The Need for Religion

What purposes does religion serve? Does that question leave you cold?

What we do, including what we think, always serves purposes, for better or worse. We don't just do things for no reason. We don't just believe things for no reason. In the final analysis, virtually everything we do and think and feel is connected to survival. Our brains evolved to be prolifically adaptive so that we might survive more easily than many, but not all, animals. And of course, all behaviors simultaneously serve more than one purpose.

The answer to why we have beliefs in the supernatural is complicated by the complexities that are sequellae to our neocortex and its abilities. We can imagine, we can reflect, and we can hypothesize: all skills that apparently no other animal can do in any great amount, although I may be guilty of gross oversimplification as well as species centrism.

Survival, of course, is not solely a function of a thicker cortex. If anything, higher brain functions tend to diminish survival behaviors. The cockroach will persist long after we are gone.

But we have much in the way of pathologies that exist because of this neocortex and its skills. One of these is narcissism. In and of itself, narcissism has gotten a bad reputation. We are all narcissistic, or should be. There is a continuum of self-interest from healthy look-after-yourself and do what's best to survive and flourish, all the way to malignant and destructive narcissism, wherein everything is done to get one's needs met at the expense of everyone else's, a kind of "f**k you" disorder (there are a few others; another is antisocial personality disorder.)

Very psychologically and socially healthy people do things that allow them to not just survive, but also flourish in a socially relativistic fashion: they usually do things that not only don't hinder or harm others, but they are also mindful to assist others in reaching their goals whenever possible. At the highest frequency of these exhibited behaviors, few are in this category. Do "religious" people exhibit more pro social behaviors? I bet not.

What about religion itself? In some ways it's a narcissistic product. In other ways, it is a natural byproduct of ignorance and fear. Yet another explanation is that religion is at its core a way to pretend we won't simply become worm food when we die; an existential anxiety reduction method. As I see it religion serves many purposes:

1. to affiliate with others socially and cognitively
2. to bring about certainty and therefore hope and optimism in the face of certain demise

3. to justify behaviors

4. to obtain gratification and esteem by others

5. to clarify and organize one's cognitions

6. to reduce the need to be self-determined (an inconvenient position)

7. to explain the unanswerable; to satisfy curiosity

So, I want to look at these.