Faith and Religion are still dominant factors in people's lives and in organizing human societies. It is difficult to discuss faith and religion without strong emotional reactions from its adherents. People have faced discrimination and have lost their lives if they happened to belong to wrong faith depending upon the majority view.
Despite all this scholars have studied religion, its evolution including the believers. The scholarly opinions are all over map because it is difficult to study religion as an objective phenomenon because of the subjective faith of the scholars.
He believes that religions evolved along the changes in the human societies.
Professor Diamond argues that religion has encompassed at least four independent components that have arisen or disappeared at different stages of development of human societies over the last 10,000 years.
The video
The talk is long but raises some very interesting points. Especially the religion providing justification for killing other humnas.
In an exclusive preview of his new book, The Stuff of Thought, Steven Pinker looks at language, and the way it expresses the workings of our minds. By analyzing common sentences and words, he shows us how, in what we say and how we say it, we're communicating much more than we realize.
