Religion evolves You can watch it It evolves I spent my whole life perplexed by religiousness Front doorstep debating with Jehova's witnesses I was a teenaged empirical thinker, A spiritual seeker Obsessed with rap I considered it lyrical research This was the medium that I could think & speak in. Flippin' ridiculous figures of speech over beats like every weekend. My CD collection became my personal gospel. I was an apostle, like Thomas, wondering was it impossible To rock shows & still be thoughtful So paradoxical Speakin' in tongues all over the drums like Pentecostals I figured if I could master the craft I could start a new religion Devoid of superstition, A descendent of secular humanism With the ecstatic rituals of ancient mystical Shamanistical Vision, except based on philosophical naturalism Which means no counterfactual claims, no supernatural, Nothin' but reason & evidence, Troops salute the rational In my religion the truth is sacred & Science adjudicates it & Meditation is cool if you wanna find your buddha nature. But human nature exists too & It's not rude to face it Enlightenment comes when we understand how evolution shapes it. It's a demon-haunted world You can take it from Carl Sagan, Whether Christian or Pagan, Religion evolves Whether it benefits one of us or whether it benefits all Adaptive problems are gonna get solved Religion evolves The bigger the scale of a society The bigger the gods People get along when someone's watchin' them, Religion evolves We'll send a rocket on a manned mission to mars If the holy wars don't kill us first, Let's hope religion evolves. I'll turn my religion upon itself like an ouroboros Religion evolves It adapts, ask a biologist A cognitive psychologist, A sociologist An anthropologist A behavioral ecologist, Religion is all of this 2 or 3 new religions get founded a day They're just like rap artists Most of them won't be around in a decade They all compete for space & followers & human devotion Religion evolves Cause many are called but few are chosen Approximately ten thousand religions are currently active, So forgive me if I don't ask which exact version you practice Chances are, flip of a coin, it's probably Abrahamic Half the planet is either Christian or Jewish or Islamic We can track the demographics Study the epidemiology But human beings have been religious since before the holocene 12, 000 years ago Agricultural revolution Prior to that, most of our significant evolution Small scale societies surviving in the pleistocene Had a strong incentive to unite like a hive of bees Religion is a device for binding people tribally & If you're in my tribe, Well then I'll die for you & You'll die for me. It's a demon-haunted world You can take it from Carl Sagan, Whether Christian or Pagan, Religion evolves Whether it benefits one of us or whether it benefits all Adaptive problems are gonna get solved Religion evolves The bigger the scale of a society The bigger the gods People get along when someone's watchin them Religion evolves We'll send a rocket on a manned mission to mars If the holy wars don't kill us first, Let's hope religion evolves. Religion is an evolved mental technology Definitely But did it evolve culturally Or did it evolve genetically? Or is it a byproduct of several other mental capacities That evolved independently and separately Function adaptively Like agency detection systems triggered hyperactively Or theory of mind Which means reading people tactically Like, I know what you're thinkin'- Who the hell is Baba Bringman? Is he some kind of cross between a prof and juvenile delinquent? Yeah that's right That's what I am Now let's get back to the question at hand I have a conscious mind and I'll try to predict your thoughts as best I can & I predict you've never considered what religion is adapted for Or if you have, then I predict you've never heard it rapped before. So how do I know it's adaptive? It could be random drift It could be a byproduct of something else that has adaptiveness Like your belly button, which is amazing, But it's not really for naval gazing; Nah, it's a side effect of your umbilical cord So religion might be a viral meme that's parasitic Or it might be an adaptation that maximizes descendents It might benefit individuals Or it might benefit whole groups Or it might be the invention of cynical priests trying to control you Or it might be a belly button byproduct Or adaptive in the past And maladaptive in the present These are good questions to ask & Science can find the ansswers & The answers are non-obvious Except the answer to where religion doesn't come from: Devine providence.