Science and Myth: Top 5 Adaptive Traits of Successful Religions

How do mythic traditions survive through the centuries? How do they thrive? By bringing together science and myth, an evolutionary perspective might help us think about these questions.

By "success" I mean long-time survival. I don't even begin to consider the moral value or truth-content of religious teachings--all that is placed in brackets. This is an evolutionary view based on the history of religions.

Consider the possibility of the following top five list.

Top 5 adaptive features of successful religions

1. Continuity of motifs defining the religion

2. Vertical transmission

3. Ethics defining the in-group

4. Placeholder terms

5. Paradox

1. Continuity of motifs defining the religion

This is the single most important feature determining success. In order for a religion to propagate itself, it must establish and maintain a recognizable identity. It doesn't necessarily require a name for itself or an identity as a religion per se, but it does require something to delineate what is and isn't part of the package that must be passed on to the next generation. Many indigenous religions, such as Shinto, had no name until the introduction of foreign religions necessitated a way to distinguish the local from the alien. Others had no overt identity as religions per se--ancient Greek had no word for "religion" (the closest was theon timai, "honors for the gods"). But it is absolutely necessary for a religion to delineate its key motifs in some way. The signal must be separable from the noise. Thus religions throughout history have developed special motifs to mark off the sacred from the mundane. They may be visual symbols like totem poles, crosses, or mosques, auditory symbols like hymns, chants, or special styles of music, or linguistic symbols like divine names, myths, or doctrines. They may be temporal symbols like annual festivals or rites of passage. Finally, they may be ethical symbols like ritual, prayer, or taboo. Most all religions feature a combination of these motifs.

All successful religions develop a canon of such motifs to identify what is to be propagated. Without it, a would-be religion would be lost in the wash of custom, extinct before it even came into existence. And without maintaining such a canon, an established religion would be absorbed into competing religions. This is what happened to Buddhism in Medieval India: it effectively died out in its birthplace because it was no longer sufficiently different from Hinduism. A canon of motifs functions to define the unit of transmission.

Interestingly, it is not necessary that exactly the same set of motifs carry on down through the ages. It is only necessary that a continuity of motifs be passed on. Modern Judaism bears little resemblance to the semi-polytheistic sacrificial temple religion of ancient Jerusalem, but a continuous lineage links the transformations from the one to the other. Japanese Buddhism is virtually unrecognizable compared with the religion founded in the 5th century BCE by Siddhartha Gautama, but again a lineage connects them.

2. Vertical transmission

The second most important feature is vertical transmission. Transmission of some kind is necessary as a matter of course: a religion of one person is no religion at all. All religions feature transmission. But vertical transmission--that is, transmission through the generations via family lines--is a feature of highly adaptive religions. The other kind is horizontal transmission--that is, transmission via dissemination and conversion. Horizontal transmission is also adaptive, but mainly as a supplement to vertical transmission. Religions consisting solely of converts rarely last. Those that inculcate religion into the young at an early age ensure deeply committed followers bonded to each other by family ties. Due to the immense importance of vertical transmission, religions conducive to large families survive better, if only because they can out-breed their rivals. Thus, those associated with agricultural peoples, whose many children are needed to work the fields, have an advantage in this regard.

3. Ethics defining the in-group

The next most important feature is ethics, but not in any moral sense of the word. Rather, the sense is of a set of prescribed and proscribed behaviors serving to separate the in-group from the out-group. When followers are restricted from partaking in certain common activities, like eating pork, they are discouraged from mingling with outsiders. This serves to protect the all-important canon of motifs from becoming diluted with foreign influences. When followers are exhorted to partake in certain prescribed activities, like eating only food that is halal, they are encouraged to congregate together. This serves to keep children with parents and therefore ensure vertical transmission. The saying "The family that prays together stays together" should actually be amended to "The family that prays together stays faithful to the religion."

Dietary restrictions are by no means the only relevant ethics--there are innumerable taboos and ritualistic behaviors that serve the function of separating in-group from out-group. However, diet does seem to deserve special mention, as it is known the world over and is superbly effective. Contemporary Malaysia is a jumble of ethnic groups and religions, but syncretization is stymied in no small part thanks to diet. The Malays can only eat at Muslim kitchens with halal utensils and menus. The Hindu Tamils do not eat beef and so are unlikely to frequent Muslim kitchens and likely to seek out Hindu ones. The Chinese have no special dietary restrictions and so can eat where they like, but that same freedom means that Muslims and Hindus are unlikely to frequent Chinese kitchens. Thus, the breaking of bread together--a key act of good will between peoples--is effectively discouraged. The result is a society boiling with ethnic-religious tension, but extremely adaptive from a religious evolutionary perspective. At the cost of social peace, religions maintain their canons of motifs.

