Religion is Not about God

[SWPIGWANG]

After many non-starters at trying to make a thread about the topic, here it is, after a entire night of sleeplessness, so forgive me for mistakes.

Here is an different sort of analysis about the entire idea of religion.

This is largely analyzing religion as a meme and a sociological structure.

Index: 1. Why people believe. 2. Why did the belief survive 3. Implications

1. Why People Believe

The best answer is: because they can. People can believe almost anything if they are taught in the supporting manner. Beliefs do not have to be rationally consistant, or even consistant with observed reality.

The biological base epismological system for understanding reality by people is a fuzzy inference system that links across ideas very loosely and only marignally consistancy.

It is sometimes thought that beliefs require a "reason" for example fear of god or result of "systematic logical" or something like that. No, beliefs requires it to be implemented in a mind and not seriously contradicted by stronger beliefs which has been thought about. While people make jokes about invisible dragoons and flying spaghetti monster, the joke is probably on them. Both invisible dragoons are flying spaghetti monsters are perfectly "believable" ideas that is only not believed in due to massive social education against it. If people are raised in a society that believe in such things, than it would be strange for them not to. Rationality and the scientific method is powerful new tools, but to the brain it is just another belief as opposed to something fundamentally intrinstic to thought. To a firm practitioners of ideas of logic, it excludes a large set of ideas from belief, but only after dedicated analyzation. Most people, thoughout most of history, do not remotely come close.

Just about any idea that can be believed, will be believed at some point.


2. Why did the religious beliefs survive and thrive

I.
Before we get into religion, lets review why do people hold beliefs at all and how do culture work.

Well, ideas is what seperates intelligent animals from less intelligent ones. A collection of ideas developed by a large group over time of course superceeds what an individual can come up in his limited lifespan. The creation and transfer of the large body of ideas is culture.

It should be noted that what a person "DO" as opposed to think is what keeps him alive. If there is two ideas that makes him do the exact same things, then they are basically the same.

Ideas that help people survive and adopt to different environments are not limited to the immediately pratical like how to make a spear. It does not necessarily need to make any sense from the point of the individual observer. Ideas go through its own mematic evolution in which bad ideas usually result in its believers killed. Good ideas gets passed on, and in general, the passing of culture is a net positive on the survivability of individuals. (but not always) If we accept the above, it makes sense that just about any belief can be formulated and believed in.

Examples of ideas that makes little sense to the individual observer while having long term benefit can be found everywhere. For example, ideas governing the choice of long term diet, to choice of housing (away from unstable habitats that may fail catastrophically once a few generations), to socially stable structures (reduction of war and random violence) and so on. The entire body of knowledge of science also points to alot of behavious that operates beyond the personal scale yet keeps the human species alive.

With simple thinking and transmission errors, new ideas are created all the time, and the can become beliefs and join the mematic evolution game.

II.
Now we've established how beliefs are useful reguadless of origins, we'll analyze why the ideas of supernatural has been successful.

The problem with culture is that transfering all those beliefs are extremely difficult, as anyone can see by a short trip to the library. Every belief has an cost in time of education to tech it to the next generation. It makes sense that a low cost method of transfering those ideas would be successful.

Religious type of ideas has been successful because.
1. It justifies the transfer or nearly any arbitary belief. Eg. cutting down trees anger the gods.
2. It is extremely simple to comprehend and remember by utilizing the well developed brain functions for remembering humans, by anthropomorphism.

The simplicity of the system probably is what made it work. Instead of things like "force at a distance" or "optimalization involving intergations of probability functions," it is so simple that a five year old can understand and it is effective in transfering the right sort of behaviour in no time flat.

That is probably sufficient to explain the large bodies of myth surrounding various cultures. Those ideas survive generally due to some usefulness, as a group people can perfectly not really think about natural events (just look at the large group of people not interested in figuring how a VCR works) and natural curiosity is only a part of the reason of its survival, though its low transfer costs means that society can afford quite a few of them.

III.
Now how did those loose end of myth evolve into religion?

Well, a large set of myth is perfectly fine for a closed small group of people. Large organized religion grew with the growth or large society that is composed of many different peoples. Organized religion probably grew from the new pressues from this environment.

At the start, most religions of new large civilizations are not really different from the large set of myth passed around. That absorbed local myth and had some shuffling from communication. It was fairly successful and lasted upto the modern era at some places (India, China, Japan).

However, there is also a new type of religion, either monotheistic or otherwise "universal" in it approach that have largely overshadowed the old. The basic difference is its generally refining all those mythical ideas into one "universal" force that encompasses all of space-time.

This has two effects: First it organize its believers into a strong, specific, unique identity. Second it opens the way for conversion for culturally different people. (one god for all) Thirdly, it allows stronger idea bundling.

Now, an idea like Christianity isn't an "standalone idea" but is really a carrier idea that transfers alot of ideas at once. Together with strong identity build with complex rituals, this has advantages of allowing the bundling of ideas of forced education, indoctrination, controlling power all at once. The disadvantage is higher entry cost as a large volume of ideas has to be transfered before can be called a Christian while a throwaway myth is only a few sentences long. However, even incomplete transfer (say dietism) of ideas benefit the meta-idea of Christianity thus it is not so bad off.

3.Implications
Now, all this discussion involved very little about god. If we view religion as just another piece of culture, there is really no reason to argue fundamental metaphysics for its spread. Ideas exists and is believed because it is believed. There is no reason to think that a human-meta-chooses an idea based on merits, especially when the human lacks such ability at the start.

The thing about religion is that they can believe in god and still do just about everything. God is irrelevent to daily life but still deemed "important" and thus the perfect carrier for ideas.

An religion is basically an "arbitary" idea that can be use to justify just about anything. It is functionally the "quick hack" in culture that passes on ideas and behaviour in a quick manner. It works by brancing out rapidly and experimenting with different ideas, with successful ones surviving. The massive "flexibility" in interperting scripture isn't just an random artifact, instead it is the absolute necessarity for the survival of an religion. However, it often only finds a local minimum, as with all evolutionary systems. Also, mematic evolution is not particularly fast with respect to the modern era, as it works on linear generational scales, while technology and economics in the recent past have worked on exponential scales.

An idea is just an abstract concept, it has no human considerations of basically anything. It does not care for suffering, unfairness or any moral value except those that contradict itself. Beliefs "care" about those human factors as much as the humans believe those factors. If a person do not believe in the possibility of a "just earth", than the person can tolerate in a belief system that imposes injustice. What determines what idea survives is what works.

Finally, religion is a very real thing. It builds churches, it raises armies, it votes and it converts. God is an excuse, it is the very real and physical effect it has on people's lives and their social structure that it survives. The evolution of religions also works on this, as there is no "religious character" that shapes how religions change, but the branch that somehow obtains power simply does.


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Ideally, modern science, social science in particular, can possiblely replace the parts of the haphazardous mess of killing ideas (and people) with evolution. However, sciences is largely value neutral, while everyone needs values to live. Social science itself is a culture artifact and there is not guantee that it will succeed despite is claims of more systematic and effective methodology resulting in better ideas. Whatever is the case, natural selection will pick the winner.