Take a bunch of people. In most situations, they will form a society for mutual benefit. The society will need to trust and depend on each other. Trusting another often requires someone to take the word of another, without any proof.
Some of the people will use this trust to gain power. Over time, some of them will come up with a faith-based doctrine with which to exert control over others.
Some of these will be “fitter” than the others and therefore have more followers. The dominant ideas have traits such as resonating better with the human psyche or having more fearsome consequences for non-belief which make them superior to less fearsome competitors.
Is this a logical explanation for how religion came to be? For those that have faith, is this as tough to swallow as the whole natural evolution idea?
I think it’s rather telling that two of the most successful global religions, and the two that seem to be spreading the fastest, are both structured basically the same. Single deity, heavenly reward, core message of peace, external fringe of violent ambassadors who introduce themselves unpleasantly and forcefully to other groups and who have to be apologized for by the mainstream which says “no, really, we’re a religion of peace, can we interest you in some literature.”
I think the principle is sound but I wouldn’t say it is exclusive to religion. Nor is the existance of it in religion and worse or different than it is in any other part of society.
The form of Christianity that dominates the Bush regime, and all its works, and all its pomps, is heavily Social Darwinist. Power to the ultra-rich, screw the poor in the name of Jesus.
The only change I would make in that short history of religions is a step inbetween a society is formed and religon is used to control. The earlier polytheistic religions rose out of explanations of nature. A god that made it rain, a god that made the daylight, etc. These beliefs then grew. The religion that could best explain to the people how the world works would gain followers. Then someone would see this powerful religion as a method of obtaining power (perhaps they know they were simply manipulating or perhaps they truely believed themselves to represent the gods). For the monotheistic religions they started out as a doctrine that, rather than explaining how the world works, they explained how it should work. People should be kind to one another, people should not murder each other, etc. The doctrine that made the most sense and promised the most in return would begin to gain followers. Wash, rinse, repeat.
While some religions may well have been started for power, I have a hard time believing that they all were. Especially a religion that was started by a carpanter who was executed and his followers persecuted for 300 years before it was even legal. I’m not even sure how much power there was in Christianity until Justinian I in the 500’s A.D.
Taking literally the metaphor of evolution, which holds that traits rise through random mutation and persist if they are useful, it doesn’t matter why the religion originally came about. It will be successful if for whatever reason it balances internal stability with external transferability.
Meme theory fits in quite neatly with this idea; the set of ideas that is best at reproducing strong, accurate copies of itself is more likely to prevail.
So how come one idea hasn’t completely dominated all others? If those in charge realize what’s going on, they could subtly manipulate the genome of their meme, making it much more dominant.
Dunno, but possibly for similar reasons that this hasn’t happened with genes in the biological world; it may be that a truly effective meme is costly in other, non-memetic ways.
Time, resistance from similar memes/ideas, and the rise of the tolerance meme. Remember, it’s not that Christianity or Islam hasn’t tried to convert everyone; it’s just that the “unbelievers” became strong enough to resist.
In recent times, they also have to deal with the success of the ideal of tolerance. Not only is it inherently opposed to intolerance ( by definition ), it’s become obvious that cultures with this ideal simply function better. This means that intolerant religions must fight against people’s self interest as well. More tolerant religions don’t have this problem, but tolerant religions don’t sweep away the competition; they don’t “dominate”.
Just look at the present world : the more a culture is dominated by a single religion, the sort that drives out all competing beliefs ( memes ), the more of a basket case that culture is. Such memes are good at preserving themselves in the short run, but they damage the host culture and sabotage their own attempts to spread.
None of this would work if people weren’t pre-disposed to be religious in the first place. When you read Augustine, Rumi, Maimonides, Kierkegaard, etc. you see people sincerely struggling with ultimate questions, not people cynically exploiting the masses. Religion comes from deep within the human heart. The fact that certain people have exploited the religious impulse for personal gain does not change this.
You don’t understand. We’re not just talking about people using religion; we’re talking about religion using people. Yes, as the OP said religion was likely largely invented as a tool of control; but it has evolved to have it’s own agenda of spreading itself.
