. . . The private perception of being intelligently designed, monitored, and known about by a god who actively punished and rewarded our intentions and behaviors would have helped stomp out the frequency and intensity of our ancestors’ immoral hiccups and would have been strongly favored by natural selection.Cognitive learning theory in the classroom bering, the belief instinct: the psychology of souls, destiny, and the meaning of life

While all primates have a hierarchy of alphas and betas, humans and chimps, who share 98.4% of their DNA, are the most prone to team up together and launch a revolution against the alpha male.Cognitive learning theory in the classroom we’re also both prone to ganging up, roaming our territory, and beating up unsuspecting foreigners of the same species, and not for direct survival reasons.Cognitive learning theory in the classroom chimpanzees have been observed finding a lone chimp male from another group and kicking, hitting, and tearing off bits of his body and then leaving the helpless victim to die of his wounds, and humans definitely bear this stamp of our lowly origin, where indeed, the imperfect step-by-step process of evolution made us highly intelligent, but still, with prefrontal cortex’s too small, and adrenal glands maybe too big.Cognitive learning theory in the classroom aggression and blood lust are definitely part of our shared heritage, and, looking at more recent human history, does that really surprise anyone?Cognitive learning theory in the classroom human evolution: crash course big history #6

In other words, the illusion of a punitive god assisted their genetic well-being whenever they underestimated the risk of actual social detection by other people.Cognitive learning theory in the classroom this fact alone, this emotional short-circuiting of ancient drives in which immediate interests were traded for long-term genetic gains, which have rendered god and his ilk a strong target of natural selection in human evolution.Cognitive learning theory in the classroom bering

In every world zone the invention of agriculture was a precursor for the rise of states. The key to having a state is agrarian surplus.Cognitive learning theory in the classroom if you produce enough food, you can have a class of people who don’t need to farm. They can then fulfill other duties in this increasingly numerous and complex society whether they be leaders or judges who settle disputes, bureaucrats who deal with administration, and infrastructure doctors who heal the sick, priests who make sacrifices to vengeful gods or soldiers who provide security or at least extract a portion of the agricultural surplus for the leadership through some kind of taxation.Cognitive learning theory in the classroom and with more people filling new jobs and generating new ideas about them, this is also good news for collective learning. Diversification of labor is also the first step of early states toward hierarchies and classes — aristocrats and popular and despotic kings and pharaohs and sultans, shahs and emperors.Cognitive learning theory in the classroom migration and intensification: crash course big history #7

. . . Begun over 7000 years ago, it’s one of the oldest religious sites n he world. . . .Cognitive learning theory in the classroom this is where the building blocks of religion began to merge. For over two million years we were hunter-gathers, and hunter-gathers typically practice a religion called animism. . . .Cognitive learning theory in the classroom but, when they switch to herding, this changes their worldview. While hunter-gathers roamed freely across the landscape, herders settled for weeks at a time wherever they could find pasture.Cognitive learning theory in the classroom this led to a new kind of religion. The first thing that happens when people start herding, they start building sacred spaces. If you want to pray, or you want to worship, you’ve got to come to this space.Cognitive learning theory in the classroom and what this does, is it brings people together, from all over the place, into this one area, to worship together. . . .

. . . This giant megalith, here, this thing weighs several tons and would have been carried a few miles just to get it to this point, and that requires organized labor, that requires people working together.Cognitive learning theory in the classroom we can surmise that they would have had some kind of spiritual significance to these things to put that much effort into this. And if that’s the case, we’re looking at some sort of prototype church.Cognitive learning theory in the classroom the first monuments were all inspired by religion. . . .

Campbell: well, it makes a psychological difference in the character of the cultures.Cognitive learning theory in the classroom you have the basic birth of civilization in the near east with the great river valleys then as the main source areas, the nile, the tigris-euphrates, and then over in india, the indus valley and later the ganges.Cognitive learning theory in the classroom this is the world of the goddess; all these rivers have goddess names finally.

Then there come the invasions. These fighting people are herding people.Cognitive learning theory in the classroom the semites are herders of goats and sheep, and the indo-europeans of cattle. They were formerly the hunters. They translate a hunting mythology into a herding mythology, but it’s animal oriented.Cognitive learning theory in the classroom and when you have hunters you have killers, and when you have herders, you have killers, because they’re always in movement, nomadic, coming into conflict with other people and they have to conquer the area they move into.Cognitive learning theory in the classroom this comes into the near east, and this brings in the warrior gods, like zeus, like yahweh.

