“Question: What do you make of the theory that religion was necessary to organiz

–“Question: What do you make of the theory that religion was necessary to organize humans past the 150 line for hunter gather tribes?”–

I think I’m making that argument every day, even if I’m not sure 150 is the number. It looks like it’s much larger. But yes. Why? Humans require a system of weights and measures for both understanding and subsequent behavior. Religion provides an external system of measurment, and one that can be ‘compromised upon’ between groups. That doesn’t force a competition for dominance between groups.

So in the broad, sense, yes, you’re intuition is correct.

As for Weinstein he’s unsophisticated in understanding such things but at the level of low resolution he’s not ENTIRELY wrong. However, instead, myths and oaths and rituals generally contain whatever agreement is necessary between the people to intergenerationally persist their group evolutionary strategy. And yes our group evolutionary strategies appear to have been standardized by the time of, or just after, the bronze age collapse.

The only way to educate before writing and certainly after writing but before literacy, was stories. And myths had to be coherent with one another and they had to include one of the three fictionalisms in order pretend knowledge that they didn’t have at the time to rely on. Myth is the equivalent of “well, just because.”

-Curt