adaptive behavior? The variety of religious practice - including this shaman ritual in Ecuador - can be linked to infectious diseases
Reuters
The same diseases that afflict . Humanity can also lead one of the fundamental elements of human culture, a new study suggests. A statistical analysis showed an association between higher rates of infectious diseases and of religious diversity in the world. The results have already sparked debate within the academic community; Critics question the validity of the interpretation, and proponents say the discovery could provide a new perspective on why religions exist and what role they play in society.
The history of individual religions are well documented, but the evolution of religion itself is not well understood. Two schools of thought have dominated the debate. The first view religion as a "byproduct" of other evolutionary adaptations such as large brains. The second religion sees itself as adaptive, arguing the man's role in social cohesion and other traits may have helped him survive.
Corey Fincher, a biologist at the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, falls into the second camp. Religion brand group members, he says, and can deter people interact with those outside the group. In areas where there is an infectious disease, it can be an advantage: No foreign means external pathogens. Isolation can also prevent the exchange of ideas, religions or, in this case. This could lead to the rise of many independent religious systems.
Fincher and his colleagues looked for an association between religious diversity and disease rates of a nation. They used World Christian Encyclopedia Barrett count the number of religions in 219 countries and verified against the pervasiveness of the disease in these areas, as indicated in a global database of epidemiology. There was a statistically significant positive relationship between the prevalence of the disease and religious diversity, religion or wealth. This persisted even when the researchers controlled for other variables that could affect the number of religions in a country the size, population, religious freedom, and economic inequality. To correct the different types of human settlement in different parts of the world, they also tested the association of disease and religious diversity in six major regions of the world; the correlation still held true.
The results, published online yesterday by the Proceedings of the Royal Society B , offer a new answer to the question of why religions exist, says Fincher. "Religions are for marking, but at a more fundamental level, may be social in itself remarkable due to stress of infectious diseases."
But Courtney Bender, a sociologist of religion at Columbia University, disagrees. Religions around the beach in the world to be very open very closed to foreigners, she said, "You can not just say religions have strong limits" Indeed, traditional religious communities often interact with those outside. their own group for trade or military alliances, said Richard Sosis, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Connecticut (U Conn), Storrs. Yet Sosis welcomes the study as a "first step" to explain the diversity religious.
"I think [the researchers] are the introduction of an area that has been absent in the development of studies of religion and is potentially important," says anthropologist Candace Alcorta also U Conn Alcorta notes that the existence of large empires in the tropics, the rich diseases -. such as the Maya in the Yucatan Peninsula - seems to contradict the findings of Fincher. But the questions the study raises could inspire research that will advance the field forward, she said.
0 Komentar