Is God real?

Is God real?

The earliest evidence of a religious school of thought would date back to the paleolithic age and is based

on the ritual treatment of the dead. Academics suggest that ritual burials represent an awareness of

life and death and a possible belief in afterlife, which point towards the possibility of prehistoric religion.

As time progressed, we have seen the advent of countless religions that were instrumental in shaping

the minds of our ancestors. From the practice of bear worship in North Eurasian ethnic religions to the

more recent Christian practice of self flagellation in the name of atonement of one’s sins, the evidence

of how religion has moralized brutal and barbaric rituals in the name of God is staggering.

In his volume, ‘The Future of an Illusion’, Freud states that religion consists ‘of certain dogmas,

assertions about facts and conditions of external (or internal) reality which tell us something that one

has not oneself discovered and which claim that one should give them credence.’

According to him, there are three reasons as to the basis of why this claim needs to be believed.

Firstly because our primal ancestors already believed them; secondly, because we possess proofs which

have been handed down to us from antiquity, and thirdly because it is forbidden to raise the question of

their authenticity at all.

The burning question here is, how did religion even come into being?

There are two approaches to the evolutionary psychology of religion.

The first approach would be religion as an adaptation. There are numerous social solidarity theories

that imply the survival benefits associated with organized religion. This is because religion can

encourage co-operation and cohesion among groups of unrelated individuals. Following a particular

religion can promote unity and can justify the presence of a central authority. This central authority

can be used to manipulate millions of devout believers who are afraid to go against God’s will.

An apt example for this would be how the Catholic church used its influence to discourage the use of

birth control. They deemed contraception a mortal sin and many prostitutes and drug addicts would

refuse to practice safe sex for fear of going to hell. This resulted in the spread of numerous sexually

transmitted diseases. The number of unwanted pregnancies rose, and the overpopulation led to an

increase in poverty and deprivation.

A study in Guatemala found that nearly every brothel there had children working as prostitutes.

Children are sold throughout Latin America for prostitution, pornography and to satanists for torture

and sacrifice. The underlying cause for this? Lack of birth control.

The second approach to religion’s evolutionary psychology would be religion as a by-product.

Pierre Lienard and Pascal Boyer suggest that humans have evolved a "hazard-precaution system"

which allows us to detect potential threats in the environment and attempt to respond appropriately.

Several features of ritual behaviors, often a major feature of religion, are held to trigger this system.

These include the occasion for the ritual, often the prevention or elimination of danger or evil, the

harm believed to result from nonperformance of the ritual, and the detailed proscriptions for proper

performance of the ritual. Lienard and Boyer discuss the possibility that a sensitive hazard-precaution

system itself may have provided fitness benefits, and that religion then "associates individual,

unmanageable anxieties with coordinated action with others and thereby makes them more tolerable

or meaningful".

In his book ‘Why Would Anyone Believe in God?’, Justin L. Barrett suggests that one of the

fundamental mental modules in the brain is the Hyperactive Agency Detection Device (HADD),

another potential system for identifying danger. This HADD may confer a survival benefit even if it is

over-sensitive: it is better to avoid an imaginary predator than be killed by a real one. This would tend

to encourage belief in ghosts and spirits.

A very common mentality that can be seen nowadays is “I might as well believe in God. If he exists,

then good for me. If he doesn’t, then I don’t have anything to lose either. It’s a win-win situation.”

This is where HADD comes into play.

Personally, I feel that religious thought is an outcome of social conditioning most of the time.

We end up believing in what we’re taught to believe, and if we don’t take charge and start thinking for

ourselves, then we will never be able to truly understand our ideals and beliefs.