This short lecture is about the invention of religion, a software for the human mind providing communities with a competitive edge in the struggle for survival. What's the use of religion and history of the human species? I shall be making the point that religion provides communities with a competitive edge in the struggle for survival. This has nothing to do with the truth or untruth of religion, it is about the social effects of religion. Religion gives human collectivities a competitive edge because it does at least three things, it creates hierarchy, it creates community and it creates a sense of superiority. When does religion make its appearance in the history of human kind, hard to say. But the earliest material remains of religion date back to the time of the Agrarian Revolution, some 12,000 years ago. There is a connection between the first evidence for religion, and a turn to an agrarian way of life. When hunters and gatherers shift to agriculture and animal husbandry, they experience dramatic changes in lifestyle. Hunters and gatherers are nomads, agriculturalists are settlers. They build their hamlets and villages close to their lands to better to cultivate their crops and tend to the stocks. Before long, the village becomes a society. There is labor division not just between men and women, but also among the male inhabitants. In the wake of the Agrarian Revolution, we move from simple to more complex societies. In such complex societies, collaboration is the order of the day. When different members, other group have different task and different specializations, group cohesion and collaboration is essential. An efficient distribution and execution of roles, moreover, requires a chain of command. Leadership takes on a new importance. Warfare is another phenomenon that enters the scene with the Agrarian Revolution. Hunters and gatherers have their occasional conflicts but they could always move elsewhere. Moving about, after all, was part of their lives. But agriculturalists are wedded to their land, they are by definition vulnerable to raids and attacks from outside. They are an attractive target of aggression because they own property. Arable lands, flocks and the surplus of their produce. That is why hamlets and villages developed into fortified towns. But warfare is inevitable. For the human species, the struggle for life turned into a state of intermittent warfare. There may be times of peace but conflict is the default of the human condition. So the Agrarian Revolution brings about new conditions of life. It creates a situation where there is a stronger need for leadership, a stronger need for cohesion, and collaboration in a society of increasing complexity, and a stronger need for courage. Confidence and bravery in order to gain and maintain the upper hand in armed conflict. Religion comes to the rescue for agrarian religion key to precisely to those three needs. It promotes a hierarchical vision of the world. It fosters a sense of solidarity and sacrifice. And it fills its adepts with a feeling of superiority that bolsters their courage. Religion provided agrarian societies with a competitive edge. Let's take a closer look at those three functions of religion. First of all, religion reinforces a hierarchical view of the world. Religion thinks along a vertical axis that is up above and down below. The gods are above, humans are down below. The hierarchical order is also an order of rank. Gods are superior in every way. That is why humans should bow to them, follow their orders and back for their favors. The hierarchical religion of agriculturalist determines their view of human relations as well. Human society replicates the hierarchical structure of the universe. There are leaders and followers. The leaders owe their position to the gods. They will often be priest that rule by the grace of god. Meaning that they legitimized their authority by a divine mission. Religion by its very nature, a theocratic. It promotes a view of the world in which human have to obey the gods, and in the physical absence of the gods, we have have to obey the human representatives of the gods. Religion reinforces hierarchy. The second property of religion is to create community. It fosters a sense of solidarity that makes people prone to acts of altruism they otherwise would not perform. Religion unites through the worship of a common god. It does creates imaginary bonds between people that are not linked to each other by ties of kinship. In a way, religion creates an artificial family. People from different lineages are, nevertheless, brothers and sisters because they bow before the same gods. It is not difficult to see why this sense of solidarity is crucial to societies based on goal residence and labor division rather than on kinship. Perhaps the most inveterate binary of the human species is the opposition between us and them, we versus the others. One of the uses of religion is to extent the limits of community. All those of our religion are we, the others are the followers of other gods. The third boon of religion is a sense of superiority. This is the placebo effect of religion. Since our god is stronger than others, we are stronger than our opponents. As long as we have god on our side we are invincible. It doesn't take up psychologist to see that this is self delusion but it works for people who believe they will win, will fight harder and longer which means that in the end they might actually win indeed. In fact, in a combat situation, the three functions of religion I just outlined, come together. There is no democracy in the army. It is perhaps the most hierarchically organized field of human activity. Everything revolves around the chain of command. Obedience to superiors is an absolute rule. Solidarity and a spirit of self sacrifice are hardly less important. Brothers in arms are willing to lay down their lives for one another and for the community they are fighting for. And it certainly helps if you believe in your superior power because god is on your side. Religion functions like software. The human mind is the hardware, and it can run on any number of programs. The agrarian religion that saw the light with the Agrarian Revolution served as a means to adapt human behavior to the new circumstances. As the mind began to run on religion, it came to believe that hierarchy is natural. That believers belong to one family and that our god is superior to all others. Is this a form of self delusion? Maybe. If so, it was a collective self delusion that yielded distinct advantages in the struggle for survival. Religion provided the first agrarian communities with the competitive edge.
