Sort of an Argument for the Purpose of Religion and Why We Choose to Deny It

I feel that the fall of religion to the acceptance of the dominance of science and its revelations is not necessarily a morally bad choice made by modernity, but an unconscious act of the nature of humans, and that it may be entailed bad consequences. I’m not trying to determine right or wrong or discern moral from immoral, but seeing as the rightness of science has the overwhelming support of large fractions of society these days and its advancements in every field of research threatens to undermine the importance of religion in society, I feel it is necessary for someone to at least come to the aid of the most ancient knowledge that gave meaning to an otherwise meaningless conglomeration of flesh and bone and everything that these bags of meat have ever done since the acceptance of the possibility of a higher power.

In trying to understand the role of religion and the human tendency towards science, it must be made clear as to the instinctual nature of humans. It is my hope that the reader may be able to see the seeming naturalness and reason for our acceptance of science, and with the awareness of the missing necessity that science fulfills in humans, and how science actually addresses the fundamental animal instinct in humans, we may be able to see as to why a resurgence of faith in any religion may be more beneficial to society than the knowledge that science provides.

Without having to diverge into the many theories of human nature and habit, I will try to give the general deep-seated characteristics of our primal personality for so much as I can observe it.

As a species, we are likened to animals because we share the same initial primitive responses to the question of survival. I speak of the drives and motivations of any animal in their quest to survive. Some of these drives include the need to acquire territory for security, generate a genealogical legacy, live in general comfort (this encompasses adequate food and shelter), and a common desire to be at the forefront of all else, or basically to dominate everything. This drive to dominate is the ultimatum of all those drives mentioned above, and is a result of the fact that everything else is considered hostile if it is not the supporting means to reach our desired ends, which is survival and influence, or power to ensure this survival. It is like thinking that you must falter so I can persist, so that I can get ahead, otherwise if you are ahead, then I am behind.

We can see in a simpler form what I mean by taking a look at the food chain in the sea. Everything must feed, and the only source of food is each other. It is because of this need to feed in order to survive that all the aspects of Darwin’s theory of “Survival of the Fittest” becomes more than just concept but reasonable. And when we apply this concept to the human species, we can already deduce the raw reason for the way humans interact with each other and the world; which is for the betterment of the individual self in one way or another. It is selfishness, whether you can accept it or not, whether it is apparent or not; that is what it all boils down to.

But what I am speaking of now is already known by psychologists and biologists. It is self preservation in one form or another. Self preservation in human conditions can even be addressed in our social interactions, in the way we associate with other people. Just think about cliques in high school. An individual involves themselves with others like them, in an atmosphere that is conducive to the way in which they live; which suits the method that they pursue that allows them to survive with the most comfort, which is only justified by what they believe, as comfort is subjective. It is inadvertently, unconsciously, naturally associating with others like you in order to feel a sense of comfort which is the foundation that motivates further involvement with these like-minded people. Like monkey clans. But I won’t go any further explaining this idea of self preservation as I can’t credibly speak on the topic, it is only through observation and analysis that I think it makes sense and I hope that you are able to share this sense at the moment. It was important to be stated in order to create a foundation for the original topic expressed which was what the role of religion in society was and why religion has been rejected through scientific reasoning or human reasoning (interchangeable).

Religion has been diagnosed as a barrier to human social development and technological advancements. It seeks to hamper progress because of the rules that it endows on every basic human habits, our freewill, and our natural tendency to sin; effectively everything that makes us human. But I believe it to be a misconception of the ideals expressed in most if not all religions when what we deduce from the teachings of any religion that we must be bound by its principles in order to be happy, satisfied, and good. If you believe that religion demands and implicates such order as any of them may express is the desire of a God for its people,that is only because you have understood the natural human aspect, the human’s animalistic perspective of it only. That aspect, which I believe to be the result of a loss of meaning in translation as well as to human interference due to the desire to project opinion and influence on anything (it is all too well known the changes that text, language, and the understanding and meaning of an issue based on these undergo in the span of time, especially when the significance is applied and manipulated to fit the context of a certain regions and/or societies and/or ages), tends to veil the true underlying moral of the entire narrative. Essentially it is how you perceive the dictation of the religion, rather than the substance of it, that we either observe it as hostile or friendly and accept or reject it.

