Religious traditions arose where scarce resources forced group coordination

Evidence

The major religious traditions (e.g., Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity, Islam) could be considered macrodemes, or a gathering of tribes, while individual congregations or communities represent demes, or tribes. Function is another factor that distinguishes groups from one another. Demes’ function is to create a shared reality or worldview, while marcodemes primarily work to standardize and coordinate language, which fosters a shared reality. The main reason why both a shared reality and language are essential to groups is that each increases the ability of the group to coordinate behavior in order to efficiently utilize the surrounding environment (Caporael, 1997). From this perspective, it is not just coincidence that three of the world’s major religious traditions (i.e., Judaism, Islam, Christianity) developed in the Middle East, where both water and arable land are scarce; such scarcity requires the suppression of self-interested motives and group coordination to maximize these resources. — Roderick M. Kramer, Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, Robert W. Livingston, Social Cognition, Social Identity, and…, 896

Categorization

• SEED: A scarcity-based functionalist account of why monotheistic religions clustered in the Middle East — an elevator-briefable environmental-determinist angle.
• QUESTION: If water scarcity explains monotheism’s origins, how does the theory handle equally arid regions that produced no such universal religions? Worth chasing.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Roderick M. Kramer, Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, Robert W. Livingston, Social Cognition, Social Identity, and…, 896