11. Religious thinking and origin of the Supernatural

Q: Religious thinking played an important role in the evolution of human societies. What are your thoughts on religions?

A: I am fascinated by religions. The subject matter of faith is interesting but the fact of people believing in supernatural gods is even more so. 

Q: Why do you find the ‘fact of people believing’ more interesting than the subject matter of faith?

A: Isn’t it strange millions of people find it necessary to believe in supernatural Gods? It is easy to judge the faithful as ignorant or deluded, but I think we should look at religions more objectively.

Q: Hmm… you want to focus on the ‘fact of people believing’ rather than content of faith itself. How does it help to understand religions?

A: I look at religions with awe and respect, from a safe distance, as I would observe an active volcano. Religions are fuming remnants of  millions of years of complex natural processes, subterranean activity beyond the knower’s objective grasp.

Q: Religious faith contradict science and common sense. For example, Christians believe in a God who came back to life 3 days after death. Do you consider it a natural process?

A: This is what I find fascinating about religions. Most people today should know resurrection is physically impossible but millions hold onto this belief with utmost conviction. I don’t think those who believe are ignorant or deluded. I am baffled by the fact that people find it necessary to believe the impossible. 

Q: Well, why don’t you consider such belief as pure ignorance?

A: It is not just the religious type that hold such beliefs. Some hardcore physicalists insist phenomenal consciousness is an illusion. Isn’t that equally absurd? There has to be a reason why intelligent people hold onto such irrational beliefs.

Evolutionary explanations 

Q: Evolutionary biologists explain the persistence religious faith as a ‘side effect’ of other adaptations. Do you agree this is possible?

A: This might be the case. 

Q: What could be the evolutionary adaptation that gave rise to religions?

A: Religious thinking could be seen as a consequence of the evolution of ‘knower’, meta-cognitive faculty in human beings. 

Q: How? What is the connection between meta-cognition and religious faith?

A: ‘Knower’ evolved from subjectivity in nature, but sees itself as an alien fighting powerful enemies. At the same time, distant memories of this billion year long journey, from primeval mud ponds to self-aware existence, bubbles up from its past. Religions are colourful expressions of such recollections. 

Q: You mean religious myths tell the story of human evolution?

A: Yes. It is not the exclusive version from ‘knower’, but as perceived by the whole spectrum of comprehension, stretching from knower’s objective point of view on one end  to pure experience at the other end.

Religious evolution and environmental factors

Q: But all religions do not tell the same story. Mythology of Christianity, Islam and Hinduism are vastly different.

A: Remember ‘knower’ evolved over a very long period of time. Like other evolutionary adaptations, ‘knower’ too was shaped and fine-tuned by the environment. Its recollections were partly a function of geography and climatic conditions under which the population evolved.

Q: I don’t understand. How can climate and geography influence the history of religions? 

A: Think about it: why did the inhabitants of equatorial Africa evolved with dark skin while those far away from the equator developed lighter skin tone?

Q: Dark skin had an evolutionary advantage over other skin tones. Melanin, the substance responsible for darker skin, offers protection from sun’s ultraviolet radiation. Regions closer to equator receives more UV radiation so darker skin tone was beneficial for survival.

A: Right. Climate and geography fine-tunes evolutionary adaptations over long periods of time. That is natural selection. We discussed the origin and development of ‘knower’ and it’s difficult relationship with rest of nature. The dynamics of this relationship was heavily influenced by external factors.

Q: How? 

A: Fear and distrust were the  defining characteristics of knower’s relationship with its source. Imagine two contrasting environments, for example the fertile soil of Indo-Gangetic plains and the inhospitable desert of Arabian peninsula. Physical survival was relatively easy in the plains owing to more benign geography and availability of resources. The infant ‘knower’ could afford more freedom for its playful explorations. In contrast, survival was much more challenging in the arid lands. Uncompromising obedience to traditional wisdom was the best strategy for survival. Laws and customs took precedence over experimentation.

Q: I don’t think it is so straightforward. Societies in the Indian subcontinent too developed rigid rules and customs and Arabia was not devoid of innovation! But I get your point. Environment played an important role in how the knower-nature dynamics evolved and it had an effect on how the ‘knower’ remembered its past. 

