0000000001285295
AUTHOR
V Di Giugno
Evolutionary and neurobiological bases of theism
According to evolutionary psychology, all human behaviours are a product of internal mechanisms in conjunction with inputs that cause activation of those mechanisms: no mechanism, no behaviour; no input, no behaviour. From an ethological point of view, the most important religious behaviours consist in the gathering of humans who perform demonstrations of submission toward supernatural individuals endowed with an immense power. About the genesis of the ideas of such beings, Freud felt that they could be the projection result of the “primordial horde’s father” in a super-human world. Subsequently Morris has proposed that divine beings risult from the projection of the figure of the dominant …
Neurobiological aspects of shamanism and sacrifice
According to Winkelman, humans skilled in “soul yourneys” are termed as “shamans”: they are religious practitioners found in foraging societies around the world with antiquity at least as far back as the Middle/Upper Paleolithic transition. Shamans are able to enter into an “ecstatic” state of consciousness that is produced by drumming, chanting, dancing and a variety of other procedures including plant drugs. Altered states of consciousness must be understood in relation to biological capacities, as those related to endogenous neurotransmitters which also have external analogues, such as opioids/opiates and serotonin–like analogues. Recent findings in neurobiological studies support the ro…