Religions are based on stories that take place over unspecified chronological points in a span of time. All we can truly infer without subjecting our reason when we try to decipher the actual amount of time it had taken not only for the events told within the selected scriptures to take place but also how long it had taken for them to be written, is that it must have taken a long time, such as with the Bible or Qu’ran or Vedas, as neither truly depicts the length of every single event save for a few, such as with the events that ensued Noah’s struggle with the Ark; and we are only left to refer to history to judge the approximate time-lapse of the rest. Still it is not the time that has any importance, but it is the message they are trying to portray, and that may be the reason why specific points in time are never mentioned.

These events are related to us through narratives, which suggest that the events at one point in time, and by some entity, had been observed, analyzed, and recorded. Those recordings always take a person or peoples into context; and from there, analyze their story which may include positive or negative proceedings, and from that, are concluded the higher morals and values that had been represented in the subject of the story either through their practice of the moral instigated or their non-practice. Their lacking, which we may call as a tragedy (like Greek Tragedies), is usually from where we learn the moral or value that the subject required in order to proceed positively in their transactions, but consequently suffered through various ways as they did not express those moral values. The magnification of these subjects by these narratives are done to show explicitly what is a good trait and what is a bad trait, and the outcome of acting on either one. It shows the natural human tendencies and compares them to the rare tendencies that are contrary to human nature, and explains how and through what means we can apply those rare ‘superior’ tendencies to our human nature; thus restating naturalism with supernaturalism. Those morals, values, principles, tendencies suggested in the stories tend to be the principles of the corresponding religion, and when we look at every religion’s principle morals, they are all the same. They all call for a change in our mindsets, attitudes, perceptions, morals, etc.

But let’s put aside the divine aspect of religion and their corresponding texts for a moment and let us see it as some choose to believe it as the work of men. What we are left with is the same scenario; they are stories taken from observation, and ideals derived from analysis of the human nature as stated before. They express the human condition and our behavior. Every tale in the texts of all religions expresses the human potential to surpass its own follies created by its own nature, whether it is according to a divine expectation or a human hope to outdo itself, its own nature. This feeling of overcoming one's self is also a plausible action of our nature. When we combine the presumption of our animal nature to dominate all else with our superb intelligence and awareness to apply the principles of ‘Survival of the Fittest’ to every act that involves mind, it is at the pinnacle of our application that we apply it to our individual selves, and therefore fight to surpass or transcend not just nature and the Earth, but ourselves. This is what we speak of when we talk about the spiritual and intellectual, the psyche and the soma, the subtle and the gross, earth and ether. We see this struggle to cope with the world and ourselves through the various lives that are made example of for us in the religious texts, and which allows us to deduce their significance. These realizations offer humans to see themselves through the magnifying glass of the reasoning beyond what we could reason on our own, otherwise if we were competent enough to do so then I most likely would not be speaking about it now. The reasoning of religion battles humans at the core of their being, their animal instincts, the force that motivates the way they interact with the world in order to survive it. It seeks to destroy the innate selfishness that is natural to our behavior. If you believe that selfishness is not a natural characteristic of our conduct, that is only because you have not realized it yet, because it is so natural to you, sort of like blinking when you sneeze.

Returning to the texts; the narrative may differ, but the moral is just the same. To have an idea of what I mean, you only have to refer to the Hero Myths that every culture, society, and civilization has created and manipulated according to their society’s conditions and circumstances. It might be that instead of the hero being known as Hercules, and their task having to clean an impossible amount of cow feces in one day from a barn, the hero might be known as Beowulf, and they may have had to battle a deceptive dragon at Earnaness. The incidents in the stories are different, but the moral (“anyone can do anything if they set their mind to it”) remains the same.

So we see that if we look beyond the way religion is dictated, beyond the demands it implies, beyond our conditional interpretation, we can distinguish the plain reality of what these religions and spiritual texts try to present; that is, the human condition, our nature, and what it is like, through another perspective other than human, to be human. And what they try to offer, though it can be intermingled in the useless language needed to tell the moral through a tale (which can make the process of understanding more complex when we scrutinize the details rather than survey the entire story, but more relative as it is expressed through human examples), is an enlightenment to our individual natures which influences and is reflected by the nature of society, considering that a society is only a collection of these individuals. But religion assesses our weakness, which can be unnerving and repugnant; as no one likes to admit their weakness.

