Mr Spinkles
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Introduction: The "Human Invention" Theory of Religion
My views on revealed religions (Christianity, Islam, many pagan religions past and present) go beyond mere disbelief in their dogmas. I actively believe that these religions are products of the evolution of ideas and rituals over time--ideas and rituals originally inspired in the human imagination by culture and natural phenomena.
This is not to say that there is nothing extraordinary about religions, or that there are not religions which stand out from the rest. Rather, it is to say that the things which are extraordinary or unique about religions can be explained without appealing to the supernatural. Countless new cults, or new versions of old religions, spring up all the time, and the vast majority of them die out. The fact that a few religions will occasionally spread like wildfire--even after the leader has died, leaving a handful of followers--does not require supernatural explanation. At various periods in history, the religions of Confucius, Buddha, Jesus, and Mohammad came to dominate the largest and most advanced civilizations on Earth. The teachings of countless more would-be prophets, meanwhile, fell into obscurity, or became only somewhat successful, or found themselves in isolated corners of the world, doomed to be overtaken by the religions of more technologically/politically advanced cultures. Again, this is not to say there isn't anything distinguishing about the major religions--their leaders may have been very wise and charismatic, and their dogmas may have been especially sophisticated or useful or attractive for any number of reasons--but none of these things demand supernatural explanation.
How does a religion/cult spread, survive, and change over time? Other than through the help of divine revelations or miracles, there are many possibilities:
· Conquest/force/oppression of other religions
· Psychological methods (promise of heaven for obedience, hell for disobedience or apostasy; parental indoctrination; communal rituals exclusive of non-believers or those of other faiths; repeated singing and chanting; appeals to emotion, such as 'mood-setting' through lighting, imagery, silence, etc.)
· Integration with indigenous beliefs and adaptation to counter or incorporate competing beliefs (science, other faiths, culture)
I submit that the theory of religion as a natural human invention makes numerous, empirically falsifiable predictions, and is therefore within the domain of science.
Predictions of the Human Invention Theory
Obviously, if religious rituals were demonstrably proved to have non-physical effects on the world significantly beyond what one would expect by chance (e.g. controlled studies show that rain dances increase the chances of rain, or intercessory prayer heals amputees), that would falsify the human invention theory of religion.
But there are many other ways the theory could be falsified. According to this theory, in the absence of divine intervention it is virtually impossible for two civilizations who have no contact with each other (say, the ancient Hebrews and the ancient Aztecs) to produce identical books of ancient scriptures with identical proper names and commandents (say, they both receive an identical Ten Commandments from YHWH as brought by Moses). If it were conclusively shown that such an event has occurred (either historically or in the present day), this would be very damaging to the theory.
Alternatively, the theory predicts that any time we see the spread of a specific belief set between groups of people, we should look for evidence of contact between those groups--and we should look for culturally-specific ways in which the newly-spread beliefs differ from the "original" beliefs. If two cultures have similar but not identical myth stories, and there is no evidence of contact between them, we should look for natural phenomena common to both cultures, such as floods, as such commonalities may have independently inspired similar stories.
I don't know this for a fact, but it would not surprise me if this very assumption has lead to the search for, and discovery of, previously unknown natural disasters or contacts between peoples in ancient times.
Here is another way that the human invention theory could be falsified: if it were shown that an ancient people had knowledge, which they claimed to be revealed by the divine, of something that they could not have possibly known with their technology, then the theory would be falsified. Now, we expect any religious claim to occasionally get some details right (e.g. the Orok creation myth, which correctly says the formative Earth was 'completely liquid, but the liquid was slowly diminishing and the earth was hardening. Under the heat, cliffs and stones boiled'). And we may expect a religion to have many non-specific beliefs that are not wrong per se (e.g. the Genesis storys claim that humans were created from dust). But a religious text/prophesy/creation story should never have many specific, correct beliefs about things that could not have been known by natural means--especially for things as specific as numbers, dates, and pronouns (e.g. the universe is 14 billion years old, on Sept. 11 2001 19 men will crash four planes to kill 2,974 people in the United States, etc.).
An Alternative: The "Real Deal" Theory
For a given religion--whether it is the cult of Dionysus or the Amish--the primary alternative theory is that the salient features of the religion result from the special access that believers have to the knowledge/will/intervention of the supernatural. Let's call this the "real deal" theory.
The questions raised by the real deal theory are numerous: If one particular religion is the real deal, how can all the other religions be explained, if not by the human invention theory? If other religions can be explained by human invention, why can't this one? Why do gods reveal themselves to only certain tribes/peoples? Why are various scriptures/decrees contradicted by or incompatible with modern science? Why do gods reveal themselves through a few individuals, rather than appear in the sky before everyone simultaneously, regularlyon video? Why are many myths from seemingly disparate religions so similar? Why does the religion change so much depending on culture and time period? Why does a spread in belief coincide with the spread of conquerors and missionaries? Why are religions distributed the way they are geographically? Why are some prayers answered, but not others? Where do the gods come from, how did they acquire their powers and personalities, and why are they so concerned with human affairs? The "real-deal" theory doesn't answer these questions, but merely appeals to the will/mystery/incomprehensibility of the supernatural.
The human invention theory, on the other hand, can actually make sense of all these questions and more. This theory harmonizes vast quantities of our knowledge, such as the tendency of people to unwittingly accept the views of those around them (geographic distribution of religions), to project patterns and intelligent agency onto randomness or natural forces (planets and patterns of stars assigned god or spirit status), and so on, and those are just a few salient facts from the field of psychology. Countless more facts from many fields fit into a coherent picture via the human invention theory of religion.
