Spirituality

I am not a religious person in the most traditional sense. I do not believe in any supernatural being, much less an all-powerful god. I do, however, believe in what I like to call “the god concept”. Here’s how it goes:
Somewhere in human evolution, I would guess between 50,000 and 100,000 years ago, we evolved a tendency to believe in supernatural beings. I believe that our intelligence and curiosity posed a number of different problems in our day-to-day lives.

It just isn’t practical for a caveman to sit around for an hour every morning wondering where the Sun comes from. He’s got more important things to be doing, like hunting and fucking hot cavewomen and not getting eaten by tigers. But if a person is intelligent and curious enough to wonder where the Sun comes from every morning, he’s going to do it for a while.

At roughly the same time as humanity evolved the intellect that it has today, I believe that it evolved an increased capability to project its own personality onto the world around it. This would be useful in a number of ways; for example, it would allow a person to predict how game would behave while hunting, because he could think (in some way – he probably wouldn’t think in English) “if I were a deer, and I saw a caveman running at me with a spear, I would run the opposite direction.” Once he thinks this, he can tell his buddy to go hide in a bush on the opposite side of the deer from where he is himself.

Well, at some point, I believe that these two phenomena (the excessive curiosity and the persona-projecting ability) crossed paths. I believe that the latter was the evolved solution to the former. Here’s how I think it went down:

A cavedude (or cavechick) possessed the necessary neural structure to project his persona onto the world around him. He also stared at the sun a lot, wondering where it came from. Not only did this burn the fuck out of his eyes, it also took precious time out of his day. When he had a kid, the “project your persona onto the world” gene and the “wonder what the fuck is up with the sun and shit” gene bumped into each other when his nutsack was making the sperm, and mixed together. His kid projected a hypothetical image of itself onto the sun, and decided that the sun was actually some sort of person who just happened to enjoy running laps around the sky.

When the kid grew up, he didn’t have to stare at the sun and wonder, because he knew what was up with it. Now, you might point out that he was wrong. Here’s the beauty of it: it doesn’t matter! All that matters is that he could spend that extra hour every day hunting food and mating with cavechicks and feeding the food to his offspring, so he had more kids than everyone else did. If all of those kids had the same believe-that-the-sun-is-actually-a-dude-who-likes-running-laps-around-the-sky gene that he did, they would, in turn, have more kids. In several generations, everyone would be believing the crazy idea.

The truth is, people today and in history blame gods for a lot more phenomena than just the rising and setting of the Sun, but my explanation was a gross (disgusting) oversimplification of the theory.

So that’s how I think religious beliefs came to be. Now let’s look at what they do for us.

When I was in high school, I used to try my hardest to ensnare religious people into arguments about their faith. I decided that there was no god, after a brief stint with Christianity, and I wanted to make everyone think the same way that I did. Since then, I’ve changed my mind a bit.

Belief in higher powers does a lot for people. It helps them get over sad events and come out of deep depressions, it inspires them to help others, it gives them ways to manipulate others into giving them money (that’s my cynical 16-year-old-self talking), and it helps them accomplish feats that they do not believe themselves to be capable of.

I know many people who fight the disease of addiction with religious beliefs. They can’t think their way out of addiction, so they think they’re not capable of not taking drugs. But they do believe in higher powers, or gods, or whatever you want to call them. So they turn their lives over to their higher powers, and ask them (the higher powers – I realize that there are a lot of pronouns floating around here, so I’ll try to be clear) to take control of their lives and help them not do drugs. And it works!

Now, let’s ask ourselves: Why could that be? I can think of two possible answers. One is that there are actually a bunch of higher powers out there, controlling these peoples’ lives and making them not do drugs. The other is that the belief itself gives them the strength to not do drugs. I don’t know about you, but I think that the second one sounds a bit more reasonable.

I think that belief in a god unlocks new capabilities in humans. It allows us to live better lives. “But Brandon”, you’re probably thinking, “who are you to say whose life is ‘better’ and whose isn’t?” When I refer to “better” lives, I do not mean to pass judgment. I simply mean that these people live lives which allow for more survivin’ and reproducin’ than the lives of us heathen atheists.

Now, you know that I am an addict. You might be wondering if I am sad that I am an atheist, because I can’t use the power of theism to help me with my addiction. If that’s the case, then you are wrong. All I need to do is find a power greater than myself which I can turn my life over to, and allow it to make my decisions for me. I haven’t found one yet, but I’m lookin’.

That’s enough about spirituality for now.