Religion And Atrocities
Atheists often and with justification blame religions for the atrocities committed.
But I think, that the religions are not cause of the atrocities. Instead religions are merely condoning the worst behavior determined by the animal instinct in people. It frees people from feeling responsible for the consequences of their behavior and it frees them from the need to override these obsolete instincts. Religions enable people to be robots of their instincts without getting into inner conflicts. Indirectly religion serves procreation and the survival of the species.
1. Atrocities to outgroups.
But I think, that the religions are not cause of the atrocities. Instead religions are merely condoning the worst behavior determined by the animal instinct in people. It frees people from feeling responsible for the consequences of their behavior and it frees them from the need to override these obsolete instincts. Religions enable people to be robots of their instincts without getting into inner conflicts. Indirectly religion serves procreation and the survival of the species.
1. Atrocities to outgroups.
Those animals, who live in groups, are driven by the gregarious instinct to be a part of the group, and by the ingroup-outgroup instinct to consider outgroup members as resources to be exploited for survival. They kill outgroup members to get more food, sometimes they even eat them. This gives them an advantage in the fitness for having the most success in raising healthy bearer of their genes.
The situation is exactly the same for humans. By killing, eating, enslaving, sacrificing or evicting from good soil the members of any outgroup, they can acquire resources for having more offspring and thus enhancing their procreative fitness. Therefore the ruthless readiness to commit atrocities has been successfully maintained in the human gene pool.
But humans have also evolved intelligence. Humans are prone to ask themselves the question, why they should get punished for killing or harming their neighbor, while they are encouraged or even coerced to kill and harm others, just because they look different, speak a different language or even just live on the other side of an invisible territorial border. This difference seems very irrational and lacking any sense justifying it. Animals are unable to ask such a question, but some humans cannot avoid to do so.
With enough rational thinking and the ability to have empathy and consideration, people would answer this question and solve their inner conflict by stopping the killing. They would start to feel responsible for what they do to all people beyond the ingroup-outgroup difference. But this would require sharing resources. This would mean to voluntarily reduce the breeding success in contradiction to the procreation instinct.
So instead they invented a god, who was the god of the ingroup. Atrocities to the outgroup were ascribed to god's will and considered as god's responsibility. Thus they freed themselves from being responsible for what they did. Their god allowed them to be the animals, that their evolving reason hesitated to be.
2. Atrocities to women.
Biologically seen, the survival of mammals including humans depends upon the willingness of the females to bear and raise children. Animals do not think, they have no option to be either willing or not, they are the robots determined by their procreation instinct.
But human females have such an option, unless men succeed in depriving them of the choice. Evolution has made men physically stronger enabling them thus to establish control over women. Polygamy, male power over all resources for survival, women being the property of men, were and are common social situations. The male have the option to rape women and to force pregnancies upon them.
As a result of the evolution of the human mind, men are able to feel empathy and to have consideration for other people's suffering. They are capable to be conscious of causing the woman's plight, and this creates an inner conflict with the urges of the procreation instinct. Rational responsibility requires, that they avoid causing a woman's suffering by making her pregnant, unless she agrees.
But Instead men solved the inner conflict in favor of their subconscious procreation instinct. They invented a god, who sends children as his divine gift and expects women to raise them in gratitude and docility. The men made the women's suffering god's responsibility. They consider establishing power and control over women as justified by god's will. In obedience to this god, they now can ruthlessly force childbearing upon women without feeling any inner conflict. This includes even atrocities to any person, who helps women with birth control.
Religion helps people to continue to be guided by the worst animal instincts still existing in their subconscious brain. Religion impedes them to become truly humane. Religion impedes the evolution towards eliminating the readiness to atrocities from the gene pool.
