The pope has brought religion back into the public debate in an unexpected way by making Christianity sound like Christ for a change. This has caused some essentially non-religious people to suspend their reflective annoyance at religiosity and given everyone a moment to think about the whole subject anew. A question: As the races of an integrating world inexorably blend, is religion destined to follow?
It’s pretty obvious where religions differ, and they differ in ways that are more resistant to papering over than ecumenists like to admit. But evolutionary psychology has thrown much clarifying light onto the history and purpose of religions, both for individuals and groups. Just as humans evolved, so has their religious sensibility evolved. Religion serves as a powerful binding agent in a group. But it is built on a foundation of a sense of right and wrong that both guides behavior for individuals, and facilitates organizing into a group religion. This is an adaptation that enhances survival. The sense of right and wrong is innate, but is in constant tension between acting for self-interest, and subordinating self-interest to the group. Read that previous sentence again, because the entire history of morality is in there.
People who say you can’t have morality without an organized religion have it exactly backwards. The morality is innate and adaptively evolved. The form religions take are the institutionalized codification of that. Codified religions have been dubiously successful in improving morality, but extremely beneficial to survival of groups. But as groups have gotten larger, so have religions. And as tribes have grown into ethnically diverse nations, religious tribalism has less and less applicability. Religious origin stories have been shown to be historically imprecise, and particularities of practices are just that, particularities. They vary, but serve a similar function.
A softening of the doctrinal particularities can eventually lead to agreement of a shared religious sensibility, as a unified global tribe inexorably develops. And as with religions, so too between the religious and non-religious. If you define good to be synonymous with God, you’re most of the way there already. Someday our descendants will look upon this creation and say, “It is good.”