As I was saying in my previous blog post; no similar species to humanity shoud have been able to last as long without some form of divine protection. Unsurprisingly, I'm not the only one who's had such thoughts and there's actually a very interesting documentary on BBC Radio 4 iPlayer about the human need for religion. Another thing the documentary's about is whether believing in the supernatural provided an evolutionary edge for humanity. If you live in Britain, and are at least vaguely interested in this particular subject, then I would reccomend listening to "God On My Mind: Evolution".
One theory that cropped up is that it's in the DNA to believe in the supernatural. That's a stupid idea that can be immediately disproved by taking your head out of the fluffy pink clouds and talking to actual people. In the heritage and tradition; perhaps, but definitely not in DNA.
Apparently, superstitions and supernatural explanations only exist in an attempt to work out how the world works and how individuals fit in. That's why children are more inclined to believe in the Tooth Fairy and Father Christmas. It's part of humanity to provide explanations for everything, even if there's no known explanation.
Another point raised is that religions can't die because they'll be reborn the next time a child is born. Obviously, this isn't true practically. It could happen theoretically, but only if the child in question happens to learn about beliefs from the dead religion.
One thing that I liked with this documentary is the brief talk about fake beliefs. Looking back, the main reason I was bullied in school was the fake belief that I had no emotions. Unlike humanity, I wasn't coming up with explanations about everything around me, and I've never been able to truely express or understand my emotions. Even some of the teachers felt uncomfortable about that. Only one of them ever caused me grief over that and their death within a year of the first instance just made the pupils scared of me. I found it quite amusing that they believed I had somehow placed a curse upon the teacher that caused their death. The real explanation was that they had cancer, but the fact that the other children around me came up with the belief that I was able to curse the teacher and cause their death proves that humanity always has to find an explanation for everything that's around them, even if they have to make one up to avoid knowing they haven't got an explanation.
This is getting a bit longer than I intended, so I'm going to cut it off here. I might continue on with this another time, but the chances of that are fairly low so if you are intersted, then don't keep your hopes up.
Cursedly,
Lord J
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