Religion Evolves

Religion evolves
You can watch it
It evolves
I spent my whole life perplexed by religiousness
Front doorstep debating with Jehova's witnesses
I was a teenaged empirical thinker,
A spiritual seeker
Obsessed with rap
I considered it lyrical research
This was the medium that I could think & speak in.
Flippin' ridiculous figures of speech over beats like every weekend.
My CD collection became my personal gospel.
I was an apostle, like Thomas, wondering was it impossible
To rock shows & still be thoughtful
So paradoxical
Speakin' in tongues all over the drums like Pentecostals

I figured if I could master the craft I could start a new religion
Devoid of superstition,
a descendent of secular humanism
With the ecstatic rituals of ancient mystical
Shamanistical
Vision, except based on philosophical naturalism
Which means no counterfactual claims, no supernatural,
Nothin' but reason & evidence,
troops salute the rational
In my religion the truth is sacred
& science adjudicates it
& meditation is cool if you wanna find your buddha nature.
But human nature exists too
& it's not rude to face it
Enlightenment comes when we understand how evolution shapes it.

It's a demon-haunted world
You can take it from Carl Sagan,
Whether Christian or Pagan,
Religion evolves
Whether it benefits one of us or whether it benefits all
Adaptive problems are gonna get solved
Religion evolves
The bigger the scale of a society
The bigger the gods
People get along when someone's watchin' them,
Religion evolves
We'll send a rocket on a manned mission to mars
If the holy wars don't kill us first,
Let's hope religion evolves.

I'll turn my religion upon itself like an ouroboros
Religion evolves
it adapts, ask a biologist
A cognitive psychologist,
A sociologist
An anthropologist
A behavioral ecologist,
Religion is all of this
2 or 3 new religions get founded a day
They're just like rap artists
most of them won't be around in a decade
They all compete for space & followers & human devotion
Religion evolves
Cause many are called but few are chosen
Approximately ten thousand religions are currently active,
So forgive me if I don't ask which exact version you practice
Chances are, flip of a coin, it's probably Abrahamic
Half the planet is either Christian or Jewish or Islamic
We can track the demographics
Study the epidemiology
But human beings have been religious since before the holocene
12, 000 years ago
agricultural revolution
Prior to that, most of our significant evolution
Small scale societies surviving in the pleistocene
Had a strong incentive to unite like a hive of bees
Religion is a device for binding people tribally
& if you're in my tribe,
well then I'll die for you
& you'll die for me.

It's a demon-haunted world
You can take it from Carl Sagan,
Whether Christian or Pagan,
Religion evolves
Whether it benefits one of us or whether it benefits all
Adaptive problems are gonna get solved
Religion evolves
The bigger the scale of a society
The bigger the gods
People get along when someone's watchin them
Religion evolves
We'll send a rocket on a manned mission to mars
If the holy wars don't kill us first,
Let's hope religion evolves.

Religion is an evolved mental technology
Definitely
But did it evolve culturally
or did it evolve genetically?
Or is it a byproduct of several other mental capacities
that evolved independently and separately
Function adaptively
Like agency detection systems triggered hyperactively
Or theory of mind
which means reading people tactically
Like, I know what you're thinkin'-
Who the hell is Baba Bringman?
Is he some kind of cross between a prof and juvenile delinquent?
Yeah that's right
that's what I am
Now let's get back to the question at hand
I have a conscious mind and I'll try to predict your thoughts as best I can
& I predict you've never considered what religion is adapted for
Or if you have, then I predict you've never heard it rapped before.
So how do I know it's adaptive?
It could be random drift
It could be a byproduct of something else that has adaptiveness
Like your belly button, which is amazing,
but it's not really for naval gazing;
Nah, it's a side effect of your umbilical cord
So religion might be a viral meme that's parasitic
Or it might be an adaptation that maximizes descendents
It might benefit individuals
or it might benefit whole groups
or it might be the invention of cynical priests trying to control you
Or it might be a belly button byproduct
or adaptive in the past
and maladaptive in the present
These are good questions to ask
& science can find the ansswers
& the answers are non-obvious
Except the answer to where religion doesn't come from:
Devine providence.