The worldwide major religions began as obscure local cultural experiments

Evidence

If you are Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist, or even an agnostic or atheist descendant of any of these traditions, you are heir to an extraordinarily successful religious movement that started as an obscure cultural experiment. To appreciate why these two puzzles are fundamentally connected, it is important to take a look at that hallmark of all religions—belief in supernatural beings such as gods, ghosts, and devils. — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 40

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: The West produced ideologies while every major world religion emerged from non-Western civilizations; Proselytizing religions both created large-scale cooperation and spread globally — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 56; Religious traditions arose where scarce resources forced group coordination — Roderick M. Kramer, Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, Robert W. Livingston, Social Cognition, Social Identity, and…, 896 (+7 more)
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: The West produced ideologies while every major world religion emerged from non-Western civilizations; Proselytizing religions both created large-scale cooperation and spread globally — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 56; Religious traditions arose where scarce resources forced group coordination — Roderick M. Kramer, Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, Robert W. Livingston, Social Cognition, Social Identity, and…, 896 (+7 more)

Broader Connections

• Even fabricated religious traditions reflect a culture’s healthy adaptive vitality #complicates (0.71)