Religion explained

[reznwerks]

"In the "higher" animals, most particularly among the mammals, threatening circumstances elicit a particular type of pain we refer to as anxiety. Anxiety constitutes a type of pain meant to prompt these "higher" order animals to avoid potentially hazardous circumstances. For example, a rabbit is cornered by a mountain lion. In such a situation, the rabbit is pumped with adrenaline, charged with the painful symptoms of anxiety, all meant to incite the rabbit to most effectively escape from the source of its discomfort, in this case the mountain lion. In its healthiest form, anxiety is meant to prompt an animal to avoid or escape a potentially hazardous experience. In humans, however, once we became aware of the fact that death was not only inescapable but that it could come at any moment, we were left in a state of constant mortal peril, a state of unceasing anxiety -- much like rabbits perpetually cornered by a mountain lion from which there is no escape. With the emergence of self-awareness, humans became the dysfunctional animal, rendered helpless by an inherent and unceasing anxiety disorder. Unless nature could somehow relieve us of this debilitating awareness of death, it's possible our species might have soon become extinct. It was suddenly critical that our animal be modified in some way that would allow us to maintain self-conscious awareness, while enabling us to deal with our unique awareness of our own mortalities, of death."
-- Matthew Alper, from "The Premise" to his book, The God Part of the Brain ††

 

[Rick W]

Well, I suppose if we're going to be compared to animals that explains some of the behavior in modern society. Some even use animalistic behavior to support their own. :wink:

 

[Featherbop]

An interesting premise. However, one should note that fear of death is universal anyway-religion or not. Can you think of religious people that still fear death, even though they may claim it is overcome? In the rabbit's case, nature has endowed it with anxiety that can actually cause the rabbit to escape it's problem. If anxiety of death caused religion to develop in early humans, then nature didn't actually provide a solution of any value, i.e. it doesn't work and isn't true. The argument could be made that nature was and is unable of providing anything better. That could explain the discrepancy. Although, if nature somehow endowed us with religion as a means to allow easier living and mental health, then it is ironic that religion(or rather the followers) has been no small cause of death throughout history. So, nature's solution, if religion indeed was nature's solution to death anxiety, has been doubly useless. I dought the premise for this reason. The existence of religion can be explained by much more sensible reasons.

 

[Vic C.]

One wonders how Matthew Alper would feel staring down the barrel of a gun. :-?

 

[Rick W]

: @ vic