Normally when we are confronted with such a hostile force that can expose this weakness, its presence is external and observable, but this new threat hits us in the core of our psyche, our conscious, and we don’t even know where it came from. Somehow, through our intellectual innovation, we can get around our weakness, but never can we really solve it, and transform the weakness into strength. Intelligence is our strength, and we exercise that to the fullest until our brains are ripped; and that is how we get around our physical weakness. But, for example, no matter how physically fit one may be, they will never be able to take down an elephant single-handedly. Even with 10 men it would be impossible, as the elephant is the size of 30 and has the strength of 30 in just its single trunk. Since we cannot on our own or even as a faction fight with an elephant and expect to win, we think of ways to do defeat the elephant while still trying to prevent harm to ourselves; thus we invent spears.

But I see religion's instigations and provocations not as a strike at our human weakness, but an attempt to separate those rare and noble strengths that delineates the human species from our animalistic nature which keeps us chained to the level of animals. Science does not offer such a revolutionary theory to the process of life and how to change it altogether, it only confirms in greater detail what we already know and leaves us without a counterargument or a new methodology for the process. It empowers the natural processes with the truth of the reality of the process and the exquisite detail that makes up the process, but no more than that is ever done. It explains how the process works, so that we may be able to use the process to our advantage, but it always fails to appropriately address and satisfactorily answer the why behind the how. Science itself is a result of the natural process, the behavior of animals; specifically humans. It is just a refined result of nature due to refined human reasoning due to the need to compensate by the human species for its lack of everything else, otherwise without our innovative intellect, we’d have remained gorillas in the Congo- without the Democratic Republic of. Absolutely this refined thinking is beyond all other possible product of another animal, much like a rhinoceros’ horn on our its forecastle is beyond the fabrication capabilities of the human biology. Our skill is a superior skill, there’s no question that it is what distinguishes a human from a rat. But it is still bound by the principles that define nature, as it was a consequential development of the process of nature; a consequence of the survival of the fittest, and is the unique method used by our species to exert our dominance over all others.

And we can see now the results of nature, which includes our own, and that this is truly the case as we have nearly mastered our world through the use of our technologies that grows ever more advanced with each passing day, synchronously with our need to master the process of nature itself. If we are to be able to master life, as that is the greatest stumbling block to humanity, we must be able to master death, and that is essentially our motivation for progressing in the fields of biology, medicine, physics, etc. so that we may be able to find a way to prolong it; or as we see from the infant form of science, alchemy, to prevent it all together. And who knows, maybe we will. In recent circulations of the Times of India, the most popular English newspaper in India, there have been many articles that stated scientific discoveries into the processes of aging and the genes responsible for it. Of course with this discovery and the injection of our curiosity and the individual desire of any single human to want to be to first explorer, the discoverer, the innovator, and overall a name to remember; and as should be expected from a good employee who is the pride of their occupation; someone will eventually investigate into how the gene functions, its process, its operation. It would be the job of geneticists and bio-engineers and so on and so forth to reverse engineer the gene in order to master its utility and apply it to the benefit of humanity. If they didn’t, not only would their vocation be pointless, they would be fired.

This is an example of the role of science. Science tries to offer various ways around complications. That is essentially what a tool does, and it is through scientific discovery that we develop new tools. We use a rock to break the shell of a walnut, which without the rock we most likely would never have been able to break through without subsequent suffering of the jaw or cracked teeth or broken fingers. Thus is the result of reasoning; we could not break it ourselves, and did not want to harm ourselves, therefore we need something else to break it. This is as well the result of innovation; we had not any tool to break the shell, therefore we tried a novel approach and used another object, a stone. But neither reasoning nor observation and innovation are exclusively characteristic to the human species. Monkeys use stones to break and even as weapons, birds use twigs for nests, and turtles use the moon to guide. It is the fact that we have developed and nurtured this skill of reasoning that we can now use steel to crack shells as well as to crack heads, cement for structures let alone forests of trees, and the moon, well, we can go there.

Initially we see it essential and noble and respectable that any inquiry into an impediment to human life is made, and once the inquiry is made it requires results if humans are to continue living in a progressive manner. But when we induce reality into this vision, we see already the infallibility in such discoveries as magnanimous as the discovery of the genetic process of aging. The earth itself can not sustain our dominance. Eventually the She will have to revolt, unless she should die herself, which we are now witnessing as the result of our scientific progress, and we are now observing and participating in the repercussions of our the advancement itself. Yes even the earth can feel the pressure of an oppressor, of someone or something that abuses its authority, and it will only be a matter time before it will not be able to sustain those pressures any further, and all things will suffer from its reversal of its own nature; from generous to covetous. This we know is fact when we look at the dwindling resources of the planet such as fresh water, land, and fresh oxygen (deforestation + air pollution), which will only diminish exponentially as the human population grows. Already we are considered at the tipping point of stability and chaos.So what then can religion offer us that science cannot? Science offers ways to get around, but what we need is an answer to solve the problem altogether, like vicoden can ease the pain, but it won't erase the source of the pain, and even by taking it we are damaging our livers for just a temporary subsidy from suffering. Symbolic, isn't it?

