I propose that : 1) the religious, magical thinking common throughout humanity today is the result of an evolutionary adaptation, 2) that the need for messiahs and other heroes is a vestige of the alpha-male dominated, hierarchical primate societies that are our heritage, 3) that the use of sexual vulgarities also is easily understood in terms of these ancestral primate behaviors and does not indicate something wrong with sex or point to sex as the "fall", and 4) that life in the UC cult represents a throwback, backward society reflecting the ancient "primate algorithms" and not an enlightened, spiritually advanced culture. I conclude by quoting Carl Sagan.

    It is often said by peoples of faith that the widespread existence of religion and religious belief around the world somehow validates the religious viewpoint - that belief systems centering around God, the spirit realm, and religious institutions must have a central core of truth simply because these viewpoints are so widespread. While it is always possible to take some comfort in the wisdom of the masses, I'm sure most people would recognize the weakness of the argument "Well, everybody else is doing it". And as I mention in the closing remarks of "Delusions and Reality", one could easily argue that the tremendous divergence of beliefs could also tend to discredit the religious outlook. I would not argue that there is no place for faith regarding the ultimate nature of reality and the goodness of life - all those larger questions about which we will never have answers. I sure as heck hope that it isn't all just "matter in motion". But I do think, as a practical matter, that the world would be much better served by the secular humanist viewpoint, that using our minds and our resources to take responsibility for solving the worlds problems will get us to a better world faster than relying on prayers and messiahs. I think a good case could be made that there has been more harm done in the name of religion - more division, war, suffering, strife, and wasted time and energy spent out of religious conviction - than all the good things that religion can rightfully take credit for. Whatever the case may be in that regard, I do think that the question "Why humans are religious" is one that deserves to be looked at. I found a very interesting speculation on this topic in a book by John Casti, entitled "Paradigms Regained". This sequel to "Paradigms Lost" looks further at the latest scientific understandings and what they imply for the modern outlook on life. Regarding the question of faith, on page 66 he writes:

    "Ridley looks at this issue by asking the question, "Why are we not more rational?" His argument is to consider our ancestors a million years ago. Suppose that population consisted of two brain types: the Robots and the Irrationals. The Robots are governed by a rational control system, while the Irrationals hold to various religious superstitions to form their image of the world. Logically, natural selection would favor the Robots, since scientific rationality is more efficient than irrational superstition; it actually does transport people through the air, cure diseases, and provides labor saving gadgets like TV's and dishwashers. In the struggle for existence, the rational protohumans would have reasoned about their affairs objectively and done whatever was necessary to produce the best result. They would have built weapons whose efficiency was guaranteed by laws of physics while their more spiritual contemporaries were conjuring hocus pocus. In a real conflict, the Robots would certainly have had the edge on the Irrationals. So there should be more Robot brains surviving in such an environment that Irrational ones.
   "As appealing as this argument seems, it well may be wrong, simply because it predicts the wrong winner. We are descended from the Irrational brains, not the Robots. Why? Well, no one seems to really know. But it seems that in a Darwinian struggle for existence, religious enthusiasm, for example, can crowd out rationality. Suppose, for instance, that the ancestral humans were a population of Robots. They calculate objectively how much effort to put into fights and other kinds of conflicts and cooperative action, both inside and outside their group. They will do just fine - until they encounter mutants with a tendency towards religious enthusiasm.
   "The religious newcomers value land not only for the resources it provides but because it has meaning to them: It is the home of their gods and must not be occupied by nonbelievers. So they take irrational risks in fights because the gods look after them in battle, and reward them later in the event of death on the battlefield. Some of the Irrationals may even exterminate their enemies when their is nothing rational to be gained by it for them. In this way, religious enthusiasm could crowd out rationality.
   "Note that the foregoing argument says nothing about the vulnerability of our own brain circuits to superstition. Nor does it appeal to the argument that religion causes us to identify with, or sacrifice ourselves to, the good of our local group. It simply follows the tenets of natural selection between two whole brain types in our past. Rationality alone is vulnerable because our reasons, our objective evidence, for almost everything are exceedingly poor. In the grander scheme of things, individual humans are almost irrelevant and we need something more than Robotic reason to prompt us to take action. So if we rely on reason alone, there is not much to stop us from saying, Why bother?
   "An Irrational, on the other hand, will suffer no such doubts. Natural selection then will favor people who go beyond the evidence, or believe more than they ought . So it is an important part of a religion that the gods should be interested in us. This puffs us up with self importance, and makes us believe that we are the chosen creatures of supernatural entities who actually care about us."

