title: Moralizing religions: Prosocial or a privilege of wealth?
abstract: Today's major religions are moralizing religions that encourage material sacrifice for spiritual rewards. A key issue is whether moralizing religions gradually evolved over several millennia to enable cooperation among genetic strangers in the spiraling competition between increasingly large groups occupying Eurasia's middle latitudes, or whether they emerged only with the onset of the Axial Age, about 2,500 years ago, as societal wealth increased to allow privileging long-term goals over immediate needs.
authors.affiliation: CNRS,Institut Jean Nicod - Ecole Normale Supérieure,75005 Paris,France.satran@umich.eduhttp://sitemaker.umich.edu/satran/home.
authors.forename: Scott
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Atran
mesh_terms: D006801:Humans; D007398:Interpersonal Relations; D012067:Religion; D012919:Social Behavior