An Atheist’s Perspective of Religion

[Music] if there were no gods then anyone could do anything and nothing would matter you could do as you liked and nothing would be real and nothing would have meaning or value so even if the gods don't exist it's still necessary to have them why hello my fellow apes i hope you're well until now i haven't publicly expressed a comprehensive account of what i consider religion to be and more importantly why it exists but i have made commentary here and there that fits the view of religion being merely a social construct created to control the masses and provide hope and order in a chaotic world there's not a lot of data on just how many people hold this view i mean why would there be but judging by what little evidence we do have this view is not only the most commonly held among the irreligious but also the religious the christian for instance tends to think of other religions as at best as a corruption of their own and at worst as a social construct born of ideological ambition the same of course is true of the muslim hindu shintoist and so on further still this is the sociological view of religion whilst weber durkheim and marx differ in their extended views they are united in regarding religion as an evolutionary adaption after all the essence of a social species is social cohesion and where ants use pheromones and chimpanzees groom humans have ritual thus the sociologist is typically indifferent to supernatural claims it is of little consequence if jesus resurrected muhammad split the moon or thor defeated the frost giants so long as the belief offers the tribe utility it's done its job in a nutshell my view of religion is a more reductionist take than the aforementioned placing additional emphasis on the evolutionary roots and it's fair to say that carl jung and jordan peterson have partially inspired my perspective because of this where many see delusion worthy of nothing more than disdain i see potential treasure worthy of both disdain and respect what's more i found that the theory that i subscribe to simply makes better sense of religion and because it acknowledges the intuitions of adherents but rejects their interpretation it offers a unique middle ground anyhow let's begin at a surface level and build up from there life in the state of nature is solitary poor nasty brutish and short these are the words that thomas hopes use to describe our natural nomadic circumstances and whilst we've escaped many of the vines of nature one shackle will forever remain we suffer and then we die yes if we're lucky as the vast majority of us alive today are we'll experience a lot of joy and happiness along the way but no matter our path all roads lead to the lonesome city of demise i'd argue that this is the most inconvenient truth of our existence as christopher hitchens put it evolution has meant that our prefrontal lobes are too small and our adrenal glands too big and thus our irrelevance in the universe is so inconvenient so are odds with our ego so odds of our evolution even that in the absence of courageous skepticism we are perfectly primed to embrace comforting lies it's this rather disgusting credulity that urged twain to write that religion was invented when the first con man met the first fool to get at the heart of the matter let's switch down again we deeply desire to be part of something far greater than ourselves to know that we are at the very least a pawn in the cosmic game at play and religion offers this promise in abundance you're not just an important part of the universe no you're the creator's favorite toy the pinnacle of all creation indeed both abrahamic and eastern religions elevate us far above our mammalian kin the former by god's will and the latter by transmigration in either case you are special yes you might be suffering here on earth but smile sweet child and wipe away your tears for this life is but a test for the next in which you'll be unimaginably rewarded for your faith you'll be given all the riches of the most wildest dreams and justice will be enacted on those who've wronged you their burning sulfur or come back as a slug what more could you possibly hope for yeah it's a little suspiciously convenient isn't it further still religion offers great psychological utility as the ex-muslim hassan radhwan puts up being part of a group that has billions of subscribers that share beliefs and experiences gives you a sense of identity comfort security and community you don't feel you are struggling alone in a vast universe you can have hope that god will look after you human lives are littered with tragedies that cannot be prevented nor predicted religion provides a blanket to wrap oneself in when tragedy strikes it promises that you will be compensated in an afterlife your life and sufferings no matter how trivial are seen noted and acknowledged again twain's harsh words come to mind but perhaps more fitting is the following from marx religion is the sight of the oppressed creature the heart of a heartless world and the soul of soulless conditions it is the opium of the people so religion offers social cohesion by establishing authority and quenching existential anxiety but as said earlier in certain circumstances it has imperative utility i'll now give just two examples you only think of valhalla and all you think about is heaven which seems like a ridiculous place where everybody is always happy well howard is ridiculous all the dead warriors get to fight again in the courtyard each morning and kill each other again and then they all have soccer together and they are both ridiculous it's always hurt me that we call christianity religion and norse mythology mythology when the only relevant difference is subscription and so let's take the norse religion and specifically its notion of falhalla on the surface valhalla is a very strange belief it's a form of heaven reserved for only half of warriors who fall in combat more still it's regarded as the