Seven millenia, actually. And two and a half since our first records of Isis. What is your point? What relation between Isis and agriculture are you attempting to refute? I don’t see how the critique links up with what I’ve written.

>“Selection pressures” is a meaningful term in biological evolution, but do you really think that the myth of Isis has anything to do with biological evolution?

Yes, I do. First, culture evolves. The metaphor to genetics is not perfect and not meant to be. Culture is its own thing with its own properties and environmental pressures, but it is evolution by selection nonetheless. The notion of the evolution of culture has gone through a lengthy and necessary phase of skepticism, and emerged from it quite convincing IMO. Second, cultural evolution can drive genetic evolution (recent research has shocked the scientific world by finding that changes in the human genome have actually sped up since the beginning of agriculture). So, the myth of Isis is deeply interwoven with biological evolution, as is any aspect of culture. I’m not claiming the myth of Isis has made any specific changes to human genetics, but that the myth itself evolves due to differential replication as a meme under relevant selection pressures.

> I know you don’t believe there is an “Isis gene.”

Correct. Isis is a cultural entity, a “meme” if you like that term, that exploits human biological features that almost certainly evolved for reasons other than what we would call religion.

>And whether or not “selection pressures” is a meaningful term within cultural “evolution” is rather questionable, as there is no generally accepted theory of cultural evolution.

It is still controversial, but the field has progressed far passed the stage of initial speculation. The rigor of the field has developed robust mathematical models, so much so that you can’t read the stuff without a thorough grounding in statistical analysis. Empirical evidence is mounting. And it is showing consilience with other lines of research, such as cognitive science.

Check out the work being done in dual inheritance theory, which IMO is hands down the best current research on the evolution of culture (including religion). It’s also called gene-culture co-evolution. Google wikipedia for a start. Among books, see Sense and Nonsense by Laland and Brown, or anything by Boyd and Richerson. The best rigorous but short and readable article I can recommend, which enfolds almost all the latest research specifically on the evolution of religions, is Atran and Henrich 2010. It’s only 13 pages and available as free pdf here: www2.psych.ubc.ca/~henrich/pdfs/BIOT_a_00018.pdf

By the time we get to the Isis of the mystery religions, such as is presented near the end of Apuleius’ “The Golden Ass,” we are dealing with the Goddess as providing meaning or orientation (she is becoming an U.I.G – ultimate internal good). But a millenium more time separates the origins of irrigation in Egypt and Apuleius, than separates Apuleius from us.

You say “the bio-cultural landscape created new selection pressures that evolved the myths of Isis…” “Selection pressures” is a meaningful term in biological evolution, but do you really think that the myth of Isis has anything to do with biological evolution? I know you don’t believe there is an “Isis gene.” And whether or not “selection pressures” is a meaningful term within cultural “evolution” is rather questionable, as there is no generally accepted theory of cultural evolution.

How the gods and goddesses “evolved” is a most difficult question, and I commend you on the attempt to address it.

You are right when you say that “Humans don’t turn to religion for the things they know and control, they turn to religion in relation to the things of which they are uncertain, do not understand, and do not control.” Much of the turning to myths portrayed here would be either larger than any individual (social forces), or unconscious from an individual’s perspective, and what isn’t unconscious would indeed relate to the uncertain, not understood, and not controlled, such as that misty and indefinable force by which the world “makes sense” and life becomes “meaningful.”

Religion does sometimes deal with abstract fear, but it also deals with abstract meaning.

Agricultural people know how to plant crops. The Egyptians learned how to irrigate groups. They didn’t need religion for this. But the Egyptians did not fully understand why the floods happened; they did not control the rains; they did not control the insect pests and other hazards. It is in respect to these kinds of things that they turned to the Goddess.

To put this in another way, people do not turn to religion in response to the things that they know clearly how to take care of, they turn to it in relation to the things that cause what I’ll call abstract fear. If we fear something, but know well how to remove the thing we fear, we simply act to remove the thing we fear. We don’t need religion. But the things we fear abstractly, such as a drought that might cause our crop planting to fail, we cannot deal with so directly. Prayer and rituals are a response to such abstract fear. We moderns may clearly see that such prayer and ritual does nothing to ward off drought or pestilence. But if it eased the abstract fear, then it did something of great value for people.

Human intentionality requires that we can image what does not exists. Thus before the pyramids were built in Egypt, somebody imagined them existing; before the nomad’s tent is put up for the night, he or she imagines it being put up, and in this way gains a better understanding of the best location for it. But while imagining what does not exists serves us in many ways, it also is the source of abstract fear. We also imagine monsters under our beds or jinn in the wind.

We live in the age of anxiety; anxiety medication is a multi-billion dollar industry. Those who can no longer believe in prayer at least have pills. I too suffer from anxiety, but I forsake the pills. I have found prayer and meditation to be very effective in overcoming it.