Serialised book (with a progressively updated >>dashboard/ToC<< page). Part II: Philosophy of the Life Instinct.

Book: Philosophy of Life Instinct: Chapter 11: Religion

Dimensions, contributions and shortcomings.

We recognise religion intuitively, but it is hard to define. Does it need a God or not? Must it have rules or inspire? Is it a calling or cult? Personal or communal? Should it stay out of government, influence it, or control it? How important are its rituals?

From the Life Instinct viewpoint, we can continue the theme from the last chapter on God. Our conscious mind with the freedom to choose its beliefs and actions is a powerful thing, but it pays the price for it — in uncertainty and fear.

We saw why we conceptualised deities — to provide rational and consistent answers for what we experience and observe. And it worked for almost every human who has lived, however irrational and imaginary they may seem for an increasing number of people today. It was a natural, even necessary, solution.

But just thinking of God was not sufficient. Our advancing human brain delivered by Life Instinct was creating a complex mental world, with thousands of observed objects, cause-and-effect patterns, choices and possible outcomes. It needed a consistent framework of problems, decision rules, and controls to grapple with it and enhance its survival. And our intellect gave us religion as the first powerful answer. It has worked for a long time and is yet to be supplanted by our second solution, science.

In effect, religion serves to answer — What should I do for this?, Why? and What if I don’t?.

The solutions of religion

Ignorance may not be bliss for less intelligent life forms, but our knowledge is undoubtedly the origin of our fears. Even lower animals experience pain and avoid death. But a great weight descended on our mind when we became conscious of our separation, exploding understanding of the world and responsibility of minor and major decisions.

We keenly felt the urge to live but observed our life’s fragility. Many things killed us easily — snakes, tigers, lions, floods, starvation, disease, infection, fire, other humans and a host of agents of our demise. And if we escaped their clutches, ageing finished us anyway.

We feel the presence of a self, an ego, a soul while we live. We feel this is our essence. It is probably a delusion, but it is a powerful one that drives our instinct for self-preservation. We either want our awareness to be immortal or want a release from wanting it to be immortal.

The knowledge of our mortality made fear a constant companion. The awareness of our separation from everything else bred loneliness, making us feel inadequate, afraid. How could we reduce our fear? How could we become part of something big and strong and not be alone?

The Life Instinct had led to this problematic condition, and soon the Life Instinct evolved the intellect that addressed it, else we may have died out. The side effect of knowledge was the genesis of religion. There were probably many religions a few hundred thousand years ago while humans formed and reformed into settlements and tribes as they migrated across the continents. There is scant but indubitable evidence back to the Stone Age in many parts of the world of systematic worship of totems and animal deities.

We will briefly look at how most religions address our fears, questions, and loneliness. (Not all are alike, and I’ll leave the exploration of their differences to the reader.)

Many of these human minds’ needs are still strong in us, a million years and thousands of generations since our species’ evolution. Much of humanity still finds the solutions in religion, of one sort or another.

(The idea of a God or gods is central to several prominent religions, but not all. This may surprise us, as many of us would take God and religion to go hand in hand. But it is understandable, as the solution can work without a creator or omnipotent deity, as long as it addresses the human condition’s critical issues. The Buddha deprecated the idea of a creator deity, Jainism does not include the concept either, and several philosophical strands of Hinduism are essentially atheistic. It is also the reason this chapter is separate from the last one, on God.)

1. Personal value

1.1 Reassurance

The chief promise of religion is that we are not alone. We are a part of a Godhead or one with cosmic existence, whether material or illusory. This reduces our feeling of loneliness. Combined with the social communion with fellow followers of the religion, it can significantly reduce our sense of isolation and weakness.

The second commitment is that we will be fine if we follow specific rules. And if we sin by breaking the rules, we can still be forgiven if we repent and ask for forgiveness or earn forgiveness through other actions.

The third reassurance of many religions is that we don’t lose our consciousness or awareness when we die. It either lives on in another realm or returns in a living body. Some religions posit that this happens a few times, after which our soul ceases, and our consciousness is finally released from its fears and desires.

1.2 Practical living guidance

The second critical value of religion is providing rules for living, individually and with other humans. This is very important as it helps with the most important of Life Instinct’s drivers — self-preservation and reproduction.

Some religions explicitly lay down the rules, such as Judaism, Buddhism, and Islam. Well-known examples are the Ten Commandments of Judaism and the Five Precepts of Buddhism. Others guide us via mythological stories and parables, for example, Hinduism. The guidance is both moral and ethical (morality can being a subjective, personal concept of good and evil, ethics the objective, external, socially accepted right and wrong behaviour).

