The Evolution of Religion

Are we still evolving? You Bet!

I will tell you why "intelligent design" is wrong. The theory says there are things which are too complicated to be explained in terms of forces of nature alone, so there must be an intelligence at work in the creation of life.

One of the favorite arguments against Darwin is that evolution is a gradual process, but the fossil record does not show that. The fossil record shows "inexplicable" bursts of radical change rather than the gradual change you would expect in an evolutionary process.

Well they are not that inexplicable. There are two fairly recent discoveries in evolutionary science which explains it all:

1. Life has a way of expanding its potential abilities as far as it possibly can and as quickly as possible.
2. Evolutionary change is not slow, it is very agressive, even viral in nature.
   

These two properties of life are observed over and over by biologists zoologists, and palentologists everywhere. They explain everything that "intelligent design" explains without the need for a creator.

If that is not enough to prove intelligent design is bogus, here is the real coup d'etat -- I will now explain the origins of Religion in terms of Evolution:

Now much of this is kind of speculative, and is the result of conversations I have had with smart people who seem to know what they are talking about.

To start, here are two intellectual posers for you:

1. What can humans do that no other animal can? This is a tough one as almost every quality that humans possess can be seen in other animals. The only satisfactory answer is that humans are capable of speaking in languages that contain theoretical concepts, symbols, etc. Other animals can have language. Some birds, whales, dolphins, and many mammals have rudimentary linguistic skills, but even apes taught sign language show no capability of abstracton.

2. What do all religions have in common? This is another often debated topic, it is called the "core of religion" problem, and almost anything you see in most religions does not exist in some others. But the best answer I have ever found is that all religions practices some form of meditation, either involving repetitive prayers or total silence, or some other method.

It is important to observe that the answers to these two questions are conceptual opposites. Humans are superior because we can speak, but in religion we spend quality time not speaking.

Further observe that the primary differences between religions is in their different preferred languages concepts symbols and scriptures.

Now as I said before, Evolution is very agressive and quick as it can be. Would it surprise anyone that the one thing we have over animals is the last thing we developed?

Human language is VERY new. Humans have been around (in one form or another) for 6 million years, yet we have only been capable of speech for a mere 200,000 and the oldest evidence of linguistic speech is only 50,000 - 70,000 years old.

That means Humans lived for at least 5,930,000 years without language.

Language is a huge benefit to us of course, art and technology cannot exist without it, We are the king of all beasts thanks to our advanced linguistic skills.

But look how wildly agressive language has become on us humans. Language affects every part of our lives, when we are not reading writing, talking or hearing words, we have a silent conscious stream of words that practically never stops.

Language is so agressive, it has taken over our conscious mind.

Language is a natural divider of people, the first language may have taken 130,000 years to develop, but in the last 70,000 years tens of thousand tongues, dialects, accents, and jargons have developed. It is like we are naturally driven to keep ourselves from being understood.

So what is the cost for letting language take over our minds?

First of all, we quickly lose our animal instincts. Because they do not have lingustic skills, we tend to think of all animals as inferior to us, and yet careful observation of animal behavior shows that most animals are smarter than we give them credit for.

Ever watch your pet cat or dog hunt? They often demonstrate amazing problem solving skills to get what they want. There is even now evidence of high intelligence in rats.

Second, so new is our linguistic ability, it can only be found in half our brain. All lingustic skills are in the left hemisphere of our brain. Yet our conscious thoughts are almost entirely verbal, The other half of our brain is dedicated to the non-verbal, but we tend to push those thoughts back, and dont use them much.

Moreover, we have only developed our lingustic skills over 200,000 years, but our non-verbal mind has been developing for at least 6 million years. This means that our non verbal brain is far more evolved than our verbal brain.

One may wrongly conclude the non-verbal is "superior" to the verbal brain and that was my initial theory, but I have concluded that it is not really superior or inferior. The real importance of the non-verbal mind is its untapped potential hidden by the verbal mind.

Consider this evidence that our non-verbal brain is at least as good than our verbal brain:

• We daily have "its on the tip of my tongue" moments, where we know what we want to say, but cant find the words.
  
• More rare, but it happens to everybody, are pseudo psychic experiences of knowing something good or bad is about to happen before it actually happens. I do not believe in real psychic experiences, but I do believe our non-verbal brain can sometimes understand (or "intuit") things before our verbal mind does. Our verbal mind is pretty smart, so it does not happen often, but it happens.
  
• Then there are the profound experiences of wonder that come via our senses, like hearing a beautiful piece of music, or seeing a great work of art for the first time, or seeing a natural scenic spot. We simply cannot find the words to describe these "spirital experiences".
  
• Here is where the religion comes in: All "spiritual experiences" are phenomenon of non-verbal mind.
  

So here is my theory: Religion started as a natural reaction to the viral nature of language on our minds. We need language, it is mostly a good thing, but it interferes with our full potential. Hence meditation is one of the first properties of Religious observance, which is why it is found in every religion from primitive tribal faiths to new modern faiths.

The point of meditation, and it is a point lost on most religions and non-religious people, is that you are supposed to temporarily shut down the less evolved verbal part of your brain, and experience thought purely from the more evolved non-verbal brain. This is often a difficult thing to do, and requires a fair amount of practice.

Hence the many variations in meditation practices from faith to faith:

• Repetetive Rezzas or Chants (20 Our Fathers, or Muslim prayers)
  
• Zen Koans or zen gardens
  
• wordless songs
  
• tones
  
• repetitive rhythms
  
• oaths of silence
  
• remote monasteries and sanctuaries
  
• quiet "holy places"
  
• aboriginal "walkabouts"
  
• Native American sweat lodge rituals
  
• ritual dances
  

All of them are directed towards the goal of pushing away our verbal minds temporarily and observe the world through our non-verbal mind.

People who achieve this state of consciousness all report an overwhelming sense of peace, wonder, awe, and leaving the outside world behind us temporarily. It is the very definition of a spiritual experience.

But over time, the agressively viral nature of language has inserted itself into religion as well.

Just as languages divided cultures, languages divided religions as well. They all develop their own dogmas and scriptures and symbolism and concepts.

Hence, Religion evolves along with humans.