religion could have been invented to re enforce those survival genes.
I strongly believe this. Our primate instincts are critical to survival in the jungle, but they pose distinct problems in more complex and larger societies. We have tribal societies still functioning with this core set of encodings. Our civilization started with cultures that had only oral histories and fables to pass on values. Only after writing is developed can we have the Ten Commandments written in stone on which to build a foundation of values, for example. IMO, these values were intended to improve the cohesion of the groups that followed them, thus increasing their chances of survival.
I see religions as promoting the natural bonds that develop within groups, but this can sometimes leads to harmful coercion and “group think.” Certainly religion is not the only source for this tendency; nationalism will do something very similar.
Religions also attempt to minimize unhelpful competition between members of the group when the tactics used to compete might end up reducing group cohesion. I see the Bible as historical and metaphorical stories that show the results of our innate behaviors: pride, envy, gluttony, lust, anger, greed, sloth. Usually, the stories end badly.
In a reductionism, these traits reduce group cohesion because they involve either a failure to cooperate, or to compete fairly, or to minimize violence within the tribe (maybe due to extreme levels of testosterone), or to contain one’s sexuality (due to high testosterone or high estrogen). We have one toe out of the jungle and I don’t think that the filtration process (Maurice Winn’s theory) is working fast enough to address these issues.
As I state in an earlier post, Christianity message was to cooperate, not be greedy (or envious or prideful) and to find an alternative to violent solutions. If sex is thrown into the mix, then we shouldn’t make it the center of our lives, but find a healthy balance. Clearly, all this is easier said than done. |
