God is dead
Religion loses devotees every day at a seemingly accelerated rate, giving rise to the question of whether religion is necessary or not anymore.
The purpose of religion has always been a hot debate between
evolutionary psychologists. Religions, by all means, are practical: they give clearly
defined life guidelines thus are useful from an evolutionary point of view. This
has lead to the theory of religion being an ideal trait for survival, thus
individuals with religious beliefs being higher up in the natural selection
pyramid.
While some attribute religion as a factor that has been navigating
the river of History up to the present day, others argue that religion is a
by-product of evolution, that being, or course, human intelligence. Many
consider Stephen Jay Gould as the father of this theory, which elegantly
ponders upon the fact that evolution led to consciousness, and religion seemed
a satisfactory explanation to many metaphysical questions, such as mortality.
Evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins also argues that the non-questionable
nature of religion leads to it propagating like a "virus".
Intriguingly, very recent studies have also related the VMAT2 gene
as predisposing to mystic beliefs, opening the debate of whether religion is
simply a human protective mechanism, therefore not related to 'pure' devotion.
Religion is based on faith, and faith requires believing in
something without evidence. Professor Dawkins said in an interview that
believing in God or in unicorns is comparable, as "the evidence that
supports them is equally poor".
On the other hand, many consider religion helpful for the answers it
offers to commonly questioned philosophical problems. Believing in God is
seemingly a way of perceiving what we see, but faith is naturally spoon-fed by
the society in which one lives, so an open mind may lead a believer to question
the reality of their faith and if, from a rational point of view, is or not satisfactory.
Besides, believing in something without evidence can be very
dangerous and interfering, as some believers have extrapolated sacred writings
to a ridiculous extent, strongly defending ideas such as 'intelligent design'
and immoral teachings from the Old Testament, for instance.
Figure 1. Intelligence leads to a more powerful ability to question things and thus to extract rational conclusions. This graph correlates intelligence with moderate religious belief. Do note that this is a present-day survey, considering that nowadays less families raise their children under the sticky influence of religion therefore people being more able to construct own ideas based on a higher span of arguments.
Religious belief is nowadays experiencing a notable decrease due to
new scientific developments and the establishment of new moral values, such as
sex equality and
Animal respect. So, if you are a believer, perhaps it may be
interesting for you to strip off unthought-of believes and critically ask
yourself: why do I believe in God?
The argument which I support the most is that religion was born to give an explanation to events which couldn’t be explained or proved in a scientific way such as mortality. The existence of god, (a being that has never been seen but who can decide the people’s future), was very important in ancient times as the belief in him helped kings and other powerful people to take control of their citizens. Its existence justified many events such as pests, bad crops, or droughts as these were interpreted as punishments from God to avoid citizens from doing riots against the king, for example in protest of the water channels’ conditions.
ReplyDeleteIf we meditate about the Religious-thought before rational reasoning we can see that although the people’s ingenuity of the time, it had some advantages. An example of this would be a case which can be found both in Christendom and in Hinduism (its reincarnation idea), with the death of a loved person the existence of a supposed “heaven” (a place where people lives after death) is a way for the people who have lost someone to move on as it makes death more bearable. Heaven transmits the idea of the “soul” of that person being alive forever instead of the reality of a body decomposing and disintegrating itself. Another advantage was that in difficult moments such as wartime praying and believing in god kept hope in people.
In conclusion, the decrease in religious belief nowadays is a consequence of the society’s evolution. Nowadays many things such as illnesses, meteorological events.. have a scientific answer so people doesn’t have to believe blindly. Furthermore, the majority of the population has an education which has awaked the curiosity for knowing the answers of things; we don’t conform anymore with the sentence “because god did it”.
Júlia Serra