The Roots of Religion
With the dawn of self-awareness among early species of humans, coupled with a growing ability to control their environment, traits like empathy and compassion now evolved. These would have been strongest within families, then tribes, races and later religions, …
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Reason Prevails
At different times across the ancient world, particularly Greece, philosophers began formulating the idea that humans alone were responsible for their own welfare and destiny.
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From the dawn of human consciousness people have found their mortality unpalatable and the belief that a reunion with those dear to us after death is indeed a seductive and comforting one.
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The central pivot of most religions is the belief in an all-powerful deity, and praying assumes that through supernatural means this entity can hear us.
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Moral awareness has evolved with us according to our needs as highly complex social creatures, but down through history our shared values have sometimes been hijacked by charismatic individuals. Often these (usually) men claimed to have been commanded by voices – a phenomenon also experienced by Peter Sutcliffe the ‘Yorkshire Ripper.
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Who then is to blame? Basically it is successive parents, since it is they who have ultimate control over their own children, but also teachers and administrators since all should be mindful of the law of cause and effect.
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We are often reminded that religious communities are happy ones. But while ceremonies and sacrifices, prayers and pilgrimages may give some believers a degree of fulfilment this may be of little or no benefit to the wider society and, more importantly, can even contribute to it’s division.
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My Road to Humanism
However, escaping childhood religious indoctrination wasn’t so simple. The Jesuit adage (from Aristotle) ‘Give me a child until he is seven and I will give you the man’ is no empty cliche. So, although no longer a practising Catholic, God remained my ever-present confidant.
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