greatest privilege the highest heaven and yet if it's true none of us today will break bread with odin for none of us will perish in combat that is unless we fabricate a phd in odinology and sophisticatedly argue that death in combat is not to be taken literally as the new age atheists like sam harris do but rather it's to be taken as a metaphor yeah i'm having a revelation just as yahweh told the pope that limbo is no longer a thing odin's telling me that valhalla is for the intelligent i mean he gave his eye for wisdom not for strength those who dedicate their lives to intellectually fighting for the asea will find themselves at odin's table as they died in intellectual combat against the evil forces that be and what of odin inspiring ivar the boneless to annihilate his enemies i hear you ask well that was odin just working in mysterious ways you see just as yahweh was working in mysterious ways when he commanded through moses to kill every male among the little ones and kill every woman who have known a man by lying with him but all the women children who have not known a man by lying with him keep alive for yourselves seriously how shallow and pedantic is the atheism of today i mean how can they possibly dismiss yggdrasil without reading all of the works of neil gaiman there are thousands of accounts of giants roaming digression aside let's get back on track it's all too easy for us the children of the enlightenment basking in privilege never before seen to dismiss valhalla as a bizarre belief a peculiar fabrication spawned of one too many magic mushrooms and indeed our culture largely encourages us to think this courtesy of chiefly christianity but i would argue that the reason we see valhalla as a bizarre belief is simply because we judge it from our perspective if instead we judge it by the environment in which it emerged valhalla is every bit as understandable as the heaven of the west and the samsara of the east in a state of nature in which clans slaughter one another for the little resources available which is precisely the conditions that the norse religion just stated within the belief that you'll be greatly rewarded should you perish honorably in combat offers obvious utility if your clan fights harder than your adversary your chances of victory significantly rise and remember for the norse it wasn't enough to embrace death as a warrior you must embrace death as a hero for only half of the fallen will dine in the great halls thus valhalla not only has literary historical and anthropological value but in the conditions in which it emerged it had extraordinary utility value it's a variation of the strong warrior archetype that's found in almost every religion and especially those that emerged in similar states of privation i would go so far as to argue that unless or until we alter our genes this motif will always have an alluring appeal no matter how irrelevant it is to the challenges of modernity i'll delve into motifs in just a moment but first let me give another example of a religious practice that a surface level appears bizarre consider the vadrayana buddhist funeral practice of sky burial in which the corpses of loved ones are placed on mountaintops to be eaten by carrion birds the vajrayana believe that once a person is dead their spirit leaves their body as part of the process of reincarnation and that by gifting their empty vessel their body to other beings the birds they are nurturing their karma like valhalla this seems utterly bizarre to our starbucks generation to the extent that the average westerner coil wasn't discussed but again this is because we judge it by our own light if we consider the environment in which sky bearer was emerged then the belief makes as much sense as any burial or cremation in the high altitudes of tibet and shanghai the ground consists of solid rock and permafrost making burial near impossible and the lack of fuel and timber similarly renders cremation unviable exposing your deceased to nature is simply the most practical and many would argue respectful solution to alleviating a corpse given this you might not be all that surprised to learn that evidence of similar funeral practice in the region dates back at least 11 500 years religious beliefs are hence not just carrots swung to enforce obedience but some at least are also abstract embodiments of the challenges and environments of those that conjured them we could of course apply this reductionist approach to any religious or superstitious belief and when corroborated with adequate anthropological historical and psychological evidence we can potentially discover crucial facts about not only the challenges of our ancestors but more importantly who we are as a species and this is especially likely when the same archetypes motifs and symbols emerge independently in vastly different cultures we must however and i can't stress this enough be very careful as to avoid confirmation bias and the naturalistic fallacy if we are looking to justify the utility of a belief then by vice of our lowly origin we're going to do so even when it's not actually justifiable for this reason we must insist on having additional evidence from strong scientific disciplines and in regards to the naturalistic fallacy we can never infer that because something is natural it follows that it's morally correct ethically justifiable or even relevant to the environment of today misogyny to take just one example goes hand in hand with religion faith is most certainly man made masculine dominance has emerged independently in so many cultures and religions that i for one am convinced that this constitutes strong evidence of it being a viable strategy in the state of nature indeed studies have shown that primates with intergroup competition that is fighting with rival groups tend to select masculine leadership whereas primates with intergroup competition that is fighting within your own group tend to select for feminine leadership i'd say