Evolution of Religion

A non fictional article. Giving a close analysis upon humanities pathological need to engage in worship, and how this has evolved.

God is dead. And science was the sword by which he was slew.

That is the prevailing belief in today’s society. Religion has gone out of fashion, frowned upon, as evolutionary theory has been largely accepted as fact. Humans, it is believed evolved. Indeed I myself subscribe to this and count myself as a card carrying atheist.

 

I was speaking to an elderly relative recently who mentioned to me that this impending Christmas she may attend midnight mass. I was surprised, confessing to my Grandmother that I’d no idea she was of any religions inclination. She divulged that she wasn’t, not really.

Revealing that apparently back when she was a child, going to church was quite simply “just what you did” there was no great biblical conviction, no holy devotion to “the lord”. You just went to church….

I’ve often balked at Religion, sighting it as a mere crutch, an aid one employs in their life if it lacks any real direction. Desperately trying to bind the world together and bring some unified purpose to chaos, to find meaning in the meaningless. I don’t endorse it; seeing the world rather as a canvas upon which each of us are free to make our own individual mark, some more profound than others. Idiosyncratic motivations lead to a million different frenzied nuances being explored all at once. Brush strokes interfering with one another resulting in a decidedly ungodly mess…. No grand masterpiece as envisioned by some omnipotent creator as religion would have it. But an horrific and uncontrolled playground on which the human race runs riot.

The lunatics running the asylum.

 

However, recently a thought struck me. Those that follow religion; do they truly believe in the nonsense chronicled in their Bibles? Or is it rather their faith that they are truly addicted to? Doubtless to me that the rational mind must surely be capable of perceiving that the ideals and stories preached by religion simply cannot be true…..

And yet the concept of this religion gives stability to the lives of these people. It gives structure to their daily lives.

Indeed many stories are told of reformed criminals being led to mend their ways through having found Religion. This is undeniably a good thing, a positive toll that Religion can take when used as a tool of rehabilitation at least. Something else that this old institution also gives to those that follow it is something that so many of us are running short of these days; Hope.

 

Hope is so very hard to come by, even for the best of us. It is true certainly that the hope that these people enjoy is entirely manufactured hope, built on promises of a wonderful afterlife and the chance to be repaid at the end. See departed loved ones again. But I come to realise; none of them truly believe any of that, not deep down, not really. It’s the hope that they’re addicted to, the structure it affords them. The focus it brings to their minds. The minds of people like myself cannot boast the same tidy condition, our thoughts and beliefs running wild. Our minds a noisy cacophony of ever shifting ideas and opinions. But that’s as I like it, and this shall never change.

 

Ruminating upon this topic recently it led me to one key question that envelops the whole argument; is blind faith better than no faith at all? What do I have faith in? Nothing….

Those that do are afforded hope, maybe even a greater sense of happiness than that which I and my fellow wild minded atheists enjoy.

 

Then I hit upon the true answer. Religion is not dead. It was not killed by evolution as so many maintain. Rather it has simply adapted to that concept within the sphere of human existence, it itself has evolved to suit the undertakings of the modern technological era.

 

As far back as human history reaches, the dominant beings upon this Terror Firma have always needed to worship something. For many a generation it was conventional Religion, the church wielding serious power in the goings on of kingdoms of the other country that is the past. Indeed people lived and died (often by execution) thanks to Religion and its whims.

 

There are those that would have you believe that this human race has grown up. Evolving beyond the childish need to worship, growing out of the ritualistic practise of communion. This, I now realise simply is not true.

 

Celebrity is the modern Religion. No longer feeling it fashionable to turn to the ornate figure of a “God” to follow, humans have instead replaced this God with David Beckham. Johnny Depp. Jennifer Lopez. Tom Cruise. Insert Celebrity of choice here…….

The modern equivalent of The Bible is Heat Magazine, the followers reading it on a routine basis just as their ancestors obsessed over the contents of the good book.

Rather than communing at church to rejoice in the venerating of the name of their idol, humans now do so online; twitter. Facebook These are the churches of the modern day. Observe on Television the screaming young women lining the streets behind barricades screaming lustfully at The Wanted or One Direction. Mindlessly devoted to their cause without truly knowing them at all….. This is worship in truly the most old fashioned sense.

 

In actuality mankind has it seems not altered as much as the enlightened among us would like to believe. It has simply adapted an old idea of dependency into a new form. While those still following the light of religion are driven by the hope of salvation, those following the adapted Celebrity worship are driven by the hope of getting a quick kiss from JLS.

Religion didn’t die. It evolved along with everything else.

 

While I and those of a similar ilk may well be devoid of hope of this fulfilling kind, we can at least find solace in the fact that we are free. Our minds are our own, following nothing but our own ambition.

 

I hope……..