    Of course, all of this is just another way of saying "You can't 'out hustle' a fanatic"! (Are we witnessing just such a thing in Pat Buchanan's gaining control of the Reform Party?) To recognize that there may have been an evolutionary advantage to irrationality, and that we may be in part a product of such forces, helps to put our own religious inclinations in a different perspective. It may very well be that the religious outlook has served a useful purpose in facilitating the survival of early mankind. But it is a fair question to ask whether such outlooks are useful in this modern age. In the struggle to break free of religious bogeyman, it might be helpful to recognize that these tendencies have source in our ancestral, evolutionary heritage rather than the halls of heaven.

   "Why do we need Messiahs"? is a related question that may also have an answer in the study of our early origins. Carl Sagan and Ann Dryuan wrote a very interesting book entitled "Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors" in which they look at ways in which our evolutionary journey may have shaped the outlooks and behaviors we human beings exhibit today. One very strong and clear theme runs through much of what they relate, concerning the way other primate societies order themselves and conduct business. It seems that almost without exception, there is a very strong tendency for a strict hierarchical structure with a dominant, "alpha" male at the top of the social ladder. This male gets first access to the best food, and of course the run of the females in the group. Under him are lesser males, who in turn dominate those lower on the pecking order.

    Various themes upon this social order can be clearly seen all throughout human history, and to some extent is still with us today. The deep rooted need for certain individuals to rise to the top of the pile is a potent driving force. Like I mention earlier, the lust for power is a theme which has been written about for ages, and may be a key to understanding what shapes most human interaction. Likewise, the need to have a leader figure, one to look up to and follow, is deeply embedded in human instinct. Is it any surprise that we should at times deify certain individuals, raise them on a pedestal on which we can gaze? Or immerse ourselves in the ultimately constraining, yet familiar and comfortable social order of hierarchy, submission, and obedience?

    One interesting aspect of this dominance is that it is expressed in sexual terms. Expressions of dominance in primate society are distinctly sexual in nature. It is common that the dominant male will ceremoniously "mount" subordinate males as a way to show his higher status. The subordinate "presents" himself in a way that communicates submission - head and shoulders down, rear end up. It is not hard to think that the custom of bowing in human society has it's origins in these ancient behaviors. I was reminded of images of the UC "prayer rooms", with members prostrating themselves, head and hands down on the floor, posterior skyward, in front of pictures of the supreme alpha, SMM.

    Sexually aggressive behavior isn't limited to male-male interactions, either. When a male chimp wants to communicate his sexual intent to a female, he uses very aggressive body language. Sagan writes that in chimp body language "I am going to fuck you" is very close to "I am going to kill you". Sex and aggression are closely intertwined. It is not surprising that human expressions of aggression and dominance are spoken in the language of sex. It is also not surprising that society tends to feel it has an interest in controlling this very private aspect of human behavior, very willing to judge and condemn those who transgress the accepted norms. It is a common characteristic of totalistic groups, from the "Shining Path" Maoist terrorists to the Heavens Gate cult to the UC, that a persons emotional and sexual lives are kept on a very short leash by the leaders. There is no need to resort to fables of Adam and Eve and the serpent to understand why human attitudes towards sex are contradictory and often negative. When we say "Fuck you" or give someone the finger, or when the UC teaches it is the worst sin, we are simply carrying on an ancient primate tradition.

    To be sure, it would be simplistic and unfair to characterize the culture of the UC as simply an ancient primate society dressed up in the trappings of religion. But I think that it is very compelling that the evolutionary, ancestral baggage that we carry within the DNA in every cell of our body expresses itself in ways we hardly understand. It is quite believable that much of what we see in the dynamics of cult life has it's roots in our evolutionary journey. I suspect that understanding this journey, and the ramifications of primate social structure, the role of the alpha, and the eternal quest for power, would yield tremendous insights into so much human behavior. In any event, I do think that the UC culture and belief system is fundamentally flawed, and that it doesn't represent any real hope for a brighter future.

Sagan and Dryuan share their hope in the closing paragraphs of "Shadows", suggesting , in effect, that understanding our ancestors is the best way we can liberate our descendants. It seems an appropriate way to end :

