Religion - the most important theme

At the moment I'm reading very much about the evolution of religion. For example, I have recognized, that "The Birth of the Gods" (1964) from Guy E. Swanson (1922 - 1995), sociologist of religion, is a very good beginning for a modern theory of the evolution of religion in human societies. It is only a beginning - but I think a good one. (I have found it mentioned in this very good overview of Richard Sosis [2003].)

Question is: Why people believe in gods and why they believe in different gods and religions? I have recognized, that this is a very important theme. Societies cannot survive without religion, without religiousness. Everything is going wrong, when religiousness is missing. No understanding any more for children, for family life, for THOSE things, that are important. People without religion - atheistic people - think (often, mostly), making money is the most important thing in life. They think to have a fullfilled life within a job is the most important thing in life. So in Germany now, politicians (Ursula von der Leyen) are discussing very much about how the Germans could have MORE children. This is the key question for the survival of our society.

But as long as they think, that making money and to have a job is as important as family life, they will make EVERYTHING wrong. And this is, what politicians and people think everywhere. They do not see alternatives. So we have very terrible politics concerning theses themes at the moment in Germany (and I think in the whole western world). For example, people begin to think, that nothing could be better, than to put young children away from mothers, parents, family. It is difficult for me to understand, how so MANY and important people can think such really, really nonsense. But the reason for this is: They do not have the slightest understanding of what childhood is. Childhood is not to become as fast as possible an adult. To have an extended childhood is, what us makes different from chimpanzees! We are "Nesthocker", not "Nestflüchter". But politicians nowadays - conservative, "christian" politicians - want to reduce that differences between humans and chimpanzees concerning all this as it seems. They want to make us a different species, they want to makes us to "Nestflüchtern" once more. And that is a very different stage of brain-evolution.

Nothing will become better as long as people and politicians don't recognize, that it is religion and religious feelings that make societies survivable. Religious feelings - that is love, that is understanding of the soul of children (that is very, very different of the soul of adults). Religiousness is all that, what is missed in modern societies. It is respect for other people. It is awe for life. If you believe in gods - like so many tribes in humanity (as Swanson makes clear) you have a completly different world view than people who think making money and economic (and philosophical) materialism is the only true goal and meaning of human life.

Children have inborn morality - and adults?

Some scientists claim (here Marc Hauser), that humans have an inborn morality. As far as we talk about children, I'm easily to convince, so the first part of the following story sounds very convincing for me:

Last week, Harvard professor Marc Hauser dropped in to his daughter Sofia's kindergarten class and presented the children with a moral dilemma. You must all keep your eyes closed for 30 seconds, he told them. If none of you raises your hand during that time, you will each get a sheet of stickers when it's over. But if one of you raises your hand, only that child will get all the stickers.

The task brought immediate cries of protest, Hauser recalled. "But that's not fair!" some children exclaimed, shocked at the idea that one child could hog all the stickers.

Some might say that the kindergartners, in their short lives, had already learned much about the nature of justice. But Hauser goes a step further: Morality, he argues, is influenced by cultural teachings but is also so deep and universal an aspect of human existence that it is effectively "hard-wired" into the brain, much like the instinct for language.

The last sentence is:

(...) As for the kindergarten class and the sticker dilemma, not a single child raised a greedy hand -- and they shared the stickers equally.

We know also, that children in the age of three "cannot" lie and they "have to learn" to lie until the age of five or so. The same may be true with their reaction "That's not fair!" here. And the same may be true some years later, when they will smile about such an experiment - as adults do. Adults are another species of humans.