The science of religion

All the evidence points to the fact that the image in the brain arises from its response to an external physical input or from the internal interactions between the various processes involved in 24-hour metabolism. There can be no physical evidence of an incorporeal God or anything else which is incorporeal, that is, emits no light or sound, and cannot be touched. The image of a god does, however, exist in the human brain and it is represented by humans in pictures, sculptures and words.

How, without any physical reality on which it could be based, have those images of God or gods taken hold in the human brain?

The scientific groundwork for an answer to that question was laid in 1890 when J. G. Frazer published the results of his anthropological study of magic and religion in his book The Golden Bough. With an overwhelming collation of data Frazer showed that the idea of God had an evolutionary history. It all started with the earliest human beings attempting to control their environment by magic. If you want rain then splash water around. If you want to have success in the hunt then dance the desired result or draw the imagined successful scene. It was not a great jump to believe that the things that humans could not control, but which happened anyway, were controlled by even more powerful but unseen humans. These became the spirits or gods. Indeed the earliest of these super humans were very human, had families and exhibited all the characteristics of normal humans such as anger, revenge, love and ambition. Truly the gods were conceived in the image of humans.

The people who could tap the power of the gods were, for that reason, very powerful members of the community. They were the medicine-men and witchdoctors: they also evolved along with the society in which they lived.

As Frazer commented from his studies of culture in Africa, "...here the evidence for the evolution of the chief out of the magician, and especially out of the rainmaker, is comparatively plentiful". From simple magician to chief and on to king or queen the role of conduit to the gods gave great secular power to the chosen individuals. Their commands, formulated from their own human desires, were given with all the awesome majesty of the gods. We have more or less passed the stage of the absolute monarchs who had that second-hand authority but the priestly caste still retains the same power over a great mass of the people. Their special raiments, ceremonies and incantations to their particular god betrays their origin as magicians and witchdoctors but their authority is increasingly being contested as the transparent human base for their edicts conflicts with the real living needs of their subjects. It is very hard to maintain that God says no to condoms in the face of AIDS.

Once scientific investigation reveals, as it has done, the natural evolutionary origin of religion and its gods and its role in society as well as its confinement to our brain activity, the veil of mystery has parted. The "agnostics" can now make up their minds. God exists but only as a product of the evolving mind.

Far from science and religion being separate magisteria they are in fact separate aspects of the one human endeavour to control the world in which we find ourselves. The idealist path of belief in the supernatural led through magic to religion and God and a dead end of endlessly interpreting and re-interpreting words to adjust to the changing demands of society. The materialist path led from experience and testing of the natural world through science to unending understanding and real control.