Campbell: yes, well, there are only two ways to explain it, and one is by diffusion, that an influence came from there to here, and the other is by separate development.Cognitive learning theory in the classroom and when you have the idea of separate development, this speaks for certain powers in the psyche which are common to all mankind. Otherwise you couldn’t have — and to the detail the correspondences can be identified, it’s astonishing when one studies these things in depth, the degree to which the agreements go between totally separated cultures.Cognitive learning theory in the classroom

At nazlet khater archaeologists found another burial, the burial of an adult, dated 30 to 35,000 years old. This example is also important because just beside the head of the skeleton was a stone and axe, an offering in the tomb.Cognitive learning theory in the classroom this is the first evidence of an associate artifact with a human body in a tomb. That means that people, at this stage, were interested in the protection of the bodies in the afterlife.Cognitive learning theory in the classroom when you protect a body after it’s dead, that means that there is a belief in the afterlife. Why do you want to protect your body if your body is useless after the death?Cognitive learning theory in the classroom in this case, when you protect the body, we can guess that these people had a very complex belief in the afterlife, and maybe a religion. Tristant, coursera — big history: connecting knowledge — how did people live in the palaeolithic?Cognitive learning theory in the classroom

Just as P [the priestly source] grounded the sabbath in the creation story, so it grounds the passover in the story of the exodus. The passover was probably originally a rite of spring, practiced by shepherds.Cognitive learning theory in the classroom in early israel it was a family festival. . . . The celebration was changed by the reform of king josiah in 621 B.C.E. Into a pilgrimage festival, to be celebrated at the central sanctuary [jerusalem] and was combined with the festival of unleavened bread.Cognitive learning theory in the classroom collins, A short introduction to the hebrew bible

As with living organisms, religion has continued to evolve and change over the centuries, with, in some cases, substantial shifts in the core tenets.Cognitive learning theory in the classroom I will focus on judeo-christianity, as that was the subject I covered in my book and with which I am most familiar; but I will return to buddhism in the neurology section.Cognitive learning theory in the classroom archaeology, in particular, has shown how israelite theology changed fundamentally over its duration. The reform of josiah, mentioned above, was when monotheism first became the official state religion of judah, not earlier in its history as its texts portray, and which the excerpts below elaborate on.Cognitive learning theory in the classroom

We know from text and from archaeology, that traditional israelite religion involved venerating the ancestors, the gods of the underworld so to speak.Cognitive learning theory in the classroom we know from texts, at least, and from iconography that we find in the ground, that traditional israelite religion involved venerating the stars and the planets.Cognitive learning theory in the classroom we know, therefore, the traditional israelite religion was polytheistic. Baruch halpern, distinguished professor of jewish studies — university of georgia, in the bible unearthed

cognitive learning theory in the classroom

The book of deuteronomy perpetrates one of the great reformations in history: it imposes a strict philosophical monotheism that banishes all other gods from traditional culture.Cognitive learning theory in the classroom this was part of a reformationist program in which king josiah attempted to centralize not only power, but the ability to reach the realm of the divine into his own hands, in jerusalem, in the temple,the temple, which, sat in the backyard of the royal palace. . . .Cognitive learning theory in the classroom

. . . What it testifies to is a new consciousness at the end of the seventh century. . . . The power of the governor was subject to some greater laws, some greater morality, and it’s here on this broken piece of pottery, as archaeological evidence from the time of josiah, that what we now still believe as biblical tradition and biblical morality, was born among the people . . . .Cognitive learning theory in the classroom

After centuries of a repressive vatican controlling much of what happened in medieval europe and the affiliated intellectual stagnation, the protestant reformation lit the match that would eventually culminate in the age of enlightenment.Cognitive learning theory in the classroom during the enlightenment, european philosophers opposed to blind faith, tradition, and superstition, advocated for the increasing application of reason and scientific rationalism, and advanced the ideas of humanism as an alternative to theism.Cognitive learning theory in the classroom as many western secular nations have evolved beyond traditional religion, secular humanism is coming to be the dominant philosophy in a number of these societies.Cognitive learning theory in the classroom statistics confirm this trend, as the least religious countries are correlated among the happiest; whereas, religion continues to have the most influence in countries with less-developed economies and greater degrees of uncertainty.Cognitive learning theory in the classroom citizens in self-actualized societies don’t appear to need the crutch of religion, allowing our common humanity to be our moral guide.

When we study buddhist meditation, where they’re visualizing something, we might expect to see a change or an increase of activity in the visual areas of the brain.Cognitive learning theory in the classroom in buddhist practice, the divine is an abstract presence, not a person who is directly spoken to, but rather an essence that can be visualized during deep meditation.Cognitive learning theory in the classroom and when andy looks at the brains of people who do not believe in god, he finds that simple quiet meditation produces none of the brain activity of believers.Cognitive learning theory in the classroom through the wormhole , did we invent god?, science (S03E10, 2012).

What if I were to tell you that god’s mental states, too, were all in your mind?Cognitive learning theory in the classroom that god, like a tiny speck floating at the edge of your cornea producing the image of a hazy, out-of-reach orb accompanying your every turn, was in fact a psychological illusion, a sort of evolved blemish etched onto the core cognitive substrate of your brain?Cognitive learning theory in the classroom it may feel as if there is something grander out there . . . Watching, knowing, caring. Perhaps even judging. But, in fact, that’s just your overactive theory of mind.Cognitive learning theory in the classroom in reality, there is only the air you breathe. Bering