Religions are a fact of life. They are the default world view for most people in all societies throughout human history. Regardless of their credibility, religions impact us in so many ways. Much of their influence is back ground noise that we don’t even notice. Other times their influence is major and in our face. Like they way they reshaped society after the 9/11 world trade center disaster or in the laws that are passed to defend and promote their values.
Therefore it is important to understand religions, their origins, and their place in human history. Otherwise their influence might pass unseen and unnoticed into our life and be a source of doubt and confusion to the uncertain mind.
We can learn much from religions because they are a product of the human mind and are built upon thousands of generations of human history. The study of religions is an exercise in philosophy, sociology, and cultural anthropology. It is a look at our shared past.
We are all tattooed in our cradles with the beliefs of our tribe; the record may seem superficial, but it is indelible. You cannot educate a man wholly out of the superstitious fears which were implanted in his imagination, no matter how utterly his reason may reject them. -Oliver Wendall Holmes, Sr.
Contrary to what most atheists like to say, religions are very logical. In fact, religions themselves are a creation of mankind’s machine like logical mind and his efforts to understand the world and his place in it.
- Religions and their associated gods are man made. Given early man’s limited knowledge, religious beliefs are understandable. With more knowledge we now see that religions were a mistake, an error made by primitive man based on the limited information available at the time.
- Religions adopted the morality present in their founding culture and claimed it as their own.
- Over time religions have become so curve fit to the human condition and have developed effective self-propagation features that they continue to thrive in spite of the better information now available to modern man.
- Religions self-propagate primarily through early parental and social indoctrination into a young child’s undeveloped and trusting mind. Once the religious assumptions are accepted as fact in the young mind, then the validity, usefulness, and truthfulness of all subsequent information will be assessed based upon these previously learned facts (religious assumptions).
- Early childhood indoctrination is critical for religious belief. But it is not a guarantee of religious belief. This is why it is common for believers to lose their faith and become atheists but it is uncommon for atheists to become believers.
- Religion’s greatest strength is also it’s greatest weakness. If one is born into a religion and is sufficiently indoctrinated into it, that religion has the believer’s mind for a lifetime. But without early childhood indoctrination – religion has little or no chance of establishing it’s self in an informed mind.
- Another self-propagating feature of religions is that believers are taught to avoid conflicting information by self censure and to eliminate it by force if necessary. The purpose of censorship and blasphemy laws is to eliminate (punish/discourage/convert, banish, or kill) the of the source of the conflicting information.
- Evidence is subordinate to pre-existing beliefs. This is why it is so difficult to change someone’s mind. Religious believers and atheists all see the same evidence about god. The difference is how they interpret the evidence. Religious assumptions learned about god in early childhood are more important to faith than any actual evidence because those assumptions dictate how all subsequent evidence will be evaluated.
- Religions are easy to teach because they rely on indoctrination and the exclusion of information. As such they are cheap and easy to pass down to the next generation. Secular thinking is complicated, contradictory, and depends on extensive knowledge. It takes time, money, and effort to educate people. And this option is currently out of reach for most of the worlds population.
- Religions are theories that attempt to explain life and the universe. If their fundamental assumptions are true then their logical conclusions are also true. But if religious conclusions are false the error is not with their logic but rather with their fundamental assumptions.
- One of the reasons that religions still thrive is because they address man’s deepest hopes and fears about life. Secular world views can not easily compete with religious world views until they successfully address mankind’s spiritual needs.
- Religious freedom is necessary because it is unreasonable to punish people for things that are beyond there control. People are born into their religion and don’t have a choice about believing or not believing. It is inconsistent with human rights to punish someone for their inherited beliefs.
- Religions don’t consider each other a threat because early childhood indoctrination into each particular religion is a prerequisite for it’s success. However atheism is a constant existential threat to all religions because secular education is a lifetime process that can potentially undermine religious indoctrination at any point in time.
- It is possible that god (as represented by one of the current or previous religions) exists. But it’s not probable.