Evolution, Religion, “Spiritual Energy”, and Morality:
Every religion gives its followers some system of rules to live by in order to function as a civilization. If those rules are followed by everyone, everyone will work toward the interests of the civilization, and everyone will be able to anticipate everyone else’s actions. Following those rules is considered “good” and disobeying those rules is considered “evil”. Through the religious belief system, people are taught to believe that good and evil will be met with good or bad consequences. That teaches the followers of the religion to attach positive and negative emotions to ideas that benefit or harm the interests of the civilization.
Every religion has a belief in some form of energy that practitioners can draw upon to find a way to do what is “right”. This intentional use of spiritual energy to find the path to righteousness is similar to the intentional use of spiritual energy to bring about metaphysical effects in the world. The one difference is that the choices the religious practitioners make based on their intentional use of this energy source are directly observable.
Whether this force is passive, as in the Christian concept of the “power of faith”, or it is active, as in the Wiccan concept of “willpower”, it always has several things in common. First, it is always a form of energy that the followers feel within themselves. Second, it always connects the practitioners to a higher power. Third, that higher power always serves the practitioners’ best interests. Fourth, it always guides the practitioner’s actions one way or another. Fifth, the practitioners can always access this energy source intentionally in order to guide themselves to the righteous path.
Here is that last paragraph translated into Christian terms: The power of faith exists within every Christian. That power connects them to God. God always has Christians’ best interests in mind. The power of faith can always guide Christians’ actions, but if the power of faith is ignored, Satan will lead them astray. Christians can always choose to use the power of faith to connect themselves to God and thereby find the path to righteousness.
Christians perceive “actions that cooperate with the Christian code of conduct and benefit civilization” to be influenced by the force of pure good. They perceive “actions that contradict the Christian code of conduct and harm civilization” to be influenced by the force of pure evil. If Christians neglect their faith in the forces of pure good, their actions will be influenced by the forces of pure evil. If they choose to use their power of faith, their actions will be influenced by the forces of pure good.
Here’s the same paragraph translated into (general) Wiccan terms: Willpower exists within every Wiccan. That willpower, like all their other physical and mental abilities, originated from the Earth Mother who conceived them. The Earth Mother always has her own interests in mind, because she is the world of which the Wiccans are a part. Wiccans are welcome to use their willpower in any way they see fit, but they are warned that anything they put forth into the world will be returned to them threefold. Wiccans can always use their willpower to strengthen their bonds to the Earth Mother and thereby learn how to cooperate with her, the world, and consequently each other.
Among Wiccans, there is no concept of pure good or pure evil, or of divine representatives of either who try to influence people’s actions. The Wiccan code of conduct is, in effect, contained entirely in the Law of Threefold Return: any benefit or harm they cause other people or the world itself will be justly rewarded within this lifetime. Beyond that, the responsibility for finding courses of action that benefit others is left in the hands of the practitioners.
Here’s the same paragraph reduced to terms of the Theory of Evolutionary Relativity: The spiritual/emotional energy that propels humans’ evolutionary survival exist within every human. That spiritual/emotional energy connects them to their evolutionary origins. That spiritual/emotional energy has always preserved the evolutionary survival of individuals and consequently the human species. That spiritual/emotional energy propels human decision-making in the direction of evolutionary survival. Humans can use their intellects to find the best ways to act upon their instincts driven by that spiritual/emotional energy.
The sociological differences between the societies that gave rise to Christianity and Wicca are numerous, and illustrate the origins of their differences in interpretation of the same spiritual/emotional energy. Christianity was born of a society that was highly agricultural, politically complex, the most technologically advanced, and the most populous of any in the world at the time. Wicca (or technically, Witchcraft, its ancient ancestor) was born of a society that was less agriculturally developed and more dependant on the cycles of nature, that had much less political organization, that had simpler technology, and that had fewer people. In short, Christianity originated in a society that was much more organized and much more separated from the forces of nature than was the society in which Wicca originated.
From this we can deduce what ideas the members of each group were using consciously. From there, when the two groups of people were faced with the same questions, we can deduce what ideas they would’ve had available to them to try to find answers. (I’ll tell you more about how information packages work in the next chapter.)
