I find that the innate pattern recognition ability that humans possess and works wonders most of the time, may also be one of the root factors in the development of religions.
As I recently wrote Hedwig:
"Here's me going out on a limb: religion might well be a human adaptation "artifact" from our pattern recognition abilities.
A while back we painted our guest restroom with a swirling, multi-color "faux" finish (shades of red, mainly). There at the throne, I see faces. Now I painted the walls myself. I know there are no faces there. And I don't see the same face twice. We see objects we recognize in clouds, in the pile of leaves behind the house, in a stray grill cheese sandwich. All artifacts of this remarkable brain being on alert. And it goes on from there. I think the roots of the supernatural are all there (along with some other adaptations that are useful to us in other ways - and this damn monkey curiosity).
I imagine that if some day we were to meet another intelligent race and some how found a way to communicate (which may be very, very difficult if not outright impossible), and we mentioned our many religious beliefs, they'd reply "what the fuck are you talking about?""
No comments:
Post a Comment