RELIGION is a strictly human infirmity. No other animal has it. It originated far back in the past, when the human world was young and the mind just beginning to open. It is an anachronism today, with our science and understanding. It survives solely by the force of tradition.
Religion came out of the brain of the savage. It has been revised and revised, in adaptation to the changing knowledge of men, but it has always retained the unmistakable earmarks of its genesis.
Religion has had a natural origin. It has been produced, like everything else, in the laboratory of this world. Nothing is above Nature. There is no such thing as the supernatural. This is one of the glories of modem science—the discovery that everything on the earth is a part of the earth and shares in its nature the general nature of the earth.
We used to talk about “Man and Nature”—as if man were not a part of Nature; and about “Man and the Animals”—as if man were not an animal. But these ideas are passing away forever. There is not one law for the insect and another for the philosopher. The earth is a unit. The human body is made of the same matters as those that sing in the streams, and roar in the winds, and sleep in the everlasting rocks. The human brain is a tissue which a hundred million years ago lined the mouth- roofs of worms. Some one has admiringly defined man as an animated carrot. Chemically considered, he is but an inglorious gruel of sand and sea-water.
The primitive mind was steeped in supernaturalism. Everything was supposed to be caused by spirits. When a tree fell in the forest, it fell because some spirit threw it down. Gravity had nothing to do with it. If the tree fell on some one, it was supposed to have been thrown that way on purpose by an evil spirit. When a man got sick or lost his mind, it was because some evil spirit had wormed its way into the man and pushed the rightful spirit out. There were no microbes among savages. In the Bible and other primitive books we read constantly of the “casting out” of evil spirits. Instead of anti-toxins, primitive doctors used magic, vile drugs, and noise to drive out the spiritual interlopers.
During all the earlier ages of the world man’s great and abiding anxiety was to act in such a way as to gain the favor of the good spirits and to outwit the evil ones. Ghosts, gods, goblins, spirits, demons, fairies and what not, swarmed about him from his cradle to his grave. He prayed and offered sacrifices; he sprinkled himself with holy water; he sang praises; he built temples; he prostrated himself in fear and supplication. It is pitiful to think how much time and money and energy and agony man has used up escaping the creatures oi his own imagination.
To a savage, things are what they seem to be. He doesn’t trouble himself to go behind appearances to find causes. The sun actually rises and sets, as it seems to do. The earth cannot turn round on its axis, because it is flat, and because we would all fall off on the under side.
Religion is a child of wonder. It is the first roughdraft of man’s explanation of the universe. The sub-human mind takes things for granted. It is without curiosity. Man’s mind asks why. Religion is an unsuccessful attempt to put two and two together. Man saw a black thing running by his side, and he wondered what it was. He bent down over the pool to drink and he saw something down there looking up at him, and his wonder deepened.
To the savage, a shadow is a reality, and the image he sees when he looks into the water is one of his souls. The Greenlanders believe that their shadow is one of their souls. The Fijians call it “the dark spirit.” The Basutos (Africa) are careful when they walk near the water to see that their shadow does not fall in, for fear the crocodile will get it and pull them in with it.
The savage knows nothing of the undulatory theory of sound. He never even suspects that the air is a substance. But he does believe that back of everything that happens is a spirit. Echoes are the voices of spirits calling from the invisible world to their friends here in the world of matter.
Savages are reluctant about having their picture taken. They believe that photographic impression is something taken out of them. Maybe it is their ‘‘life,” and the loss will prove important in time.
Dreams are actual experiences to the savage. In sleep the soul leaves the body and wanders in the spirit-world. This spirit-world of the sleeper evolves later into the future world or heaven of more advanced peoples. If it had not been for the phenomenon of dreams, it is doubtful whether man ever would have succeeded in inventing the belief in a hereafter. Death to the savage is an “eternal sleep,” when the soul leaves the body for good, and wanders endlessly among the spirits of invisible spheres.
Hell was the headquarters of the evil spirits. It had to be located somewhere, so it was placed in the earth. Heaven was up among the stars, and was supposed to be only a few hours’ journey above the earth. According to the ancient Hebrew conception, the sky was the metallic floor of the celestial regions, and the stars were the openings thru which angels and prophets came and went in their journeyings between heaven and earth. The rain did not come from the sea, but from these “windows of heaven,” which were opened now and then. At the time of the Flood these windows were fastened open for 40 days, and the water poured thru until it was 4 or 5 miles deep all over the earth. Whatever became of all this water no one has ever yet made plain.
The idea of hell is rapidly becoming extinct. It is too repellant for anything but a very dull or a very cruel mind. We hold on to heaven because it is pleasant. But it must not be overlooked that heaven and hell are twins. They came together out of the same womb of primitive superstition. They rest on identical foundations. Man is a comical animal. He thinks he is logical.
The human mind is in its infancy. Man is a recent species. Mankind will live for millions of years. The short past is as nothing compared with the almost-endless ages to come.
Religion is essentially pre-scientific. It will pass away. It represents a certain stage of mental development. It has been tinkered with and tinkered with, until it is about ready for the scrap heap. The more men know of chemistry and physics and evolution and natural law, the less use they have for supernaturalism. No true scientist can pray. Prayer is unscientific. No evolutionist can believe in the divine origin of anything.
Religion has had a natural origin, like coal, and rock salt, and mountains, and river valleys, and everything else. It has been made in the laboratory of human feeling and imagination. The gods did not make men; men made the gods.
J. Howard Moore
International Socialist Review, June 16, 1916, pp. 726-7