The Rational Incarnation of God

This chapter is for atheists. It is a suggestion for how to work out the fact that many people are religious and do believe in God. Atheists – especially Darwinians – used to ask the question: How could such a useless thing, like religion, evolve? They ask it in the name of the science: in the competition of Darwinian evolution sooner or later every trait which has no added value to the competitiveness of the individual will disappear. Or with other words the trait which has no added value to the competitiveness of the gene which holds the information of that trait.

They ask it in the name of the science, and they forget one thing: at the age of its’ origin every religion was the science itself as well. It was “up to date”. At its’ origin a religion summarizes all the actual knowledge about the universe as well as about everyday practices. So, when scientists question the advantage of religion, at the same time they question the advantage of science. The religion (ancient science) by creating common believes, common rites and common actions created a real community in their times. A cooperating community was much stronger than a herd of individuals. And for that level of cooperation which the mankind achieved the transfer of the knowledge is essential. This is the evolutional advantage what we are looking for. This is the way on which the science and the religion could evolve. The knowledge collection and knowledge transfer functions are maintained by both the today’s science and today’s religions. However, the community creating function is maintained only by religions. Nowadays they are not really successful in it. Especially not in Europe and in the metropolites of the world, but at least they are trying. The communities of scientists are not available for other people. A tailor or a cook can never be a member of a scientist’s community. On the other hand, in the religious communities everyone can get a membership. This is the main difference between today’s science and religions. Science has fresher knowledge, but science is lack of community creating function for ordinary people. Atheists often fail to recognize this function of religion. Richard Dawkins in his book The God Delusion, First Mariner Books, 2008 argues with a very rational approach, that: “A child is not a Christian child, not a Muslim child, but a child of Christian parents or a child of Muslim parents.” By the opinion of Dawkins, the child has not enough knowledge to decide about which religion wants to belong to – if wants to belong to any at all. Dawkins is right that on knowledge base it is hard to make a difference between the religions not only for little children but for adults as well. Especially hard, because every religion announces its’ own supremacy. But a child doesn’t want to argue about God, doesn’t want a dispute about theology. A child wants to belong to a community and first of all wants to belong to his/her parents. A child needs safety which can be given by the child’s parents. And for the family the safety is provided by the community. So, there are Christian children, and there are Muslim children and not because these children are conscious followers of their religion but because they find their safety together with their parents in that community they belong to. And to speak about them, like they are not Christians or not Muslims just an offspring of such people means them, that they do not belong to their parents, what is equals to that they are in danger. They want to be together with their parents and want to be mentioned together with their parents.

The evolutional advantages of a religion are:

knowledge accumulation;
knowledge transfer by creating a culture;
creation of a community by common believes;
maintenance of the community by common rites and actions.

So, the question is not that, how could science and/or religion evolve. The question is that, why do they change so slowly? Unfortunately, we know the answer for this second question as well. Because laziness is the mother of the sins. For most of us many of the existing explanations are equally acceptable. For everyday use a good-enough explanation of the universe will do. We don’t want to investigate the best one. So, the arguments are rather about the power and not primarily about truth. Whose truth will be accepted? The truth of the church? Or the truth of the scientists? Which scientist? Or which church? Since Thomas Kuhn we know that the new scientific theories will be accepted only after the retirement of the former generation of scientist which is followed by the retirement of their theories.

The conclusion is that religion is the ancient name of the science. They have the same evolutional advantage: through knowledge transfer creating common believes, creating and maintaining the community. They have the same operation: some of their representatives defend the old theories while new generations propagate new ones. But there is a difference between the churches and the science on the time scale. The mechanism works through centuries in the churches, while between groups of scientists the mechanism works through decades.

The huge difference is that religion goes far forward to other aspects of our life than nowadays science. Propagates common rites and common activities and committed to create communities. And these aspects are much more important in our daily life, than the origin of our galaxy. We are social species, we like to cooperate, we like our common constructions. This is, why people keep their religion despite its’ outdated scientific tenets.

God as the caretaking society

We humans are social animals. Living in a community and working for the community is the real source of our happiness. If we work for the community, then we are not alone, and we will see the caretaking of other people, which gives safety to the community. So, if we do not struggle for our own business, but struggle for others, then our community will be successful, and hopefully will take care of us. Our caretaking community which is beyond of us, individuals, manifests a higher level of organism. In other words, this is the providence, even in another word this is our caretaking God, the Father.

Why do we call him God and not society? Because this word emphasizes that he is above us. We must respect him. The word “society” – unless it is not a part of the name of a legal entity – is never initialized with capital letter. We think that the society equals with us, the society is we. The God as a notion is above us. Never mind if one believes in God or not, uses the notion in this term. We do not bargain with God. In our terminology people make a social contract with the society, with the government while people make alliance with God. In the first case we can decide whether we accept the contract or not. In the second case God offers us an alliance which is not worth to refuse.

So, the difference between the God and the society is in our mind. The difference is the respect, the admission of supremacy. People must surrender themselves to this supremacy. As the bee cannot live without the hive and must behave in compliance with the rules of the hive, the bee must surrender herself to the hive, so must we people surrender ourselves to our society. It is not so hard, because we have an innate instinct to do so.

God as the rule of cooperation

In our mind there is another aspect of God than the caretaking, the providence. This is the ruler, or the rule itself. We expect universal rules from God, and we expect that God will supervise the conformity with his rules. When individuals cooperate, share the labor which provides them mutual advantages, then this new cooperating unit is more competitive than the solitary individuals. This is the rule of cooperation which is explained detailed on these pages. This rule is not a rule for humanity. Every living organism on earth is a product of cooperation. And there is nothing what can limit the validity of this rule to Earth. This is a universal rule, applicable for every living or nonliving unit on earth or anywhere in the universe. This rule of cooperation is timeless. This means not only that it was valid in the past from the beginnings and will be valid in the eternity. This means also that the cooperation when creates a higher level of organization then also maintains its’ sustainability. Our cells can die but our body survives. Ants can die but the colony survives. The cells and the ants are working not only for themselves and not only for their contemporary cells and ants, but for the sustainability of the body and the sustainability of the colony. They work and cooperate for the future generations as well. Cooperation creates a unit of higher level.

This is the rule of cooperation, this is the essence of God, the spirit of him. The Spirit.

God as a model, as an exemplar

The third role which we usually assign to God that embodies as an exemplar for people. The embodied God, as a man shows in the everyday practice how to interpret the rules. Every religion has such exemplars: prophets, people who have reached nirvana, the messiah, saints. In polytheist religions gods are very human like so, they also can solve as an exemplar despite that they are sometimes not so immaculate and overgrown as we could wish.

Questions:

Because the editor of this page was grown up as a Roman Catholic, the later parts of this page reflect a Christian view of rationalization of God. The provident society, the role model and the rule of cooperation reflect the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit of catholic Trinity.

Probably other religions have as well concepts and notions which are hardly explainable with rational thinking. Like the catholic Trinity above, these notions surely also can be related somehow to cooperation, to game theory, to life criteria, etc. which makes them easier to understand for nowadays’ people. It is sure, because every religion has created successfully cooperating communities, so every religion must propone cooperation as a fundamental value.

Please help to create these relations between the fundamental values and notions of religions, and the values proponed on our site!