Ronnie: Hello there
I wonder if anybody heard about this hypothesis before. If so what do you think about the findings? Sounds like an attempt to explain morality without God’s involvement. You may find other articles that include this research outcome; they will be written in a different way. The articles came out 2-3 days ago.
Ron, welcome to the godandscience.org discussion forum!
Of course, people who deny the Lord's existence have always tried to explain away the origins of faith in the true God / Jesus - as non-spiritually authentic in nature, but just a societal response to maintaining peace and order. As this is a really naive belief - especially considering that many ancient pagan religions included many hideous and barbaric practices - of sacrificing human babies, children, virgins, etc., and many terrible cultic practices demonic in origin.
In Romans 1, the Apostle Paul indicates that the origins of religion (all practices worshiping false deities and things other than the true God), had everything to do with the fact that God created people designed to Worship and depend upon Him. And that they otherwise substited the rightful worship of Yahweh to false pagan and demonic-inspired "deities." Note what Paul writes about this in Romans 1:
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?s ... ersion=ESV
Hope you'll hang around and become part of our discussions and journey as we learn and talk about all things related to God and faith!
Philip
