Religion

Religion, as wiki puts it, is a "set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe, especially when considered as the creation of a supernatural agency or agencies, usually involving devotional and ritual observances, and often containing a moral code governing the conduct of human affairs."

I have wanted to blog about this topic quite some time ago, I just lack the time and will to do.

But after much deliberation, I have decided to do it today. By Religion, I mean "higher beings" or "supernatural forces" etc, not necessary deity beings.

We all know, or least people who have studied a fair amount of Biology, that the DNA is a set of instructions that make up an individual of any living thing on Earth.

Physical traits, such as having fingers or a spotted tail are predetermined by a gene or sets of genes that relate to each other.

Behavioral traits are, based on genes as well, I think. How else does any given life form knows how it is supposed to act? By this, I mean, how do fishes know, from the instant they are hatched from their egg sacs that they have to look for cover to avoid predators? How else do insects know where to get their food from? How else do birds know how to perform mating dances when they reach sexual maturity? How else do bees know to construct honeycombs in hexagonal shapes?

It must have been encoded in their genes to display such an act! This applies to all living things on Earth!

So we can all agree that physical and behavioral traits (to a large extent) are predetermined by sets of genes.

So now comes my question, is Religion, a behavioral trait predetermined by genes? Can anybody be a true atheist?

Across the entire globe, no matter how remotely a group of human beings have chosen to live, all of them have chosen to believe in spirituality, a higher being, life after death and so on, varying in forms and origins. We have also built places of worship for that purpose, have complicated rituals and celebrate such beliefs.

There may never be an answer for this question, I feel, which to me, is very irritating. How can I not know?

Religion is such an integrated part of our life, we are surrounded by it constantly, we look up and gaze into the sky and cannot help but wonder if there was really a "higher order" responsible for everything around us.

Any well informed person will know about the Large Hadron Collider and its ambitious goals of colliding protons at super high energy levels. The purpose is to address fundamentals of physics and perhaps, offer a glimpse into how the universe was formed. Suppose one day scientists confirm how exactly, or perhaps partially the universe was formed, then the belief that a "higher being" creating the universe would be flawed, wouldn’t it? Then wouldn’t other beliefs built upon the pretext of an existing higher being be invalid? Everything you believed would suddenly look delusional made up. So if the belief in Religion is predetermined by genes, what would that spell for man?

But, that I would say is of no threat for a long long time, given today's knowledge of the creation of the universe.

Moving on to my next question, Can anybody be a true atheist?

We know in general that atheist are people whom reject the idea of a deity. But with so much information being exposed to them, how can one label himself as a true atheist? To them, is the idea of God a social function, to fulfill psychological and emotional wants and needs.

But the question remains, can anybody be a true atheist? Apart from the fact of obvious newborns.

A research/study can be carried out, isolating newborns from all aspects of religion, God, supernatural etc, and then posing questions related to the creation of the universe, life after death, God(in this case, "someone whom you think has the ability to create living things” since they have no experience of such topics) etc. Of course there must be stringent controls to ensure that the data collected and compiled are non-bias. Like they must be children whom are abandoned right at birth, because the parent raising the child may be bias. So under such circumstances, these children can be spared potential propaganda so as not to affect test results. Of course, the environment they are raised in must also be free from possible hints of religious or supernatural elements. We must also consider the questions posed to them at a later stage of life, whether or not hot these questions asked are leading them on to believe the idea of God. Questions asked must be neutral. Next, the age of which the children are allowed to be raised till in such an environment. Too young and they may not have higher order thinking (HOT) which may be essential to the data collected. Too old and the study/experiment is not feasible. Well, lastly, ethics, the biggest hurdle to cross. Needs no further explanation. Obviously, this is all theoretical, aint it?

Alas, I may never know the truth behind it. This kind of makes me wish I was still in JC, its so GP-ish i feel like putting up my hand in class to pose the question to Mrs A. I think she may be able to give me a satisfactory answer, although not necessary answering the question directly.

"Nancy waded out to her own rocks and searched her own pools and let that couple look after themselves. She crouched low down and touched the smooth rubber-like sea anemones, who were stuck like lumps of jelly to the side of the rock. Brooding, she changed the pool into the sea, and made the minnows into sharks and whales, and cast vast clouds over this tiny world by holding her hand against the sun, and so brought darkness and desolation, like God himself, to millions of ignorant and innocent creatures, and then took her hand away suddenly and let the sun stream down. Out on the pale criss-crossed sand, high-stepping, fringed, gauntleted, stalked some fantastic leviathan (she was still enlarging the pool), and slipped into the vast fissures of the mountain side. And then, letting her eyes slide imperceptibly above the pool and rest on that wavering line of sea and sky, on the tree trunks which the smoke of steamers made waver on the horizon, she became with all that power sweeping savagely in and inevitably withdrawing, hypnotised, and the two senses of that vastness and this tininess (the pool had diminished again) flowering within it made her feel that she was bound hand and foot and unable to move by the intensity of feelings which reduced her own body, her own life, and the lives of all the people in the world, for ever, to nothingness. So listening to the waves, crouching over the pool, she brooded."

- Virginia Woolf ( To the Lighthouse)