Download Big Gods: How Religion Transformed Cooperation and Conflict AudioBook Free

How did real human societies scale up from small, tight-knit sets of hunter-gatherers to the large, private, cooperative societies of today - even though anonymity is the enemy of assistance? How did prepared religions with "Big Gods" - the great monotheistic and polytheistic faiths - spread to colonize most minds on the planet? In Big Gods, Ara Norenzayan makes the surprising and provocative discussion that these important puzzles about the roots of civilization are one and the same, and answer each other. Once human minds could conceive of supernatural beings, Norenzayan argues, the stage was established for rapid ethnical and historical changes that eventually led to large societies with Big Gods - powerful, omniscient, interventionist deities concerned with regulating the moral habit of humans. How? As the saying runs, "watched people are nice people." It practices that folks play nice when they think Big Gods are watching them, even when no-one else is. Yet at the same time that sincere faith in Big Gods unleashed unprecedented assistance within ever-expanding groupings, it also presented a new source of potential issue between competing groupings. In some elements of the entire world, such as north Europe, secular organizations have precipitated religion's decrease by usurping its community-building functions. These societies with atheist majorities--some of the most cooperative, peaceful, and productive on the planet - climbed religion's ladder, and then kicked it away. So while Big Gods answers important questions about the roots and spread of world religions, it also helps us understand another, more recent social transition--the surge of cooperative societies without idea in gods.

Category: General

Details

Publisher	Audible Studios
Language	English
ISBN
DATE	2014-05
Author	Ara Norenzayan

Download