Evolution Of Gods

Logical Arguments against God

I have received more than 100 emails asking me why I was ignorant of the deluge of logical arguments against the existence of God, or if I was indeed cognizant of those, why I haven’t addressed them anywhere. Of course, I can understand the sentiment. The primary atheistic approach, especially made popular by Bertrand Russel, seem to have been subjecting religion to logical scrutiny, and demonstrating that they are so chock full of holes as to make them worthy only of derision. Many people were especially confused–and astonished–by my approach to critiquing religion: primarily consisting of moral arguments. Since the whole point of religion was to improve morality, and in fact, despite all the absurdities, the reason people still tolerate the horrors that has been part and parcel of religion, is that it was supposed to somehow improve a persons moral conduct, many people wondered how I could even entertain ideas of ‘moral’ arguments against God.

That God/Religion are absurd is something that is obvious–or at least I realized it around the age of 19, when I would wake up everyday with yet another logical inconsistency in the concept of God. I even did a bit of debating with the believers around that time, and it is then that I realized the logical approach was thoroughly flawed. Firstly, it is IMPOSSIBLE to logically discredit God, since the the standard answer to any and every argument would be that God is beyond Logic. This is an explanation that preempts any intelligent approach at disproving God. It does have one small drawback though. The Scripture tells us that Man was made in God’s image, and the purpose was companionship. It appears silly that, if companionship was indeed the purpose, why God would bring forth a creature who cannot understand God’s nature. But this is a niggling triviality bordering on technicality, and would get lost in the verbiage in most of the debates.

Logical arguments also entail another pitfall. People’s inability to even understand them, or coming up with specious explanations that apparently contravenes them. One such argument is Molinism, proposed by Luis de Molina in the 16th Century as a response against the foreknowledge-freewill conflict. The actual problem arises from God’s foreknowledge, which would mean that God knows everything, which includes the future, and thus He knows now what I will do. Since God’s foreknowledge is infallible, I cannot do anything else, and this would lead to the conclusion that I cannot have freewill. Calvin used this to form a religion on its own: Calivinism, which claims that each person is predestined for salvation or damnation even before he is born, and that ultimately we have no choice. Calvinism isn’t as gruesome as it might appear at the first sight. IN fact, it is extremely attractive. It takes away personal responsibility, and human mind being what it is, every follower can hold the idea that he himself is blessed, while his enemy has been eternally damned. While Calvinists have whole-hearted embraced the predestination theory, the Catholic Church, which makes a fortune out of sin, guilt and repentance, naturally does not want anything to do with it. And Molina’s seems to be the best argument that had been proposed so as to reconcile the contradiction between of God’s omnipotence and Human Freewill. The argument is convoluted, ultimately does not make any sense, and there isn’t even any consensus amongst Molinists themselves about many of its conjectures. Yet, a religious apologetic can trivially use it to simply get into a drawn out logical contest which will never reach anywhere.

But the reason why I completely avoided the whole approach itself is because I realized–something Mencken also figured out long back–that there wasn’t anything new I can contribute. All these arguments had been lying around for 100s of years, and yet, I don’t think anyone really has recanted his faith merely owing to being logically beaten in a debate. Of course, a person who was already on the path to atheism, might find them interesting, but for majority of the believers, they were totally and utterly irrelevant. And that’s when I realized the real issue with the whole God/Religion thing. When it comes to God, the pertinent question wasn’t whether he existed or not–the Gods as described in the Mainstream Religions are so vulgar, brutal, and barbaric, we are better off without such a monstrosity anyway–, but rather how could people believe in this garbage. Again, the issue with Religion is not as much with the lack of logical coherence in their central thesis, but sheer barbarity of the principles. Every religion actively tries to discredit–and in the case of Islam, exterminate–its opponents, and holds that they alone are the keepers of the key to the ultimate truth. Thus it is apparent that all religions cannot be true, since one of them being right would automatically disprove every other religion.