4. Placeholder terms

Of great importance is the strategic use of placeholder terms. By "placeholder terms" I mean key religious terms, the meanings of which are defined so vaguely as to invite a wide range of interpretation. Such terms include god, spirit, truth, wisdom, justice, good, evil, and so on. These terms give a semblance of meaning immediately recognizable to all followers, but their precise meanings are so vague that they can be made to support nearly any policy or agenda that happens to arise. This is vitally important to the long-term survival of religions. As centuries pass and values change, the old motifs must be continually reinvigorated with new meanings. If the key terms are too rigidly defined, they become irrelevant when the social context that gave rise to them is no longer present. Thus, to allow for changing contexts, the terms must remain vague, even vacuous. Each generation fills them with new meanings, all the while purporting to carry on the "ancient" tradition. Reforms in religions are frequently presented as a return to old ways: the previous generations' meanings are declared corrupt and degenerate, and new meanings are attached under the smokescreen of "getting back to basics." American currency says "In God we trust", and a new generation of religious pundits have successfully filled that phrase with their new evangelistic, creationistic, and political meanings, even though the founding fathers were mostly Deists and meant something very different by the word "God." Proponents of keeping the phrase "In God we trust" on the currency say "God" is open to interpretation, thus emptying the term of specific meaning. At the same time, pundits fill it up again with their highly-specific meanings in order to push their politics. Through this example it can clearly be seen how the term is merely a placeholder for the values and agendas of the moment. The strategic use of placeholder terms allows a religion to stay limber while maintaining the continuity of its motifs.

5. Paradox

Finally, the fifth highly-adaptive feature of religions is effective use of paradox. By "paradox" I mean something not immediately obvious, something that frustrates the conventional, mundane reasoning process and opens a follower to the mysterious. This could be something which by ordinary standards is "impossible." Miracles are by definition impossible, though they purportedly happen nonetheless. It could also be something unanswerable by ordinary means, such as the question of why we exist or what happens after we die. It could also be something beyond the ken of ordinary perception, such as invisible spirits shooting elf shot to cause illness.

Such uses of paradox are adaptive for several reasons. First, they awaken followers to the limitations of their own understanding, thus making them more receptive to understandings transmitted as part of the religion's package of motifs. Second, they make the followers dependent on the religion's motifs to explain the paradox. Third and finally, they cause those who feel "deep in their heart" a given response to the paradox to seek the company of likeminded souls. Humans seem to have a psychological need to be "understood" by their fellows. Thus, followers retreat from those who do not share their religious feelings and congregate with those who do. Contemporary Pagans have hit upon "magic" as a paradox sufficiently mysterious to make them seek out each other and remain reticent around those who "just don't get it."

This congregation based on common feeling bonds the community together, serving to enhance the functioning of the previous four adaptive features. Followers express their paradoxical feelings in terms of their religion's canonical motifs, transmit their feelings to their young in these terms, and adopt the religion's ethics in order to be part of the group of those who "feel the same."

Note there is nothing indicating followers do in fact feel the same phenomenological experience. Placeholder terms allow individual, unique, and radically different feelings to be expressed in common linguistic forms, creating the perception of sameness. This sameness may be genuine, or it may be an illusion. So long as a religion's placeholder terms are vague enough to accommodate all the followers' different experiences, a perception of in-group commonality can arise and be maintained. Thus Episcopalians and Evangelicals and Roman Catholics and Coptics and Quakers and Snake-handlers can all feel they have a common bond through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, even though the personal experiences of all these different followers are likely to be radically different.

Conclusion

These are the top five features determining the long-term "success" (evolutionary survival) of religions. Most religions in history have featured them in some way, and those that have not have died out or been absorbed into other religions.

Bringing science and myth together in this way can help us clarify how we think about religions.

Have I missed any that should be in the top five?

Explore more of the relationship of science and myth at the website Humanistic Paganism.

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Is Astrology a True Science? Part II

This is a very deep and vast subject and you will not find these answers at your local book store, or from a collection of the National Enquirer. These words come from a line of Spiritual Masters whom spoke from a state of cosmic consciousness to teach us divine strategies.

