Religion is a failed attempt to explain WHY
There are two qualities inherent in the human mind that made it possible for our species to evolve and develop into its present position of dominance on our planet: curiosity and imagination.
Curiosity made humans probe into everything they observed, to find out how things began, how they worked, and how they could be used for practical purposes. Imagination supplied explanations for things that were beyond human understanding.
Children grow up asking thousands of WHY questions. Parents and teachers try to supply answers. Frequently, parents who don’t know a specific answer will offer an imaginary one, made up by the ancestors of our own culture, or manufactured in our own richly imaginative heads. Humans know themselves to be creative, and thus attribute creation of all nature’s mysteries to human-like but better entities — the superparents who know everything and can do anything. Therefore, gods and goddesses become an integral part of the religious imagination now called mythology, which has historically supplied answers to the most essential WHYs: Why does the universe exist? Why are we here? Why must we die? Why should we behave in certain ways? Why must we communicate with these alleged superior beings?
Once a mythology becomes established, it flourishes and grows with every generation. Different kinds of immortal beings are created: angels, demons, vampires, fairies, goblins, elves, gnomes, ghosts, demigods, mermaids, monsters, spirits of the sea, the sun, the moon, the sky, the underworld — everything. Monotheists have clumped them all together into one and have violently removed all female-based concepts. Yet somehow the underworld god (devil) remains separate, as do angels, saints and demons. And since motherhood is an irrefutable fact of human existence, the mother symbol that Catholicism declared merely human, Mary, has now achieved a definite aura of divinity.
Theology is taught to children from as soon as they learn to talk. Churches and other religious institutions insist on their faithful attendance at every opportunity because every attendance not only enforces the dictated beliefs, it brings more and more tax-free profit into the religion business. Worldwide, it has become the most profitable business ever created; it receives lavish payment for promises that it never has to keep, and dire threats that never have to be carried out. It lives richly, feeding on the human imagination because human beings love to envision things: stories, fiction, drama, sci-fi, folktales, entertaining lies that sound believable. Our brains are always ready to imagine and envision not only the possibilities of useful creativity, but also idle entertainments of every description. Our experience of dreams and fantasies can seem as real as the experience of life — even more so at times. When a fantasy is believed, it can easily become a faith.
For all of these reasons, religion maintains its ever-so-lucrative grip on human culture. Our childlike faiths war with each other, try to destroy all the nonbelievers, and bring on catastrophic evils such as crusades, inquisitions and holocausts, not to mention the everyday nastiness inherent in prejudice.
Yet there is hope that reason may at last prevail, and sensible people will be able to cultivate and broaden the sane distinction between faith and knowledge. If the human race is still in its cultural childhood, may we set a new faith in such a hope, that after more generations it will eventually grow up?
WHY not?
FFRF Life Member Barbara G. Walker is a researcher, lecturer and author of 24 books on comparative religion, history, mythology, symbolism, mineral lore, knitwear design, the tarot, the I Ching, a collection of original Feminist Fairy Tales, an autobiography, a novel, and two essay collections: Man Made God and Belief and Unbelief. Her Woman’s Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets has been in print since 1983 and was named Book of the Year by the London Times.
Curiosity made humans probe into everything they observed, to find out how things began, how they worked, and how they could be used for practical purposes. Imagination supplied explanations for things that were beyond human understanding.
Children grow up asking thousands of WHY questions. Parents and teachers try to supply answers. Frequently, parents who don’t know a specific answer will offer an imaginary one, made up by the ancestors of our own culture, or manufactured in our own richly imaginative heads. Humans know themselves to be creative, and thus attribute creation of all nature’s mysteries to human-like but better entities — the superparents who know everything and can do anything. Therefore, gods and goddesses become an integral part of the religious imagination now called mythology, which has historically supplied answers to the most essential WHYs: Why does the universe exist? Why are we here? Why must we die? Why should we behave in certain ways? Why must we communicate with these alleged superior beings?
Once a mythology becomes established, it flourishes and grows with every generation. Different kinds of immortal beings are created: angels, demons, vampires, fairies, goblins, elves, gnomes, ghosts, demigods, mermaids, monsters, spirits of the sea, the sun, the moon, the sky, the underworld — everything. Monotheists have clumped them all together into one and have violently removed all female-based concepts. Yet somehow the underworld god (devil) remains separate, as do angels, saints and demons. And since motherhood is an irrefutable fact of human existence, the mother symbol that Catholicism declared merely human, Mary, has now achieved a definite aura of divinity.
Theology is taught to children from as soon as they learn to talk. Churches and other religious institutions insist on their faithful attendance at every opportunity because every attendance not only enforces the dictated beliefs, it brings more and more tax-free profit into the religion business. Worldwide, it has become the most profitable business ever created; it receives lavish payment for promises that it never has to keep, and dire threats that never have to be carried out. It lives richly, feeding on the human imagination because human beings love to envision things: stories, fiction, drama, sci-fi, folktales, entertaining lies that sound believable. Our brains are always ready to imagine and envision not only the possibilities of useful creativity, but also idle entertainments of every description. Our experience of dreams and fantasies can seem as real as the experience of life — even more so at times. When a fantasy is believed, it can easily become a faith.
For all of these reasons, religion maintains its ever-so-lucrative grip on human culture. Our childlike faiths war with each other, try to destroy all the nonbelievers, and bring on catastrophic evils such as crusades, inquisitions and holocausts, not to mention the everyday nastiness inherent in prejudice.
Yet there is hope that reason may at last prevail, and sensible people will be able to cultivate and broaden the sane distinction between faith and knowledge. If the human race is still in its cultural childhood, may we set a new faith in such a hope, that after more generations it will eventually grow up?
WHY not?
FFRF Life Member Barbara G. Walker is a researcher, lecturer and author of 24 books on comparative religion, history, mythology, symbolism, mineral lore, knitwear design, the tarot, the I Ching, a collection of original Feminist Fairy Tales, an autobiography, a novel, and two essay collections: Man Made God and Belief and Unbelief. Her Woman’s Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets has been in print since 1983 and was named Book of the Year by the London Times.