Thus in this website, when I talk of "God", it actually means ‘belief-in-God’. The existence of God is something which I have no interest nor time to devote any attention to. I have not yet found anything more barbaric than the God as described by Bible/Koran, and to even entertain ideas of the existence of such an entity shows a mind that is bestial and totally devoid of compassion, and I personally wouldn’t want to engage in a protracted discussion with such an individual.

My gripe with God stems not from the fact that he doesn’t make any logical sense–human brain is too feeble to make such dogmatic statements anyway–but rather I am appalled by the sheer barbarity and brutishness that is promulgated in the scriptures, that masquerades as a peculiar kind of morality.

Misconceptions that militate against explaining the origins of Religion

Myth Number One: Religion is about explaining the unknown.

a) People are not really bothered about mysteries. If they really cared about the intricacies of the nature of their surroundings, science would have been the lifestyle of the masses, rather than the vocation of a professional few. b) Habit of Miracle Mongering: People actually want events classified as miracles even when it is apparent that there is a simpler scientific explanation. The examples are the fake psychics like Yuri Geller , who, even though exposed as consummate fraudsters, still command a sizable following. c) Religions, while explaining some phenomena, in fact, creates bigger mysteries in its place. For instance, if we say the lightning is created by Indra, then the whole question of the nature of Indra and his disposition is left to the unexplained.

Myth Number Two: Religion is about ameliorating the fear of death.

a) Death, though trumped as a major issue by some people (Woody Allen’s pretentious obsession with death themed books in in Annie Hall), isn’t a really big deal to an average person. (When directly confronted with life threatening situation, we are truly in the thrall of absolute terror though). While there is an instinctive and reflexive fear of life threating situation, death as an abstract event/concept doesn’t really occupy the mind of an average person. In fact, there is a reverse instinct. The whole attitude of preferring a life of wealth and Honor even if it entails a high risk for life. This is the whole concept behind the Nobility as a class and generally the people who willingly precipitate in war. This instinct arises due to the adaptive nature of war. b) Pascal Boyer notes that there do exist certain cultures that do not have either a creation myth nor the after-life concept. Also when it comes to ancestor worship, the salient idea is not the actual nature of life-after-death, but rather how the ancestor can influence people who are currently alive. So life after death is not really a preoccupation found in all human beings, and seem to have some cultural provenance.

Myth Number Three: Religion is about creativity.

Religion is primarily triggered when people encounter more mundane matters like crops or disease. The most religious people currently in existence, the Jihadis aren’t what you could call as creative. On the other hand, as is usual with people of higher intellectual caliber, good artists generally tend to be left leaning liberals. Again we should understand that in the past, before science, and before Darwin, religion was the sole intellectual pursuit. Thus it would be true that many of the past artistic accomplishment would be in the sphere of religion. The thing is religions got a free ride from all the great minds of the past, because there was simply no other alternative. When analyzing people’s disposition towards religion, we should actually focus only the post Darwin post science phase.

Myth Number four: Religion is about morality.

This is the silliest one. Bible/Koran are rape/murder manuals. If anything, Bible/Koran not only condones, but demands and even mandates the most heinous activities from its followers. Also see below.

Myth Number five: Religion is about humility.

From Alexander the Great to Hitler, all of the warlords were strong believers, and it is their belief that fueled their madness. In fact, Megalomaniacs aren’t people who think they were ABOVE God, but rather they think they are in the special protection of a supernatural being. In fact, it can even be argued that true megalomania is not possible without belief in God. I mean, rationally speaking, a logical person is more than aware of the fragility of one’s own life. And also a person who is calculating everything purely based on probability would be more than aware of the Murphy’s law (If anything can go wrong, it will). On the other hand, the true megalomaniacs think that they are God’s chosen one, and thus they are invulnerable to all the trivial and niggling laws of nature. History of warfare would also show that God is invoked not only in Religious wars, but rather the soldiers expect God to aid them even if the war is for purely secular purposes and they are not directly doing God’s dirty work. Thus believers have a tendency to expect God to take their side no matter what.

