Kashmiri Muslims celebrate Eid-e-Milad-un-Nabi, the anniversary of the Prophet's birth (Credit: Getty), It’s difficult to imagine religion without the capacity to experience these emotional elaborations for the same reason it’s difficult to imagine close social groups without them: such an emotional palette binds us to one another at a visceral level. My Wife now of 9 years is a Lanna lady. He lives in Delaware. In the first of a two-part special, Brandon Ambrosino examines the evolutionary origins of religion. “It is an argument for materialism,” he wrote in a journal entry, “that cold water brings on suddenly in head, a frame of mind, analogous to those feelings, which may be considered as truly spiritual.” If this is true, then that means the causes of religious feelings can be pinpointed and studied just like any other feeling. Powered by Invision Community. But isn’t this just self-preservation? Our ape line evolved from our last common ancestor around 19 million years ago. That’s the big picture here. There is evidence for this mechanism in hyenas, dolphins, wolves, domestic goats.”, He also finds evidence that animals “actively try to preserve harmony within their social network … by reconciling after conflict, protesting against unequal divisions, and breaking up fights among others. For this reason, some theorists such as Dunbar argue that we should also look beyond the individual to the survival of the group. Turner says the key isn’t with what we typically think of as intelligence, but rather with the emotions, which was accompanied by some important changes to our brain structure. Feel very fortunate to feel so happy and settled here, where I will see out my days-lots more of them hopefully! I'm not going back to Australia until the COVID s##tstorm has died out, could be 3-5 years. (Read about what the future of religion could be like. Natural selection was able to accomplish this astonishing feat by enhancing the emotional palettes available that had long been available to our ancestors. An animal may perform the behaviour X, but does it do so because it feels it should do so – thanks to an appreciation of a norm? We live now on my pension and hardly ever need touch savings. Yes, of course there are pleasurable sensations associated with the action of giving to others. They also show emotional self-control and anticipatory conflict resolution in order to prevent such deviations. I did use an agent in Chiang Mai, but do everything myself now. Still, we need to start somewhere, so de Waal suggests this definition: religion is “the shared reverence for the supernatural, sacred, or spiritual as well as the symbols, rituals, and worship that are associated with it”. “To call that selfish,” says an incredulous de Waal, “because in the end of course these pro-social tendencies have benefits?” To do that, he says, is to define words into meaninglessness. It makes us have an emotional stake in them.” If religion, according to our definition, is a way of being together, then morality, which instructs us as to the best ways to be together, is an inextricable part of that. As far as Darwin was convinced, there wasn’t any difference between religious feeling and any other feeling. “The hunters feel proud to have done well and shared with their family; those who prepared the food are recognised and appreciated; everyone’s belly is getting filled and feeling good; and so many positive social interactions are taking place. These, he claims, are characteristic of hunter-gatherers. They require both shared intention and shared attention. I have a much better life here than I would have in Australia, with my Thai GF. Such a hard and fast line between altruism and selfishness, then, is naive at best and deceptive at worst. The last 9years been best of my life. I watched certain uncertainties play on my fathers mind as he got older. mortenaa My Wife now of 9 years is a Lanna lady. But evolution teaches us that complex, advanced phenomena develop from simple beginnings. At this point in his argument, Turner introduces the concept of first- and second-order elaborations, which are emotions that are the result of a combinations of two or more primary emotions. Altruistic tendencies come very naturally to many mammals.”. I can add nothing. Our story is about us. While the theology-based forms are only a few thousand years old and characteristic of post-agricultural societies, Dunbar argues that the shamanic forms date back 500,000 years. “They can’t analyse it, they don’t talk about it, they can’t describe what they feel. Started Yesterday at 02:10 PM, By I hate to think how I would have felt if I had been trapped in Australia, with all the strict rules. The importance of shared experience can’t be overstated since, in the story we’re telling, the evolution of human religion is inseparable from the ever-increasing sociality of the hominin line. “This appears to be the largest group size that can be maintained through grooming alone,” he says. A decade of decadence. Period. Play also occurs in bouts: it has a clear beginning and ending. And while Turner acknowledges it might be pushing it to refer to a chimpanzee waterfall dance or carnival as Ritual with a capital R, it is possible to affirm that “these ritual-like behavioural propensities suggest that some of what is needed for religious behaviour is part of the genome of chimpanzees, and hence, hominins”. They have norm of how this distribution should be. The emotional capacities of great apes (particularly chimpanzees) were already more elaborate than many other mammals, so selection had something to work with. Either way, evolution didn’t “aim” at religion; religion just emerged as evolution “aimed” at other things. She spent 3 years in Australia with me. Play involves a sense of justice, or at least equanimity: big animals need to self-handicap in order to not hurt smaller animals. I hope I live to 100+. When one participant suggested they start with defining religion, someone was quick to note that last time they tried to do that, “half the audience had angrily stomped out of the room”. De Waal has been criticised over the years for offering a rose-coloured interpretation of animal behaviour. Get the latest weather news and forecasts from CNN's meteorologists, watch extreme weather videos, learn about climate change and follow major hurricanes with CNN's storm tracker. The other 3 popular tourist zones of Chiang Mai, Krabi and Phuket have been in the Green Zone throughout the current month of restrictions and can operate much as they were before December last year. Followers of the Nazareth Baptist Church climb the Nhlangakazi Holy Mountain. But this is a misguided way of talking about altruism, de Waal says. Started Yesterday at 11:13 AM, By Read about our approach to external linking. Des flocons devraient venir danser dans le ciel londonien demain dimanche entre 10h et 20h. And we can see the same with discussions of social norms. As Bellah points out, religion is as a way of being. 