My Evolutionary Theory of Religion

[Jagella]

As we all should know, religion goes back for at least tens of thousands of years. Neanderthals may have practiced a kind of religion. Since religion is so old, it is likely a product of our evolution.

Thanks to Darwin, we know that evolution occurs largely by means of natural selection. Natural selection is nature selecting those individuals who by chance have genes that confer to those individuals traits that allow them to reproduce. When they reproduce, those individuals pass down those genes that confer the survival advantages to their offspring. This is the basis for biological evolution.

Natural selection probably "chose" our remote ancestors who were able to think of things that may not have existed. For example, if a hominid heard a rustle in the bushes, that hominid might think of a lion there and flee even though the rustle may have been only the wind. If it was a lion, then if that hominid didn't flee she would be supper and never reproduce. So those hominids who could imagine lions who may not exist would be more likely to reproduce than hominids who were unable to think of imaginary lions. The gene that caused hominids to imagine lions that may not exist would then be passed down to future generations.

The ability to imagine that which does not exist had other advantages as well. In addition to our ability to flee possible threats, we could imagine useful things we might create. We could imagine tools, weapons, and shelters we did not yet have but that we could fashion and build. In other words, we could plan. When we evolved the ability to plan by imagining those things that didn't exist but that we could make, we acquired a very important survival advantage.

Unfortunately, no survival advantage is perfect, and with our ability to imagine what doesn't exist, we evolved the ability to imagine gods, angels, devils, ghosts, fairies, heavens, and hells. In this way superstition was born, and when some individuals had the ability to shape superstition in others, religion was born.

So my evolutionary theory of evolution is that religion evolved when a trait in some individuals enabled them to shape superstition in others. This trait confers tremendous survival advantages to those individuals who influence superstition, and they are more likely to reproduce. My theory explains why religion just won't go away. It won't go away because those who benefit most from religion, the clergy and other religious leaders, won't go away. They are very likely to reproduce because their ability to influence superstition in others grants them many survival advantages. That's why the clergy and apologists defend their religion with such great tenacity.

What strengths and weaknesses do you see in my evolutionary theory of religion?

[Aetixintro]

[Replying to post 49 by Aetixintro]

Nah, religious evolution will continue because evolution isn't some kind of ascending ladder. It's a branching tree of diversity. We can expect new religions to continue appearing, old religions to adapt or die off, and new ideas to come about.

For example, as technology improves, religions will come about incorporating them. Some will claim that "god" can be created with AI. Some will claim that AI is the proof of humanity's "ascension to godhood."

Some religions are forming within monotheism today that continue to morph the omni-max incomprehensibly illogical Judeo-Christian god into a kind of pantheistic being.

Some religions will recycle old ideas, claiming that we are fragments of a god, where our experience fuels or somehow perpetuates that creator god's will or identity.

There's no limit to the kind of developments religious nutters can come up with. And there's no reason to think that Christianity has any more validity just because it capitalized on the exploitative nature of monotheism.

I think your answer makes it evident that you are an Atheist as your usergroup suggests. Remember that we live in the Information Age and it gets no better in the future. Thus, I find that people get increased sense of science and logics and the rest and therefore also have no use for new religions because the existing religions carry all the religious needs, God, Allah, Brahman, Buddha, etc being primary, hence miraculous creation.

[Neatras]

[Replying to post 51 by Aetixintro]

This completely ignores the fact new religions ARE being created in present times. You seem to either dismiss or ignore that religions continue to be born, with such classics as scientology and the suicide cult Heaven's Gate being prominent examples. My speculation on how religions will develop is based on data, not superstitious reverence for religions you personally like for spiritual or emotional reasons.

[Aetixintro]

[Replying to post 51 by Aetixintro]

This completely ignores the fact new religions ARE being created in present times. You seem to either dismiss or ignore that religions continue to be born, with such classics as scientology and the suicide cult Heaven's Gate being prominent examples. My speculation on how religions will develop is based on data, not superstitious reverence for religions you personally like for spiritual or emotional reasons.