Through out this essay, my intent was not to try and convince everyone to revert to the lifestyle of the middle ages. I am only trying to bring to light the qualities, values, and answers that religion gives us; forgetting the source of its knowledge or the people that wrote it, but only looking into how it challenges our human nature and seeks to transcend our animalistic behavior, our Darwinian lifestyle of survival of the fittest. Religion tries to avoid this natural disposition to competitiveness and show that at the very bottom of everything we are all striving and fighting for the same cause, to save our lives. It shows us how to relieve ourselves of the struggle and accept it; that a progress can be made internally in the nature of the self rather than externally in the nature of the world, and that it is by the internal progress of the species that we can actually change the nature of the external world, or at least the perception of it, which really is the only thing that must be changed.. 

But if we consider what I had proposed with the brief idea behind the motivation of animals and the reality that human’s are predisposed to the same conventions, then the reason and cause of the recent decline in the acceptance of religion is fairly understandable. What is understood is that every entity on the earth is naturally bound to try and assert its dominance and authority against everything else on the planet for the sake of the prosperity of the concerned life of itself; which, since we are part of this natural world, goes against our primal instinct to survive if it is not us presently performing the assertion, and we react like a mirror with the same intent, to dominate this hostile force that threatens to dominate us, even though it uses the same means as us. An example would be throwing a wild healthy lion and a healthy man in each other’s midst. Obviously as the lion is not tamed it would attack the human either out of defense or encroaching hunger, and the human would attack the lion similarly in defense, or if the human had a notion of the lion’s presence beforehand, then they may attack preemptively to prevent being caught off guard. If he tried to run away, the lion would chase out of instinct, determining it as prey, so fleeing cannot be accepted in this hypothetical situation. The end result is that one of beings would have successfully endowed their dominance over the other. One will inevitably die, and the other will inevitably feast. The lion will unarguably be the victor of the two. Where the argument can be developed on behalf of the human and be considered as a reasonable case, is if the man uses his intellect and acquires a tool to aid him in his quarrel with the lion, and therefore place himself at a somewhat equal footing, or at the very least would take a step higher than where would have previously been without the tool-come-weapon against the lion.

Similarly on a much larger scale, science (a result of human reason and human nature), through intellectual advancement by understanding the processes of nature to a fuller extent and the technological achievements derived from the understanding, has today placed itself on an equal footing with religion (a result of divine and essentially unnatural reasoning, as it is supposed to be of ethereal origin); the biggest threat to the natural reasoning of human intellect, something that reasons against it. And by observing the decline in the populace’s adherence to religious morals, principles, and values, and the acceptance of what we know as the dignity and integrity of a conscious beings (which tries to imitate the values of religion but makes the division between morality and immorality much wider than religion insists it is), we could say that human nature has begun to administer its dominion over religion. We see evidence of this when we compare today’s culture with the culture of only a century ago. What we consider a human right to express has been distorted into the human need to define limits; that limits are only as limiting for as much as you accept to be limited, as inspired and influenced by our progress in science (which directly reflects the development of the human collective ego) whihc has pushed the boundary of the limits stated in religion, and it is only by a thin margin provided by the ancient religious morals now imbedded in the government constitutions which we are forced to abide by that we are saved from our own nature due to 'moral' limitations. But we see can see how far we have pushed those limits. Just turn on the television and you can see for yourself where our morals and values lie.

Before I begin to sound like a radical anti-modernist, I must present the thoughts required for you to consider a reacceptance of religion. Remember I do not suggest a respect and devotion to any religion, only an awareness of the morals and values that are shared by and define every religion, and to consider its value when brought under the light of our general culture and the nature of a human being. I believe these religious principles may hold a greater reward for humanity than science can provide, and that they can be a guiding instrument towards our development as a species that is capable of spirituality, because I feel that beyond the human aspect of religion that I have cared to detail previously, that there lies a profoundly brand new concept of morality that surpasses human reasoning and natural conceptualization, and is a model which we can replicate, though unnatural to the processes that govern the universe and at the end of the day ourselves, that can be reasoned out to understand its value and rationalized to determine its significance by we who have the intellect to do so.

