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Most animals operate entirely upon what we would call impulse. When the mama bear gets hungry or has mewling cubs at her feet, she simply goes out looking for food. When a male mammal detects the pheromones of a female in heat, he doesn't pause to reflect but simply starts doing his mating thing. Maybe he beats his head against other males or bellows loudly or spreads his tail feathers, perhaps becoming the lucky one to get to hump for a bit. Perhaps not. In any case, precious little thought goes into it.

Perhaps we humans are just the same. Perhaps we just act too. But, the curse of language has led us to find reasons, motivations, purpose to our behavior. We didn't just "do it," like Nike advises, we had justification!

What happens then when someone witnesses something beyond comprehension, like a lightening bolt hitting a tree and bursting it into flames, or a volcano erupting or a tornado cutting the forest a new asshole? How do you explain THAT, Kimosabe? The easy way, the way of religion, is to simply postulate super humans or spirits or gods. We can't see them, but they must be there. Otherwise, how could these things happen?

It is also true that the first humans had only one way of transmitting information, word-of-mouth. Anyone who has ever played the game of "gossip," where everybody sits in a circle and one person in the circle whispers a sentence to the next. This is rapidly repeated around the circle until the last person to receive the message has to say aloud what he or she has heard. Almost never does the data appear unmangled at the end of its journey. Imagine this process under stone age conditions.

"Did you hear that Oog saw flames burst out of the sky and into a tree? He says that there must have been a fire spirit in the sky that did it."

"I heard that Oog, in the next tribe over, saw the Fire Spirit start a fire in the forest."

"Oog, who is one of the few people who has actually met the Sky Fire Spirit, says that all fires are started by this being."

"Oog told us that in exchange for food to take him through the winter, he will personally intervene with the Great Fire God in the Sky to make sure we always have fire. Such a deal!"

Which brings me to my point. I maintain that religion takes the easy way toward explaining the great mysteries of life. The incentive for this is that this approach is the easiest way to enrich the priestly caste, self appointed guardians of the Truth. After all, to be believed about the existence of imaginary beings, one only needs to be trusted. Word-of-mouth is the easiest way to maintain deniability as well.

"I didn't actually say that I could make the Fire God do my bidding, but only that he would do it if He was in a good mood. Perhaps your tribe has not been generous enough in the collection plate."

Science, on the other hand, requires proof and repeatability. These are much more difficult commodities to obtain than mere trust. If you claim that you know how to make fire, you damned well better be able to prove it by making fire on demand, each and every time! But science requires much more than was available to early humans. It requires a way of storing and retrieving information so that people who have not personally witnessed an event can understand and appreciate it. In short, science requires writing and books. One sure indicator of the difficulty of promoting science is the creationist movement. Evolution, which has literally tons of data supporting it, is still an open question to a fairly sizeable grouping of humans. They choose to trust the word of their prophets over the much more difficult assignment of studying and experimenting and demonstrating.

So how does religion answer the great questions of life? Again, I say that all religions take whatever approach that is most profitable for the ruling group. Take the meaning of life, for example. Christians, Moslems and Jews believe that the afterlife is the meaning of our mortal lives. Thus, they emphasize doing good work during your life (like contributing to the Church) to pave the way to a glorious afterlife. Who ever knows whether it worked or not? Who can say who is having a good afterlife or not? To cloud the facts about whose interests are really served, this is called "service to God Almighty."

If you doubt that religion exists mainly to enrich and ennoble its priesthood, take a comparative survey of the leading issues in each religion. See what gets talked about the most. You will find that whether it is Pat Robertson, using religion as a pathway to political power, or L. Ron Hubbard simply trying to get rich, the leading issues will always serve the central cause. Talk to you later...

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