1.3 Purpose and motivation

The impulse of life is strong in us, but at some point in life, our reflective minds come up with the question — why must I struggle so? For what do I go on?

The major religions provide some reasons for living an active and directed life, for example, the concept of duty or Dharma in Hinduism and Sawab in Islam.

Still, this is not a strong suit of most religions. Whereas they say what we should do and not do, they gloss over why. We can assume that they unconsciously relied upon the basic drives of Life Instinct to keep us going strong in life. But it is an answer that more and more people seek, within religion and outside it.

1.4 Spiritual nourishment

Religion has always understood the need for humans to remove themselves from the daily grind of life and seek moments of exaltation, peace, grace, upliftment, and inspiration.

Religion has provided chiefly this experience through community, ritual, and art. Gathering in a church, temple, or mosque can lighten the mood and make our individual problems seem smaller. The friendly interactions before and after attendance also help this.

Hearing a choir chanting in a cathedral can transform the mind into a state of glorious joy. Seeing Sufi whirling dervishes, one may get lost in the beauty of motion and emotion. Listening to a Carnatic Classical Bhakti song can mesmerise us.

Then there are the architecture, painting, fresco, sculpture, mandala and other art forms that have added so much pleasure and interest to our lives. Even a non-religious person can appreciate all this and thank religion for it.

One may think of all these as devices, but they work. This is perhaps one of the most outstanding contributions of religion’s beneficent side to humanity. If one believes in a benevolent God, it is probably God’s best work.

1.5 Metaphysical answers

Another problem religion deals with is our mind’s rational nature and its need to relate effects to causes. So, it is not satisfied with religion’s practical reassurances and demands a few ultimate answers — how did everything begin? What is reality? Why do humans exist? Is there a God? How will everything end?

The answers from just the largest three religions would fill many chapters, so we will be content with noting that they indeed provide answers to such questions. We can get a flavour of it by seeing the answer to the question of creation. In Hinduism, Brahma creates the universe, which lasts for one of his days, or 4.32 billion years, Vishnu sustains it, Shiva destroys it, and the cycle begins again. In Judaism, Christianity and Islam, God says, “Let there be light,” and light appears. Then in six days, he creates the sky, the land, plants, the sun and moon, animals, and all creatures, including humans. Similarly, there are creation stories in Egyptian, Chinese, Aztec, Norse, Greek, Persian and other ancient religions.

2. Social Bonding

2.1 Security in community

Religion provides its followers with a common framework of behaviour and beliefs to bond them. This cohesion tolerates the internal strains of social inequality and some of the institution’s harmful aspects. It supports one of the most critical developments in humanity — community formation. We saw in Chapter 4 how society played a vital part in our survival and development. It is not unique to humans, as other species also form social groups. However, it is highly developed in us, with extensive, deep and complex relationships between community members.

Initially, religion would have bonded small groups of hundreds to thousands of humans. The gradual collection of humans into larger settlements in river valleys and other cradles of civilisation probably went hand in hand with religions’ development, mutually catalysing each other.

In the early twenty-first century, the major religions have coalesced into billions of followers in the major three — Christianity, Islam and Hinduism. The rest are also not small in size, numbering in the tens to hundreds of millions. It shows religion’s power to bring people together into a shared worldview and way of life. They gain security, emotional and physical well-being from this communing. It does not mean they don’t belong to other social groups and simultaneously benefit from them. We are capable of belonging to several networks at once. But religion is one of the most robust, multi-faceted and large communities.

2.3 Culture

We saw in section 1.4 how religion provides spiritual experiences and upliftment through community and art forms. In a broader context, it becomes a significant part of the followers’ culture. Indeed, religion and culture have been closely associated throughout our history. Many people may even equate their culture with their religion.

Still, culture encompasses more than religious belief and practice. It includes aspects such as the knowledge, beliefs, skills, language, laws, customs, celebrations, festivals, food, dress, arts, behaviour, and habits of the community’s individuals.

Religion has often dominated most of these aspects of society in a region or period. With time, the influence of other intellectual pursuits of humanity has reduced that of religion. Science, industries, sports, secular art, migration and other factors have influenced culture worldwide. However, religion continues to play a large part in our cultures. It is not bad, as it has inspired much that is beautiful and ennobling for us. It allows our emotional mind to come to the fore. It softens us, makes us happy, brings a smile to our faces. Culture raises our intellect and gets us to think at a higher and philosophical level.

Familia Sagrada Barcelona, Chartres Cathedral, Florence, Rome, Istanbul, Abu Simbel, Konark, Madurai, Ajanta, Angkor Wat are but a few locations in the grand procession of our most extraordinary art. The achievements in every form are staggering and due to religious motivation. We must recognise its outstanding contribution to shaping and defining culture. It is worth exploring beyond this book as an enriching field of study.

