One-minute animations on theories of religion

Today I came across these adorable but also informative one-minute overviews of (evolutionary) theories of religon. Though they are by no means anywhere close to exhaustive, they're fun to watch, and give you a quick idea on some of the major perspectives on the evolution of religion! Enjoy!

Religion as social control
Karl Marx's idea of 'religion is opium of the people', how it oppresses the workers as well as making them feel better about being oppressed.

Religion as ritual
Sociologist (Isidore) Auguste (Marie François Xavier) Comte's idea of how religion develops along with science, and that ritual becomes an important part of society in the process.

Religion as a mother
Swiss antiquarian and Roman law professor J. J. Bachofer’s theories of matriarchy.

Religion as a virus
Atheist and evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkin's idea of religion as a virus, spread through 'memes'.

Darwinizing culture (video)

On the third day of the Nijmegen Lectures, Russell Gray talked about the evolution of culture (including language). A highly informative video that covers some similar material, can be found through UCLA (Youtube), posted below. If you are interested on how phylogenetic methods can be applied to cultural features, I recommend you watch this video. Enjoy!

For the discussion afterwards, go here.