Religiolution

Why Religion Persists Against All Odds  

Any middle school science student can tell you about Gregor Mendel’s peas and Charles Darwin’s finches. But there is much more to heredity than genotypes coding phenotypes, and there is much more to evolution than survival of the fittest.

Reproduction is every organism’s ultimate goal. But why would an organism aware of its own imminent death pass the suffering on to a new generation? Similarly, why would complex organisms, humans for example, behave humanely toward their own kind, or other kinds, if their demise were unalterable?

The religious sect is indoctrinated by a centuries old state of mind that was created to numb the people’s overwhelming fear of death. When humans evolved enough to develop feelings, language, complex thought, logic, etc., we also gained awareness of our own mortality. To temper the fear enough for our species to continue to reproduce, religion was created.

Christianity and the Bible serve as a framework for morality. Without a strict handbook to distinguish right from wrong, many people would not behave rightfully. The strongest animal instinct is self-preservation; protecting one’s own life is the only law of nature. But with religion, the human priority becomes serving God, more so than preserving and bettering one’s own life.

In a more primitive world, living by the code of a higher being would be an advantage for species survival. Christianity motivates the human species to join forces and serve God in the quest for eternal life. The moral guidelines of Christianity (theoretically) keep people from killing one another, and instead band the savages together for a common cause. There is power in numbers, and a large community is much stronger than living individually.

As the community expands and becomes knit more tightly, the Christian doctrine becomes more central to the identity of the group. Members are welcomed and protected, non-members are excluded. In today’s world where politics conquer nature, non-membership in a powerful group doesn’t really qualify as a life-threatening issue; you can simply join a minority faction and get a long just fine despite some potential political marginalization. But in a pre-political society, when the land was governed by natural right, being an individual could hinder your odds of survival.

Even in the pre-modern, but certainly civilized, era (i.e. Renaissance, Enlightenment, Scientific Revolution), scholars of the time identified as “theologians” for fear of being sentenced to death by the Catholic crown. The government and church were so intertwined that excommunication from the church was synonymous with capital punishment. Refer to Richard Dawkins’s The God Delusion for a more specific list of suspected atheistic scientists.

In the modern world you won’t exactly be killed or exiled for admitting you’re not Christian, but there are still consequences. Identifying with an Abrahamic religion has become such a norm that people are wary to admit otherwise. The stigma attached to Atheism is more negative than any other group. Surveys have suggested that Atheists are the most hated group in the United States; Muslims and gays rank higher. Additionally, less than .1% of the population admits to being Atheist.

The God Delusion provides evidence that many of today’s scholars and politicians merely wear the mask of Christianity to earn research sponsorship or voters, respectively. The stereotype of Atheism is that it goes hand-in-hand with immorality and Satanism. Accordingly, no politician is willing to run on the Atheist ticket, even if they are one. This is similar to the phenomenon featured in the documentary Outrage, in which a team of bloggers “outed” hypocritical gay Republican politicians who voted against their true constituency to maintain their political image. But lucky for the LGBT community, the public seems to be gearing toward a more liberal view of sexuality. Sadly, Atheists still feel the need to hide; for centuries there has been no way to live in the Western World at all except as a Christian.

But humanity has progressed and we don’t need God anymore. We don’t need the idea of God anymore to keep people civil. This is not to say that religion should be eliminated; it still serves many moral and social purposes for those who really do need a deistic influence in their life. But for those too intelligent to have real faith, don’t force it. It is natural to fear death, and it is natural that this fear drives even the smartest among us to believe in God. Reason burns in the mind and belly of the intellectual, but even the intellectual will suppress logic in search of eternal life.         

-Mendelssohn