[nexxo]

OK, just for the heck of it...

Religion is not about principles, or morals, or philosophy, not really. It's about attachment (Attachment? Yup, for the psychology grads amongst you, just read a bit of Bowlby).

Basically, attachment refers to the strong emotional bond that exists between a child and caregiver (usually parent); more specifically, the "secure base" that the parent provides for a child from which to explore the world (think how a crawling infant stays within a certain "action radius" of its mother), and to which it can return when it feels frightened, insecure or hurt. All children sort of know they depend on their parents (think of the terror a child can feel when it suddenly finds itself lost in a shop or crowd, for instance), on a very instinctual, pre-verbal level. Since we're talking basic survival here, you can rest assured that attachment is a very instinctual drive. Animals have it too, but there the phenomenon is referred to as "imprinting" on the parent.

Attachment never stops. As we grow up, and more independent, we can tollerate a greater physical and psychological distance between us and the caregiver; we go to school, we leave home, etc. But at the same time we "internalise" our secure base. We learn to depend on ourselves in the way we depended on our parents, because we internalise their caring for (and about) us in our caring for (and about) ourselves. You can see how attachment issues form the basis of many psychological problems (particulatly where dependency --either on drugs or on people-- play a part). Moreover, our attachment experiences influence the emotional bonds we form with our friends, our life partners, and our children.

No matter how grown-up we are, the world remains a scary, and dangerous place. It's a big universe out there, and the more we learn about its vastness, the more we feel like an insignificant speck. We will still feel that yearning for a "secure base", and the more insecure (and immature?) amongst us will feel it stronger. So we create a new "attachment figure", in the image of a parent as seen by a very small child: all powerful, all wise, all loving, or, if you had the bad luck of growing up in less fortunate circumstances perhaps: all authoritarian, unpredictable, demanding, abusive. Sometimes, God is just an attachment figure. And to think that we're all alone (like Evolutionism would seem to suggest, for instance), is very scary, and therefore meets with fear and hostility.

And with this attachment comes the primitive, almost magical thinking of a child. That is another reason why Evolutionism doesn't go down well-- there seems to be no simple cause-effect relationships here, and it is very hard to get your head around principles like Critical Dependence on Initial Conditions, or Emergence phenomena, which are part of how a tree gets created, seemingly, "out of thin air".

Don't get me wrong. Religion, like any beliefs or preferably, ideas, can be a powerfully good thing or powerfully evil. But let's not lose perspective. Let's acknowledge being human. After all, in this world, we only have each other. There's no justice, but in us. No love, but in us. No mercy, no faith, no compassion, but in us. There's just us.