462. Religion As The Consequence Of Evolutionary Incongruity

Religion As The Consequence Of Evolutionary Incongruity

Evolutionary incongruity is the discrepancy between the cognition enabling humans to be aware of the consequences of their actions also from the perspective of the targeted victim, while the urges of subconscious animal instincts nevertheless drive them to embark on such actions.
Inventing religions is a method of dealing with this incongruity.  

Concerning pain, there are major differences between humans and animals.    

• Animals are robots driven by instincts that ultimately serve only the one purpose of the survival of the species by procreation.   Animals have no cognition and therefore no awareness of the sufferings experienced by their victims, for which they cannot be held responsible.  
  
• Animals suffer physical pain.   They also suffer discomfort from simple sensations caused by external events as is fear of a predator or grief by the loss of a herd or mate.   Animals lack the cognition to suffer from complex and abstract emotions.  
  Therefore some instinctive behaviors do not affect animals at all, while they are extremely painful for human conscious sensitivity even when there is no physical harm.

The following are two examples, how religion is applied as a method to allow humans to ruthlessly act in a way, that is experienced as cruel by the victim.     

Example 1.   Physical Cruelty

Animal Behavior
Animals know the members of their ingroup.  Outgroup members are only perceived as objects in the environment to serve their survival.  Animals know by instinct, whom to kill and eat and with whom to share the spoil of the hunt.   They have no morals guiding decisions of what is right or wrong based upon any cognitive attitude.   They have no generalized empathy for individuals, only limited empathy for ingroup members.  
Animals like for example lions, who hunt other animals by ripping them apart while still alive, inflict agony upon their prey.   But they have no cognition, they cannot know, that their survival causes agony to others.   

Human Cognition
The human cognition has evolved enough to enable humans to recognize the physical and the emotional suffering of any other human being and the physical suffering of animals and who or what is the cause of the suffering.    Humans are able to recognize and to define cruelty.   They are able to act with consideration and responsibility and to avoid cruelty.  
The advanced intelligence of humans enables them theoretically to cooperate in peace and harmony and to solve all conflicts by constructive communication.    Considering only these capacities of human intelligence, violence, cruelty, aggression, domination have become obsolete.    Human intelligence has led to a level of scientific progress, that would allow all humans to have a moderate standard of living without ever again doing harm to each other.     

Human behavior caused by animal instinct
Human cruelty is not an automatic reaction as it is in animals, it is a conscious decision.     A person determined by animal instincts to treat another person as outgroup feels subjectively justified to allow himself to be guided more by his instincts and less or not at all by his human cognition.  Harming outgroup members is done in the full awareness, knowledge and perception of the physical and emotional agony of the victims.      

Human suffering as victims of animal instincts
While animals and humans suffer the same pain from physical atrocities, humans in addition also suffer extreme emotional pain.   Being made the victim of cruelty causes a variety of abstract emotional reactions like outrage, indignation, humiliation, helplessness, betrayal and much more, depending on the circumstances.   

The evolutionary incongruity between cognitive knowledge and instinctive urges
The same person, who is ruthlessly driven by the ingroup-outgroup instinct to cruelly commit atrocities can at the same time be very sensitive when being a victim of cruelty and atrocities.   Rational people would experience this as a serious inner conflict.   They would also be confused, when the same cruelty is sometimes seriously punished and sometimes required and commanded and the difference is not due to any merits or faults of the victims as individual persons.   Instead the only difference is between the ingroup and outgroup.  It is too irrational to be morally justifiable by unencumbered cognition.
Religion solves the problem.   History is full of examples of extreme atrocities, that were committed under the justification of an alleged god's will.   In every case, the perpetrators were fully aware of the extreme suffering of their killed, tortured, mutilated and enslaved victims.    They were not ignorant of what they did, instead they obeyed an imaginary god, who had commanded them to commit the atrocities in his name and in his service.    Therefore the pain was believed to be the god's responsibility, the perpetrators felt not responsible at all, they perceived themselves only as an infallible god's well functioning tools.  

Example 2.   Emotional Cruelty

Animal Behavior
Many animal species are promiscuous, as this seems to have advantage for the procreative fitness of some species.   Animals are robots for procreation, they do not have the cognition to evaluate a mate for any qualities as being unique beyond procreational physical fitness.   They have no cognition to get emotionally attached, to bond and to suffer from separation.   Animal mating is between two bodies for the purpose of the survival of their genes.   Animal monogamy or promiscuity is symmetrical, males and females are complementary in their instinctive behaviors.   

Human Cognition
Humans have a cognition, that enables them theoretically to get deeply bonded in a symmetrical relationship between two persons.   Human have a cognition to perceive, experience and appreciate a mate as a unique personality.   They have evolved enough intelligence to be able to value a companion primarily for non-physical benefits, for the joy of emotional and intellectual intimacy.  
Two bonded persons can become very significant for each other.   Not only the loss of a reciprocally bonded companion, but also to be mistreated, degraded and abused in a situation of onesided bonding are causes of extreme emotional pain.  
Every human is theoretically able to know this, to refrain from hurting due to consideration and responsibility and to make a wise decision of how to avoid the risk of causing emotional pain to another human being.  This rational decision is to either get bonded monogamously or not to get involved at all.   

Considering only the capacities of human intelligence, all emotional pain from being dumped, cheated, betrayed could be avoided.

Human behavior caused by animal instinct
The instinctive urges in mammals are different for females and males.    Male animals are proactive predators, the female prey are selectively defending themselves.      
There are many men, who are so much enslaved by the animal predator instinct, that they lack the ability to get monogamously attached to one woman.  They ruthlessly dump and cheat and use women and degrade them to mere bodies.   

Human suffering as victims of animal instincts
The victims of promiscuity are usually women, who are deprived of the exclusivity and bonding, which they need.   When used, dumped and cheated upon, they suffer emotional pain, that only human cognition can feel.   They suffer humiliation, indignity, depreciation, betrayal, helplessness.  

The evolutionary incongruity between cognitive knowledge and instinctive urges
Every promiscuous person is fully capable to be aware of the emotional cruelty inflicted by dumping, cheating or degrading another person to be a used body.    There is absolutely no rational justification to do this to another human being.    The ruthlessly promiscuous men cannot avoid to know and to notice, that their behavior devastates women.  Their emotional cruelty to women is not an automatic behavior, but a decision.     
Religion solves the problem.  The promiscuous men invent a god, whom they hold to be responsible for how they treat the women.  
The men believe, that god had made them to be promiscuous.   The fact, that men are on average stronger than women is used as evidence for men's false belief, that their god wants them to dominate and control women.   Men believe it to be god's will, that they are able to rape women and to make them pregnant,   Men believe it to be god's will, that they are able to control the survival resources, so that women are dependent on the cheating and cruel men.
The women are made to believe, that god will compensate and reward them in the afterlife for their plight.    By this belief women are brainwashed to submit and to accept their sufferingas god's will and not as men's decision to be cruel.
The same men, who believe to be the creation of a god and who fervently reject to be related to apes, use the comparison with the instinctive behavior of animals as an additional excuse for their cruel promiscuity.   They claim monogamy to be unnatural, because of the predominance of promiscuity in animals.  They justify using women, dumping and cheating, by animal promiscuity, but they are so mislead and ignorant, that they completely overlook the significant fact, that animals cannot get emotionally attached as most women and high quality men with low instinctivity do.  


The less humans are driven by instincts, the less they are cruel.  
The less they are cruel, the less they need religion to justify their cruelty.