We must here draw a distinction between Gods. There are two. The God of the one, and the Gods of the many. The God of the one is my God, and your God, whoever or whatever they may be, the ones who may be found anyplace we happen to be, in a moment of quiet contemplation. These are the Gods who hear our curses, who weep with us at the graveside, who comfort us when our hearts are troubled. These are God as God is to us.
The Gods of Religion are not these Gods.
The Gods of religion are the Gods of the many, the Gods of society, the final arbieters of judgement, holding sway over the court of final appeal - Authority inviolate. These Gods are only found in Churches and Mosques and temples. They do not stoop to sit upon our shoulders, they are hard, statuesque, unbending.
But they are necessary, useful. As is religion. Any institution that defines and praises/rewards good acts, as most churches do at their base, promotes goodness, by which we really mean kindness, by providing a wellspring of grattitude by proxy. This is a very necessary thing, because in the real world kindness, though at first eliciting grattitude, upon repetition soon breeds only expectation, dependency and eventual resentment. Again, this pitiful chain of response is not good, not bad, only human, we do not like to be humbled, to acknowledge we fall into a group that ‘needs to be helped’, it is galling, an affront to our vanity.
Incidently on a social level, this resentment of the weaker toward the stronger, the helped to the helper is circumvented by the creation of the concept of ‘rights’. The freedom of speech etc. I know I can call Mike Tyson a complete bastard because it is my ‘right’ to express my opinion. But this is bullshit. I can express my freedom of speech only because impllicit in the social contract is that the state will protect the individual. Me, in this case. The freedom of speech is not a right, it is a privilige lent to me by society, in the interests of harmony. The only rights I have in reality, are those I can protect personally, with my fists.
It makes me angry when some fucker on the TV forgets this and uses his freedom of speech to willfully create discord.
Evil of course, needs no church - Evil needs little prompting, and is its own reward.
Anyway, I digress.
Why are primitive religions ‘primitive’ - Ancestors, great-spirits, nature-pantheons, crazy beer-sodden War-Gods etc…?
Because they are religions with a different purpose than the ones that came later.
Why is village-life more peaceful, why is there less crime…? Because there are less people - less than 150-200 to be exact. Everybody knows everybody. The community polices itself, what’s the point of stealing Aunty Vera’s necklace if you can’t wear it, or sell it, or melt it down without suspicion…? Exactly.
There was a time when the whole world was villages. Islands of people in the great green void. Then the purpose of religion, or myth-cycle, or perhaps most truthfully - story culture was to amuse, and to explain. To give us causes where none can be found. To give us the why’s of the sunrise, of the dark, of the seasons, the storms and the lightning. Of death, of life, of fate and doom.
Zeus was a much more interesting God than God, so was Thor and the trickster, so were the dryads, the nixies and the trolls. Of course they were, they were always intended to be. Homer could never have written the bible - He’d have been running about, pulling his hair out crying “We need more Hydras in there dammit!!! I’m gonna get laughed off the stage !!!”
Most importantly - these little gods and godesses reflected human nature, they did not presume to tell us how to live. For the simple fact that the societies that spawned them in their imaginations did not need to be told how to live in relative harmony, because they already - naturally - lived in relative harmony. What agression and ill-feeling there was, could be directed outside the community, because at that time… There always was an ‘outside of the community’ to be had.
Not like now. In these global times.
Then numbers grew. Grew beyond the number that any individual within that community could reasonably get to know well, well enough to know the specific links between person X, person Y and themselves.
In game theory, altruistic strategies of behaviour only make sense in indefinite re-itterated games. In common language, it only makes sense to be nice as a default, nice to everyone, if you have a high chance of encountering that person again, at which point you will hope perhaps, they will return your favour. And if they don’t, you will punish them by withdrawing yours.
Communities don’t choose suddenly to go bad. It’s just numbers. Beyond a certain size of population, societies get ‘invaded’ by selfish, agressive, nasty people. Why…? Because they can be. Say I’m hungry, and I’m walking down a shadey street. Along comes another guy with a sandwich in his hand. Never seen him before in my life, doesn’t resemble any family characteristic I’m familliar with.
I split into two - The angel nods, and walks by. The devil nods, walks by, turns, and clubs Mr. Sandwich to death.
Eventually, the angel dies, the devil persists.
What tends to persist, becomes more common.
So, a village that swells into a city, as all prosperous villages will do, must find some way to police themselves, or fade away.
Let me tell you a tale of two cities.
In one, the city maintains its old religion, its licentious and indulgent gods. It also has a whacking great police force, on constant guard against persons who attack the body politic, who work against the harmony of the whole. A whole lot of energy, time and money goes into the police force. A whole lot of time, energy and money that could be put to better use.
In the second - Their religion changes. God becomes fierce. Bloody minded, eye-plucking, hand-chopping, plague-sending, soul-reaping, soul-damning. God with a uniform, God with a nightstick. God on the beat.
There, the police force is not so big, not so hard-working, because now, people don’t steal because the risk is not just a couple of nights in the pen and a fucking good hiding from the pigs, it is their eternal souls.
Suddenly the jewel sparkles less brightly, and the apple looks less appetizing.
Which city will prosper…? Which will grow quicker…? Fight harder…? Compete more successfully…? Persist…?
What tends to persist, becomes more common. Becomes the norm. Becomes the one and only.
Village religions are entertaining, fear-quelling, explanitory religions.
City religions are cohesion-maintaining, ‘do unto others as you would have them do unto you’ religions, and most importantly - give as good as you get religions. They have to be, lest the city fall, the society fade, their Gods forgotten.
Eventually Empires grow, the world shrinks, boundaries evaporate. There is no ‘us’ and ‘them’, because its all us.
Game theory: Altruistic strategy, (good for good, good for bad), communities are first invaded by ‘evil’ ‘selfish’ strategies as the population grows (bad for good, bad for bad). A plateu is reached and population steadies. At this point, the society will either fail and fall back to a lower population, or grow, if - and only if - the common strategy changes to a ‘give what you get’ type, one that rewards good behaviour, and punishes bad behaviour (good for good, bad for bad). Again, a plateau is reached - limited by the average number of human mistakes made in any interaction.
ie - we are the best of friends, until I accidently throw up on your wife. Then we are enemies. Forever.
That’s the trouble with the old-testament God, with ‘give what you get’ there is no forgiveness.
So, in order for a community to grow beyond the city, into the empire, into the world - you need forgiveness. You need to try to recreate the default altruism of the village, but on a global scale, between total strangers.
So Jesus turns his cheek, and forgives his friend a vomit-stained wife.
And that’s it.
Religion is necessary for growth. It is helpful at all stages of population growth until, suddenly, it’s not.
Which is where we are now. As the global population, in the past divided, has now technically become one, as the ‘outside of the community’ has shrunken and disappeared - all that pent-up agression, that evil, that selfishness that is so natural to us, so demanding of expression, so adamant in its righteousness…
…Suddenly has no-where to go. And a religion that once preached forgiveness is warped and twisted into just another reason to make a fist.
Inevitable. Unavoidable.
But let us hope, not insurmountable.