2.2 Government

Religions that arose in or encountered difficult social conditions may start assuming the rights of governing the people and areas over which it holds sway. It has happened throughout history. Religious institutions and their priests have controlled even secular rulers and governments.

It is also a natural outcome of the control exerted and desired by the religious system over its adherents’ lives. It ends up wanting to control what the followers eat, drink, wear, do, say, think and believe. Being the government achieves all this most effectively.

We can add to this the motivation of protecting the institution, followers and territory from opposing religions, cultures and states. If the religious institution controls the country’s finances and army, it can deploy them for its interests and against threats to its existence and power. In fact, in some cases, the ruler has either been taken to be an embodiment or representative of God and made the head of the clergy and religious institution to multiply power and avoid conflicts between the two major systems that manage citizens’ lives — the sacred and secular.

In the absence of sound non-religion based rulers or governments, religion can fill the need directly or exert power behind the facade of secular governments. Either way, it may do well for the populace for a while. But its skills lie elsewhere, and some of its motivations are at odds with the populace’s needs outside religion, and it ends up doing more harm than good in the long run.

How religion works

Intuitively, consciously or by trial and error, religion figured out what works to indoctrinate the human mind. It developed four primary ways to enable personal reassurance and social bonding — formal prayer, texts, rituals and practices. Their wide acceptance by humans attests to their essential effectiveness.

1. Prayer

Prayers are primarily personal communications between humans and God, God’s representatives on Earth, or other supernatural beings or forces. The aims are to praise them, acknowledge their power, supplicate oneself, ask for material and immaterial rewards and appeal for the forgiveness of sins. One may pray for oneself, someone else or a whole community. It is a fundamental function of the human mind, and it is unlikely any human has lived who has not prayed to an extent in their lives.

Anyone can pray, but organised religion gives you the right things to say, with the words, phrases and cadences laid out for you. It is implied this will work. Not only does this give the follower confidence in its effectiveness, but by making it commonplace for the religious community, it adds to the sense of belonging to a single large body of like-minded humans.

The development of prayer into chants, hymns, songs and dance in some religions added to its power, as the body and senses become a part of the praying. We vibrate with a wonderful resonance when we hear or participate in multi-voice, energised, and coordinated Buddhist, Hindu, Christian or other prayer chanting. That is their purpose.

2. Texts

Writing has been respected by the human mind ever since it started representing speech in symbols. There is something solid about the written word, a sense of permanence and authority. The prophets and saints wrote or directed books with the stories of creation, the lives of gods and prophets, God’s message, and directions for living.

For ultimate trustworthiness, the words could not be from other humans but the supernatural power we are willing to accept as the creator and provider of true meaning. Most religions’ primary sacred books are declared to be such gods’ direct expressions. The authors knew that if something were in the book, the faithful would take it as truth. And once there, the text could not be changed by lay challenges without losing its essence as the last word.

It also explains why Hinduism, which for a long time in its history did not have a single supreme source text, later developed the Bhagavad Gita, which captures the message of Krishna, an avatar of the god Vishnu. It has become something like a primary sacred text for Hindus. It is broad and deep enough to satisfy Hindu theologians and philosophers while providing practical directions for laypeople. Sikhs respect their holy text, the Guru Granth Sahib, like a sovereign.

As most followers were illiterate until recent times, the literate clergy read aloud the canonical texts and interpreted them. It gave them enormous power over the masses. In several religious sects, they continue to intercede between humans and the almighty powers even today.

Every major religion’s primary text has a lot that is sublime, some part pedestrian, and a few unfortunate passages. The most philosophical and life-affirming parts inspire enlightened religious leaders and followers.

3. Rituals

There is something powerful in performing an elaborate and specific sequence of actions, with concentration, repeated precisely by millions of humans for hundreds or thousands of years. It engenders humility and a sense of being part of a continuum with meaning. We forget our physical and mental problems for a while and enter a sort of out-of-body state where we observe ourselves performing the prescribed actions diligently and with faith. In the end, there is a feeling of serenity, satisfaction and peace. It is the power of ritual.

All religions know this and make it a bedrock of their system. Of course, life events are prime opportunities for elaborate rituals that imprint the religion’s particulars on one’s mind, body, life, and community. Daily, weekly, and annual personal and communal events are also objects for ritual practices. Religion incorporates ritualistic visits to graves or yearly days of remembrance for family or beloved friends who have passed away. By faithfully following this, we reassure ourselves that someone will remember us too after we die. It is a need driven by the Life Instinct that makes us want to survive, in memory, if not physically.

