Buddha image, Sri Lanka   (credit: Wikipedia)                                                             

12. Reiteration of the Argument So Far

To reiterate: in the first place, we do have principles that we rely on in practice to guide our behavior in the world. In the second place, these beliefs got deeply ingrained in the lore and behavior of a few tribes because they work: they enabled those who lived by them to survive in greater numbers over the long haul than was the case for competing tribes who didn’t have these beliefs .

In the third place, these beliefs were kept not because they guaranteed hunters or farmers success in every project, but because they improved their adherents’ long-term survival odds, as experience showed. Tribes who lived by them grew.

Fourth, tribes come, by trial and error, to imprint a few very general values, customs, etc. very deeply into their young by transforming those values into myths/religion. This very human trait of making myths is due to two facts: first, these very general ideas, values, etc. kept working, gradually, for centuries, enabling more members of tribes who believed in them to survive and flourish; second, the tribe’s lore as told by its shaman couldn’t explain in everyday terms why these values/principles worked. They needed myths to justify their culture.

Tribes that survived did so because, by trial and error, they made a few useful generalizations into tenets of the tribe’s religion. Useful generalizations then became surrounded by ritual, mystery, and emotion. Then, they would not be lost by the tribe, even if, for a while, the evidence happening around the tribe didn’t seem to support those generalizations. Over decades, sound values work.

“We find dry wood for the fire because wet wood will not burn. You can’t burn wet stuff, son. But we don’t worship dry wood like we do the elk. We conserve and respect the elk because they were given to our people by the Great Spirit.”

“The buffalo may be almost gone now, son, but the Great Spirit’s ways still rule. One day, white people will pay for how they treat His world.”

                                       All Saints Catholic Church (San Francisco, US)                                                                              Christian Religious Symbolism

                                                (credit: BrokenSphere / Wikimedia Commons )