A: Yes, we should carefully re-think religious history in the light of knower-nature dynamics.

Origin of the Supernatural

Q: So far we have our foot firmly on the ground. Where does the supernatural element come from? Evolution was a natural process. Why does its ‘colourful reflection’, religion, includes the God concept? 

A: God is a representation of the unknowable in the universe. The ‘knower’ re-imagines ‘real-but-inconceivable’ as ‘supernatural-but-conceivable’.

Q: I am lost!

A: ‘Real-but-inconceivable’ describe the state of the universe before ‘knower’. We normally think of the universe before meta-cognitive humans as an objective fact. This is a mistake because we are ignoring knower’s evolutionary history. World was a terrifying mystery for early generations of meta-cognitive humans and it remained so for thousands of years, until ‘name covers’ were drawn up to conceal the mystery.

Q:  This is where I still have difficulty. I can understand the world was a mystery for early humans. But it is no longer the case. We know better and whatever our remote ancestors saw as mystery is not so mysterious any more. Why do you think what happened at the infancy of our species is relevant today?

A: The mystery never disappeared, only went hiding behind the veil called ‘objective knowledge’. We went through the mechanism of ‘knowing’ earlier. Objective knowing involves covering up the strangeness of ‘things-in-themselves’ by attaching labels and identifying patterns from externally observable behaviours.

Q: What do you mean by ‘mystery was hidden behind objective knowledge’? 

A: The ‘thing-in-itself’ was a threat to the budding ‘knower’. It was tamed by creating a representation of how the ‘thing-in-itself’ appeared from outside, completely ignoring the inner dimension. 

Q: What ‘inner dimension’ are we talking about? Do you seriously believe rocks and atoms have inner dimension?

A: Human beings have an inner dimension for sure. It is undeniable and it must have a logical explanation. We are made of atoms and it is logical to assume the stuff we are made of have properties that manifest as consciousness in us. 

Q: So God is a representation of the mystery hidden behind objective knowledge?

A: God is the representation of the inconceivable. ‘Representing the inconceivable’ is paradoxical and that is where the supernatural element comes in. Impossibility of representation is communicated as a miracle. God, representation of the un-representable, becomes a supernatural being. Unflinching faith in God is necessary for the representation to be effective. Meta-conscious man had to preserve the relationship with his source through unconditional faith.

Q: The inconceivable we are discussing is the ‘thing-in-itself’, not a living being. Why is its representation not an object? Religions imagine God as a living being, not an object.

A: God is the representation of ‘nature-in-itself’

Q: ‘Nature-in-itself’ is alive?

A: Where do we draw the boundary between life and non-life? ‘Nature-in-itself’ include all life.

Q: Let me approach the God question from another direction. You mentioned the error factor in knower’s representation of ‘nature-in-itself’. Why didn’t this error become a major talking point in the past 300 years?

A: It did not appear as a problem during early stages of scientific revolution because creator God, sum of all mysteries, was an essential but unspoken component of the mechanistic world view. 

Q: But it became a problem as science progressed and astronomers found no evidence for a creator in the heavens?

A: Yes. Clock-work universe doesn’t make sense without  a creator ‘god’ and the idea of  human person doesn’t make sense without a ‘soul’. Philosophers of science failed to re-enforce the mechanistic world view with suitable ‘god replacements’. Instead, devout materialists went on to declare consciousness itself an illusion, in effect transforming physicalism into an elaborate superstructure hanging in the air without foundation. 

Trouble with present day religions

Q: How can religions stay relevant despite rapid expansion of scientific knowledge?  

A: Religions need to re-invent continuously. This is not an easy task as all religions depend on faith to a large extent. Faith and  traditions harden with time and this is a fatal weakness in a rapidly changing world. 

Q: Why should religions re-invent? Isn’t the essence of religious thinking, ‘creative evolution of nature-in-itself’ as you put it, an absolute truth?

