There is no afterlife, only thermodynamic equilibrium.
Yesterday, I shared an interesting article about religious arguments on Google+, and mentioned atheism. Specifically, I've always been an open minded atheist, almost agnostic at times, but in the past couple of years I've become increasingly hard-nosed, culminating in a final puzzle piece last spring that nailed the subject shut forme.
In a nutshell, it was the question of what causes religion. Not any specific religion, but religion in general. For years, the single biggest argument for religion in my mind was religion itself. Think about it: there are dozens of major religions in the world, and thousands of small ones. From Suffism to Taoism, from Christianity to Wicca, Mormonism, Judaism, Rastafarianism to Buddhism, Islam, Hinduism, etc, etc, etc. What drives us to religion? Why do people all over the world come up with religions?
In some ways, the answer is obvious: there's something to be religious about, right? We wouldn't have the drive for religion if we didn't, on some level, know that there was a greater power out there. Unless there's a world-wide delusion, there must be something to be religious about. It's a tough argument to beat, until I read a book that opened the right question.
That book, weirdly enough, was a book about distance running called Born To Run. It's a great book for anyone interested in running, evolution and yes, even religion. Anyhow, Born To Run included a brief aside about the ability to think like another creature. In other words, if we're running across the steppes hunting antelope, we can't predict where that antelope might go or what it might do unless we have the psychological ability to put ourselves in the antelope's place and see what course of action would make sense to the antelope- not from the perspective of the hunter, but from the perspective of the antelope that doesn't know what the hunter knows. That ability is actually a pretty advanced psychological process that is developed in each person as they grow. Lacan calls it the "mirror phase"- that phase of our life where we begin to realize that the person in the mirror is us, and thus that that other people we see are not us. Once we realize that, we realize that there are different individuals who have different thought processes and wants. This is the basis for self-awareness, and more importantly, it's the basis for thinking like the prey, and thus being able to predict what the prey will do.
OK, so, if we accept this hypothesis, then obviously those people who are best at this weird little game are most likely to survive. There is quite literally an evolutionary pressure to be able to, and even for a tendency to think like a different entity. Oddly enough, some of the earliest cultural things we can find are evidence of hunting (spear points, burnt animal bones, etc) and evidence of story telling- masks, images, etc. We have evolved to analyze actions from an outside perspective and internalize those actions into a mental narrative. As yet, this evidence of storytelling involves mundane objects- people and animals, but nothing superhuman- there are cave paintings of people spearing buffalo, but to the best of my knowledge no images of a giant wrestling a bull, or people attacking dragons. Everything is firmly rooted in reality, or at least physical possibility.
Still with me? In order to predict where the antelope goes, we need to think like the antelope. This means there's an evolutionary advantage in putting ourselves into the mind of anther creature. Because we rely on hunting, there is evolutionary pressure to do this.
Now, take away the hunting. We're no longer a hunter/gatherer society, and have become a sedentary/farming society. We no longer need to think about what that other mind out there is doing because, let's face it, there's no need to outsmart corn or a tame goat. But the mind is still built to do that. We still have the urge to think about an outside mind. Only now, there's nothing to focus on. With this tendency to conceptualize an outside mind but nothing to pin it to, the mind creates an entity to pin it to. It's not something we ever see, of course, but it's there. The mind, in looking for an outside entity to cast itself into, wanders until the culture creates a collective identity which doesn't exist and thus can never be killed... it expands, solidifies, you see stories of heroes... the heroes do the impossible... the heroes become gods... and bang! You have religion.
Interesting side note: the rise of religion, as far as I can tell, did not coincide with the rise of hunting, but with the rise of farming- the end of hunting.
So what does this have to do with atheism? Well, it gives a good explanation of a possible evolutionary reason for religion that goes beyond "well, people seem to be aware of something out there..." Rather, there is a reason for that world-wide delusion: there is (was) an evolutionary advantage to this sort of outside person manifesting itself in our minds, and now we're stuck with it. Maybe this exact scenario wasn't the reason, but it opens the possibility, and indeed the likelihood, that something like this happened to our minds. Frankly, this makes much more sense than the idea that there's some vague presence out there that controls the stars and that I can never, ever actually conceive of. Now that I know what's causing this, I can ignore it. The result is atheism, and the nail the coffin of religion.