It’s not surprising that people have a built in religious impulse. Religious people have spent thousands of years killing unbelievers; there’s been a strong evolutionary pressure for people to be religious. This is especially true since the common pattern is to kill the men and children, then rape the women. That eliminates the male unbelievers and offspring, while forcing the women to bear the children of fanatics. Do that for thousands of years, and the majority of the population is compulsively religious.
I think one reason one religion hasn’t fully taken over is varying forms of religion differ in effectiveness for different people. Even Christianity and Islam have subsets which vary in terms of strictness and focus on judgement. I’m a liberal Episcopalian whose culturally as much English as I am American. The form my Christianity takes is quite different from a born-again Pentecostalist who grew up in America’s south. One thing I’ve learned in discussing religion with such people is their need for judgement is every bit as great as my need for compassion and we sometimes see each other as equally crazy and sometimes even flat out wrong. Religion adapts to meet the needs of its followers, whether those followers like to admit it or not. There is more to this, but I’d like to give it some more thought, first.
I do understand the OP, I just think it’s kind of silly. Religion is a concept. It can’t use people any more than the number 3 can use people.
Religion seems to be a natural part of human psychology. It arises in one form or another in all societies. It was most definitely not invented as a tool of control. It was invented to make sense of life, the Universe, and everything. That unscrupulous people have used religion to exploit others does not change this.
As for the evolutionary aspect, I don’t get this. Are you saying that people’s brains have changed so that they are more religious? From my admittedy unstudied WAG, I’d guess the proportion of atheists is pretty constant, if not actually increasing as we learn more about the laws and deep structure of nature.
We’re thinking in terms of memes; beliefs/ ideas viewed as virus/genelike evolving entities. Religion can use people the same way a virus can use a cell.
I have no proof; as far as I know nobody’s even tried to do a study on the subject. However, given the nature of evolution it seems straightforward; if you keep killing unbelievers/impregnating them with the genes of believers, you’ll end up with a species with inbuilt tendencies towards religiousity. Frankly, it would be hard to avoid that result, unless evolving that tendancy was impossible.
I must admit I’m a bit suspicious of the whole meme idea. It’s a clever way of thinking about things, but if you take it as more than a metaphor or analogy, it breaks down. Viruses and genes are real in the physical sense, memes are not. Also individuals can pick or choose what they believe in. The meme idea discounts human reason.
I don’t have any proof either, of course. This is all pretty speculative. However, I’d guess that the proportion of unbelievers in the world has always been pretty small. Also I don’t think–again, a WAG–that religious belief is genetically transmitted like hair color or even musical ability. There may be a genetic component to it, of course, but I believe we can learn from our surroundings. Also, the majority of religious violence in the world seems to be not people killing unbelievers but people killing believers in the “incorrect” religion.
First, memes ( if they exist beyond a useful metaphor ) are just as real; they are embodied in the written word, in speech and the brain structures of those who learn them. Viruses and genes and memes are all pure information; the matter they are embedded in is just the medium. A gene can be read off a DNA strand, the sequence stored in a computer, printed onto paper, typed back in a computer, then engineered into another strand of DNA. It’s still the same gene, no matter what medium it’s stored in.
The idea of memes doesn’t really discount reason or choice. We are simply in the position of a species that could rewrite and/or create it’s own genes. Remember my comment about intolerant religions ? I believe one reason they are having problems, is that the are against peoples self interest. In essence, I believe we affect our memes, and they affect us back; it’s a feedback loop, not a set of puppet strings.
Actually there’s a fair amount of evidence that religious tendencies have a genetic component, here’s a story on the subject. .
As far as religions killing rivals and not unbelievers, remember that unbelievers by nature are the rivals of all religions; they don’t have one on their side like the believers do.
This is all pretty speculative. However, I’d guess that the proportion of unbelievers in the world has always been pretty small. Also I don’t think–again, a WAG–that religious belief is genetically transmitted like hair color or even musical ability. There may be a genetic component to it, of course, but I believe we can learn from our surroundings. Also, the majority of religious violence in the world seems to be not people killing unbelievers but people killing believers in the “incorrect” religion.