Religion = Communal attempt to quell the DOUBTS in Vulgar-god.

This will explain a very perplexing behaviour found among believers.

Believers seldom help the needy. But they are comparatively generous toward their churches.

We have a evolved instincts to sustain the religious edifice, because, without this external religious underpinning, OUR OWN belief in Vulgar-god (which is adaptive) would falter. But there is a problem in this trait. You are not DIRECTLY benefiting from your contribution, but you are only benefiting indirectly. So gene-selection tells us that, an unbridled generosity towards the Churches also will not evolve.

Two strategies can be adopted to thwart the free riders:

Religions can police the contributions by making sure that more beneficence is conferred on people who contribute more. Thus, religions will evolve complex rituals and regulations where higher spiritual blessing is conferred upon people who spend more money on the organization. Or simply put, all religions will have methods by which you can BUY blessings, where their most generous patrons are lavished more spiritual attention than the average people.

The best way to keep cheaters away is again Gossip. Maybe that is why Church is always the center of Gossip in a community. A person can make sure that he doesn’t get cheated, by keeping track of his neighbour’s contribution, and making sure that he doesn’t himself contribute any more than that.

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&>; Churches will make sure that people who pay more get better spiritual blessing.
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&>; Believers will make sure that they will not pay more than their neighbour, and also socially penalize the people who dont contribute.

Thus:
A person will have a strong desire to see that his Church is well off (A good church bodes well for his own well being), but he wouldn’t want to contribute more than his neighbour. This behaviour, which is similar to strong-reciprocal-altruism, is consistent with the individual-selection model.

God and Universal Justice.

My favorite story concerning God and prayer is this: One day, when an old mendicant alights at the door of a very rich man, the rich man was engaged in his morning prayer, and thus the old man had to wait outside. After ending his prayer, the rich man turns around and is surprised to find that the mendicant was leaving without getting his alms, and being the do-gooder-in-the-name-of-god kind of guy, chases after the old man, and asks the reason for his hasty departure. The old man wisely replies: "When I was standing outside, and when I heard you pray to God to give you more wealth and fame, I realized that you were actually a mendicant too, and instead of begging from yet another beggar, I should directly beg to God".

The story above beautifully illustrates how contradictory and absurd is the whole concept of prayer is. The rich man is praying to God for granting him more wealth, the same God, who has denied the starving beggar of basic sustenance. If God is capable of granting wealth, the person he ought to have helped is the beggar. But the rich man will find his prayers are indeed being answered, and would more likely than not, grow richer. But to say that it is God who is responsible for his wealth, is a grave insult to a just God. If anything, the God should make the monetary distribution more equitable, and we can clearly say that, if the rich man grows richer, it is in spite of God, and not because of God. Considering that world has no dearth of rich folks who are deeply religious, I assume that this simple conclusion is something that they never reach.

One of the fundamental traits assigned to God is his ability and desire to enforce a Universal Justice. To an intellectual, it is necessary that there should be an entity that makes sure that at some level every perpetrator is punished commensurate with his transgression. The Judeo/Islamic/Christian concept of divine judgment and the heaven/hell is one of the ways in which justice is implemented. But studying Christianity, one is appalled by the actual method how the judgment is carried out. Though disowned by many intelligent Christians, the actual distribution of rewards/punishment in Bible is absolutely arbitrary. Bible makes it clear that the only way of salvation is the belief in Christ, and not through good deeds. A person who has lived altruistically all his life, yet willfully ignored Christ, would be cast into hell, while a murderer or a rapist who has lived off other people’s misery all his life, if he makes a deathbed confession and embraces Christ at the last moment, would win eternal happiness for himself. Though many Christian apologetics have argued that Good Works is necessary for salvation, anyone who reads the Bible can find enough instances to justify his conviction that he can procure a ticket to heaven, no matter what his actual actions are.