One may be an atheist and yet believe in rituals’ benefits and participate in them.

4. Practices

Belonging needs visual signs for others and oneself. Religion has its ways to mark the human body of its followers as its own. Some changes are permanent, to the body itself, for example, piercings and circumcision. Others are to be worn or carried from life events such as birth, puberty and marriage, for instance, sacred threads and rings.

Then there are annual events such as the solstice, harvests and so on, where religion has entered the picture, for it will in as many human activities as possible, and taken the opportunity to transmute them into religious highlights in the calendar. Most of them are enjoyable events anticipated by the populace and vital ingredients in the religious cookbook.

Religious prescription on food was inevitable, and billions of people still follow them.

Practices indirectly inspired by religion also arose that complement the health of mind and body. Examples are meditation, yoga, and so on.

Two outstanding practices inspired by religion are cleanliness and charity. Most religions stress both, and their effects are salubrious for humanity in a broader context.

The physical institution

Parallelly, the movers of religion established robust institutional systems for their delivery.

Clergy

A clergy was the natural outcome for fulfilling the aims of religion. Ostensibly, it would have begun as a service for the laity to provide theological answers, ritualistic guidance, spiritual inspiration, intercession with God and psychological support. Most major religions have well defined clerical systems.

As the institutions grew in complexity and size, the clergy needed to take on financial management, property acquisition and maintenance, operational management, and preserving the institution’s self-interest and power through political activity.

Finance and Property

A place was required for the faithful to congregate and bond through various religious activities. It had to be large enough and spiritually inspiring through architecture, art and scale. It had to house the clergy, and in some religions, the remains of the dead. All this required considerable land, buildings and furnishing. Grants of land and money from rulers and well-off followers provide spiritual and secular rewards for the former and the latter’s materials. These contributions have played a big part in religious property’s growth.

Churches, temples, mosques and viharas have added to this through their congregations’ donations, who get psychological benefits in return. A devotee may feel the contribution in cash or kind is received by the supernatural deity or the cosmic forces it represents. But not a bit of it is dematerialised or wasted by the religious system.

The problems of religion

Many of the self-harming aspects of humans are seen in religion also. This is not surprising, given it is a development of the same imperfect life form. We are not capable yet of creating and applying ideal systems, religious or otherwise.

How many humans has religion helped give birth to? How many humans have died due to religion? It is estimated that since we became a separate species, about a hundred billion humans have lived. If we conservatively say that religion in all its ancient and modern forms created positive social and personal conditions for half this time for half the population, it would be twenty-five billion people who owe their existence to it. In recorded history, about fifty million people have died in religious wars. For prior periods if we take ten times the number, it would be half a billion deaths. This looks like the addition of twenty-five billion humans for a loss of half a billion due to religion. One may argue that it has delivered excellent results.

But this does not take away the tiniest bit from the fundamental instinct we have to preserve every life until its natural demise. Nor does it consider that Life Instinct’s drive is not mere survival; it is to move us towards a healthy life, one as robust psychically and physically as possible, and begetting healthier offspring. While religion has delivered life to tens of billions, we cannot ignore the deaths and unhappiness that have been inevitable attendants of the system.

Many religions have had a streak of exploitation, gender inequality, bigotry, division, casteism, outright crime, war-mongering, mental subjugation, maiming and killing.

We may wish religions were all about peaceful social systems, personal guidance, equality, freedom and spirituality. But this was almost impossible, given its underlying aims and subjects. It is not easy to manage humans. They are neither docile like lambs, simple like lions, nor wise like sages. They are a work in progress, a combination of intelligence, fear and greed. In this life form, the Life Instinct had to give itself some tough love for survival. So it did, in the form of religion, but with significant ancillary damage.

The evils of religion originate mainly in the following factors. One may say they are the handiwork of the self-same Life Instinct that created it in the first place.

1. Constancy — a rapidly changing set of rules can hardly inspire confidence in the followers.
2. Power structures — after all, religion is managed by humans, with their desires and insecurities. So it all becomes about control, through reward which is hard to deliver, so even more importantly through punishment, which can be confidently guaranteed, in life and the afterlife.
3. Social class systems — religion cannot equalise a stratified society without coming under attack from secular power structures.
4. Critical mass — if enough people are not kept within the religion, and anyone can renounce it or convert to another willy-nilly, the religious commune will dissipate and be unable to protect its remaining members against the dangers of other groups and nature.