A: Religious truth, if it can be named so, is unrepresentable. All religions are attempts to capture ‘creative evolution of nature-in-itself’ in colourful imagery. Such ‘imperfect representations’ need continuous upgrading as the knower unravels more refined patterns.

Q: How important is faith in religious thinking?

A: Emergence of ‘knower’ broke man’s sacred connection to nature-in-itself. Unconditional faith was a pragmatic substitute for direct experience as the ‘knower’ grew into adulthood. It was a necessity for the ‘knower’ to keep its relationship with the source alive. 

Q: You mean ‘knower’ had to accept supernatural representations of the ‘real-but-inconceivable’ without asking questions? 

A: Yes. This was the only way ‘knower’ could have survived its infancy. Remember it was born to be hostile to its source, forever attempting to cover up unknowability and create representations for practical use. This was a dangerous mission and faith in the truth of representations was an evolutionary necessity.

Purpose

Q: Well, it appears things did not work out as intended. See what man has done to nature in the name of progress! Wouldn’t ‘nature-in-itself’ be in a better shape without human arrogance wreaking havoc with God’s other creations? Did something go wrong with God’s plan in evolution?

A: Let us be very clear. There was no plan. God is a representation created by man to account for the in-expressible in nature. 

Q: I get it, but the ‘in-expressible’ must have had a purpose. Your statements about the evolution of ‘knower’ imply an end goal. 

A: All that we could say is ‘nature-in-itself’ is creative. Anything more would be blasphemy! Evolution is a creative dance of beautiful patterns. Man is capable of resonating with these patterns because the meta-cognitive ‘knower’ is itself a flicker of nature’s creativity. 

Q: You are assuming there is some mysterious creative force in nature. Why is such an assumption necessary? Isn’t it undercutting the fundamental laws of physics?

A: There isn’t anything supernatural about creative evolution hypothesis. We began with the search for an objective as well as experientially meaningful explanation for life, accepting evolution, reality of phenomenal consciousness and comprehensibility of the universe to human mind as foundational. 

Laws of physics are descriptions of creativity in the universe, as seen by the ‘knower’. Such patterns of creativity were integral to ‘universe-in-itself’ until meta-cognitive man evolved. Identifying the patterns and describing them objectively was a task accomplished by the ‘knower’ over a period of several centuries.

Q: We went through that before. You are treating meta-cognition as the pivotal event in the history of the universe. I am not convinced! 

A: Meta-cognition is the pivotal event from human perspective. Our ability to be objective arose from an experiential foundation. 

Q: Do you think some degree of meta-cognition exists in all life?

A: We could imagine a tendency for awareness existed in earlier life forms or even in non-living matter.

Q: This ‘tendency for awareness’ developed into full blown meta-cognition in modern humans?

A: It is not exactly right to describe humans as fully self-aware. Our sense of identity is clouded in a state of partial awareness. We see the world and ourselves through a tiny but gradually expanding window in the high wall separating us from ‘nature-in-itself’. We are at an intermediate stage in the journey to full-blown meta-cognition.

Is faith still relevant?

Q:  Is faith still relevant? Knowledge has made tremendous progress since the knower’s humble beginning. Are we ready to discard blind faith for good?

A: Faith has become largely irrelevant with scientific progress but the true relationship between mind and nature remains a mystery. We are in a precarious position, similar to a trapeze artist transiting between hanging bars high up in the air.

Q: Are you suggesting religious thinking still has an important role? 

A: Faith based religions refuse to fade away because ‘knower’ is yet to figure out the vital importance of direct experience. Both objective and subjective viewpoints are essential to find meaning in life. Imagine watching a 3D movie without polarised glasses. Images on the screen will be a fuzzy mix of shadowy figures. Both left and right eyes need to receive separate images for 3D vision. Left eye cannot take over right’s job and vice versa. Scientific rationality cannot grasp the essence of phenomenality. It requires a different mode of comprehension. Humans evolved with two brain halves for stereoscopic perception. We must learn not to mix objectivity with direct experience. 

Q: Do you think human reason will eventually succeed? Will mankind evolve to be truly meta-cognitive in the future?

A: I hope so. There won’t any future otherwise!