Ich hatte in dem Artikel „Warum Menschen an Gott glauben“ schon ein paar Gründe aufgeführt, die zu der Entwicklung von Religion beigetragen haben könnten.
Jared Diamond stellt hier einen weiteren vor (via Jerry A. Coyne):
The more of one’s life is wrapped up with one’s group, the more crucial it is to be able to identify group members correctly and not to be deceived by someone who seeks temporary advantage by claiming to share your ideals but who really doesn’t. If that man carrying a Boston Red Sox banner, whom you had accepted as a fellow Red Sox fan, suddenly cheers when the New York Yankees hit a home run, you’ll find it humiliating but not life-threatening. But if he’s a soldier next to you in the front line and he drops his gun (or turns it on you) when the enemy attacks, your misreading of him may cost you your life.
That’s why religious affiliation involves so many overt displays to demonstrate the sincerity of your commitment: sacrifices of time and resources, enduring of hardships, and other costly displays that I’ll discuss later. One such display might be to espouse some irrational belief that contradicts the evidence of our senses, and that people outside our religion would never believe. If you claim that the founder of your church had been conceived by normal sexual intercourse between his mother and father, anyone else would believe that too, and you’ve done nothing to demonstrate your commitment to your church. But if you insist, despite all evidence to the contrary, that he was born of a virgin birth, and nobody has been able to shake you of that irrational belief after many decades of your life, then your fellow believers will feel much more confident that you’ll persist in your belief and can be trusted not to abandon your group.
Das ist letztendlich nichts anderes als der Gedanke, dass Religion gerade wenn sie gewisse absurde, unlogische Elemente hat, gut dazu geeignet ist, ein Gemeinschaftsgefühl zu erzeugen, indem man sich zu einer Unlogik bekennt. Der Gedanke dahinter ist dann eben, dass dies nur jemand machen würde, der sich der Gemeinschaft besonders verpflichtet fühlt.
Durch die Unlogik wird also gerade das verbindende Element geschaffen, weil dieses zu akzeptieren eben gerade das Kostspielige ist.
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