Tribal dogma - an observation.

Human offsprings are the most vulnerable to survive when left unattended. We cannot fend ourselves in early stages of life when compared to any other mammals or birds in the wild. Realization of this downside gave dawn to human nature of cooperation, that helped our ancestors thrive in the wild. This evolutionary stable strategy led to formation of clans and tribes. Anyone or anything outside our known world was perceived as threat. It was survival of the fittest then.

Power of nature and night sky were both felt and seen with fear and amusement. Unpredictable occurrence of certain natural events and inability to contain those with man power coaxed them to self submission. This ignorance to many natural phenomena threatened the tribe, in turn altered their mindset to adore and worship such events -The rise of ‘gods’. This devotion was nothing but the inability to exercise power. Diving deep into their minds, we now understand it was fear transmuted to worship, not love for 'god' .  The Sun worship is an evidence to it, among Incas, Mayans, Egyptians, in Shintoism, Hinduism and many other age-old cultures. Rituals and proceedings imbibed dynamic changes as generations passed. 

7000 years ago - still debatable - we then became wanderers and practiced organized farming. In certain old agrarian societies, rain was indispensable for survival as it’s the blood to crop cultivation. So, to keep track of occurrences of rainfall, the position of the sun in sky was tracked. A pattern was observed. We have to understand it is those times when watches or calendars were not even introduced to our consensus. As we progressed, we now know as to why there is a pattern seen in rainfall and position of the Sun in the sky - the Seasons.  Worshiping sun and rain then became an integral part of their life, however, the root cause was fear of threat to life. Geographical locations where rainfall was minimal, societies never worshiped Sun and never kept track of Sun’s positions in sky, instead, pattern or positions of moon was observed as a reference to keep track of days. This is why the Lunar calendar was followed by middle east cultures and associated religions. This in reality has nothing to do with religion but was just the way with which days, months and years were tracked down at a time when calendar never existed. Similarly in South Asian societies where farming was prominent, localized calendars existed that was way different from the calendars maintained by cultures of other geographies. The Gregorian calendar that we use today - solar based - as the international civil calendar is a successor of the Roman calendar that was lunar based. We all would have observed certain localized practices and how many of us were curious to ponder upon why certain practices are the way they are.!

Religion is a subset of culture. Cultures were pre-defined practices that were a necessity of a contemporary age. Some cultures deteriorated and were long forgotten, some withstood the oppression from new age ‘religions’. Certain cultures are now being called as religion, to correctly put - publicized as religion. The fact is, culture has nothing to do with religion but was just age old candidly practiced ways of life. These intrinsic nature of Culture and the so called religion possess enormous gaps with regards to how it is applied to the humans and human minds. The process of evolution injected the tribal instinct in all of us. All humans inherently have intrinsic tribalism.

Religion plays the con-man that manipulates this instinct by introducing a guardian god to instill fear. Because, without fear, religions don’t have traction and a firm base and cease to exist.

It’s always one's choice to practice what each of us believes in. We do not have a choice as to what social settings we are born into, so certain practices and beliefs are vital for social validation. But as we grow and expand our understanding about the outside world, we should educate ourselves as to why certain beliefs and practices exist. As time flies, logic behind certain practices becomes obsolete, but if social settings are not conducive to get rid of such practices, one thing that is still possible is not to preach about it. Let’s not etch such nonsense in the minds of coming generations. Nevertheless, practices that deliver peace to human existence - not religious existence - are to be retained. Beliefs, as the word suggests, is personal and private, and so it’s bigotry to impose one's beliefs over others. The unique characteristic of religion is that if one group unites against another, the other group also unites by its own without any external precondition as tribal instinct in us senses a threat.

There is data available that needs to be brought to the limelight, at least to educate on how religion and peace is correlated.

Source: https://www.visionofhumanity.org/maps/#/ 

The above infographics is one of many pieces of evidence that the countries with the highest level of peace are not the ones where majority preach religion, nor are they developed economies. There are few exceptions to it, but very minimal.

Economically backward societies are the most vulnerable to being puppeteered. The sense of being poor invokes fear, which triggers the dormant tribal instinct in each of us. They are then naturally attracted to various religious clans or groups that reduce their perceived sense of threat to survival. But, the affluent consider themselves to be privileged and self-sufficient. This halo effect does not drive a need to be part of any survival groups or any religious clan. So for the upholders of the religions, it is necessary to have a poverty stricken population and an enormous gap in income inequality to flourish.

If we take a close look at certain global indices, we find a pattern. Countries with people being less religious retain top positions in multiple indices namely Human Development Index(HDI), World Happiness Report, Global peace report, Good Country Index and more. This doesn’t mean to convey that people should be less religious. It’s just that these citizens live with good morale and harmony without being religious. This is all about being conscious of what is being practiced.

Embrace and enjoy one’s personal beliefs however it’s not wise to be slave to any religion. Show morality and righteousness, not for the religion we preach but for the humans we coexist with.