Whoa! You cite "Heaven's Gate" and it turns out to be:

Heaven's Gate was an American UFO religious millenarian cult based in San Diego, California, founded in 1974 and led by Marshall Applewhite (1931–1997) and Bonnie Nettles (1927–1985).[1] On March 26, 1997, police discovered the bodies of 39 members of the group, who had participated in a mass suicide in order to reach what they believed was an extraterrestrial spacecraft following Comet Hale–Bopp.

With the stunning amount of 2 members (post-1997) and with 41 members prior to 1997.

Hey, we're talking religions, not crazies! (Scientology is, though, respectable and that I consider my own religion as well, in addition to Lutheranism by Scientific Christian Deism.)

[Jagella]

[Replying to post 1 by Jagella]

Given your account of the evolution of religion, I'd remark that there may only be a very limited set of remaining religions to "invent". The religious views are deep intellectual worries about the Universe as a whole formed at a very early stage by us.

One should understand myths very well, as much as drawings by children, to understand that they tell us important issues about life in general.

"Miracles" today, be they telepathy, "golems", regeneration, reincarnation, phantom feelings and the rest, have been exactly the same in the past as now and they are therefore beyond doubt important to those people before us as they are now.

The Bible differs from scientific school books in that scientific school books actually tell us what we do know, not what we do not know. It's because of the many mysteries in vast space that the Bible has been born along with other holy books of other religions.

Therefore, the Holy Books of the major religions through times are not written by idiots. This is important to realize when forming a credible Evolutionary Theory of Religion.

I'm not sure what any of this has to do with the evolution of religion. Can you explain?

[Neatras]

[Replying to post 54 by Jagella]

From what I gather, he thinks that the only religions that can come about that have any kind of creative input are ones that are divinely inspired. So he's basically broken down the idea of religion into: Those that are divinely inspired (and he apparently favors the more popular religions, like Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Scientology, etc), and those that aren't (the unpopular ones, or any that take ideas from the ones he prefers).

And he assumes that the "divinely inspired" ones can ONLY come about through divine inspiration, so the only way to have a "new" evolved form of religion is to have it be received via divine revelation, otherwise no new religious ideas can come about at all.

He commits several fallacies, offers no data to support his claim, and uses a kind of question begging rhetoric to dismiss alternative explanations, such as yours.

Aetixintro, please correct any of my misunderstandings of your position. I certainly think they are illogical, emotionally-based drivel [the religions], and that those among the especially gullible try to use your tactic to assert that "all religions are true in a way" as a kind of half-baked scheme to shoe-horn in some pithy statement about how there are no liars among religious founders (or at least, for the religions you like).

I've seen many people like you before, so I'm more inclined to shuffle you off into the category of "especially gullible," since folks who have even an ounce of skepticism and critical thinking tend not to commit the act of trying to overload your superstitious needs with extreme religious exposure.

[benchwarmer]

Whoa! You cite "Heaven's Gate" and it turns out to be:

Heaven's Gate was an American UFO religious millenarian cult based in San Diego, California, founded in 1974 and led by Marshall Applewhite (1931–1997) and Bonnie Nettles (1927–1985).[1] On March 26, 1997, police discovered the bodies of 39 members of the group, who had participated in a mass suicide in order to reach what they believed was an extraterrestrial spacecraft following Comet Hale–Bopp.

With the stunning amount of 2 members (post-1997) and with 41 members prior to 1997.

What does the amount of members have to do with anything? It says it right there in your own quote "UFO religious millenarian cult"

Hey, we're talking religions, not crazies! (Scientology is, though, respectable and that I consider my own religion as well, in addition to Lutheranism by Scientific Christian Deism.)

Can you please draw the line for us between "crazies" and religions? I personally consider Scientology 'crazy'. Even Christianity, at it's core, is about a guy who supposedly died, reanimated, walked around for a bit, then flew away. Seems kinda crazy too IMO.

