Religion as a Function of Biology

How the Dynamic Between the Two Creates Cyclical History

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Indeed, every table of values, every ‘thou shalt’ known to history or the study of ethnology, needs first and foremost a physiological elucidation and interpretation, rather than a psychological one; and all of them await critical study from medical science.¹ — Nietzsche

Suppose you’re a mystical seeker after God. You spend a lifetime devoted to intense spiritual awakening—knee-deep in esoterica, you mount up on the highest peaks to ask the sage’s counsel. And then one day, after a lifetime delving into the bedrock of the world, you finally see the face of God. But instead of a kindly old man, you find a cruel, idiotic mass of tentacles playing flutes nonsensically forever.

This Lovecraftian scene is not unlike what Nietzsche found when he sought the psychological foundations of Western morality, and it’s not far from what the god-fearing man finds when he seeks the biological basis for religion. We’re told not to look upon the face of God, but against better judgment, we’re going to do just that today. What we find is both horrifying and highly enlightening as to what’s happening in the West today.

Through me is the way to the city of woe,
Through me is the way to eternal pain,
Through me is the way to a lost people.
Justice moved my great Creator
Divine Power made me,
The Supreme Wisdom and the Primal Love.
Before me, nothing else was created
But the eternal, and I last eternally.
Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.

If God turns out to be something in the brain which can be turned off and on at will, here is disenchantment made manifest. You thought Darwin was a blow to tradition? Ha! Only the most supreme gigachads who can hold in their heads contradictory assumptions will be able to shoulder this burden—what doesn’t kill me makes me stronger.