Skip to main content

God is tools

OPINION - God and spirit are controversial discussions in science and even mythology will have no place among naturalists and for Darwinians. Apparently this has been final that mythology is a delusional, mystical and superstitious concept that cannot be empirically proven in the world of science.

Most scientists and science activists have agreed that god is nonsense, delusional and cannot be accommodated in the theory of evolution. This opinion can be understood methodologically and I agree with the sentences. But so many behaviors are very real and occur in the field.

Dlium God is tools

I am a fieldman who goes to the wild every day, along rice fields and forests to watch insects to plants, talk to people especially in villages, visit Hindu-Buddhist temples built in the 8th century, witnessing busyness in mosques, temples and churches.

I feel something is missing in the view of naturalists and Darwinians. There are short moments that are missed in analyzes in the timeline of human evolution. These little moments are small chronicles, but in my opinion have a very important role in the journey of this species, even the dominance of Homo sapiens in the past.

I will not discuss the existence of god because we are here talking about the origin of god. We have seen and found so many godly behaviors in the field. Perhaps these behaviors are tasks performed by anthropologists where godly behavior is a mythology and product of culture.

Before going further, I need to say that we have all agreed that Hominidae does not come suddenly. The small family that is occupied by Ponginae and Homininae has undergone a long process to have the appearance and behavior of today.

The adequacy of archaeological data has made it difficult for us to know the mythological behavior that spreads across species, but I see that observations by Christophe Boesch et al (2016) in the Pan troglodytes community are one good example of how behavior rather than foraging has become a culture.



The evolution is endless and even now the appearance and behavior of H. sapiens species is not final and will never be final, but at each point has phases including paleo, hunting and gathering, agriculture and industry. Humans create a series of cultures at each stage of the journey.

Let me express my opinion here that the accompanying culture, tradition and mythology is a survival tools or way to solve life's problems. Culture is a problem solving and these are forms of survival coping. Like bees, ants and even other solitary species where culture is inherited through genetics.

A method will develop when it is deemed to be able to solve the problem, but the method will be left when it can no longer solve the problem. Primates will continue to look for new ways, create new cultures and so on. New cultures develop and old cultures will be abandoned.

Humans create gods and mythologies are efforts to reduce pressures to answer about death. These existential anxieties require immediate completion and mythology to become a healing that evolves into concrete rituals. In the name of god, someone built social class and a society hoarded politics and weaponry too!

I would like to say that godly behaviors and mythological rituals have been lost for so long in the analysis of naturalists and the subject of evolution. It is indeed a difficult discussion to find links between morphology, anatomy and genetics with culture. But it is very clear that culture is a natural product too.

It is no exaggeration to think that mythological behavior has primordial roots in the course of human evolution. Belief and delusional behavior are forms of human instinct in response to an external and internal threat where mythology will also cause new forms of anxiety paradogically.

It is not clear to me whether a species must pass through this cultural phase of mythology as well as H. sapiens and P. troglodytes to become sophisticated species. But the most visible here is the proportion of skull volume or neurological complexity or environmental stress or competition and natural selection.

Allow me to say mythology is a response to survival of the fittest, a driver of group cohesiveness and the production of subsequent new cultures. This is very speculative, but I would say that mythology maybe also gave H. sapiens victory in destroying Neanderthals and other Hominini!

By Aryo Bandoro
Founder of Dlium.com. You can follow him on X: @Abandoro.

More opinions:

Popular Posts

Black jumping spider (Hyllus diardi)

Black jumping spider ( Hyllus diardi ) is an animal species in the Salticidae, black and white spiders, long hair, round head, elongated belly, relatively small, arboreal, perched on leaves in bushes and low trees in forests and agricultural lands. H. diardi has black and white color, shiny surface and white hair all over the body. The head is round, shiny black with a linear white line in the middle. Black eyes on the front of the head. The stomach has an elongated, jointed, black cylindrical shape with black plots at the top of each segment. The legs are long, segmented, shiny black or brownish in color and hairy. Black jumping spiders live arboreal, perch on leaf surfaces, low bushes, trees in forests, agricultural land, roadsides and shade. Very sensitive to human presence and will hide behind leaves to avoid sight. Kingdom: Animalia Phylum: Arthropoda Subphylum: Chelicerata Class: Arachnida Order: Araneae Suborder: Araneomorphae Infraorder: Entelegynae Superfamily: Salticoi...

Hairy senna (Senna hirsuta)

Hairy senna ( Senna hirsuta ) is a species of plant in the Fabaceae family. It is an upright shrub, growing up to 2.5 meters tall. The leaves are compound on petioles up to 13 cm long. They usually have 2-6 pairs of leaflets, are egg-shaped, and have white hairs, up to 10 cm long and 5 cm wide. The flowers are yellow and arranged at the tips of branches and in the upper leaf axils in clusters of 2-5. The petals are 12-16 mm long, have 6 stamens, 3-8 mm long anthers, and 4 staminodes. Flowering occurs almost monthly. The pods are cylindrical, up to 15 cm long, 4-6 mm wide, and curved. TAXON Kingdom: Plantae Phylum: Tracheophyta Subphylum: Angiospermae Class: Magnoliopsida Order: Fabales Family: Fabaceae Subfamily: Caesalpinioideae Tribe: Cassieae Subtribe: Cassiinae Genus: Senna Mill. in Gard. Dict. Abr., ed. 4.: [s.p.] (1754) Species: Senna hirsuta (L.) H.S.Irwin & Barneby in Phytologia 44: 499 (1979) Variety: Senna hirsuta var. acuminata (Benth.) H.S.Irwin & Barneby, Senna ...

Awar awar (Ficus septica)

Awar-awar or lagnob or hauli tree or barabar or sirih popar or tobo tobo ( Ficus septica ) is species of plants in Moraceae, trees grow in bushes or in neglected places and sap contained in roots, twigs, leaves and fruit is used to treat poisoning and digestive problems. F. septica is usually 1-5 m high, although in the forest it can be up to 25 m. Round, hollow and bare branches. Roots, twigs, leaves and fruit will emit a yellow sap and sticky if injured. The base of the leaves is large and spiky, arranged alternately or face to face with a stem length of 2.5-5 cm. Large leaf blade, round egg, 9-30x9-16 cm, rounded base and blunt narrow tip, flat-edged, upper side dark green with 6-12 secondary bones pale white. Fruit paired, single or clustered up to 4 items, short-stemmed, at the base has 3 protective leaves, light green or gray green and 1.5 cm in diameter. F. septica is food for 22 animal species including wasps, bats, birds, monkeys and mice as well as seed dispersing vecto...