This link has been bookmarked by 10 people . It was first bookmarked on 28 Apr 2008, by paul allitor.
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23 Feb 13
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14 Jul 10
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Humans alone practice religion because they're the only creatures to have evolved imagination.
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Instead, he argues that first, we had to evolve the necessary brain architecture to imagine things and beings that don't physically exist, and the possibility that people somehow live on after they've died.
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Once we'd done that, we had access to a form of social interaction unavailable to any other creatures on the planet. Uniquely, humans could use what Bloch calls the "transcendental social" to unify with groups, such as nations and clans, or even with imaginary groups such as the dead. The transcendental social also allows humans to follow the idealised codes of conduct associated with religion.
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they can't imagine beyond this immediate social circle, or backwards and forwards in time, in the same way that humans can.
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Bloch believes our ancestors developed the necessary neural architecture to imagine before or around 40-50,000 years ago, at a time called the Upper Palaeological Revolution, the final sub-division of the Stone Age.
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At around the same time, tools that had been monotonously primitive since the earliest examples appeared 100,000 years earlier suddenly exploded in sophistication, art began appearing on cave walls, and burials began to include artefacts, suggesting belief in an afterlife, and by implication the "transcendental social".
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religion is only one manifestation of this unique ability to form bonds with non-existent or distant people or value-systems.
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"Once we realise this omnipresence of the imaginary in the everyday, nothing special is left to explain concerning religion," he says.
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"theory of mind" - the ability to recognise that other people or creatures exist, and think for themselves - might be as important as evolution of imagination.
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02 Dec 09
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30 Nov 09
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Humans alone practice religion because they're the only creatures to have evolved imagination.
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Instead, he argues that first, we had to evolve the necessary brain architecture to imagine things and beings that don't physically exist, and the possibility that people somehow live on after they've died.
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Once we'd done that, we had access to a form of social interaction unavailable to any other creatures on the planet. Uniquely, humans could use what Bloch calls the "transcendental social" to unify with groups, such as nations and clans, or even with imaginary groups such as the dead. The transcendental social also allows humans to follow the idealised codes of conduct associated with religion.
"What the transcendental social requires is the ability to live very largely in the imagination," Bloch writes.
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No animals, not even our nearest relatives the chimpanzees, can do this, argues Bloch. Instead, he says, they're restricted to the mundane and Machiavellian social interactions of everyday life, of sparring every day with contemporaries for status and resources.
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Bloch believes our ancestors developed the necessary neural architecture to imagine before or around 40-50,000 years ago, at a time called the Upper Palaeological Revolution, the final sub-division of the Stone Age.
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At around the same time, tools that had been monotonously primitive since the earliest examples appeared 100,000 years earlier suddenly exploded in sophistication, art began appearing on cave walls, and burials began to include artefacts, suggesting belief in an afterlife, and by implication the "transcendental social".
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"The transcendental network can, with no problem, include the dead, ancestors and gods, as well as living role holders and members of essentialised groups," writes Bloch. "Ancestors and gods are compatible with living elders or members of nations because all are equally mysterious invisible, in other words transcendental."
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But Bloch argues that religion is only one manifestation of this unique ability to form bonds with non-existent or distant people or value-systems.
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08 Nov 09
Amira .Humans alone practice religion because they're the only creatures to have evolved imagination.
That's the argument of anthropologist Maurice Bloch of the London School of Economics. Bloch challenges the popular notion that religion evolved and spread because it promoted social bonding, as has been argued by some anthropologists.Religions anthropology Human being Atheism mind & brain Human paradoxes
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Humans alone practice religion because they're the only creatures to have evolved imagination.
That's the argument of anthropologist Maurice Bloch of the London School of Economics. Bloch challenges the popular notion that religion evolved and spread because it promoted social bonding, as has been argued by some anthropologists.
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Instead, he argues that first, we had to evolve the necessary brain architecture to imagine things and beings that don't physically exist, and the possibility that people somehow live on after they've died.
-
Once we'd done that, we had access to a form of social interaction unavailable to any other creatures on the planet. Uniquely, humans could use what Bloch calls the "transcendental social" to unify with groups, such as nations and clans, or even with imaginary groups such as the dead. The transcendental social also allows humans to follow the idealised codes of conduct associated with religion.
-
"What the transcendental social requires is the ability to live very largely in the imagination," Bloch writes.
-
No animals, not even our nearest relatives the chimpanzees, can do this, argues Bloch. Instead, he says, they're restricted to the mundane and Machiavellian social interactions of everyday life, of sparring every day with contemporaries for status and resources.
-
Bloch believes our ancestors developed the necessary neural architecture to imagine before or around 40-50,000 years ago, at a time called the Upper Palaeological Revolution, the final sub-division of the Stone Age.
-
At around the same time, tools that had been monotonously primitive since the earliest examples appeared 100,000 years earlier suddenly exploded in sophistication, art began appearing on cave walls, and burials began to include artefacts, suggesting belief in an afterlife, and by implication the "transcendental social".
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Once humans had crossed this divide, there was no going back.
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"The transcendental network can, with no problem, include the dead, ancestors and gods, as well as living role holders and members of essentialised groups," writes Bloch. "Ancestors and gods are compatible with living elders or members of nations because all are equally mysterious invisible, in other words transcendental."
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But Bloch argues that religion is only one manifestation of this unique ability to form bonds with non-existent or distant people or value-systems.
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"Religious-like phenomena in general are an inseparable part of a key adaptation unique to modern humans, and this is the capacity to imagine other worlds, an adaptation that I argue is the very foundation of the sociality of modern human society."
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"Once we realise this omnipresence of the imaginary in the everyday, nothing special is left to explain concerning religion," he says.
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"theory of mind" - the ability to recognise that other people or creatures exist, and think for themselves - might be as important as evolution of imagination
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As soon as you have theory of mind, you have the possibility of deceiving others, or being deceived," he says. This, in turn, generates a sense of fairness and unfairness, which could lead to moral codes and the possibility of an unseen "enforcer" - God - who can see and punish all wrong-doers.
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06 May 08
Rudy Garns"Humans alone practice religion because they're the only creatures to have evolved imagination." (28 April 2008 - New Scientist)
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02 May 08
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28 Apr 08
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