Big gods : how religion transformed cooperation and conflict
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
Big gods : how religion transformed cooperation and conflict
Princeton University Press, c2013
- : cloth
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Note
Includes bibliographical references (p. 215-241) and index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
How did human societies scale up from tight-knit groups of hunter-gatherers to the large, anonymous, cooperative societies of today--even though anonymity is the enemy of cooperation? How did organized religions with "Big Gods"--the great monotheistic and polytheistic faiths--spread to colonize most minds in the world? In Big Gods, Ara Norenzayan makes the surprising argument that these fundamental puzzles about the origins of civilization answer each other. Sincere faith in watchful Big Gods unleashed unprecedented cooperation within ever-expanding groups, yet at the same time it introduced a new source of potential conflict between competing groups. And in some parts of the world, societies with atheist majorities--some of the most cooperative and prosperous in the world--have climbed religion's ladder, and then kicked it away. Big Gods answers fundamental questions about the origins and spread of world religions and helps us understand the rise of cooperative societies without belief in gods.
Table of Contents
List of Illustrations ix Acknowledgments xi The Eight Principles of Big Gods xiii Chapter 1 Religious Evolution 1 Chapter 2 S upernatural Watchers 13 Chapter 3 Pressure from Above 33 Chapter 4 I n Big Gods We Trust 55 Chapter 5 Freethinkers as Freeriders 76 Chapter 6 True Believers 94 Chapter 7 Big Gods for Big Groups 118 Chapter 8 The Gods of Cooperation and Competition 140 Chapter 9 From Religious Cooperation to Religious Conflict 155 Chapter 10 Cooperation without God 170 Notes 193 References 215 Index 243
by "Nielsen BookData"