It would be interesting to see if the following could ever be taught in schools, or what the response would be:

“Early humans were faced with numerous phenomena they did not understand: thunder, lightning, diseases, storms, wildfires, volcanoes, earthquakes, meteors, and so on. In an effort to understand and define their surroundings, they created human-like gods to rule over these forces.

Early human society was probably much like modern chimpanzee society, with a typical alpha-male tribal structure. An angry alpha male was probably a common occurrence, and there are clear rituals for showing submission – the same is true for any social mammalian species, from zebras to wolf packs. Thus, early humans tried to placate these natural forces by offering prayers and gifts to them, and this is probably how the first notion of gods arose.

Other natural forces had a profoundly beneficial nature – rain made the grass grow, and food became abundant. These forces were ones that early humans would have wanted to encourage. These good gods and goddesses brought gifts to humanity, but other, more evil ones brought suffering.

Many different belief systems along these lines (good/evil) came into being as human society developed, and came to be a key part of the cohesiveness of social groups. In many cases, the professions of doctor and priest would overlap; in others the professions of king and priest would become the same. This went on for thousands of years, with varying results.

This really began to change with the rise of scientific explanations for natural phenomenon. First, the basic rules of motion on earth were shown to apply to the heavens as well, and then the universe began to get bigger and bigger, until in the early 20th century Hubble discovered the red-shifted galaxies and the expanding universe.

At the same time, there was a steady increase in knowledge of biological evolution and biochemistry. The unity of all life on earth became clear, as well as the descent of modern species from common ancestors. This all brought on a huge shift in religious attitudes, and a great loss in power for the religious authorities.

As psychology developed, the deadly sins – pride, envy, gluttony, lust, anger, greed, sloth – were no longer viewed as the temptations of Satan, but rather as hangovers from our animal past – primitive emotional states that could be controlled by the well-adjusted adult human mind, in the rational secularist viewpoint. That viewpoint can easily become its own religion, however, with scientists as the new high priests… but science has built-in defense mechanisms against authoritarian takeover.

The two big problems for traditional religion have been the sheer size of the Universe and the knowledge of our animalistic predecessors. This has led to a new religious interest in Very Big Concepts, such as “the Universe as God” and so on. My own favorite religious take is that God, bored with strictly deterministic universes, decided to create one that would be interesting yet quite unpredictable – thus, quantum mechanics and chaos.

So, that’s what science has done – relegated God to the outer reaches of cosmology, where He or She or It may be lurking quietly, just out of sight. For example, there is no more Vital Essence theory of living systems, in which life can only arise by a divine intervention (thus, no spontaneous generation is allowed).

However, when it comes to social norms and acceptable behavior, it seems that by and large both religious and secular philosophies come to the same basic conclusions about what is moral and ethical and what is not.

I have to ask, though, any of the taxi drivers grill you on “Stephen Hawkins”? Seems about half the taxi drivers I meet in Dublin seem to have recently watched something about black holes on TV. I have had some pretty strange conversations on the way back from a night out. One guy seemed to be particularly up on Schroedinger’s sex life. Weird.