All things in the universe attract one another either by strong or weak gravitational electromagnetic impulses. Thus the influences of the planets is nothing but ones environment which is dependent upon your own karma. It is you who attracts such influences as a certain husband, wife, friend or family. You draw a specific person born to a specific sign. There are planetary influences where you have a hard time getting along with specific people who are there to teach you specific attitudes. You must understand that anything that happens to you in life sub serves a divine purpose. You may say "oh I have the wrong wife, oh I have the wrong husband." They are there attracted by your own inner environmental magnetic field which I will further explain. When you let yourself be governed by the environment to which your karma has magnetically drawn you, you are ruled by the vibrations of that particular planet.

Astrology is the mathematics of our life and the mathematics of our actions. So how are we going to disconnect ourselves from the stars which have great power to affect us. Well actually it is quite difficult to do so especially if we do not meditate, here is why, according to the masters in the science of astrology you very quickly realize you are not dealing with ethics, moral codes or constitutional rights, but with cosmic laws and magnetic forces few people are aware of and we find the relation of the stars to the body and mind are very subtle.

Putting aside the mundane type of astrology of charting horoscopes from the testimony of clocks and calendars, let me tell you about a deeper science. Spiritualizing the twelve signs of the zodiac is a science so advanced it speeds up man's evolution. It is a true science practiced by great masters and their disciples using two special techniques, known to the practitioners as Hong-Sau and Kriya Yoga.

The Kriya Yoga technique is always preceded by a special breathing technique called Hong-Sau. These are powerful techniques. One hour of Hong-Sau is equal to going into a Trappist monastery, entering into a cell and remaining there for twelve hours praying unceasingly. Now, one hour of Kriya Yoga is equivalent to twelve hours of Hong-Sau. Why? The master explains that the natural evolution of mankind, the unenlightened masses will be enlightened through thousands and thousands of incarnations automatically as the earth rotates around the sun in three hundred and sixty five days going around the twelve signs of the zodiac. A similar occurrence takes place in your body. Your spiritual eye is the sun and the twelve signs of the zodiac are your six chakras, six up and six down and by polarity that makes twelve. It will require one million revolutions of the current going up and down the spine until every cell of your body has the proper frequency to receive the final charge of cosmic consciousness for enlightenment to come to you as a cosmic flash of light.

The masters devised a technique duplicating the cosmic motion of nature in exactly thirty one seconds causing a motion of current going up and down the spine giving you one year of evolution each time you do one Kriya technique, like the time machine of H.G. Wells, and if you can do one million Kriyas in one lifetime you can attain cosmic consciousness. There are thousands of people quietly practicing these sacred techniques all over the world and only those with good karma end up actually getting Kriya as you must practice the technique of Hong-Sau for several months to condition your body before you can practice Kriya Yoga. A full explanation may not be given to the general public because of certain yogic injunctions, but it can be given from an authorized instructor of Self-Realization Fellowship in Los Angeles or Yogoda Satsanga Society of India. However a broad explanation must be sufficient. For more information see chapter 26, "The Science of Kriya Yoga" in the book Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda. This book has transformed the lives of thousands seeking the spiritual path.

There is a relation of our spinal plexus to the signs of the zodiac. We have an outer and an inner universe working together. We have the sun and the earth rotating around the signs of the zodiac. Attraction and repulsion causes these currents in the spine to move up and down the same way the earth rotates around the sun in twelve months. These currents, at the same time, are moving through our spine every year charging our thirty thousand billion cells with higher frequencies. However, we immediately waste them away with either too much sex, disease, over eating, drinking or smoking; we overdo everything except when we meditate. The coexistence of a loose emotional life and the great science of yoga will never work. Instead we are constantly depleting ourselves of properly charging our chakras with energy by putting it into our five senses. The repulsive cosmic illusion (maya) brings our consciousness downward from the heart-center to the sub-conscious.

Most people don't meditate so when we allow our feelings to reside in the three lower chakras of the spine it causes forty two physiological and emotional imbalances such as suspicion, criticism, gossip, resentment, worry and everything else that hurts is all located in these lower chakras. The energy located in the lower chakras is weak because it is not yet awakened to help us when our consciousness is there. The great magnet called kundalini or coiled-energy has not being properly distributed in every chakra to harmonize itself; the energy is all locked up at the base of the spine ceaselessly dragging us downward like a gravitational wave hence here is the power of repulsion which brings us into the five senses of maya, the cosmic illusion, the great power of attraction.

