Growth in a stigma

The things I am about to say come out of my own mind,  although I use different words for perspective such as we,  you,  us,  our, humanity  etc. . . . .  it is all hypothetical perspectives played out in my head.  I can only imagine what the human race as a whole thinks or believes,  I cannot actually speak for billions of people.  I can only observe common patterns in human thought and extrapolate trends I believe to fairly accurate.  It is safe to say that the rest of humanity effects my thought patterns and in a way shares similarities both within inherited traits and learned traits.  It is also safe to assume that my inherited traits for the most part are not totally unique in their nature,  DNA has a rubric for homo sapiens that for the most part repeats quite often.  All minute differences aside I will now tell you what I have observed in my brain and pose a theory,

In my mind there has always been a stigma between religion and evolution,  which is quite ironic now that I look at it because the stigma is created through the anomaly of evolution itself.  Looking at the grand perspective of humankind I have realized that religion can be analogous to the action that propels evolution,  religious teaching as well as governmental laws is a rubric of commands that are meant to apply to the entire populace. I will use America as an example: If you think of human behavior as organelles of the cell the physical governmental institution itself is like RNA,  it sort of regulates and commands the flow of cellular work.  The Nucleus is the white house.   The laws of a civilization is like the DNA,  the law is what commands the physical governmental institution (RNA) what actions to carry forward to regulate the processes of the cell.  Now that the analogy is in mind it is easy to understand why this would be effective, after all  it's an effective strategy for our cells,  which are living subunits that are propelled to expend energy in order to grow so logically it would follow that a similar rubric in the organization of individuals contributing to the group would be similar.  This is because a group of individuals in a species must also expend energy for the species to perpetuate and grow as well.


So where does religion come into play for survival strategy?  Religion in and of itself is the act of mutation,  the result of current thought patterns and organization strategies is the result of that mutation.  Humans are mimicking the nature of genes and the survival strategies of life in how they organize themselves.   Once religion was started in various parts of the globe it effected how laws were made and thus how people have behaved for thousands of years.  This has to have an effect on the development of our brains in that a law abiding citizen has the most reproductive success.  But what accounts for the overall lack of leaders in human society?  The general population consists of an average type of IQ and mindset that tends to follow.  If being a human leader means large reproductive success wouldn't it mean that we would eventually have nothing but leader genes?  First I will finish the analogy before addressing these questions. 

 Every religion has a similar pattern of maintaining peace among the ranks,  this also makes the most sense in that the most fitness for the group maintains the most fitness for the individuals.  There is no religion that survives today that has laws such as kill thy neighbor,  steal from each other,  leave your parents,  jump off a cliff and thus receive the lord.  Rules such as these would not survive long because the followers will soon disappear and not maintain them.  Human sacrifice has been found in older religions,  but this did not have as much success as the less violent religions.  But all the same Aztec religion never demanded sacrifices beyond an unsustainable payload and mostly entailed the sacrifice of other groups such as the Mayans.  etc. . . .  Although it could be debated what exactly happened in history,  it would just be semantics.  Now let me emphasize that this shows religion to be a natural product or occurrence of human evolution.  This thus goes into an even deeper realm of evolution that involves the occurrence of communication,  which is the foundation for how religion is delivered.


It is safe to say that communication occurs between all individuals within a species and even cross species but that is a topic of latter discussion.  Communication is a necessity for reproduction,  gregarious behavior,  and keeps the occurrence of cannibalism down.  Without a means to communicate individuals would commence in eating each other,  reproducing with just about anything,  and no group behavior can thus occur.  Communication is a successful survival strategy for species.  The amount of which fluctuates between different specie forms.  



Now the need for shamans has all but disappeared because of a very key phenomenon,  religion,  culture,  and government were evolving.  It is hard to distinguish when,  but the oldest evidence is in the code of Hammurabi.  This is the first occurrence of written law and without any conscious awareness of what the creators had done,  they made headway for the foundation of written religious practices,  commands,  laws,  and accounts.  After this point the shaman is no longer needed because a universal commandment can take the place of the "words of the gods"  and effectively it also takes away their "will" as it was imagined by the shaman as well. 

What does this mean for the present time period however?  This means that;  regardless of origin,  it is a proven observation that nature follows an evolutionary pattern which favors reproductive success.  Religion is a practice that effects the behavior of individuals and it follows that anything effecting the behavior of individuals effects their reproductive success.  So therefore Religion is a result from the patterns of evolution. 

Is it a coincidence that religions tend to favor the passage past the sky and into the heavens as the best pursuit for a human to follow and evolution favors individuals that find new niches? 

Is it a coincidence that the only species capable of interstellar travel so far has developed a means for duplicating the mechanics of DNA with concepts such as government,  laws,  and religion to organize species behavior? 

Religion is a part of progress but it can also hinder progress much like DNA.  In order for religion to have the greatest evolutionary success it has to be able to mutate and adapt.  In order for humanity to have the greatest success we must also take into consideration the evolutionary advantages of religion.  The question is whether religion has effected our psyche over time to the extent that we are not capable of grasping anything beyond it without mutation.  I must take a break I will come back to this latter.