The eastern concept of ‘Karma’, where the universal force holds one accountable for all our actions, is yet another of Cosmic Justice mechanisms. The enforcer in ‘Karma’ concept is not an anthropomorphic God like the one found in Christianity, but rather it is simply the property of the universe itself, an automated program, a physical law that cannot be broken. This means that there are no short-cuts or loop holes whereby you can avoid the effects of your actions.

As is evident, the concept of ‘Karma’ is far more intellectually satisfying, leading to a more equitable society, and would also make people more concerned about their actions toward their fellow men. The concept of Karma, while the most intellectually satisfying one of all the justice executioners, does have a fundamental problem in that there is a time gap between the act and its reward (or retribution). This fundamental window of time between the two is what has necessitated the creation of the idea of ‘reincarnation’. While we might escape the effect of our Karma in this life, the universal force makes sure that we will pay for it another. But the retribution can never occur at the same moment action, and this leads to the notion of infinite reincarnation, where we keep on getting born into this world till our actions slowly diminish, and in time, our Karma and our retribution approach each other, and finally meet, at which point we would achieve salvation and disappear from the world.

The above philosophy is the one that has come closest to some form of fairness, but our following analysis shows that even this is a far cry from true equity.

Let us consider the lives of two people - the first one gets pleasure out of hurting people, while the second finds joy in helping others. Let us imagine both of these people have decided to pursue their deepest desires to the fullest extent. According to ‘Karma’, the former would have to suffer punishment, while the latter would rewarded, but it is clear that, in a spiritual sense, neither of the individuals deserve the opprobrium or the praise that might be attributed to their actions. The second person does his good deeds not actually out of rational cognition, but rather in his attempts to please his visceral desires, and that his actions are deemed good is simply a matter of good fortune. Similarly it is just unfortunate happenstance that the first person is possessed by desires that lead to actions deleterious to others, and ultimately to himself via the retribution executed by the Karma machine. This is basically the crux of the principle elucidated by Kant in his seminal work "Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals". According to Kant, only the acts that does not fall under the influence of external influences like wants or desires can be categorized as moral or immoral. Thus moral judgment can be passed only on actions that result from pure rational cognition.

But what exactly is rational thought? The purpose of life is the satisfaction of our desires or wants, and thus pure rational thought has no meaning. Intellect is but a tool, and its purpose is to achieve the fulfillment of our wishes. Pure rational thought does not exist, and has no significance: neither for moral nor practical purposes. Acts that have been committed without affecting the pain or pleasure of the individual are irrelevant. In fact, we come to the conclusion that pain and pleasure are the only measurable quantities, and not any of our actions. The true justice would be when the God makes sure that for every person, the amount of pleasure is perfectly counterbalanced by the same amount of pain.

(Idealists would say that the job of God is to maximize the pleasure of every person, but since pain exists, it would seem that such a condition is simply impossible, unless of course, the pain in this world is essential for maximizing the pleasure in a greater context. As far as our current knowledge go, the existence of pain in this world would mean that aim is not to maximize pleasure.)

Thus, if the God is truly just, and he is also omnipotent, his primary task would be to make sure that everyone has the same amount of pleasure and pain. A person’s actions are irrelevant, since actions have meaning only if they are committed for the sake of fulfilling desire, and thus are meaningful only in the amount of pleasure or pain that it engenders in the actor. Thus the only true justice in this world is to make sure that every single person has the same amount of pain and pleasure.

But this is a self-defeating situation. This would mean that God would never allow me to be happier than the most wretched of the beggars. It would mean that my own actions have no effect. Whatever I do is irrelevant. Whatever be my actions, my total pain and pleasure would be the same. Since the only real things are pain and pleasure, and the only function of human being is to maximize pleasure and to minimize pain, this would mean that life as we currently know it, is meaningless.

IF GOD EXISTS, LIFE IS MEANINGLESS.

The above is not a logical paradox, like the one about free will conflicting with the God’s foreknowledge. The above is the direct result of a truly equitable God who has the power to enforce this true justice.

