Foreword
When a human is born it's brain is not pluripotent. That is to say, "It is not formless and void and capable of doing anything."
The brain of the species Homo sapiens sapiens is genetically pre-programmed for doing certain specific tasks. There is an operating system and there is software that was installed in the factory prior to shipping.
It is not difficult to understand that many of these software programs have to do with finding food and water, having sex, and protecting oneself from predators. These programs are installed in many species. However, there is an entire software program that is installed only in Homo sapiens.
Homo sapiens do complex language for the purpose of improved sociability. Like the spider's unique ability to spin webs, our unique ability is to be social. We are by far and away the most social species. No other species even comes close. Therefore, our unique software subserves detailed, intimate, and complex communication with others in our species.
We are all born with the software for doing this. Incidentally, have you ever wondered why all human behavior everywhere is essentially the same?
It is because everything we do must be done with these brains we were given and the software that was pre-installed. For example, I am using a PC to write this book and I will have to deal with it being a PC. I can't expect it to be a MAC.
It is amazing how connected to each other we are. Our software even allows us to access each other's minds. To know what each other is thinking. For example, my wife always seems to know what I am thinking. What other species can do that?
We must make alliances and work as a team. We must give orders and we must take orders. We must all follow the same set of rules so the team is coherent.
We have programs that make it easy for us to link up and network. We have little difficulty accepting what everyone else believes is real and working together as a single unit. We all learn and understand the playbook. It is more important for us to be on the same page and doing things to survive than for any one of us to figure out what is real.
Think about this: Hitler figured out how to unite a group of humans and accomplish big things. Einstein figured out a reality about the universe that few of us can understand. So, Hitler was a human and Einstein was a nut!?
Or, suppose we all dance and sing and chant and have traditions and feel a connection to one another? Hey, why don't we do...
RELIGION?
The funny thing is that every single place on earth where there are people there is religion. And in every single one of these places the religion is done in basically the same way. Of course, since the advent of written language humans have heaped a lot of mentally masturbated pseudo-logical mumbo jumbo onto the basic way we do religion but the way all religions started out is essentially the same.
It goes like this: There is an imaginary being that has a single counterintuitive trait. For example, a God that is like a human king in every way except he has no body. Or he is half human and half beast. Or he is a human who is the sun or the wind or the rain. Or he is a guy who throws lightning.
Then, there is a set of rules that we must live by.
The gods and the rules are similar for all groups of humans everywhere because they were all invented by the same program. They all serve the function of establishing a unified and law abiding group of humans.
At the dawn of the era of science many people thought that religion was just a way to explain natural phenomena that we did not understand. They thought it would go away when science explained everything. That didn't happen.
To expect that a human won't do religion is like expecting a PC to be a MAC.
This book is about how our brains are constructed to do religion and why this ability was selected for during the course of our evolutionary past.