My views on revealed religions (Christianity, Islam, many pagan religions past and present) go beyond mere disbelief in their dogmas. I actively believe that these religions are products of the evolution of ideas and rituals over time--ideas and rituals originally inspired in the human imagination by culture and natural phenomena.
This is not to say that there is nothing extraordinary about religions, or that there are not religions which stand out from the rest. Rather, it is to say that the things which are extraordinary or unique about religions can be explained without appealing to the supernatural. Countless new cults, or new versions of old religions, spring up all the time, and the vast majority of them die out. The fact that a few religions will occasionally spread like wildfire--even after the leader has died, leaving a handful of followers--does not require supernatural explanation. At various periods in history, the religions of Confucius, Buddha, Jesus, and Mohammad came to dominate the largest and most advanced civilizations on Earth. The teachings of countless more would-be prophets, meanwhile, fell into obscurity, or became only somewhat successful, or found themselves in isolated corners of the world, doomed to be overtaken by the religions of more technologically/politically advanced cultures. Again, this is not to say there isn't anything distinguishing about the major religions--their leaders may have been very wise and charismatic, and their dogmas may have been especially sophisticated or useful or attractive for any number of reasons--but none of these things demand supernatural explanation.
How does a religion/cult spread, survive, and change over time? Other than through the help of divine revelations or miracles, there are many possibilities:
· Conquest/force/oppression of other religions
· Psychological methods (promise of heaven for obedience, hell for disobedience or apostasy; parental indoctrination; communal rituals exclusive of non-believers or those of other faiths; repeated singing and chanting; appeals to emotion, such as 'mood-setting' through lighting, imagery, silence, etc.)
· Integration with indigenous beliefs and adaptation to counter or incorporate competing beliefs (science, other faiths, culture)
I submit that the theory of religion as a natural human invention makes numerous, empirically falsifiable predictions, and is therefore within the domain of science.
Predictions of the Human Invention Theory
Obviously, if religious rituals were demonstrably proved to have non-physical effects on the world significantly beyond what one would expect by chance (e.g. controlled studies show that rain dances increase the chances of rain, or intercessory prayer heals amputees), that would falsify the human invention theory of religion.
But there are many other ways the theory could be falsified. According to this theory, in the absence of divine intervention it is virtually impossible for two civilizations who have no contact with each other (say, the ancient Hebrews and the ancient Aztecs) to produce identical books of ancient scriptures with identical proper names and commandents (say, they both receive an identical Ten Commandments from YHWH as brought by Moses). If it were conclusively shown that such an event has occurred (either historically or in the present day), this would be very damaging to the theory.
Alternatively, the theory predicts that any time we see the spread of a specific belief set between groups of people, we should look for evidence of contact between those groups--and we should look for culturally-specific ways in which the newly-spread beliefs differ from the "original" beliefs. If two cultures have similar but not identical myth stories, and there is no evidence of contact between them, we should look for natural phenomena common to both cultures, such as floods, as such commonalities may have independently inspired similar stories.
I don't know this for a fact, but it would not surprise me if this very assumption has lead to the search for, and discovery of, previously unknown natural disasters or contacts between peoples in ancient times.
Here is another way that the human invention theory could be falsified: if it were shown that an ancient people had knowledge, which they claimed to be revealed by the divine, of something that they could not have possibly known with their technology, then the theory would be falsified. Now, we expect any religious claim to occasionally get some details right (e.g. the Orok creation myth, which correctly says the formative Earth was 'completely liquid, but the liquid was slowly diminishing and the earth was hardening. Under the heat, cliffs and stones boiled'). And we may expect a religion to have many non-specific beliefs that are not wrong per se (e.g. the Genesis storys claim that humans were created from dust). But a religious text/prophesy/creation story should never have many specific, correct beliefs about things that could not have been known by natural means--especially for things as specific as numbers, dates, and pronouns (e.g. the universe is 14 billion years old, on Sept. 11 2001 19 men will crash four planes to kill 2,974 people in the United States, etc.).
An Alternative: The "Real Deal" Theory
For a given religion--whether it is the cult of Dionysus or the Amish--the primary alternative theory is that the salient features of the religion result from the special access that believers have to the knowledge/will/intervention of the supernatural. Let's call this the "real deal" theory.
The questions raised by the real deal theory are numerous: If one particular religion is the real deal, how can all the other religions be explained, if not by the human invention theory? If other religions can be explained by human invention, why can't this one? Why do gods reveal themselves to only certain tribes/peoples? Why are various scriptures/decrees contradicted by or incompatible with modern science? Why do gods reveal themselves through a few individuals, rather than appear in the sky before everyone simultaneously, regularlyon video? Why are many myths from seemingly disparate religions so similar? Why does the religion change so much depending on culture and time period? Why does a spread in belief coincide with the spread of conquerors and missionaries? Why are religions distributed the way they are geographically? Why are some prayers answered, but not others? Where do the gods come from, how did they acquire their powers and personalities, and why are they so concerned with human affairs? The "real-deal" theory doesn't answer these questions, but merely appeals to the will/mystery/incomprehensibility of the supernatural.
The human invention theory, on the other hand, can actually make sense of all these questions and more. This theory harmonizes vast quantities of our knowledge, such as the tendency of people to unwittingly accept the views of those around them (geographic distribution of religions), to project patterns and intelligent agency onto randomness or natural forces (planets and patterns of stars assigned god or spirit status), and so on, and those are just a few salient facts from the field of psychology. Countless more facts from many fields fit into a coherent picture via the human invention theory of religion.