In a nutshell, it was the question of what causes religion. Not any specific religion, but religion in general. For years, the single biggest argument for religion in my mind was religion itself. Think about it: there are dozens of major religions in the world, and thousands of small ones. From Suffism to Taoism, from Christianity to Wicca, Mormonism, Judaism, Rastafarianism to Buddhism, Islam, Hinduism, etc, etc, etc. What drives us to religion? Why do people all over the world come up with religions?
In some ways, the answer is obvious: there's something to be religious about, right? We wouldn't have the drive for religion if we didn't, on some level, know that there was a greater power out there. Unless there's a world-wide delusion, there must be something to be religious about. It's a tough argument to beat, until I read a book that opened the right question.
That book, weirdly enough, was a book about distance running called Born To Run. It's a great book for anyone interested in running, evolution and yes, even religion. Anyhow, Born To Run included a brief aside about the ability to think like another creature. In other words, if we're running across the steppes hunting antelope, we can't predict where that antelope might go or what it might do unless we have the psychological ability to put ourselves in the antelope's place and see what course of action would make sense to the antelope- not from the perspective of the hunter, but from the perspective of the antelope that doesn't know what the hunter knows. That ability is actually a pretty advanced psychological process that is developed in each person as they grow. Lacan calls it the "mirror phase"- that phase of our life where we begin to realize that the person in the mirror is us, and thus that that other people we see are not us. Once we realize that, we realize that there are different individuals who have different thought processes and wants. This is the basis for self-awareness, and more importantly, it's the basis for thinking like the prey, and thus being able to predict what the prey will do.
OK, so, if we accept this hypothesis, then obviously those people who are best at this weird little game are most likely to survive. There is quite literally an evolutionary pressure to be able to, and even for a tendency to think like a different entity. Oddly enough, some of the earliest cultural things we can find are evidence of hunting (spear points, burnt animal bones, etc) and evidence of story telling- masks, images, etc. We have evolved to analyze actions from an outside perspective and internalize those actions into a mental narrative. As yet, this evidence of storytelling involves mundane objects- people and animals, but nothing superhuman- there are cave paintings of people spearing buffalo, but to the best of my knowledge no images of a giant wrestling a bull, or people attacking dragons. Everything is firmly rooted in reality, or at least physical possibility.
Still with me? In order to predict where the antelope goes, we need to think like the antelope. This means there's an evolutionary advantage in putting ourselves into the mind of anther creature. Because we rely on hunting, there is evolutionary pressure to do this.
Now, take away the hunting. We're no longer a hunter/gatherer society, and have become a sedentary/farming society. We no longer need to think about what that other mind out there is doing because, let's face it, there's no need to outsmart corn or a tame goat. But the mind is still built to do that. We still have the urge to think about an outside mind. Only now, there's nothing to focus on. With this tendency to conceptualize an outside mind but nothing to pin it to, the mind creates an entity to pin it to. It's not something we ever see, of course, but it's there. The mind, in looking for an outside entity to cast itself into, wanders until the culture creates a collective identity which doesn't exist and thus can never be killed... it expands, solidifies, you see stories of heroes... the heroes do the impossible... the heroes become gods... and bang! You have religion.
Interesting side note: the rise of religion, as far as I can tell, did not coincide with the rise of hunting, but with the rise of farming- the end of hunting.
So what does this have to do with atheism? Well, it gives a good explanation of a possible evolutionary reason for religion that goes beyond "well, people seem to be aware of something out there..." Rather, there is a reason for that world-wide delusion: there is (was) an evolutionary advantage to this sort of outside person manifesting itself in our minds, and now we're stuck with it. Maybe this exact scenario wasn't the reason, but it opens the possibility, and indeed the likelihood, that something like this happened to our minds. Frankly, this makes much more sense than the idea that there's some vague presence out there that controls the stars and that I can never, ever actually conceive of. Now that I know what's causing this, I can ignore it. The result is atheism, and the nail the coffin of religion.