The Sky Cake and all it’s glory: Religion as explained by Patton Oswalt
I like Mr. Oswalt’s point of view on religion for a couple of reasons. First of all, it’s funny (the main reason for me posting this audio clip). Secondly, it definitely makes sense (to me anyways).
In the book The God Delusion, author Richard Dawkins questions why religion continues to thrive. To paraphrase Dawkins, what is it about religion that allows it to continue to exist as a facet of human behavior in today’s society? As far as we can tell, being religious provides no measurable advantages for survival. It’s not like being religious makes you richer, or healthier. That alone is enough for most behavioral attributes to be whittled away by natural selection. However, as Patton explains, religion is what allowed people to get away from the “survival of the fittest”, thus allowing humans to focus on matters outside of survival, such as art, literature, and pondering the meaning of life (no raping or murdering). Religion has served its purpose in the evolution of human society… but it continues to pervade today’s society because religious people don’t want it to go away.
In my opinion (and seemingly Patton Oswalt’s as well), religion is no longer necessary to keep people behaving the way they should. Society has had a chance and a half to set its own rules and guidelines which will (hopefully) keep us from reverting back to our murderous, pre-historic monkey style urges.
Anyways, lately, all Sky Cake seems to be good for is fueling Cake Wars.
Agree? Disagree? Let me hear it in the comments!!