h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

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It's right up your street, I think, with your interests in religion.

Yes it is a very interesting view. It reminds me when I was studying RE at school and we talked about humanity's predisposition to religion.

As far as evolution is concerned, just for the moment let's pretend that it actually happened. We could either argue that evolution has produced religious views. Or we could argue that at a certain point in evolution, God gave us the knowledge that He exists.

What do you believe?

I lean towards the "pan narans" ("story-telling ape") position. I believe that the key advantage our ancestors had was an ability/desire to tell stories to explain the world around them.

These stories are as accurate and "real" as we can make them, based on the evidence we have - we call these stories "scientific theories and hypothesese".

The urge to explain has always been there, but in the past the amount of available evidence was scarce (mainly due to the fact that humans had to spend a lot of their time hunting food and defending themselves). I can imagine an early conversation between early humans;

"What was that?"

'Thunder'

"But what's thunder?"

'It's a big bang in the sky. I can make a bang hitting these rocks together, so it must be somebody banging big rocks together in the sky'

"But people don't live in the sky, and they can't lift rocks big enough to make that bang."

'It must be big people then.'

"And they must be invisible."

'And have wings.'

"But why are invisible flying giants banging rocks?"

'They're hunting giant flying mammoths. That's what the bit after the bang is; it's the mammoth falling over.'

As time went on, and humans got better at feeding themselves, and had more free time to think, the stroies became more complex. The rocks bacame war drums, then a hammer in a giant forge (which explained the lightning as well - sparks off the iron - and the occasional iron meteorite found was a spill from the ladle of molten iron).

Eventually, tribes were good enough at looking after themselves, they had enough spare resources to support a full-time religious caste. This is where the politics comes in, as well as the conflict between religion and science (even though there was no formal science at the time). The priests will have been jealous of their position, advising and influencing people and kings without actually having to work for their keep. If some upstart came along with a better story ("Well, I've noticed that the bits of the fields where the animals poop tend to grow better than the bits with no poop. Maybe we should try fertiliser to make our crops grow better, instead of sacrificing chickens to Wheatibang the crop god?"), the priests would have to guard their position by guarding their stories: 'BURN THE HERETIC! (and sacrifice a pig to keep Wheatibang happy as well. Don't worry, I'll clear it away...)'.

Writing [including carving into stone tablets ] would help to add weight to the argument, especially when most people couldn't read, for "is it not written that...?" This is an argument you have used yourself (in essence): It is written in the Bible, so it must be true.

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I'm concious that I've rambled a bit, so to get back to your original point:

My position is that at a certain point in evolution we gained the ability to imagine a god to help us explain the universe, and then that adaptation helped us learn enough to realise that there are more logical explanations for it all.

To put it another way, I think religion is important to our history, because it is part of how we learned to think about the world around us, just the same way that tricycles are an important part of the history of my attempts to move more quickly in the world than simply walking. Our culture has left the safety of religion, where "god" was there to catch us if we fell, and moved on to the greater risk of science, where a bad move can dump us ingloriously on our backsides and make us start all over again.

I've just realised I made a mistake. It's "pan narrans", just in case you are going to google for it.