   "Our family tree was rooted when the Earth was just emerging from a time of massive, obliterating impacts, molten red-hot landscapes, and pitch-black skies; when the oceans and the stuff of life was still falling in from space; when our connection to the universe around us was manifest. The orphan's file began in epic style.
   "The family tree of a few rare individuals of our species, we've argued, can be traced back perhaps as much as two or three dozen generations. Most of us, in contrast, are able to penetrate only three or four generations into the past before the record fades and is lost. With a rare exception here and there, all earlier ancestors are the merest phantoms. But hundreds of generations link us to the time civilization was invented, thousands of generations run to the origin of our species, and a hundred thousand generations lie between us and the first member of the genus homo. How many generations link us back through our non-human primate, mammal, reptile, amphibian, fish, and still earlier ancestors to the microbes of the primeval sea, and how many generations before that to the first organic molecules able to make crude copies of themselves is unfathomed - but it may approach 100 billion. The family tree of each of us is graced by all those great inventors: the beings who first tried out self-replication, the manufacture of protein machine tools, the cell, cooperation, predation, symbiosis, photosynthesis, breathing oxygen, sex, hormones, brains, and all the rest -inventions we use, some of them minute by minute without ever wondering who devised them and how much we owe to these unknown benefactors, in a chain 100 billion links long.
   "Many have construed our clear kinship with the other animals as an affront to human dignity. But any of us is much more closely related to Einstein and Stalin, to Gandhi and Hitler than to any member of another species. Shall we think more or less of ourselves in consequence? The discovery of a deep connection between human nature, all human nature, and the other living things on Earth comes not a moment too soon. We are helped to know ourselves.
   "In acknowledging our ties of kinship, we are forced to reconsider the morality (as well as the prudence) of our conduct: wiping out another species every few minutes, night and day, all over the planet.... We have been faithless heirs, squandering the family inheritance with little thought of generations to come.
   "We must stop pretending we are something we are not. Somewhere between romantic, uncritical anthropomorphizing of the animals and an anxious, obdurate refusal to recognize our kinship with them - the latter made tellingly clear in the still-widespread notion of "special" creation - there is a broad middle ground on which we humans can take our stand.
   "If the Universe really were made for us, if there really if a benevolent, omnipotent, and omniscient God, then science has done something cruel and heartless, whose chief virtue would perhaps be a testing of our ancient faiths. But if the Universe is heedless of our aspirations and our destiny, science provides the greatest possible service by awakening us to our true circumstances. In accord with the unforgiving principle of natural selection, we are charged with our own preservation, under penalty of extinction.
   "And yet we go from massacre to massacre; and as our technology becomes more powerful, the magnitude of the potential tragedy grows. The many sorrows of our recent history suggest that we humans have a learning disability. We might have thought that the horrors of World War II and the Holocaust were enough top inoculate us against the toxins there revealed and unleashed. But our resistance quickly fades. A new generation gladly abandons its critical and skeptical faculties. Old slogans and hatreds are dusted off. What was only recently muttered guiltily is now offered as political axiom and agenda. There are renewed appeals to ethnocentrism, xenophobia, homophobia, racism, sexism, and territoriality. And with a sigh of relief we are apt to surrender to the will of the alpha, or long for an alpha we can surrender to.
   "Ten thousand generations ago, when we were still divided into many groups, these propensities may have served our species well. We can understand why they are almost reflexive, why they should be so easy to evoke, why they are the stock in trade of every demagogue and hack politician. But we cannot wait for natural selection to further mitigate these ancient primate algorithms. That would take too long. We must work with what tools we have - to understand who we are, how we got that way, and how to transcend our deficiencies. Then we can begin to create a society less apt to bring out the worst in us.
   "Still, from the perspective of the last ten thousand years extraordinary transformations have lately been playing themselves out. Consider how we humans organize ourselves. Dominance hierarchies requiring debasing submission and obedience to the alpha male, as well as hereditary alphahood, were once the global standard of human political structure, justified as right and proper and divinely ordained by our greatest philosophers and religious leaders. These institutions have now almost vanished from the Earth. Chattel slavery - likewise long defended by revered thinkers as preordained and deeply consonant with human nature - has been abolished worldwide. Just a minute ago, all over the planet, with only a few exceptions, women were subordinate to men and denied equal status and power; this also was thought predetermined and inevitable. Here too, clear signs of change are now evident nearly everywhere. A common appreciation of democracy and what are called human rights is, with some backsliding, sweeping the planet.
   "Taken together, these dramatic societal shifts...provide a compelling refutation of the claim that we are condemned, without hope of reprieve, to live out our lives in a barely disguised chimpanzee social order...Given the reality of our mutual interdependence, our intelligence, and what is at stake, are we really unable to break out of behavior patterns evolved to benefit ancestors of long ago?... by what right, what argument can pessimism be justified? Whatever else may be hidden in those shadows, our ancestors bequeathed us...the ability to change our institutions and ourselves. Nothing is preordained.
   "We achieve some measure of adulthood when we recognize our parents as they really are...Maturity entails a readiness, painful and wrenching though it may be, to look squarely into the long dark places, into the fearsome shadows. In this act of ancestral remembrance and acceptance may be found a light by which to see our children safely home."