The spiritual/emotional energy that propels humans’ evolutionary survival exists within every human as a form of energy that the followers feel within themselves. The Wiccans saw themselves as inherent parts of nature, so they would naturally perceive this to be one of the many forces of nature in the world. The Christians were much more separated from nature due to their agricultural level, their technological level, their political organization, and their population density, so they would be more likely to perceive that spiritual/emotional energy within them as something that had been placed there intentionally by someone else.
The emotional energy force that connects people to their evolutionary origins feels like a connection to a higher power. The Wiccans perceived themselves to be inherent parts of nature as was everything else in the world, so that higher power would naturally seem to them to be the world itself. The Christians perceived themselves to be separate from the natural world and were much more politically organized, so they would be more likely to perceive that higher power to be a king.
That spiritual/emotional energy has always preserved the evolutionary survival of the human species, and thereby has served humanity’s best interests (or at least, the interests of the individuals who survived and wrote the history books). The Wiccans perceived that their survival was dependant on the natural world, so they would be more likely to perceive that the natural world provided for their needs. The Christians perceived themselves to be separate from the natural world and were more politically organized, so they would be more likely to perceive the force that served their interests to be a king who saw to the needs of his people.
That spiritual/emotional energy propels human decision-making in the direction of evolutionary survival by guiding people’s actions. Human instincts evolved to preserve the survival of the human species (by preserving the survival of individuals) while humans lived in the wild prior to the development of agriculture, so the directions that spiritual/emotional energy propels human decision-making never apply perfectly to life in agrarian civilization. The Wiccans perceived themselves to be inherent parts of the natural world and were less politically organized, so they would have been more able to perceive that their evolutionary instincts served useful purposes in their lives. The Christians perceived themselves to be separate from the natural world and were more politically organized, so their living conditions were more greatly removed from the origins of their evolutionary instincts. It would follow that their evolutionary instincts would conflict with their living conditions more greatly, and they would be less able to perceive that their evolutionary instincts served any purpose.
Humans can use their intellects to find ways to act upon their instincts propelled by that spiritual/emotional energy to guide themselves to righteous paths. The “righteous path” defined by any religion always refers to “the path people must follow to keep the civilization functioning”. At this point any differences between religions, other than the differences between the societies in which those religions were conceived, become completely superficial. Wicca originated in a society that had little political unification, where the population was small, and where people’s lives were ruled most strongly by the forces of nature, so “the righteous path” of the Wiccans valued independence, free will, and respect for the natural world as its highest priorities. Christianity originated in a society that had great political unification, that had a large population, and in which people’s lives were ruled most strongly by governments, so “the righteous path” of the Christians valued unity, distinct social organization, and adherence to laws as its highest priorities. In both cases, people were taught to use their intellects to interpret the best ways to act upon the forces of their evolutionary instincts, according to their living situations, rather than acting upon their instincts directly without thinking about what they were doing. This is true of the people of every civilization in the world. That includes hunter-gathering people of the Amazon Basin and the Arctic today, who have used their intellect to find ways to advance socially in spite of not having broken free of the original food-producing conditions of their evolution.
Naturally, once you identify that Christians would be more likely to do one thing and Wiccans would be more likely to do another, and apply that to their societies, it means a majority of people would do one thing or the other, and that in turn would create the sociological forces that drove the societies.
In every religion, the concept of “the righteous path” is that religion’s version of morality. It is taught to followers according to Dr. Goleman’s predictions of emotional instincts being attached to ideas. The number of ideas to which followers of religions are taught to attach emotional meaning varies by religion. In the case of the Wiccans it is a small number of ideas, while in the case of the Christians it is a larger number of ideas. The Wiccans had broken themselves free of the original conditions of their evolution less than had the Christians, so they needed to depend on less emotional forces being instilled in their people artificially to keep their society functioning. The Christians had built a civilization that was much more socially, politically, agriculturally, and technologically advanced, so they needed to teach their people to make more artificial emotional connections in order to keep their civilization functioning.
In all cases, both religious and secular, morality originates in the same way: People feel some force pushing them in the direction of making certain decisions, they use their intellects to find the most preferable decisions given their situation, and they combine intellect with instinctive emotional force to try to reach a decision that will best satisfy both.
Every group of people in the world, for tens of thousands of years, has perceived a form of energy that pushes their decision-making processes in various directions, and has perceived that they can, and must, use intellect in conjunction with that energy to reach decisions that are the most advantageous to their evolutionary interests.