This unworldly reasoning found in all religions questions human behavior just as deeply and critically as human reason questions the questioner’s legitimacy. And like I have said, we see this as a hostile act, as it struggles with us, regardless of the fact that it is done internally rather than externally; and conclusively we choose to reject it as we cannot stand to be made victim, and in order to preserve our humanity for whatever reason we may choose.

Somehow, at the conclusion of every religious text, they all point towards a fiery end to the world because of the human condition, the human disposition to ‘sin’. Whether this prophecy is true or not remains to be seen, but symbolically it has major significance as we now come to terms with the effects of global warming and climate change, and the recent revelation of a spike in the sun’s solar activity. All of these ‘warm’ factors suggest a hotter world, and scientists have agreed that a warmer world is not good for anyone or anything above and below the surface of the Earth. This however is off topic. Let me backtrack to the statement I made about this being the result of human sin. Does sin really mean bad? Is it possible that sin could actually be referring to the actions that could possibly harm not only another person, but the world altogether, moreover their own ego and integrity; and from this analyses of potential results of our behaviors, it is therefore concluded that these actions should be avoided as there is more probability of a negative result of them, even if we had the best intentions? It is my belief that when this God of everything tells us through these religious texts what humans should do or not do, or what is right and what is wrong; God is not actually fighting against or condemning human nature, but offering humans a way to transcend it, and if we take the warning of a world in flames to heart, this suggestion might be the only way to avoid such an end. And from what I can infer, it was never a command to act accordingly as desired by this Divine creature. In fact, free will has constantly been expressed in these texts as wholly in the right of humans to practice; that we can in fact do as we wish. What God seemed to be telling us though was that if we choose to hold fast to our animalistic nature, that it would prove unwell for not only ourselves but for all living things. From what I have proposed is that the core motivation of humanity, the nature of humans, is synonymous with an animal’s nature; the need to survive, protect, dominate, etc. in order to succeed in the time that we have on Earth. What these texts put forward is an alternative, a divine nature, one of compassion, selflessness, charity, awareness, resolve, good will, etc. Our nature and the so called ‘divine nature’ are at opposite sides of the scale, where humanity’s side seeks to gain more weight for whatever reason it so chooses, probably just so it can say it has more due to its predilection to selfishness, whereas the ‘divine’ side remains neither seeking nor avoiding. It just is, because divine truths can not be affected by earthly truths, and we have no reasonable idea or explanation as to what can diminish or increase its presence unlike ours which is malleable according to our will. They simply are at too high (or too low) of a frequency to get disturbed by our own tendencies.

You may be thinking based on what I have said about free will and global warming, that even if humans had been devoted to acting on the principles of this supposed divine nature, that regardless, we all would have suffered tremendously due to this predicted solar storm in 2012. But it is fact that it has occurred in recent times, I believe the latest was in the 19^th century, and we seemed to come out of it alright. I say, maybe with the onset of the temperature rise due to global warming, that this flare will only make it even hotter and ultimately less conducive to existence unlike two centuries ago. A sort of cause and effect is what the doomsday prophecies seem to show, rather than just inevitable death. And it related the cause and effect to our human nature; that our natural behaviors would have disastrous consequences unless we could change our very nature to something beyond that which is natural; an ethereal nature; divine, holy, etc. Simply put, religion offers that new perspective other than our own which is unavoidably conditional due to the circumstances we find ourselves alive in, and that is in nature! Let us try and see from a new perspective.

So it seems, like the days before Galileo, we still believe the universe revolves around us, except we don’t have that same faith we had then to solidify such a belief. But with the truth now out that we are nowhere near the center of the universe, not even the center our own solar system or galaxy, we must cease to ignore the parallel symbolism of that fact, and seek a rock from which we can have a source of stability. Science allows us to discover how we are because it questions nature, is the product of human reasoning, and is applied by us in order to seek that which can help us live better lives. Religion allows us to discover who we can become, it is the product of someone or something with reasoning beyond human concept and appeals to our nature to seek that which can help us overcome life altogether, rather than just find ways around it.You don’t have to call yourself a Christian or a Muslim or a Hindu or a Naskapi…Just try and see why these people address themselves with these titles, and call yourself whatever the hell you want when you discover the truth about the nature of the world, yourself, and the entire essence of life.