Even discounting such drastic conclusions, let us consider the whole point of belief in God: solace at the time of crisis. But can God really provide us comfort? For an intelligent person, the answer is no. Most of the prayers to God is a form of supplication, which is a request to provide us with petty comforts. The most common prayer would be the cry desperately requesting God to take our side in a conflict. But a just God cannot answer even a single prayer, since if I am to gain something, it has come at the expense of someone else’s happiness, and a truly just god would loathe to engage in an activity that favors one at the expense of another. Thus to an intelligent person, God cannot act as a comforting delusion.

Or let us look at it from yet another angle. Material life, by definition, is a competition for the limited resources. If God exists, it is abundantly clear that both myself and my rival will be absolutely the same in the eyes of God. Even if I am more talented, I would expect God to make sure that me and my rival finally achieve the same level of success, irrespective of our inborn capacities, since my rival’s lack of talent is not his fault. Thus, if God exists, all of the competitions are irrelevant. There is no way I can win anywhere, since God would have to ensure that no one is penalized for their ineptness, since they were born that way, and it is no fault of their own. In other words, existence of God undermines the whole idea of material life, which means "Succeed against others".

Ironically enough, we come to the conclusion that if God exists, the supernatural economic system implemented by God would be that of perfect communism, where everyone is treated equal irrespective of his ability. One of the biggest ironies of humanity is the absolute enforcement of atheism by the Communist Societies, when a truly just God would be nothing but a Supernatural Communist Government, making sure that no one is able to take undue advantage of their inborn skills over their less fortunate brethren.

In the beginning was the pure solipsist mind. It did not need God, because its God was itself.

Religion has been a citadel that has resisted the onslaught of science for millenia. Despite all the predictions of the intellectuals of the early nineteenth century, who saw religion as an aberration that would disappear as science penetrated into the masses, it has tenaciously repulsed the infiltration of science. Even though, throughout the seeming conflict between Religion and Science, there were always thinkers from both sides who called for a truce, and considered them to be two distinct and non-overlapping, and thus non-conflicting domains of knowledge, for majority of the intellectuals, Religion was an abomination whose time had come. But of course, God seems to have scorned all these men who predicted his demise, and appears to have only grown stronger in the years.

History seems to have repeated itself when Science, in the form of Evolutionary Psychology, instead of attempting to quell religion, focused its attention on explaining its origins using the basic principles of adaptations. Despite many enlightening attempts by the EP scholars, Religion as a whole, has remained an enigma. The fundamental difficulty that anyone encounters when one approaches religion with the intention of explaining it is the sheer vastness of its scope. While the myriad and entirely distinct rituals found all over the world itself is enough to thwart any overtly reductionist approach, the wide characters of the believers whom we find inside a single religious framework like Christianity itself would undermine even an extremely sympathetic attempt to explicate religion.

There isn’t a body of scholarship on this planet that would be as contradictory as even the simplest religion found in the remotest of the cultures. In fact, this inherent self-contradiction appears to be the exact charm that endears Religion to people from all walks of life. And this isn’t really a surprising finding actually. Every human being is a walking contradiction, and it is only natural that the contradictory tracts and myths of the religions will appeal to his mind which is actively trying to come into terms with the quagmire of real world.

This attempts to cut through whole undergrowth of the forest of belief and intends to present a theory whose simplicity is only superseded by its ability to explain and make predictions. We going to simply wipe out the whole conundrum of Religious behaviour in one fell swoop. We will also see that the deceptively simple hypothesis about the nature of human mind will yield a deluge of profitable implications that can shed light into many of the apparently paradoxical human behavior. Though it won’t be discussed in this , the hypothesis also results in a totally radical way of viewing the whole human cultural and historical achievements.

Before we delve into the thick of our material, it would behoove you to read <a href=/article.php?q=/philosophy/reality-awareness/equations.html>this page </a> where I have explained all the terminologies I will be using throughout this article.

