Like Neurotic Gerbils

Slacktivist has an interesting post about 'core animal emotions' - rage, fear, seperation anxiety, and seeking - and relating them to both political messaging and the atheism vs. theism debate. His apologetic characterization of McCain-Palin supporters as 'neurotic gerbils' made me laugh intensely. He then tries to make an argument about the New Atheists that kind of misses the point.

Yes, a lot of argument is directed at the fact that religion is based on fear; and sure, people probably don't 'like' to be compared to neurotic gerbils. Unbelievers don't particularly 'like' to be told they're going to fry for wanking or having uncharitable thoughts or eating pig meat or refusing to wear the silly hat. That's the kind of thing that leads one to believe that religion is based on fear.

If it seems that atheist arguments don't address the existential fear that religion provides a comforting security blanket for, it's because you're still looking for a security blanket. We fight the fear of death by accepting its inevitability while simultaneously working to prolong and improve the real lives we and others live. We fight the fear of the unknown by seeking to explore, understand, and explain it. We fight the fear of an unjust, meaningless cosmos by seeking earthly justice and creating earthly meaning. We fight fear, not by diving under a warm fuzzy blanket, but by building a house. It won't keep out all the fear, but it will keep out some; and we can be all the more confident in it by knowing it's more than just a blanket - that it's a sturdy structure we built with our own minds.

I'm not sure I'd agree that the religious are motivated more by 'seeking' than by fear, but certainly it is a motivation for all and a primary motivation for some. One of the arguments of the New Atheists is that the universe is large and complex and wondrous; that we're not even close to finished exploring it; and that to put a childish meme-god of human creation at the pinnacle of this amazing engine is not only unnecessary and silly, but an insult both to the human mind and to the unknown it seeks to explore. Whatever is out there in the unknown, it's a hell of a lot bigger than the box that religions try to put it in. Atheism, and its embrace of science and empirical rationalism, has more than enough room for 'seekers' in it; the real wonders of real nature discovered by science are more than the equal of any imaginary deity and afterlife.

People come to religions with a lot of emotions, desires, and ideals. My main point here is that the system, the god-made-by-man, takes these 'animal emotions' and warps them to its own ends. It uses seeking to lead people into a false reality trap. It channels rage outward against all who detract or question. It uses fear, and seperation anxiety, and reason, and love, and compassion, and every other thing that is human as fuel for its own growth and strings to manipulate its puppets. It does this because that's what it evolved to do. It teaches humans to channel their animal emotions into sustaining the system, using promises of metaphysical security no stronger than a cardboard tunnel and metaphysical knowledge no realer than a fishing lure, instead of teaching them to direct their animal emotions toward securing their own happiness and fulfillment in real life.