So, you will have to be more specific what constitutes just a bunch of crazies and what constitutes a religion. Good luck given the subjective nature of the word 'crazies'.

[Clownboat]

[Replying to post 28 by Clownboat]

Mine is backed up by psychology.

Did you actually read the article? Not much is said that is stated as a fact. Rather, most of what is said is qualified by saying, "it is suggested." So then, it would seem that "yours is backed by opinion."

Notice, I did not claim to have facts. I have the opinion (to use your word) of psychology and the reasoning behind it.
Your rebuttal is a straw man.

Feel free to pick a religion and claim it as truth

I have been on this site for a few years now, and have posted a fair amount, and I do not recall ever, "claiming that any religion was truth", and this would include Christianity.

Another straw man.
I have not claimed that you have done such a thing. Please try to be more accurate.

but don't pretend that our approaches are the same please.

They are not. I tend to never claim something as truth, unless I can demonstrate it to be truth. While you certainly seem to believe that, opinions, and suggestions, somehow constitute, truth.

You did say: "in the end, it really is on the same scale, I am afraid."
When the debate is lost, slander becomes the tool of the loser - Socrates

Notice how you did not even attempt to deal with the information that was provided? It would be better IMO if you tried that approach...

[William]

What strengths and weaknesses do you see in my evolutionary theory of religion?

I think that the weakness of your theory revolves around the assumption that everything happened accidentally and that inward promptings which help to make things real are part of that accident.
Your argument appears to be that humans imagined GOD when it may in fact be the other way around, but your argument also tends to see human consciousness as being separate from GOD-consciousness when it may be one and the same thing.

Not unlike the imagined lion in the bushes, these imaginings stem from real incident, and one has to take into consideration 'alternate experiences' which are deemed as real as anything else, and amount to - not whether or not the lion actually IS in the bushes, but that it is possibly the case.

I know you are not suggesting GOD actually exists of course, but the fact that consciousness exists and the fact that you have decided to exclude from your theory the possibility that consciousness and GOD may be the same thing means that your theory requires belief in order to support it.

Inner promptings which precede external creation may very well be evidence of GOD at work. We don't know, so we can't say for sure either way.

What I am suggesting is that we are all possibly the collective equivalent of a GOD lost unto itself but in the process of remembering...and hence the inventions that - naturally enough - would go along with that idea and change over time as we understood ourselves better.

I have written fairly extensively about what you are proposing in the OP, in my Members Notes. The only significant difference in how we interpret the same data differently is that you want notions of GOD out of the picture, and I think that would be most unnatural, but do think there is room for vast improvement re those notions.

♦ The evolution of the understanding of the idea of GOD

Topics therein;

Earth Entity


♦If GOD was female?

♦The GOD of many names and faces.

♦The Local GOD - Entity Earth.

♦The Local GOD - Entity Earth. 2

♦The Mediums between GOD and Individual

♦The day the Fat Lady sings

♦Earth Entity as an aspect of GOD (a GOD but not THE GOD)[/b]

♦Speaking of the local GOD...

♦Religion is just one aspect in which the Earth Entity uses to attract human attention.

♦Hearing the presences of Brethren.

♦Anthropomorphism - The fog of confusion lifts over human understanding..."GOD" is not like "Human".

♦Consciousness is all inclusive.

♦The larger part our subconscious plays in relation to connecting with the mind of Earth Entity.

♦Subconscious experience is the interface between GOD and the individual.

♦Our Mother Who Is In Heaven...

♦Discernment=Options

♦The evidence is within the fact of the evidence.

♦Life begat life - Consciousness is life.

♦Life begat life - Consciousness is life and purposeful 2

♦Evidence of Self Conscious Intelligence ~ Bees.

♦ET - or perhaps a former species evolved in the dinosaur age.

♦Creation is not the Creator.

♦ Until Death Do We Part.

♦GOD Earth Entity and ETs - the metaphore of The Garden of Eden.

♦The Earth Entity - A GOD in its own right. +

♦b]Prayer [Requests to one's idea of GOD ] is said to work for all types of belief systems

♦Rebuking the reprobate belief systems.

