In the debate between atheism and religion, perhaps the only truly rational thinker is the agnostic.

Atheism is a faith like any other. No definitive evidence exists on deities either way. While, yes, there may be a somewhat sound chain of logic that supports the claim that there is no deity, are no deities, I argue that this chain of logic is not well enough connected to the entire body of evidence available for atheists to make the claim that religion is a failure of the senses and something humanity will outgrow. What we all hope humanity will outgrow is extremism in any and all faiths.

Framing the Debate

A part of the problem is the use of science in framing the debate, religion as its opposite. In my experience, science, not as an abstract, but as it is practiced in our messy human way, is dogma, is religion. Priests guard the portal to knowledge, carefully selecting their acolytes. To this ‘church’, the focus of my scientific research, despite the body of evidence which supports its validity, is heretical. (Probably due to the fact that it sits squarely on the line that divides science from religion in the general milieu.)

During a conference on consciousness and the mind, I broached the subject of my research with psychiatrists and physicists who might point me toward fruitful lines of inquiry. They instead gave me warnings and expressed their sympathy. “Be careful who you talk to about this,” I was explicitly told. A prominent scientist nearly lost their job due to similar ‘extracurricular’ interests, they said. When I met with one of his graduate students in a café in a city which is home to one of the greatest technical ‘churches’ in the world, he made a careful scan of the patrons to see who might be in earshot before proceeding to advise me on the topic. Naïve, I was shocked.

So much for rationality in the practice of science. So much for using the results of said practice in science to definitively frame this debate. Science and its reporting (both in professional journals and popular media) have become like the information on the internet, one must be a little bit of an expert in everything in order to parse the truth from the noise. This need for hedging gives some people just enough doubt to make climate change such an issue.

A New Approach

In the tradition of Elon Musk and Hannibal Lecter, let us dispense with all trappings of knowledge, category, labels, etc. and look at what is via first principles.

It may be ironic to begin a discussion of atheism and religion with evolutionary psychology but as I hope I will make clear, it has its place.

Evolution is real; it happens every day. What seems to be in doubt is what happened 200,000 years ago (first fossil evidence of anatomically modern humans) or 1.5–2.7 billion years ago (rise of eukaryotic life) depending how finely one might want to filter one’s questions. We should not allow rancor over arguments on what is in fact the origin of humankind (not evolution) to taint the whole of science and critical thinking or to paint a large percentage of the population as ignorant savages. This should not be a debate but a conversation, a mutual exploration into the deeper roots of our past as represented by the biology of inheritance and in religious heritages that span millennia.

I argue that religion may also contain clues to our past and our origins. That hidden within these mystical traditions that have arisen on continent after continent, culture after culture are things which will shed light on the evolution of consciousness over time. Though our bodies may have ceased their major adaptations to the world around us, our minds have not. When I was in high school, I programmed on teletypes and CRTs with CPUs as big as several closets behind us. Now, I type this in light. Now, I craft things in light to share with others. Many of us do. More importantly, many of the children do. And more importantly than that, their children and the children that follow will do so too, as long as we can retain our hold on the fragility that is our technology.

I believe, and there may be evidence to support this claim, that ‘updates’ in the minutiae of neurological processing follow adaptations to leaps in technological development. Neuroplasticity. Our brains are such wonderful mysterious machines.

And housed in such bodies! What complicated pieces of machinery are we that house adaptive senses linked inextricably to a self-reflexive or meta-enabled consciousness which allows us to build the towering new and intricate old structures that represent civilization all over the world, to defy gravity as a matter of course to travel from continent to continent, to heal without letting blood, to kill from enormous distances.

Religion, or more accurately, the need and the mechanisms for faith are deeply rooted in the human psyche because they must be. I hypothesize that to be who we are, to be able to do what we do requires deep reservoirs of faith. If we do not Believe, we cannot Build. The ancients (and not-so-ancient) crafted some of the most amazing structures of old as monuments of and as testaments to their faiths, whether faith in God, gods, the state, money, or love.

Productive Illusions and the Beginnings of Human Community

Our reservoirs of spirituality are matched with the equal ability to fly into the depths of nihilism. Such is the gift, such is the curse of consciousness. All of God’s gifts, all of the universe’s gifts, come double-edged. I think this was part of the story of the apple. Sometimes religion is the truth; sometimes religion is illusion as well as allusion. Sometimes we are asked to suspend our disbelief.

