Abstract
We had searched for a model for the evolution of religions. This model had to fulfil all the requirements of a model of evolution in the strictest scientific-theoretical sense. Religion had developed out of human territorial behaviour and out of human existential fears. This proto-religion subsequently developed into the different pre-historic and historic religions, on account of the appearance of varieties within the individual taxa and the selection which exerted its pressure onto them. Finally, those religions developed which characterise the spectrum of modern religious life.
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- 1.
Those searching for mystical experiences turn to other religions which are able to offer exactly that, for example Buddhism and its meditation techniques.
- 2.
For a more in-depth discussion of this development, see Wunn and Grojnowski 2016, pp. 235–256.
- 3.
Compare here the identical deliberations in Homans 1950, pp. 322–223).
- 4.
“Mneme. Das Überleben der antiken kultlichen und weltlichen Pathosformel als Funktion des Gesetzes des (kleinsten) Kraftmasses durch das mnetische Wiederauftauchen von Ausdruckswerten maximaler Ergriffenheit.” Warburg 2010, p. 646. Translation, author’s own.
- 5.
Witzel uses this termn (2012, p. 416). Strictly speaking, this powerful creature should be refered to not as high god but perhaps as dema.
- 6.
This clearly argues against evolutionary models based on the Cognitive Sciences, and in favour of adaptionary models, to use the words of Konrad Szocik (2018).
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Wunn, I., Grojnowski, D. (2018). Conclusion and Results. In: Religious Speciation. New Approaches to the Scientific Study of Religion , vol 6. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-04435-0_15
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