Origins and Evolution of Religion

As it is a rather popular topic, I decided to write some more about this repulsive antithesis of reason. You might find this post boring but it might give some more insight into why religion is the way it is. Perhaps you will find interesting the fact that evolution of religion mirrors greatly the evolution of living creatures. Bear that in mind while reading this.

Origins

The right eye of a giant bird-god.
..Or it's a large ball of hydrogen.

The first "religious" memes came into existence when a member of some primitive tribe of apes claimed that they figured out some of the following: volcanoes, thunder and lightning, the wind, the Sun, the Moon, the stars, disease etc. Their explanations included magic, giant/invisible humanoids, anthropomorphic animals etc. (Most of them have since left religion because science explained it all.) Some of the reasons why people come up with and spread such nonsense, include:

• Desire to impress or deceive (cf. "bullshit")
• Mental disorders
• Mushrooms, yopo, virola, cannabis ...

The first one listed being by far the strongest. I rarely encounter people who readily admit that they do not know, they bullshit instead. Impressing others is of vital importance to the continuation of the species, and no one is impressed by ignorance.

But why would anyone believe any of it? Well, the human brain is not perfect, it's a kludge. We tend to believe authority figures (especially when we are children), we tend to conform to the majority, we make plenty of logical fallacies, we tend to not understand large numbers, probabilities etc. I will come back to this point in a future post.

The crucial meme of religion is the idea that death is actually not the end of life. It's a very pleasing idea to someone whose main fear is death*. It is so pleasing that it is almost certain to occur and spread.

The first religion is formed by connecting several such memes. E.g. "when you die, you join the bird-god".
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*Fear of death and desire to live are products of evolution. People who have neither tend to die without progeny, it's as simple as that.

Evolution

Once you have this basic "organism" called religion, the evolution takes care of the rest. New memes can be added and mutations can occur on existing memes, changing them a little bit. This organism will be attacked by reason and by other religions that contradict it. Its fate is either to perish, as the vast majority of religions have, or to evolve. Religions today are the lucky ones that have evolved rather than perished. Just like living organisms, they have adapted to their surroundings.

A nice example are the Abrahamic religions. A mutant child called Christianity was born and it had Hell, and eternal love and forgiveness. It might not make much sense but that does not matter. It works. That's why it's still there. If you join them, they promise salvation and if you don't, they promise eternal fire. It is an effective weapon against atheism, agnosticism and many religions. The other offspring, Islam, was born with additional mutations: Muhammad was the last prophet and apostasy means death. These are even more effective. Had any peaceful religion been born in that area in place of Islam it would have perished. Islam, and religion in general, is a product of its surroundings.