2020 for me was a good year as a retired Alien. BBC Weather, Met Office, Meteo Londres… Plusieurs sites spécialisés l’annoncent ! Deluxe Room (45 sq.m) 34,000 THB per 1 person for 16 days, 15 nights. Chiang Mai is a large city in the northwestern part of the country, an energetic mix of markets, shops and packed thoroughfares, a place where people can easily disappear into the anonymity of bustling urbanity. [9] The airport is the main hub of China Airlines , the Republic of China's flag carrier , as well as EVA Air , a private airline established in 1989. I love Thailand, most of my mates back In Oz all tell me they are envious of my lifestyle. Here’s how nature pulled it off. Any religious meal is, before it is anything else, a meal. D onald Weber was startled to be suddenly confronted by two men from El Paso at his girlfriend’s apartment in Chiang Mai, Thailand. This is known as multilevel selection, which “recognises that fitness benefits can sometimes accrue to individuals through group-level effects, rather than always being the direct product of the individual’s own actions”, as Dunbar defines it. The second trait we must consider is empathy. Buddhist monks launch a sky lantern during the Yee Peng Festival in Chiang Mai. But evolution has produced pleasurable sensations for behaviours we need to perform, like sex and eating and female-nursing. ASQ Package Price. The same is true for altruism, says de Waal. As our ape ancestors moved from receding forest habitats to more open environments, like the savannahs of eastern and southern Africa, Darwinian pressures acted on them to make them more social for increased protection from predators and better access to food; it also made it easier to find a mate. “During 200 million years of mammalian evolution, females sensitive to their offspring out-reproduced those who were cold and distant,” says de Waal. When I retired I wanted to come to Thailand, she would have been happy staying in … The reason for this, says Dunbar, is that humans have the capacity to reach three times as many social contacts as chimps for a given amount of social effort. Læs tilbudsavisen fra MENY og få tilbud og inspiration til travle hverdage og weekend. Report abandoned vehicles in Bangkok - get half the fine! That leads Turner to what he considers the million-dollar question: “How did Darwinian selection work on the neuroanatomy of hominins to make them more social so they could generate cohesive social bonds to form primary groups?” he asked me on the phone. I am 70years old  now been married 3 times totalling 47 years. But food-sharing even predates our Homo ancestors, and is currently observed in chimpanzees and bonobos. Close Adult Filtered Event The title and synopsis of this program cannot be viewed as the Adult Content Filter is active. Although the neocortex figures prominently in many theories of the evolution of religion, Turner says the more important alterations concerned the subcortical parts of the brain, which gave hominins the capacity to experience a broader range of emotions. Notice anything about that list? They behave normatively in the sense of correcting, or trying to correct, deviations from an ideal state. And yet – Homo sapiens wasn’t the only species to discover the benefits of food-sharing. I will post that I very much like your attitude and outlook on life. Perhaps it was adaptive in the environments it originally evolved in, but in this environment it’s maladaptive. Bellah calls ritual “the primordial form of serious play in human evolutionary history”, which means that ritual is an enhancement of the capacities that make play first possible in the mammalian line. De Waal disagrees, pointing out that animals do recognise norms: The simplest example is a spider web or nest. There’s obviously a gap between primate social repair and the institutionalisation of moral codes that lie at the heart of modern human societies. Now been here 6 years together here in San Kamphaeng area. My Wife now of 9 years is a Lanna lady. Aren’t the animals just acting in their own best interests? By Religion is an embodied phenomenon because the human religious way of being has evolved for millions of years as the bodies of our ancestors interacted with the other bodies around them. Fun. Awe, which figures majorly in religion, is the combination of fear and happiness. Other countries have tropical weather and beautiful beaches but the Thais are the most fun. Empathy is absolutely central to what we call morality, says de Waal. So, for example, the combination of happiness and anger generates vengeance, while jealousy is the result of combining anger and fear. Second-order elaborations are even more complex, and occurred in the evolution from Homo erectus (1.8 million years ago) to Homo sapiens (about 200,000 years ago). Barbara Fruth, one of the study’s authors, told the digital magazine Sapiens that meal-sharing “must have its roots in our last common ancestor”. You do realize your thread will be moved as has nothing to do with Thai visa etc forum. Goodall has observed a similar phenomenon happen during a heavy rain. Using agents for all that I can, so that I don't have to deal directly with IOs etc,  has certainly reduced any anxieties. There are two major perspectives on why this might be. Animals want to