Jared Diamond - The Evolution of Religions

Jared Diamond has turned his considerable intellect to the evolution of religions - very cool lecture (though geeky). Diamond is as close to an integral thinker as we are likely to find in the academic world. His argument, at least in part, is that religion shapes communities, so if you change the religion you change the community.

He also seems to hold, at least in some ways, to Jean Gebser's model of psycho-cultural evolution that is the foundation for modern integral theory.

Jared Diamond, professor of geography at UCLA, received the Pulitzer Prize for non-fiction in 1998 for Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies. In 1999, he received the National Medal of Science. His most recent book is Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (2004).

Professor Diamond argues that religion has encompassed at least four independent components that have arisen or disappeared at different stages of development of human societies over the last 10,000 years.

Tags: evolution, Religion, culture, Jared Diamond, Evolution of Religions, integral theory, Gebser