The Long Way Back to Ourselves

3.6

From Ancestors to the Great Gods

This episode asks why the oldest known gods showed little interest in whether people cheated each other, while today's largest religions treat morality as central business. It tests psychologist Ara Norenzayan's big gods hypothesis, that belief in watchful, punishing deities let societies grow past the size where reputation alone enforced honesty, against a 2019 study led by anthropologist Harvey Whitehouse finding moralizing gods typically appear only after societies had already grown complex. You learn the two findings cannot currently be reconciled, since such gods become visible mainly through texts, which only exist once complexity is high. It closes by tracing Chinese oracle bones, where deceased kings get consulted about campaigns and toothaches, as ancestor worship functioning as a working conversation.