The hypothesis put forth here is that any evolved conscious mind is inherently solipsist, the reason being that an awareness of an outside world and sentient beings outside of oneself, which would lead to a subconscious implementation of the Golden Rule, would be severely deleterious to the individual’s fitness. What do you mean by solipsist? Solipsism is philosophical construct that states that ’self’ is the only thing that can be known or verified. So when we talk about a mind being solipsist, we mean that it has no real understanding that the external world has any meaning outside of its own desires/wishes. Thus a purely solipsist mind always holds the conceit that the world and everything in it is structured in the exact manner so as to maximize its own fitness. In other words, a purely solipsist mind does need God, because its God is itself. It is pretty much trivially clear that such a mind has strong survival advantage over another one that gets an idea that the real world might have an existence independent of its own. The former can be ruthless in its execution, while the latter, due to the awareness of the reality outside of itself, will be too hesitant in its actions, which would severely harm its fitness. Thus using the basic idea that the maladaptive traits are strongly selected against, we can say that a Reality Awareness will not evolve in a species if possible. Now we should understand that the lack of Reality Awareness will in no way detract the animal from behaving in the right manner to maximize its fitness, because its actions are determined by the specialized modules in the brain which doesn’t need any input from the intelligence to function. And the complex societal structure found among even the simplest of the species like ants or bees would prove that ostensibly complex social interactions can indeed stem from very simple and fundamental instincts, and a species can maintain highly social behaviour without ever bringing intelligence into the picture.

Now that we have established the fact that Reality Awareness cannot evolve, let us now take a look at the peculiar property of humans that we call as intelligence. We can extrapolate the basic modular mind theory to see that Intelligence, after all, is just yet another module, though unlike other modules that are very specialized, intelligence is general purpose computation mechanism. Now, Intelligence has high adaptive function as everyone knows. While the specialized modules will work in the normal situations that an animal encounter, in a constantly changing world, a general purpose tool can allow an animal to deal with if an entirely new situation crops up. But we also see, that intelligence, since it is a generalized apparatus of cognition, can also bring in information that would be highly deleterious for our survival. (Think Hamlet). Thus, for the first time in the history of this planet, we have an animal who has evolved a cognitive mechanism that has maladaptive properties.

Thus we see that, intelligence, which primarily evolved as a tool, has broken out its pure survival agenda, and has brought our mind out of the solipsistic state. The most serious issue that any animal will face when it first comes in terms with the reality is its own impotence at breaking the laws of nature. We saw earlier that in the pristine and pure solipsist state, the mind’s God is itself, and now when it comes out of this state, and realizes the immutability of the physical laws, the God splits from itself and takes on the form an external supernatural deity.

A Mind desperately seeks to create God when:
Realizes the immutability of physical laws.
Realizes that there is world outside that doesn’t seem to bend exactly according to its wishes/desires.

Thus, God was not created for the sake of explaining the unknown, but rather to circumvent the known, in the creator’s favor of course. While the lack of knowledge could have disquieted our instincts that always feared the unknown, a more severe discomfort is felt when one realizes our impotency in shaping the world exactly according to our desires.

Thus the mind that has just emerged out of solipsistic state creates a God so as to overcome its own inability to shape the material world.

This clearly explains the empirical observation which found that Human religions always contain Gods or god like agents, who are always portrayed as having the knowledge and power to influence the course of events. (Pascal Boyer)

When we talk of the present day religion, we should actually realize that it purports two distinct, and non-overlapping ideas of God

The god of the atheist/intellectual/spiritualist: An omni-benevolent, omnipotent, omniscient entity whose purpose is to ensure that virtue is rewarded. (This is the Kantian God).

