Stubbornness and Religion

I am finding myself more and more in the opinion that humans are stubborn irrational beings. It is but the finest stroke of luck that we have managed to make it this far, to have a society so relatively enlightened. (I say relatively since in many way we have lost a good deal of sense, and it may cost us the very life of our planet.) It seems that some sort of memetic description of ideas is probably what most likely exists. This is essentially a model that pits ideas in an evolutionary battle amongst each other, the most fit surviving. Unfortunately fitness can be gauged in many ways and some destructive ideas very good at propagating themselves are bound to survive. Take for example religion.

Now by all accounts religions, and the Judeo-Christian ones in particular, are based on some outlandishly outdated principles. Primity reeks through them and particularly out of their "holiest" of texts. Whether it goes by the name "Torah" or "Old testament" the Pentateuch is a disturbing archaic book. A cursory reading of it would lead to the obvious conclusion that its authorship could not be attributed so well to any group other then a iron age tribe from the Near East. The practices of this tribe are strikingly similar to all the other tribes around it and in its own time would not seemed very different from them. Really it could have been any of these ancient state religions that survived, but as it happened the winner of this battle was the ideas of the Yahwists.

What is more then a little surprising is that Yahweh, by all accounts, seems so unsuited for the role of today's generic "God". Yahweh is a war god, an honor god and on the rare occasion a forgiving god. He creates pacts with his people by slicing up animals, giving his subjects extraordinary tests and even having them slice off their own foreskins. Misbehaviour is treated with the utmost vengeance and entire nations are wiped out due to some growing tendencies. Ultimately it is usually the sweet smell of the burning of some animals flesh which convinces him that the worthiness of his people is intact, thus sparing their lives. Clearly, this is all very different from the wise, patient, benevolent, unintrusive, and omniscient god that most imagine today. Certainly there are similarities. He still demands your utmost devotion and will torture you after death to "cleanse" you if you do not follow this. He supports only one nation truly, whether this be the Christians, Muslims or Jews. By and large though, these two gods are really of separate species and maybe even separate genus.

Even this new version of god, filled with his hypocrisies and vagaries is hardly tenable. This is a god that our cool indifferent reality provides no evidence of. This could even be extended into a reverse watchmaker argument of sorts. When there is a single path in the desert to a spring, and beneath this path land mines are planted, one can only assume that a malevolent being or an indifferent psychopathic being placed them their. This is a far more accurate portrayal of our universe then a fine elegant creation like a watch. Believers convince themselves that all the horribleness of our world is humanities fault and we are lucky to deserve even the occasional kiss of goodwill from our creator. They will make claims like, "Look the entire building fell killing hundreds but a beam fell in a certain direction protecting a few children in the basement. We should thank god for this miracle." Statements like this reveal not only an impoverishment of the intellectual faculties but of the moral senses as well. Are we to believe that everyone in the building brought this terrible fate upon themselves, while god gracefully gave undeserved help to these few children? What of the helpless toddlers next door? Even the silly comic book superheros we invent have more compassion then this despicable deity.

So now I return to my original point on the stubborn irrationality of people. There really seems no greater testament of this to me then humanities absolute refusal to shed their iron age superstitions and to embrace an age of evidence and reason. Yet if so many of us seem to share this problem, then it must say something about all people, even those who do not share these beliefs. I see no other place to examine this phenomenon other then at the point in our minds in which ideas or confronted with conflicting ideas. The question is, why are some ideas chosen by the mind over others? A simplistic view that only took rationality into account would claim that the most logical ideas would win out. Yet it seems that the mind would probably be much more accurately explained with some sort of holistic system that viewed belief system as the culmination of different mental forces. To build a model like this would be quite complex and so for simplicity sake it seems that the memetic model is most adequate at explaining a process in which the slow influx of more "fit" ideas can multiply in the mind thus taking over control. However, this does seem a simplification and I think requires more thought on my part.