The masters tell us there are two sets of powers we have to face. All parts of creation are linked together in interchanging influences. The balance and rhythms of the universe are rooted in reciprocity, that is as long as our consciousness is in our lower chakras, we must go through that balance, the duel scale of maya where every pleasure is balanced with a pain. Now if we can lift that great cosmic energy in the spine to the spiritual eye and we function in the higher chakras, we can be in the world with every sphere of consciousness and still be uninfluenced by the world. The first force we must deal with is the tumult within our being caused by the mixture of earth, water, air, fire and ethereal elements. These elements are uncontrollable inharmonious stirred forces of the lower chakras and are the ones constantly affecting us. These magnets draw upon us positive and negative attraction so each time we feel worried, anxious or fearful we are living in these lower chakras which gradually impregnate our subconscious mind with negative magnets and every fear, worry and the like get drawn back toward us. Only we can balance our chakras through yoga-meditation or the spiritual masters, but they are not allowed to do so.

Cosmic energy is constantly fed with positive electromagnetic energy from outer space and it enters into the medulla oblongata through the lower back of the head where we have a positive and a negative antenna in both sides and when it enters the medulla it forms a number of magnetically attracting centers of energy, chakras and consciousness. Each human being carries a bundle of these magnets which draw positive or negative attraction according to their strength. Our inner spine is actually our magnetic field and we attract to ourselves that which is good or bad. Our thoughts determines what kind of energy goes into our chakras. Thoughts are not energy, they are portions of consciousness. Our thirty thousand billion cells are thirty thousand billion portions of ourselves and when our thoughts go down our consciousness goes down with it, straight into our sub-conscious mind. Here, in the realm of the sub-conscious, our consciousness encounters the great library of multi-personalities of about five hundred thousand past incarnations and according to our current mental environment various personalities begins to manifest in the conscious mind. For instance, modern psychiatry is a bit lost in accepting multi-personalities but we do indeed have multi-personalities. We have had countless sub-conscious video taping from incarnation to incarnation from the diversity of people we have met and the many situations we have lived which influences our brain daily but we are unable to perceive how we change and affect our bodies and minds with our actions and how these changes affect our chakras in the spine. These centers are directly correlated with the twelve sings of the zodiac and hold great electrical currents with millions of volts locked up inside.

No matter what the environment we live in, all the surroundings rays of earth and the universe react upon our bodies. As we respond to these rays, there is a reaction between them and the stars around our bodies. These rays around our bodies are what we call aura. The aura is the radiation emitted by our thirty thousand billion cells. Certain negative or destructive vibrations radiates from the stars due to the attraction of past karmic blueprints in the computer of our sub-conscious mind. These specific destructive vibrations begin to shed their rays upon us and if our shield is strong there will be no reaction because we will be impervious to their rays. The cosmic rays will have power to affect us only if our biorhythms are low or if our mind and immunity are weakened by lack of exercise, too much sexual activity or wrong eating. As long as we train ourselves to keep our bodies in shape, fast regularly, watch our diet, never eat pork (that's right) , pork can be deadly, be cautious with eating beef and very careful not to weaken our aura by letting disease or destructive forces enter our magnetic field to affect us, we can develop a strong protective shield.

The inner spine is the most important part of our being. It is alright to run, jog and train the body to keep it fit but we must put the same amount or even more efforts in meditation so to develop the power of attraction toward God until it becomes more powerful than the repulsive attraction of consciousness to the human body because we can have a perfect body in this lifetime but if our chakras are not awakened, forget it, as long as we have human desires we shall have a human body. Only when we have no more human desires we will have no more forced reincarnation in a human body.

Every part of the ego that has been given to us has been given to mislead us. Burton Russel once said, "Oh Lord, if you will forgive me for the little joke I did to you, I will forgive you the big joke you did to me" and what does that mean? It means the moment God gave us ego-consciousness we live in a state of amnesia as spiritual paraplegics and this is what the masters refer to as the spine becoming spiritually paralyzed. We need to walk in the state of intuitive awareness. The great masters and yogis are souls walking with a body (aware of its divine nature) and we are bodies walking with a soul. That makes a world of difference in the kind of perception we have around us. We must all become spiritual paratroopers and not be afraid to jump into the infinite.

Do you believe there is a divine plan for every life? One is an astrological plan and the other is a divine plan. The first has everything already written about us and our ego-consciousness as puppets of destiny in a marionette show. The latter gives us an opportunity to change and bypass the show. God's divine plan gives us the opportunity for free choice. Read " Is Astrology A True Science" (Part 1)

Copyright 2008 Gary Zalben. You may reprint this article as long as the source is kept intact. For more information about the author and self-improvement writings see http://www.howtoselladeadhorse.com

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