militant on Earth is imperfectly though unavoidably embodied. A church is in danger of lapsing into this idolatry insofar as she lapses into believing herself to be, not merely a depository of truth, but the sole depository of the whole truth in a complete and definite revelation."
Of the possibility that a new religion may arise in Western civilization to finally establish a permanent kingdom of heaven, he concludes that it is unlikely or impossible. "The manifest reason is exhibited by the nature of Society and the nature of Man. For Society is nothing but the common ground between the fields of action of personalities, and human personality has an innate capacity for evil as well as for good. The establishment of such a single Church Militant as we have imagined would not purge Man of Original Sin. This World is a province of the Kingdom of God, but it is a rebellious province, and, in the nature of things, it will always remain so."
From a religious viewpoint, there are several possibilities to account for the historical development of religion. Religions can consider themselves founded, with a founding figure establishing a doctrine based on revelation or enlightenment. Ethnic religions on the other hand are primarily based in and justified by tradition. Further development can be based on theological speculation, or at least partly guided by further revelation (c.f. claims of divine inspiration of the LXX and KJV Bible translations). Development away from the tenets of one\'s own school (schisms) will be characterized as heresy, failure to abandon more archaic stages of worship as idolatry or paganism. A historical example of doctrinal evolution in medieval Christianity based on theological argument, not revelation, is the doctrine of Palamism, accepted in Eastern Orthodoxy but rejected in Roman Catholicism.
A "progression of revelation" is accepted in most world religions: The patriarchs and prophets (Nevi\'im) in Abrahamic religions, beginning with Abraham, the Rishis in Hinduism, and the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas in Buddhism, the Tirthankars in Jainism, the Saoshyants in Zoroastrianism, etc.
In the Bahá\'í view, religion develops through a series of divine interventions from God, in the form of a Manifestation of God, extending that progression indefinitely into the future (see Progressive Revelation).
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