RELIGION AND REALITY

Religion is a form of magic.  Elements of this magical system are as follows:  a higher being exists who controls our lives, but he is invisible; his works are great, but they can not be proven to have occurred; wine is turned to blood and wafers into flesh, but no chemical analysis can confirm this; believers go to heaven and sinners to hell, but neither destination can be directly observed; the faithful will one day be raised up from the dead, but the timetable is uncertain.

Supernatural concepts are present throughout recorded history and undoubtedly existed in the world of early man.  When catastrophic events, or even unusually favorable ones, cannot be explained rationally, the imagination must take over and provide answers.  If a plague kills thousands of people, God is angry and demonstrating to his followers that they must be more pious.  Several bad crops in a row are the result of not making sufficient sacrifices.  An earthquake that destroys a city occurs because of the sinful behavior of its citizens.  Malformed births are the devil’s work.  A major success on the battlefield shows that God is on the side of the victors.

Such conclusions are clearly irrational, but religion is not about reason.  Rather, faith becomes a key factor in guiding and affecting human behavior.  If you believe strongly enough, you can make your cancer disappear.  If you pray hard enough, your kidnapped child will be returned to you unharmed.  If you sacrifice a calf, or attend mass every day, or contribute heavily to your local synagogue, church or mosque, your most fervent wishes will be granted without any further action on your part.

It is true that blessings and prayers can have beneficial psychological impacts on people suffering from various maladies.  If an individual’s belief structure is strong enough, a complete cure might actually be achieved.  This is an example of the body responding to strong guidance from a person’s mind, not from a fictitious external entity.  In other cases, people are cured, goals are achieved, fortunes are won, and adversity is overcome through totally random sequences of events.  Yet, if the beneficiaries of these favorable outcomes proffered sacrifices, prayers, or promises to their god or gods prior to having their desires fulfilled, then they became all the more convinced that their strong faith is what made it happen.