that misogyny is most certainly natural but that obviously doesn't make it right burying an axe in someone's skull because they're of a different clan is natural but that's not very nice and this brings me to the major challenge that we've been facing for quite some time our intuitions archetypes and motifs evolved in an environment scarcely similar to the world of today we are a fish out of water and we need to deeply analyze our evolutionary psychology to recognize which bits of vestigial and which bits are for keeps but the problem with religion needless to say is that it's dogmatic it's horrendously resistant to this necessary flexibility whereas the non-believer can accept the abrahamic motif of the loving father but reject the bigotry and false assertions the believer has a significantly harder time doing the same some can make progress of course as is the case with most christians finally accepting evolution but others are incredibly stagnant such as islam which boasts to be the final word from god religion is hence the appendix of our psyche where it once greatly improved our chances of survival it now largely hinders it or to put this another way aggression over affection may have been the optimal solution in the state of nature but when the axe is replaced with the nuclear bomb the optimal solution is affection over aggression misogyny may have been the optimal solution in the state of nature which is embodied by nearly every religion but when the challenges we face are of an intergroup nature such as nuclear proliferation climate change globalized economy and extraterrestrial travel the optimal solution is affection over aggression now i could happily speak on this matter for hours on end covering the emergence and decline of greco-roman polytheism the crusades and various religious positions on sexuality but i don't want this video to go on forever before i wrap up however i can't resist talking about our arch enemies snakes save you now potter it only obeys me the symbolism of snakes can be found in just about every religion and even among those that emerged in ecosystems absent deadly snakes such as celtic britain britain has only one native venomous snake the european adder and it's not considered especially dangerous as in this fine land more people die of bee stings than they do of adabites nevertheless druids revered and feared snakes and used them in medical rituals because like certain plants and fungi which have healing properties venom has conscious altering effects ecologists such as dr lane isbell have argued that the reason that snakes can be found in just about every religion is because they were our first and most persistent predators they might not be our arch enemy today but they were for tens of millions of years they were such a threat isbell continues that they heavily contributed to the emergence and evolution of primates our forward-facing eyes and cognitive capacity to identify camouflage objects is largely courtesy of snakes now the adders of england may be easy prey for us but the black member of africa which is after all where we're all descended is exceptionally dangerous with just two drops in 20 minutes untreated black mamba venom has a fatality rate of nearly 95 percent now that sounds like an arch enemy to me thor the norse god of thunderstorm and strength certainly seems to agree for his arch enemy as jurgen mant the world serpent that's destined to initiate ragnarok weird isn't it that in the frozen lands of norway snakes an ectophermic species is considered the nemesis the buddhist and hindus also exaggerate snakes through the monstrosity of naga a race of half-human half-serpents who guard temples and treasures and they're not alone snakes are often depicted as guardians because they tend to raise up and stand their ground they are natural guardians if there's a snake in the camp so says the tribe leader we're moving camp and to give just one more example in the abrahamic religions the enemy of man the devil takes the form of a talking snake in the garden of eden why a snake and not a bumblebee or at least an alligator most don't ask this question because they either believe outright or the sick to death of religion but given our evolution it's no surprise that a primate depicts his historically greatest predator as its antagonist anyhow as previously said i could go on for hours but for now at least i've said enough it's 3am and i should probably get some sleep but in conclusion we evolved to survive in the brutish state of nature in which resources were scarce and ignorance was king but we now inhabit a world far beyond our ancestors wildest dreams this has created a seemingly irreparable conflict between our intuitions and our reason as the former is born of evolution and the latter is the emancipation from it we have simply not evolved to confront the challenges of modernity and our outdated hardware threatens ironically to end us no doubt some of the motifs in religion will always be relevant such as the depiction of light as good and dark as bad and i'd bet that this motif permeates in any species that would cite as a primary sense but many of the motifs in religion are not only irrelevant but extremely dangerous anyhow food for four i need that sleep i'm stephen woodford thank you kindly for the view and an extra special thank you to my wonderful patrons and those of you who have supported the channel via other means i've got two new year's resolutions the first is to lose 15 kilo and the second is to get those bloody cartoons done i apologize for the delay thanks for your patience

Channel: Rationality Rules

Views: 118,806

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Keywords: Atheist's perspective of religion, religion sociology, religion marx, religion hitchens, religion, religion twain, religion weber, religion durkheim, religion radwan

Id: Yi0OpxnP6nM

Length: 16min 27sec (987 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 01 2021