<font color=blue> The god of the average believer (Any religion): A personal supernatural entity who will actively help him put a knife in his best friend’s back. </font> This is because, in a low intelligence person, his intellect is not strong enough to comprehend the reality of the people. Thus to the mind of the believer, everyone else are just virtual entities which has meaning only in relation to himself. He sees his world as consisting of his ‘parents’, ‘children’, ‘friends’, ‘enemies’. They are just tags and they exist only in relation to himself, each one requiring a particular set of behaviour. It requires a very high intelligence for a person to viscerally perceive that the people who mill around have a mind that is exactly like his own. Lacking this awareness of others as real individuals, a believer feels not an iota of compunction at committing the most heinous acts and yet feel that he is righteous. Of course, as I have already explained, all his instincts are in place, and thus, even though he thinks that a supernatural entity is actively protecting and aiding him in his brutal struggle against everyone else, he will not engage in activities that proscribed by the laws of his society, as this will hurt his fitness.

Of the two versions of God I have described above, the first is an artificial construct of intellectuals, and doesn’t exist in nature. So I will summarily ignore it from now on. We need to focus only on the second God.

Thus:
The god of the average believer (Any religion): A personal supernatural entity who will actively help him put a knife in his best friend’s back, and rape his sister. From now on, the Vulgar-god .

Prayer is the request to this deity to circumvent the known laws of physics, on his behalf of course, and thus prayer is one of the truly evil activities that a person can indulge in. Majority of the times prayer consists of requesting a deity to fulfill some petty material requests, even if at grave costs to others.

It is very clear that belief in this God is EXTREMELY adaptive for the person. His instincts are all in place, and thus his belief will not allow him to indulge in anything that is really deleterious to his fitness, but his conscious mind will be confident all the time that there is someone protecting him, thus quelling unnecessary anxiety. Vulgar-God is essential in that it is the entity that can short-circuit the maladaptive traits of intelligence. Intelligence is both adaptive AND (inadvertently of course) maladaptive. Vulgar god muzzles the maladaptive properties of intelligence, thus making it fully useful for survival.

Thus, Vulgar-god is EXTREMELY adaptive for an individual.

If a person is left alone, he might start conjuring up doubts about the existence of this vulgar God. Religion is the method by which people reassure each other of this vulgar god. Thus:

Belief in a vulgar, vicious. unjust PERSONAL god is extremely adaptive.

If a person is left alone, the belief in the Vulgar-god may falter.

A society where members continually REASSURE each other of the existence of this Vulgar-god will thus have more adapted individuals. (People go to church not for community welfare, but to buttress their belief in the Vulgar-god.) And reassuring each other of the existence of Vulgar-god is what we call as religion.

The lack of reality awareness brings to light the impotency of the religious edicts that exhort virtue. Humans have inbuilt faculty to completely ignore Religious rules and strictures when these rules would make them work against their own survival. To a believer others simply do not exist. To a Jihadi, you are nothing but a virtual entity that has been created for the explicit purpose of getting blown by him so that he can achieve glory in the eyes of his God. For a fundamentalist Christian your exist for the sole purpose of getting exploited by him. Thus, the Religious strictures that demand self-sacrifice are automatically meant for his neighbour, enemy or his mother-in-law, and never for himself. For a person with low intelligence, God, in effect, is his father’s private property, a supernatural entity whose only purpose of existence is to overcome on his behalf his own inability to shape the world according to his wishes. And now this leads us to the reason why Hell is so popular. An average believer, owing to the lack of Reality Awareness, is firmly convinced that he is destined for heaven, whatever be the nature of his conduct, and Hell is a place that was eternally conceived for his neighbour, enemy and his mother-in-law.

Please note that this is the only theory that can actually explain the mental workings of a Jihadi. We have at last managed to solve the paradox of the person who can hold that an omni-benevolent God wants him to rape and massacre his innocent fellow beings. The answer is that a Jihadi is not aware of others. His God is for him alone, so it is little wonder that he he has no disquiet in holding the conceit that this ‘all-loving’ God desires the brutal death of millions of innocent men and women. But since Jihadi is simply the extreme case of an average believer, we get that:

There is absolutely no need to for us to respect anyone’s belief. A believer is someone for who doesn’t even realize the reality of our existence, and thus we are not obligated to even acknowledge his existence, let alone respect is belief.