Evolving Religion

Although we can think, it is inefficient to consider every situation afresh that arises in life. The mind needs to quickly identify known problems and dispatch them in proven ways to focus on new ones. For this nearly automatic processing, it needs a reliable and consistent framework. Religion has to have predictability and continuity for matters addressed through its beliefs and practices. This is one of the critical reasons religion moves rapidly towards dogma and vigorously resists change.

The other reason for religion’s reluctance to allow fundamental changes in its rules is that many of its tenets are grounded in Life Instinct’s fundamentals of self-preservation and reproduction. As illustrations, consider the questions of abortion, gay sex and divorce.

When major religions took shape, there were still many threats to the species, from diseases, famines, floods and tribal battles. Every birth was important, to add to the species and replace the dead. Any action or behaviour that could impede the population’s increase was subject to severe discouragement. Religion was the vehicle for this. As a dimly realised translation of the necessities of survival, the rules for social cohesion made their way into the canon. There was nothing wrong with these behaviours in an absolute sense, as life itself has no absolute value, and for the Life Instinct, freedom of choice in these things was not of primary importance.

The condition of the human species has changed. We are far more numerous and robust now. Many situations of abortion are viewed as ethical by a vast part of the species. Divorce and gay marriage hardly spell the end of humanity.

We are also much more connected, migrant, globetrotting and interdependent. Cross-currents of cultural influence add more to our lives’ enjoyment and health than harm us.

Are religions wise enough to treat these changes as life-affirming on the whole and an individual level, not inimical to their purposes? Can a religion drop its anachronistic rules but maintain its utility for those who need it? What does history show us?

Prophets and religious leaders addressed the fundamental questions that are the foundations of a religious system. Krishna, Abraham, Mahavira, Buddha, Jesus, Mohammed — all took on the challenge of providing answers of a metaphysical nature. Their revelations or visions may have differed, but they initiated systems that could provide comfort and guidance to humans. Given how intelligent they seem to have been and the amount of time they spent thinking about difficult questions and their messages’ nuances, they were quite likely philosophically sophisticated. They recognised the needs of their times and provided the answers. They may have voiced their intellect or spiritual inspiration, or both, but they delivered practically.

Since then, the major religions such as Hinduism, Christianity and Islam have had upheavals in their history that created major offshoots such as Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism, Protestantism, Sunni and Shia. Some have deviated in practice, and some in fundamental positions on God and theological beliefs. They maintained their relevance through such transmutations and reinvigorated the original system’s disaffected followers. They have largely remained stable over many human generations.

There is no denying that every religion is under constant pressure to adjust to humanity’s changing conditions. For example, we see Catholicism making small yet significant changes to its practices at this time, early in the twenty-first century since its emergence. Whether a religion continues to benefit its adherents while helping others, or at least not harming them, will decide its fate. That is how it should be and will be.

Alternatives to religion

In parallel to religion, humanity has developed other social systems that give a person a sense of community, comfort, guidance for behaviour, relief from worldly cares, and an outlet for creativity.

Examples of these ecosystems are guilds, lodges, clubs, sports, charitable organisations, etc.

Science holds a special place in these options. By far, it is the most comprehensive alternative system as it affords metaphysical answers, a sense of strength and security, fellowship, and moral and ethical pathways. As yet, only a fraction of humanity is in the fold of science or its applied disciplines of engineering and medicine. The one thing science does not focus on is our spiritual needs because it goes against its grain. But it can indirectly provide its practitioners and admirers with uplifting experiences, whether one peers through a telescope or microscope, senses the elegance of its theories, or beholds its astounding outcomes, from devices to interplanetary travel.

Our profession is another substitute for religion. It does not have anywhere near the breadth and depth of science nor the spiritual power of religion. Still, it fulfils the needs for security, belonging, ethics, morality, and creativity for many of us.

Conclusions

Religion has receded in the minds of humans in many parts of the world. Hundreds of millions of people are not adherents of any religion. Many people have secular sources for their morality and ethics now, and they are fit, well-adjusted and successful in their lives.

Given our puny and chance existence in the cosmos, a kernel of spirituality or the idea of God may always stay in our minds. But the need for institutional religion is likely to become a miniscule exception over time.

Meanwhile, it is there and large because humans still feel the need for it, and the Life Instinct retains it. Its ugly side has reduced but is far from gone. We have a fair distance to go before the strength of our self-confidence, gracious self-enlightenment, and alternative communities supplant religion.

© 2020 Shashidhar Sastry. All rights reserved.

(As each chapter of the book is published, its link is updated in the ToC below.)

Table of Contents

Part I Metaphysics of The Life Instinct

Part II Philosophy of The Life Instinct

Part III The Life Instinct and The Future

Published By Shashidhar Sastry

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