by Harry Cassio

Created on: October 08, 2008

As humans we are in the unique position of having no beings superior to ourselves, in the world in which we know. All other animals in our world are constantly confronted by beings that are instantly recognizable as either greater or lesser than them. A bigger, stronger, faster animal is to be avoided and a smaller, weaker, slower animal is, if edible, to be hunted. This inherited capability on the part of animals is crucial to their survival. For this reason animals see their position in the scheme of life and live comfortably in the knowledge that superior beings exist in their world.

We as humans share no such luxury. We are at the top of our evolutionary tree and as such have great difficulty in coming to terms with the idea that no one more evolved than us exists. And for good reason. The history of our own evolution is steeped in the same kind of confrontations that today's animals deal with all of their lives. Before we managed to rise above the rest of the earth species and take our position of prominence, before we developed the intelligence to counter our relative physical weakness compared with the strength and agility of animals of our own size, we spent millions of years hiding from and defending ourselves from danger. The residual characteristics inherited from that period are with us today and our need to believe in the existence of someone greater than ourselves is a trait that evolution has yet to extinguish from our makeup.

In terms our capacity to understand our spirituality we are poor indeed. We equate religion with living a good life, many a discussion has broken down because we cannot come to terms with the idea that we are born with an innate understanding of the difference between right and wrong and that we therefore don't need to immerse ourselves in communal worship to teach us to do the right thing. We have yet to develop a comfort zone that allows us to live our lives without having someone to apportion blame for our misfortunes, someone to thank for our good fortunes, someone to attribute the unfathomables and explain away the unexplainables in our world. If God didn't exist, we would have invented him. So the question remaining is, do we believe in our various gods because we can't do without them, or are our religions justified because god is there to ensure our smooth transition through life and we should therefore demonstrate our gratitude and respect? I for one take no responsibility for my atheist ideals and blame God for making me this way.

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