Where else is such illusion productive? That we can we lose ourselves in the emotions a piece evokes testifies to art’s ability to provide a seemingly illusory but visceral sense of presence. As do literature and dance. As do theater and cinema. We all willingly suspend our beliefs and immerse ourselves in something outside of us which includes us, which draws us in. Such is the nature of religion, such is the nature of that aspect of faith.

What of the potent energy found in religion? Readers of Frank Herbert will be very familiar with this idea. Protestants may not. Catholics can feel it in the call and response. Evangelical Christians feel the spirit in their bones; the mystics, in their souls. I once attended a Ramadan service at a Turkish mosque in Brooklyn and shared the breaking of fast. There is much energy in this faith; there is no doubt about that.

Another home to such euphoria and energy is sports. “The thrill of victory; the agony of defeat.” Not only for its participants but for its fans. The human mob can be a frightening spectacle but a bonding one as well. The use of the sports arenas as venues for large concerts is apt. The gathered energy where we meet to worship the gods and goddesses of sound is astounding. Music is a direct line to our emotions, our emotions a direct line to our faith, no matter what kind it may be.

Though I have not experienced it myself, I think the evidence shows that combat makes use of our ability to feel and channel this energy as well. Fighting and war, sports, music, religion, theater, and art. All of these have been with us since the dawn of human language; some of these, certainly dance and war (as the hunt), perhaps even longer. All of these pursuits in which we, as participants, subsume ourselves in something outside of us, yet common to one and all, are part and parcel of our ability to form and hold to faith.

Beyond the fact that religion takes advantage of the fact that we are wired for spirituality, it gives back in the form of community and in the idea that someone is looking out for you, that the hardships you face are lessons from which you may learn, that the community organized around beliefs you share, your church, will help you through them. Sometimes it’s hard to take comfort in chance or coincidence or circumstance.

Ultimately, religion is about community around shared beliefs, some more inclusive than others. Cynics would say that this only preys on our societal instinct, point at evo-psych for truths. I would answer that religion, like dance, like art, evolved out of community as a form of sharing and thus strengthening the community bonds via storytelling, no matter the medium.

My thought experiment takes me back to early humans sitting around on a starry night, swapping stories of the hunt, watching the stars wheel by and the galaxy rise, sharing stories about those bright points and wondrous ribbon of light, how their shapes and movement across the sky might mean something important. Our brains, ever seeking order. So, in the beginning.

Religion and the Energy of Procreation

No talk of religion would be complete without a mention of its relationship to sexuality and procreation. It is, after all, the energy of procreation that religion seeks to control or, more kindly, manage. As this leads into a bramble of topics I would but rather not broach right now, I will only ask questions concerning a subtopic of same: Does the repression of sexual energy transfer this force into productivity in other realms? Or does it lead to distortion and perversion? Or either or some admixture of both, depending on personality and circumstances?

Pitfalls of Religion

Some things that atheists might say against religion:

• It forces people to conform to norms which might not be acceptable to people of other religions, cultures, or political beliefs. And may even perhaps force people into behaviors that warp them. (The evidence isn’t clear but may be mounting but for the inability to collect same.)
• It requires belief in words ultimately transcribed and edited by people, thus ensuring confusion as translations and sects proliferate and argue sometimes unto death.
• It leads people to commit atrocity again and again.
• It blinds people to their responsibilities.

I would be hard put to disagree, yet I still say so what. So do nations. In extremis. So does any faith practiced in the extreme, whether in money or God. The solution is not to condemn but to look deeper into the roots of our own beginnings with an unjaundiced eye.

A Look Forward

We humans crave order, so we create it where we must and use what tools, sometimes no matter how flimsy, to prop it up. We should not be surprised to see an uptick in conservative leaning in uncertain times, and therefore should be on guard for such consequences and modify our actions and reactions accordingly.

We should look at the energies of faith, of religion, in action and within the greater scope of its collisions with human psychology pressurized in various environments in order to understand how we might best approach conflicts which erupt when the friction between the sects of belief of all kinds becomes too high.

As revolutions in technology work to free science from the clutches of dogma, i.e. the proliferation of free, on-line classes from the best universities; perhaps similar innovations will move spirituality away from dogma as well. Because the science isn’t there yet, even if we managed to practice it cleanly.

Most reasonable people understand that extremism in any form is unhealthy. The above is my attempt to find places of reconciliation by channeling the discussion into more productive avenues. It is also an attempt to shed light on a fractious and nuanced topic via the viewpoint of one who has had a glimpse of many faiths.