Artificial construct religion may be, but it is a proven and powerful motivator to engage in conduct, be that conduct benign or malign. The historical evidence alone, informing us of this, is voluminous.
Of course, we now move into the realm of proximate and ultimate bases. Yes, religion is a proven and powerful motivator to behave in certain ways, but there has to be a reason for it, and several here have already pointed to the reason - namely, evolution selecting for obedient children during a dangerous era in the history of our species.
Children that obeyed parents, and didn’t stray too far from supervision and guardianship, had a habit of becoming adults. Children that disappeared into the forest, were much more likely to become lunch for lurking predators.
That evolutionary reinforcement of childhood obedience has, of course, a dark side - it makes children susceptible to manupulation by the devious. Religion provides perhaps the most powerful means of said manipulation, one that strikes a chord with our clade-memory going all the way back to Homo erectus.
Religion was quickly morphed from our first (and failed) attempt to explain the world, into the replacement of our fear of death at the hands of the nearest sabre-tooth, to fear of death at the hands of a vengeful invisible ape in the sky. “Magic Man says so” became not merely an article of faith, it became for a long time a looming imperative with a terrifying, Death Star level presence.
What, in my view, helped to change that, at least among the educated, was the combination of two events - our becoming an increasingly literate species, maintaining memory that persisted beyond the human lifetime, and the Black Death.
I’ve already posted here about the Black Death at some length, this post being an example. What I neglected to cover in that and other past posts, was the fact that the Black Death struck at a time when humans were compiling histories. Which meant that the horror of that time was made available to future generations, in a manner that was beyond the remit of oral traditions.
The easiest access thereto was, of course, at the hands of the literate and educated, pretty much by definition. Which is why the first serious seeds of doubt arose among the demographic consisting of men of letters and philosophers.
Of course, earlier members of this demographic asked pertinent questions, and sought reasoned answers to those questions, but the Black Death marked the first time that a well-constituted literate class faced a truly existential crisis. Local disasters were one thing: a continent wide slate wiping of the population was entirely different.
In a sense, so-called “modern” atheism can be traced back to that singular failure on the part of supernaturalism, to provide deliverance from that slate wiping. A failure that would have been noticed, not merely by the men of letters. Even an astute peasant would find those seeds of doubt taking root, and would only keep quiet about this, because of the willingness of religious power brokers of the day to suppress dissent in brutal manner.
I’ve also written here in the past about Murillo, most notably here, which is also apposite to the present day debate on religious malignancy. I noted in that post how Murillo not only possessed exceptional artistic talent, but took considerable risks when painting his Madonna and Child, by basing his vision of the Virgin Mary on his recently deceased wife - a very risky move in Inquisitional Spain.
Which brings me to another essential point. Murillo may have possessed what I consider to be lamentably convential religious views for his time, though to be fair, he almost certainly had no escape from this. But what he did possess in his favour, was that he kept those religious views connected to humamity, and that Madonna and Child in the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool is a case in point.
I may find religion to be mostly repellent with a passion, and I will not shy away from brutal honesty in this regard. However, what I am also prepared to admit, is that when religion maintains a proper connection to humanity, it can sometimes provide a welcome service. The abolition of slavery, though woefully overdue when it happened, is a case in point - I have no problem whatsoever admitting that religious belief played a significant part in that movement, not least because denial of the historical evidence is manifestly absurd.
But, we also have a vast body of evidence informing us what happens, when religion is decoupled from humanity. The Inqusition being a particularly relevant instance, because there are those today in the USA, who, perversely, yearn to drag Western Civilisation kicking and screaming back to that obscene era.
We are, I suspect, also on the verge of seeing a repeat of Bonhoeffer being played out, as several clergy in the USA have already stated that they’re prepared to oppose ICE, and if necessary, die on that hill - literally. A typical report on this matter is provided here.
Personally, I hope the situation doesn’t result in new martyrdoms, because those have their own dark side as well. But it will be interesting to see who couples their religion to humanity, and who doesn’t. I suspect the obvious answers may turn out to be tragically correct.