In fact, it is the tragedy of our species that while the most intelligent has always respected other’s beliefs, the most vulgar had not only accepted it as their right, they never even entertained a passing fancy about returning the favor. Thus we have the intellectuals clamoring for the tolerance of Muslims, even the fanatical ones, and the only effect of this is that these fundamentalists, who naturally interpret it as a further proof of the divinity, consider it as sign that they can commit more horrible deeds with impunity.

Vulgar-god as a means to short-circuit the maladaptive aspects of intelligence:

Intelligence is both adaptive AND maladaptive. The latter property is inadvertent of course. While intellect can solve puzzles that might fall beyond the power of the specialized modules, it can also bring in too much information and confuse the conscious decision taking process. (Think Hamlet). So natural selection, if it wants to retain intelligence, will have to selectively purge the maladaptive properties alone. And God is the best way to do this.

How God nullifies the maladaptive aspects of intelligence:

The well known adage "Leave THE REST to god":

It is interesting to note that the maxim doesn’t say "Leave EVERYTHING to God", but only "THE REST", that is, only the jobs that you can’t accomplish on your own are to be delegated to the almighty. Thus it allows you to focus on only the parts of your job that you can do, and ignore what falls beyond your capabilities. This tendency might be disastrous in some instances, but on the whole this is an extremely adaptive trait. (Similar to men’s capability to underplay the risks of war). Of course, we should understand that the normal instincts that make a man cautious are still operating, and it will prevent him from taking any really fitness-reducing risks.

God will short circuit intelligence alone, and will not affect any other instinct.

For instance, let us take a criminal who is well prepared to rob a house. Even though he believes in a God that actively protects him, he will not take any really stupid risks (because of the normal instincts), but his belief will enable him to quell the nagging doubt, which is arising from the intelligence, that there MIGHT be some danger more than that he has prepared himself for. God can short-circuit this worry, by giving him a conceit that whatever he has left out, will be taken care by God.

Thus, Gods encourage crime.

Another famous maxim is "Kill ‘em all, and let God sort ‘em out.". (The obvious question "then why not let God do the killing?" never enters the question here). A believer can do indiscriminate killing, without entertaining any worry that there might have been some innocent among the dead. He will be thus confident in his actions.

Eg:
Henry V vs Hamlet: Shakespeare’s characters.

Henry V is considered the perfect hero. He does everything without too much thinking, and lets God take care of the moral implications of his actions, and ends up doing the right thing all the time. He suffers no compunction, even though, because of his actions, tens of thousands of INNOCENT French People were Killed/Maimed/Raped/Starved to death. He is a mass murderer, but his conscience is clean because he thinks it is all God’s work.

On the other hand we have Hamlet, who is too much worried about doing the wrong thing. Hamlet does rationalize the events in life as being part of a divine plan, but somehow he can never truly convince himself about the truth of that statement. He is forever confused, can’t even get himself to kill a single man, a man who deserved death, even from a neutral point of view.

In fact, Hamlet is the perfect example that clearly elucidates the maladaptive tendencies that is inherent in intellect.

Conclusion: Humans with Vulgar-god have higher fitness

Thus we see that not only will a human come up with a Vulgar-god, his natural need to suppress any doubts regarding this God will lead him to lend support for the creation of an external organized framework, and will actively work maintain it.

Predictions:

From our theory we can conclude that higher the intelligence, the higher will be a person’s reality awareness, and this will naturally lead to his God becoming less vulgar. This is something that can be reliably verified by conducting experiments: That is, the more the intelligence, the less vulgar (more spiritual) will be a person’s God. The experiments would involve putting an average believer into different moral and ethical dilemmas and questioning him how his God would behave in each circumstance. This can tell us the level of partiality displayed by his deity, and the correlation between the nature of the God and the Intelligence of the person can be found.