Poop Shute

Religion (again)

For those religious readers, please know that (for once) I am not stirring up sh*t here. I am not poking the bear with a stick to watch him roar. I am just sharing some conclusions I have come to for myself. Feel free to disagree, but lets keep it civil.

I saw Bill Maher's new film RELIGULOUS on Saturday. Good times. It got me thinking about a conversation I had a couple summers ago with a good friend. I remember him citing some kind of innate human need to have a spiritual life, or something to that effect. He mentioned the same thing that many religious people often mention: the fact that nearly every major civilization that ever existed on earth had religion of some kind. He wanted to know how I could explain that obvious human need that crosses all culture and race lines. I don't remember exactly how I addressed it at the time, but I do know that I didn't have an answer of any kind of substance. Much time has passed in reflection, and after all I've read and seen and thought about since then, I have an answer now. It's not an original one, but it makes sense to me.

I think what we humans actually have is a powerful and innate need to feel that we understand exactly what is going on around us. We need to know why the earth is here, why we're here. We need to explain birth and death and the changing seasons, why the sun rises and sets, etc. etc. This need is in our blood, and I mean that literally. Our genes cry out to us to piece together an understanding of the world so that we may better move through it, and this need exists in all cultures and goes beyond all borders.

In early man's quest to understand the world he needed to categorize and label everything. Early man did not have the tools necessary to do this using only his five senses, so he began coming up with stories. These stories were connected to an immaterial (and I would say imaginary) sixth sense. With this soul, or spiritual sense, or third eye, or whatever it is you want to call it, we humans began to feel as though we were perceiving the presence of a higher power at work.

This helped early man to label and categorize everything. Anything he couldn't wrap his primitive mind around was explained through some kind of fanciful tale, and that was all he needed to feel he had a handle on the world. Why did the world go cold and snowy once per year in winter in ancient greece? Easy: Demeter (goddess of grain and harvest) is upset because her daughter spends a few months every year in the underworld with Hades, so sad Demeter shuts down the earth for a bit.

Why bother learning more about it? After all, it is simply the will of (insert a deity name here). Nearly all cultures applied these same tactics, but different cultures had different perspectives and different needs, and it follows that the stories they created contained different priorities and different constraints. And in this short paragraph here I have not only answered the question asked about the human need for religion, but also the unasked question about why the answers of the various different cultures to the same questions were all so very different. Further exploration of the reasons behind those differences, however warrants another essay... no, in fact it warrants an entire book.

Fortunately for us, in this day and age, we do have the tools to further understand the world around us. With the help of microscopes and telescopes and particle accelerators I can perceive with my five concrete senses what is actually happening. I don't need a story to tell me, I can literally see it, hear it, touch it, etc. I don't need to imagine that the universe is a representative democracy with a president (also called God) and through my vote (also called prayer) I can pass a meteorological referendum for rain to fall. I know that the weather is a chaotic system and rain will happen whenever it's going to happen, and there is nothing I can do to change that.

So, yes, I think we probably do have this innate leaning towards a spiritual life, but I think that is a byproduct of our even more powerful innate need to understand the forces at work on our lives. I find that need is fulfilled quite easily with astrophysics and evolutionary biology. They are cold, unfeeling forces who don't listen to my prayers, or anybody else's, but I kind of like that. I like that nobody is given anything by any deities in my world. Nobody has a leg up, and everybody has to go out and get what they want for themselves, or at the very least seek corporeal help.

I also recognize, as does Bill Maher, that I am incredibly fortunate to have lived a life that brought me to these conclusions. I know that I am lucky to have had the education and oppotunities I have had that release me from the need to lean on an all powerful and all loving imaginary friend. I recognize how those less fortunate might need that. I really understand that, I do. I do not share in that need. I revel in the world around me for what it is, and I don't need anything else to make me feel loved or secure.