survive. Can the roots of spiritual behaviours and feelings be found in other animals? There is a continuity between the two. Brain size is measured by an endocast, but Turner says these do not reflect the subcortical enhancement that was occurring between the emergence of Australopiths (around 4 million years ago) and Homo erectus (1.8 million years ago). But the point I’m making – that religious experiences emerge from very specific, very long histories – could be made with most religious phenomena. Being an Aussie we like to take Mickey out often, but that us. Afterwards you’ll see them sitting on a rock, actually in the stream, looking up, watching the water with their eyes as it falls down, and then watching it going away. The process of subcortical enhancement Turner refers to dates to about 4.5 million years ago, when the first Australopithecine emerged. Faites votre choix parmi les films, séries TV, reportages ou documentaires qui seront diffusés ce soir à la télé et concoctez-vous une soirée TV réussie ! How far back to these tendencies go? While folks on both sides of this debate have their reasons, it seems unhelpful to frame the evolution of religion in such either/or terms. We modern humans share 99% of our genes with living chimpanzees – which means we’re the two most closely related apes in the whole line. De Waal’s definition echoes one given by sociologist Émile Durkheim, who also emphasised the importance of shared experiences that “unite into one single moral community”. As Bellah reminds us, we don’t come from nowhere. Malimalipe But the comparably smaller brain size doesn’t mean that nothing was happening to the hominin brain. Ultra-Orthodox Jewish men take part in the Tashlich ritual, during which sins are cast into the water to the fish (Credit: Getty). And though this history doesn’t determine us – for with each new phase in life’s story comes greater power of agency – this bio-cosmological history influences everything we do and are. Empathy is not primarily in the head. Pool View Room (45 … what the future of religion could be like. The sharing of food is common in many world religions - and it may reflect some prehistoric preoccupations (Credit: Getty). An example is cooperative hunting, which enables groups to catch bigger prey than any members could catch as individuals. When they get here, they’ll rhythmically sway, often upright, picking up big rocks and throwing them for maybe 10 minutes. Not to jump ahead too far, but it’s important to understand how pivotal feeling is in the evolution of religion. These lush babes are here for you – free to download and watch, carefully selected in categories by our team of experts in the vast field of the adult movies. The Lantern Festival or the Spring Lantern Festival is a Chinese festival celebrated on the fifteenth day of the first month in the lunisolar Chinese calendar.Usually falling in February or early March on the Gregorian calendar, it marks the final day of the traditional Chinese New Year celebrations. The idea that normativity is [restricted to] humans is not correct. Feel lucky to be here. That’s what we’ve been keeping in mind as we made our way back in time to the evolutionary seeds that would eventually – and quite slowly – blossom into human religion. As the ape line evolved from our last common ancestor in more open environments, it was necessary to pressure apes, who prefer to go it alone, to form more lasting social structures. If we are to understand religion, then, we first need to look back into your deep history to understand how human ancestors evolved to live in groups in the first place. And it might go without saying, but play is embodied. Should be fun. In his book The Bonobo and the Atheist, the primatologist Frans de Waal shares a funny story about participating in a panel hosted by the American Academy of Religion. Now 50 and still.... Fun. With a broader set of emotions, the hominin brain was then able to enhance some of its capabilities, some of which quite naturally lent themselves a religious way of being. These observations have led her to conclude that chimpanzees are as spiritual as we are. There are norms involved. Still, says de Waal, all of these “human moral systems make use of primate tendencies”. We might also view it as a way of feeling, as a way of feeling together. Blokes in Oz have been brainwashed by the aggro beefy feminists and it has been disastrous on their mental health are a bit soft, and have very low expectations as a result. Sure, we can all find things to complain about but I wouldnt live anywhere else or with anyone else. After all, Jesus was a Jew, and so his act of breaking bread with the disciples reminds us of the entire history of the Jewish people, including their harrowing escape from Egyptian slavery and their receiving of the Torah at Sinai. They try to get back to an ought state. I lucky myself my wife is great and smart, We live now on my pension and hardly ever need touch savings. Thank you for the wonderful honest word/!All I can say apart from thanks, is , Join the club. I am 70years old now been married 3 times totalling 47 years. Our religious services of today may seem worlds away from the mammalian play and empathy that emerged in our deep past, and indeed institutionalised religion is much more advanced than a so-called waterfall dance. Without the ability to maintain new structures – like small groups of five or six so-called nuclear families, says Turner – these apes wouldn’t have been able to survive. Do you wish to remove the filter for this visit? Started Yesterday at 07:36 AM, Copyright 2002 - 2021 Thaivisa.com Need someone to talk to? I guess I can say that as it is my home country, used to be be a good place to live, but now I'm looking forward to getting out and finishing my life in Thailand. If we made contact with aliens, how would religions react? Play allows us to do this.) In contrast, the average human group is about 150, known as Dunbar’s Number. Fun, Back at 27 and then every year since, mainly Samui sometimes with girlfriends, sometimes with mates, Fun, All of my 40s. 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