Religion - Morality

With his finger pointing upwards and shaking like whip ready to strike the preacher exclaimed, “Without our strong religious beliefs we have no morality.” 

    That tenet is univerally accepted by the faithful without question, but if one accepts an ultimate right and wrong for human behavior, the preacher has got it backwards. It is the desire for morality that defines a religion, non-exclusively.
  
   Exploration of the history of humankind always finds the existence of some form of religious belief.  Something people accepted without the benefit of proof.  Ancient faiths frequently did not have gods and immortality of the soul consistent with most modern day creeds, but most often focused on the maintenance and health of their societies.  As they determined good and bad activities they fashioned rules of life or moral guidelines and passed that knowledge by way of religious traditions and mythologies to succeeding generations. 

   Earlier species of humans, such as the Neanderthals from 100,000 BCE to 35,000 BCE occupying southern Europe, and Cro-Magnons from slightly before 35,000 BCE to about 10,000 BCE occupying much of the rest of the planet, maintained small family groups, probably never greater than thirty and seldom more than two generations.  Survival skills were passed from parents directly to the children, in manners comparable to all mentally evolved and adaptable creatures do – show and tell, thereby allowing training modifications to changing environmental.  What one interpret as morals started out as nothing more than rules for staying alive.

   Extrapolate this observation to all living organisms. They pass on their "morals" through an evolved genetic coding. Those that lack adaptability compensate via statistics. They produce huge quantities of progeny with random variations in the genetic code and let the environment advance the best suited.  Evolution has provided humans with another strategy for survival -- a brain that can readily be programmed with what is right and wrong to maximize its chance for survival.

   Oh, how the egocentric religious fundamentalists must be screaming now.  The fact that humans evolved from a lesser and somewhat hairy organism is unfathomable to them.  The possibility of morals evolving from random programming of genetic code must send them cursing from their self-erected pedestals.  They accept religion as a revelation from God as the source of morals.  But how did God get into this story?

   Gods only became an expedient around 10,000 BCE when tribes joined into larger groups.  No longer was a father instructing just sons in his family unit, where his authority was unquestioned.  These societies now had their wisest and those with the best memories attempting to train greater numbers of sons with broader experience.  That knowledge transfer was not always accepted.  Societies needed a vengeful force above which no tribe member could intercede.  Tribal bards converted accumulated knowledge in stories that all could remember and woven into these mythologies was the message -- abide by our traditions or suffer the wrath of our God.

   Recapping, survival requires rules based upon accumulated knowledge. As the origin and purpose for those rules got lost during passage of time, they became society’s morals.  Most often we accept these morals by faith alone without verification as to their truth, making them foundation for religion.

   Religion is not necessary for a moral society.  Our desire to survive as that society makes us moral.