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.

Community genetics

A very interesting article is publicized in the new "Nature Reviews Genetics": "The co-evolutionary genetics of ecological communities". It seems, that there are some parallels to human communities and how they influence each other in history and evolutionary times. - Only as one example we can suppose a sort of "co-evolution" between the Germans and the Ashkenazi Jews in the last 1000 years (parallels in genetics and mother-tongue). Another example for "co-evolution" could be the influence between Europeans and East Asians at the long chinese border during ancient times (the beginning of chinese bronze age and other events).

Here are some sentences concerning plants and animals:

Advances in the emerging field of community genetics, which integrates genetics and community ecology, could revolutionize how co-evolution is studied, how genes are functionally annotated and how conservation geneticists implement preservation strategies.

Patterns of co-adaptation result from the process of co-evolution, which occurs whenever two ecologically interacting species exert reciprocal selection pressures on one another and the response is inherited. Although most interactions between species, including those between competitors, predator and prey, host and parasite, or host and symbiont, generate reciprocal selection pressures, the specific pattern that emerges over time varies with the nature of the ecological interaction, the genetic architecture of the co-evolving traits and the degree of co-transmission across generations.