Question From a Friend

[lyrikal]

Please help me answer the question a friend of mine asked today…

She asks:

“Do you think there is a chance that religion was part of the evolutionary process? What I mean is - we were more primitive and in order for our species to continue we needed religion for morality because we instinctively understood that continuing to live in a barbaric way would mean the end of our species.”

Thank you.

 

[ConallCernach]

Please help me answer the question a friend of mine asked today…

She asks:

“Do you think there is a chance that religion was part of the evolutionary process? What I mean is - we were more primitive and in order for our species to continue we needed religion for morality because we instinctively understood that continuing to live in a barbaric way would mean the end of our species.”

Thank you.

Theoretically, one doesn’t need to have hope for the future, just a desire to procreate. A sex drive and no morality would seem more advantageous for the passing of genes. But I think, in surprising agreement with a Mr. Dawkins, that religion doesn’t benefit a species in terms of evolutionary bonuses. This is because it transcends benefits of the natural world.

Pax.

 

[elliejanba]

The question itself is also flawed, what is a barbaric way? The word barbaric comes from strange unusual language. I think the person asking the question should take a look at “primitive cultures” and find that they vary and have many different ideologies and ways of life. Some being more peaceful and others being more violent.

It’s terribly sad that people make judgments about certain cultures without studying their ways of life.

I would talk about that to your friend, it seems that she thinks she has the world figured out. Yet, I think with faith in God, you realize that the world’s questions are limitless and impossible for a strict and easy answer.

I fell back in love with the Bible recently. It is such a great book filled with great ways to live your life more clearly. So often you think you read it, you have it all figured out, but you never do. It’s so expansive, so interesting, and always relevant.

I certainly don’t think it should be limited to “undeveloped cultures”, if such a thing exists, it should be looked at by everyone for the wisdom that is within the texts.

 

[survive]

It doesn’t add up at all.
Human beings have a real need to believe in God and try to serve Him. However, to be a thinking creature and need to believe in God would be a deadly combination if there were no God. We would depend for our well-being, even our lives at times, on a belief our own nature would make impossible to maintain. Evolution would soon do away with our species if there were no God to meet our need for one, since if reason didn’t support religious thinking in the long run for most of us, the early Dawkinses and Hitchenses would have convinced most thinking people and we would have died out. The only explanation that doesn’t end up in a snarl of self-contradiction is that there is indeed a God, and that is why we have a need to believe in and serve Him – He made us for that reason. He gave us reason to discover Him.