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Could belief in all things religious be the earliest form of a natural coping mechanism?
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If we are an organism that evolved by pure chance, why are we such insecure little creatures? How did that overwhelming sense of "life's just too hard, I can't make it on my own, I need a god to believe in" manage to make it's way into the evolutionary process? It just doesn't make logical sense that such a trait would make it through the natural selection process.
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Though I agree that the concept of religion partly originated as a coping mechanism, I don't think it evolved purely out of an inability to deal with the difficulties of life. I agree it was likely a factor, yes, but I suspect that it also served to help humans deal with their own mortality, with the fear that came with knowing, in a real and conscious way, that they were finite. I also think that it's natural for any being who is self-aware and intelligent to wonder at his origins. When you understand that you have some kind of end, it's natural to ponder your beginning. Even on a personal level, among those of us who never had the opportunity to know either one or both of our biological parents, there is often a need to investigate that gap in our knowledge, a feeling that something important is missing in our lives due to the incompleteness of our knowledge of our heritage. I don't find it strange that, for many, this applies not only to our personal heritage but beyond to our shared heritage and farther back still, all the way to "How did it all begin?"
I think the reason this tendency made it through the natural selection process is because of our self-awareness combined with our intelligence and basic physical design. Our self-awareness gives us the drive to seek the knowledge and our intelligence and physical design gives us the means to seek it.
In this one sense, at least, science and religion serve the same purpose -- while being entirely different approaches (and often resulting in different conclusions), the pursuit of each is attempting to answer some of the same questions. As we've evolved, grown in knowledge, and explored increasingly varied philosophical ideas, there's been an increasing divergence of religious beliefs/non-beliefs among us.
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It is not an anomaly. Most atheists are ex theists like me.
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All that being said, atheism as an anomaly is an outdated perspective on it. Was it, at one time, a deviation from the "common" rule? Sure. In times when our understanding of the world and the universe and all their various mechanisms was far less comprehensive (or not comprehensive at all), it makes sense that fewer among us would question whatever our particular culture taught us about them. Given the sheer complexity of the human mind, however, I do not doubt that there have always been those who rejected the religious teachings of their particular cultures, even if they did so privately to prevent ostracism or even more severe punishments, up to and including execution. Many cultures and their associated religious schools of thought have been, or still are, brutally intolerant of anyone who disagreed with them.
But the word "anomaly" no longer applies to atheism. There is no "common" rule or "normal" set of beliefs anymore because so many cultures are no longer isolated from one another, leading to widespread exposure to vastly different ideas and to increasingly impressive scientific discoveries. And though there is still a great deal of intolerance for naysayers to be found, the lack of isolation means there are greater opportunties for people whose beliefs differ from their native culture to relocate to a place in which they can live more openly.
I'm by no means saying that tolerance is where it should be; I'm merely saying that the world, as a whole, is far less hostile to those whose beliefs depart from what is considered the majority than it used to be. There are still isolated cultures, and there are still cultures that are intolerant to varying degrees, ranging from the brutal to the merely annoying, but there does seem to be a steady, albeit slow, progress away from that.
Atheism is no longer so uncommon as to be considered anomalous, nor is it incompatible with the instinctive drive to seek knowledge as to our origins. It is merely the result of intelligent, educated people drawing a specific conclusion to a specific question based on the current evidence available to them. There is nothing strange about that.
Whenever there are multiple possible answers to the same question, the only thing I would find strange would be if there was one particular possibility to which no one subscribed.
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If religion is just some giant coping mechanism -- well what is it coping for?
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I think the answer to this question is more varied and personalized today than it was in more primitive times. For some, it is, as the above poster suggested earlier, a way to cope with the difficulties of life. It satisfies a need to believe there is some kind of loving force to whom one can appeal when in crisis.
For others, it is the only way they can cope with the inevitability of death, the idea of just
ending being more than they can bear. For many of them, the fear of that would inhibit their ability to function in day-to-day life. Their religion assuages that fear and allows them to live their lives with a peace they wouldn't be able to achieve without it.
For others still, there is a need to believe that there is some kind
point to it all, that their lives are not just exercises in futility, that all they experience and learn is not just a colossal waste of time that means nothing, and that there is some kind of justice system for the acts committed in this life. For them, the idea that people are born, they live, they die, and there are no consequences for anything bad anyone did (regardless of how heinous) and no purpose to anything that was learned or suffered or felt, fills them with a profound emptiness. Religion fills that emptiness for them, and motivates them to learn, to grow, to achieve and/or do good things for themselves and others.
For many, I'd imagine it's a combination of some or all of the above.
Then there are those whose religion, or lack thereof, is not a coping mechanism at all. Either they simply accept whatever teachings were drilled into them as children without examining them closely (merely going through the motions with no personal motivation behind their "beliefs"), or they've drawn their own conclusions based on whatever information is available to them and whatever personal experiences they claim without allowing what they might
want to be true to taint that process.
I would assert that most agnostics and atheists fall into the latter part of this category. Though I've known a couple who
want there to be no deity, no "rules", and/or no point, meaning that it could perhaps be argued that their agnosticism or atheism is a coping mechanism of some sort, that is by no means the norm. The vast majority of agnostics and atheists, based on my research and experiences, embrace no religion involving a deity or afterlife or whatnot simply because their education and logic dictates that they not do so, not because they have any personal stake in what they do or do not believe. Where there is no conclusive scientific evidence, they do not believe, or they actively disbelieve. What they might wish to be true has no relevance to what they believe is true.
But there are people of varying religious beliefs who fall into the latter part of this category as well. There are those whose belief system is purely the product of their own analysis of the latest scientific evidence, their personal experiences, and/or their intuition. For them, I don't see religion as a coping mechanism so much as the best answer they have to satisfy their curiosity about the universe's and humanity's origins.
I'd put myself in that last group, which is why my belief system is open to change based upon the receipt of new, validated information. I've often thought that those who are the least tolerant of differing beliefs, who are the most aggressive about trying to convince others to convert to their personal belief system, are the ones whose beliefs are the most fear-based. The very existence of people whose beliefs differ significantly from theirs is like a seed of doubt in their minds, and that is only threatening to someone who
needs to believe to function well in life.
When your belief system is not predicated upon combatting fear, when it is independent of what you might wish to be true, you are not threatened by those who believe differently. You don't
need to believe what you do, so what does it matter if a particular belief is undermined by someone else? If a belief cannot withstand scrutiny and contradiction, then it isn't a particularly valid belief to have in the first place, so, at most, what others believe should simply be a potentially interesting avenue for exploration.
Sorry this was so long, but it's been a long time since I posted much of anything on this forum and I found this subject particularly interesting.
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