Atheism, Society, and the Human Condition

by Fred Mitchell

Deities: Why do we have them?

Throughtout all of human history, humans have nearly always clung to a deity of some sort. What I wish to attempt to address here is my views on why that is, and highlight some of the "drivining forces" behind this phenomonon. In this discussion, I will also touch lightly on memetics and their role in deistic belief systems.

A human mind comprises many modalities. Modalities are driven by a complex process that encompasses past experiences and learnt knowledge. Modalities are not necessarily fixed in stone, but do change over time, and their relationship to each other and the learnt knowledge and past experiences is a complex and non-linear one.

Modalities

I shall attempt to define these modalities. A modality is a basal emotional or response construct with evolutionary underpinnings that is heavily influenced by its interaction to its enviorment. "Environment" in this context encompases both internal and external influences, and the molded history that is the knowledge and experiences.

Modalities influence how, the form of, and the quality of what is formed and retained as experience and knowledge. Conversely, the very same knowledge and experience influences the nature and function of the modalities in complex ways.

There exists a generalization of modalities that is fairly common to all humans, and is the result of deep emergent phenononea hosted in how our brains are configured. I will regard the details of that configuration as relatively unimportant to this discussion, even though, in actuality, they are extremely important to who and what we are.

Now, it is all to obvious that we, as human beings, do not exist in isolation. In fact, we are extremely social beings. We love to interact. We are not mentally healthy if deprived of this interaction with fellow humans. It is very intrinsic to what we are as a species. Also, it should be painfully obvious that as a result of this extremely strong social drive, we heavlily influence each other's modalities. A large part of that knowledge and experience is related to aspects of that interaction with regards to our fellow beings. Indeed, our culture and codes of conduct are all a strong part of that knowledge and experience.

One modality prompts us to ask questions. It is a modality of curiosity that leads us to seek out new knowledge and understanding. I would consider it our most important modality, for it is largely responsible for our personal growth and development as social beings. From the time we are infants, we seek a mode of interaction with our environment with the goal to elicit more information from that environment. As we develop, the curiosity modality itself grows and develops and becomes more sophisticated and refined, which of course, influences what it seeks out as new knowledge.

Other important modalites are fear and greed. Both of these modalities arose from very primal evolutionary pressures directly tied to the most basics of survival -- self preservation related drives so that we might live to reproduce that next offspring -- and to ensure the offspring lives to produce its own offspring. The fear modality is perhaps the most powerful, as it relates to alertness in dealing with immediate potential threats to survival, and therefore propels our actions accordingly. Greed is more casual and can take longer to operate. It is subsumed by fear, of course, but it does lead us to want that which will -- as we preceive -- ensure our survival in the long run.

We can see fear and greed in its most raw form operating in our markets of exchange. Fear patterns tend to manifest themselves more quickly than greed patterns, which take longer to manifest. In the average person, fear has a tendency to overrule all other emotions.

So now we have a modality triad -- curiosity, fear, and greed. These three modalities are not isolated, but do influence each other in very complicated but significant ways. And all three also heavily influence the knowledge and experiencial factors.

And you are probably wondering when we will finially get to the issues of deities and the prevelance of beliefs thereof. Hang in there, we will get to it eventually. I think the background discussion is important for a full understanding.

Curiosity, Fear and Greed -- The most important modalitites

Life is a very nonlinear process. Human perception is driven by this nonlinearlity, and thus itself nonlinear. I emphasise this nonlinearity for one important reason: it is a human tendency to oversimply and to impose a weak linear model where the reality is actually nonlinear. Linear systems, after all, is far eaiser for the human mind to grasp and understand. Linear models (and modalitites) are more "intuitive", and actually do work in very limited domains. The problem arises when the limited domains is assumed to extend into the nonlinear spaces.

Modalities influnence each other by 2 means: (a) reflexive link, and (b) cognitive link. The reflexive link is an "automatic" link that requires no cognition. An example of a reflexive link is the flight response to a condition in the envirornment that is seen as immediately dangerous. The fear modality immediately invokes a flight modality, and the subject then takes immediate action that is hoped to remove the subject from the dangerous condition.

Curiosity

The Curiosity Modality (henceforth we shall refer to it as simply "Curiosity") drives us to seek perpetual novelty. Once we become used to a thing, we become "bored" with a thing, and are thus driven to seek a new thing to satisify Curiosity. We become bored with a thing when we've learnt everything distinctive about that thing's qualities, dynamics, etc. When there is nothing new to learn, we then "discard" the thing for the sake of Curiosity -- though the thing might serve a utiltarian role in some other aspect of our lives.

I would like to state that Curiosity is the sole modality that clearly sets humans apart from most other animals on this planet -- as far as we know. Humans express a deeper a richer variety of activities and achivements than all the other species combined. Curiosity has taken us to the furthest reaches of the planet -- and even off the planet. Curiosity has lead to great creative enterprises such as liteature, the arts, science, mathematics, phiolosphy, and religion. Curiosity has also spurred us to live in a variety of ways -- urban, rural, primal, wealth, poverty, cold and warm climates, etc. We also eat an immense variety of foods and groom ourselves in an immense variety of ways. Curiosity has also lead to many different social systems of varying sizes. And on and on.

Now, for what was mentioned above, it is clear that Curiosity was not the only driving force. Surely Greed and Fear modalities plays a huge role as well in many human activitves.

Fear

The Fear Modality (henceforth we shall refer to it as simply "Fear") drives us to seek immediate protection. Fear has a viseceral aspect which makes it especially powerful (and therefore more primal). Fear has the power to subsume all other modalities. It leads to surges of adrenalin in our bodies to prime us for an immediate "fight or flight" response. Fear is not a cognitive-based modality, which makes it so dangerous. For Fear subsumes cognition.

Fear causes us to act irrationaly, and has been the subtext for many, if not most of the atrocities in human history. Fear subsumes even moral modalities and leads us to destroy our fellow social beings, even ones that we might have had favorable interactions with in the past. In social orders that have a hierarchial power structure, Fear is the glue that is used to maintain that social order.

Greed

The Greed Modality (henforth refered to as simply "Greed") drives us to see immediate gain of something that might -- as we preceive -- better our chances for survival in the long run. Greed, like Fear, has also led to some of the greatest atrocities in human history. Many, if not most wars are wars of acquisition -- the foreced acquisition of another's wealth or resources. But Greed is and of itself is not a bad thing -- under the right contexts, it can lead to wonderous achivements, and spurs our technological growth.

Combinations

It is obvious that Curiosity, Fear, and Greed do not function in isloation. There is a complicated interplay between these three modalities, as mediated by reflexive and cognitive links. For as much as it is possible, we shall attempt to discuss how combinations of these modailities operate, giving rise to what I shall now refer to as "virtual modalities". When two or more modalities strongly interact, that interaction can be considered a modality in its own right.

Greed and Fear

At first, it may not be apparent that there is a link between Greed and Fear, but there is. A reflexive link between Greed and Fear exist -- Fear subsumes Greed; the reflexive link is a negative one. One cannot be greedy if one is in fear. If you see a gold bar next to a live bomb, the fear of the live bomb would tend to override your greed for the gold bar. Of course, you may be of the more adventurous sort, in which case you might be inclined to go after the gold bar, taking the risk of being blown to bits by the bomb. Indeed, the Fear in this case may have a positive link to Greed, or at least the Adventure modality.

Are we done yet?

... I do intend to finish this paper, honestly!