♦Victim blaming to save God's character

♦Is Belief in a GOD simply the yearnings of our ancestors to make sense of the incomprehensible?

♦The theory of Intelligent Design in relation to the theory of evolution.

♦What would a perfect GOD do?

♦Did Jesus dismiss Yahweh?

♦Sacrifice and atonement, forgiveness and revenge. How is justice understood?

♦Seeing GOD in the actions attributed to Yahweh - can this be done? What is the naked Truth? [2] [3] [4]

♦GOD knows Itself always in the position of the Actuality, and in that, is always in the position that my position is 'catching up with' and that this process is me evolving in my understanding of the idea of GOD.

♦Can we find good in God?

♦If the idea of GOD is 'evolving', then what's the problem? If 'static' then yes - therein is the problem.

♦The idea that GOD is the same 'yesterday, today and forever' can be aligned with the idea of a GOD evolving within the understanding of human beings.

♦We do not notice immaturity until we start to mature.

♦First remove the husk from the seed, then plant, nurture and see the plant mature...

♦I wonder if we look for perfection in all things, because we sense it is somehow missing?

♦Every 'thing' exists in the Mind Of The First Source

[Jagella]

[Replying to post 58 by William]

I think that the weakness of your theory revolves around the assumption that everything happened accidentally and that inward promptings which help to make things real are part of that accident.

Why do you think that random processes could not cause evolution to happen? And what do you mean by "inward promptings"?

Your argument appears to be that humans imagined GOD when it may in fact be the other way around, but your argument also tends to see human consciousness as being separate from GOD-consciousness when it may be one and the same thing.

You need to define "God" and "God-consciousness."

Not unlike the imagined lion in the bushes, these imaginings stem from real incident, and one has to take into consideration 'alternate experiences' which are deemed as real as anything else, and amount to - not whether or not the lion actually IS in the bushes, but that it is possibly the case.

I'm not sure what you're saying here. Can you clarify?

I know you are not suggesting GOD actually exists of course, but the fact that consciousness exists and the fact that you have decided to exclude from your theory the possibility that consciousness and GOD may be the same thing means that your theory requires belief in order to support it.

Well, obviously my theory requires belief if it is to be accepted, but the reason I don't include any gods as explanations for the evolution of religion is that gods are not well defined if they are defined at all.

What I am suggesting is that we are all possibly the collective equivalent of a GOD lost unto itself but in the process of remembering...and hence the inventions that - naturally enough - would go along with that idea and change over time as we understood ourselves better.

Is that your definition of God--collective humanity? I cannot use home sapiens to explain the evolution of religion in homo sapiens. We and our religion are the result of something that caused us to evolve. We cannot be that something.

The only significant difference in how we interpret the same data differently is that you want notions of GOD out of the picture, and I think that would be most unnatural, but do think there is room for vast improvement re those notions.

If you want me to respect your notion of God, then you need to define it and explain how it caused us to become religious. Evidence for this God would be very helpful too.

[Clownboat]

[Replying to post 49 by Aetixintro]

Nah, religious evolution will continue because evolution isn't some kind of ascending ladder. It's a branching tree of diversity. We can expect new religions to continue appearing, old religions to adapt or die off, and new ideas to come about.

For example, as technology improves, religions will come about incorporating them. Some will claim that "god" can be created with AI. Some will claim that AI is the proof of humanity's "ascension to godhood."

Some religions are forming within monotheism today that continue to morph the omni-max incomprehensibly illogical Judeo-Christian god into a kind of pantheistic being.

Some religions will recycle old ideas, claiming that we are fragments of a god, where our experience fuels or somehow perpetuates that creator god's will or identity.

There's no limit to the kind of developments religious nutters can come up with. And there's no reason to think that Christianity has any more validity just because it capitalized on the exploitative nature of monotheism.

Let's not forget Truscott's version of pre-earth Christianity. Another example of religion adapting.