The Axial Age

http://darwiniana.com/2010/12/28/how-did-god-get-started/

http://darwiniana.com/2010/12/19/evidence-density-2/

http://darwiniana.com/2010/12/16/history-evolution-and-values/

http://darwiniana.com/2010/11/26/harm-done-to-question-of-the-axial-age/

http://darwiniana.com/2010/11/22/old-testament-history-secularism-and-the-axial-age/

http://darwiniana.com/2010/11/17/ye-olde-cave-man-warnt-a-monotheist/

Talking about monotheism and the evolution of primitive man is ridiculous. We see, in any case, the late arrival, or crystallization, of monotheism in the Axial period.

http://darwiniana.com/2010/11/12/nietzsche-on-history-vs-the-axial-age-data/

http://darwiniana.com/2010/11/02/god-of-the-old-testament/

http://darwiniana.com/2010/11/06/fine-tuning-the-axial-age-and-greek-tragedy/

http://history-and-evolution.com/whee4th/chap5_1_2.htm

We see that the Axial interval is only secondarily a question of religion. In the first place, the religions that do appear in the wake of the Axial interval are not absolute innovations but, in our terminology, relative stages or transformations in place of outstanding religious traditions. Thus this period is not as such the beginning of our religious traditions, this having long since occurred. It is nonetheless close enough to see the emergence of the major religions such as Buddhism and the Occidental monotheisms in the context of the Axial Age, if we remember that, strictly speaking, they do not emerge exactly in the Axial interval but after it. They are mideonic phenomena. Thus, significantly, Armstrong is hard-pressed to explicate the emergence of Islam long after the Axial interval. But this is no problem in our approach. Islam shows a clear lineage from the Axial period but is an independent mideonic process initiated for reasons explicable on other grounds than Axial analysis.