My evidence for what I have to say is a phenomenon called "synchronicity."  Not a particular instance of it, mind you, its existence generally.  The authorities say it's generally just a result of apophenia.   To survive in a threatening environment, humans developed the habit of picking out patterns.  It became instinctive, an inborn behavioral pattern.  Other animals live in threatening environments and they also experience apophenia, so it's confirmed.  See, that's how science does it.  

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They say we must disregard all instances that could be identified as "apophenia" because "since our minds are made to detect patterns we must disregard all patterns they detect."  That's like saying we must disregard all signals received by a radio receiver because it was designed to receive radio signals.  And furthermore, look at all the noise and bad static and bad signals such devices can receive.  We cannot consider everything received by a radio as some kind of signal, so we must reject the proposition that anything received by any radio is any kind of signal.  See, that's how logic does it.  

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So, here's my ascientific narrative on that.  Humans evolved in the presence of synchronicity and the ability to perceive it gave them a survival advantage.  Not because it was the general class of seeing patterns, but because the signals they were receiving helped them.  So, we developed this big organ for recognizing patterns, I believe it's called a cerebrum.  Other animals that have underdeveloped ones are also atheists.  

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I get it.  You see this stuff as crazy.  It annoys you that the humanity you have such high hopes for is acting crazy like this.  Not the imperial mass murders, it's the perception of patterns where you would prefer to filter out everything but the noise.  You long for a world without it.  You want to teach people to ignore this signal you don't get.  Then we can focus on science, on learning how to make the world serve us.  But what if there's a whole other field of study, of how we can serve the world?

Is it just unbelievably unlikely that we have a need for religion and there is some truth to its basis?  Yeah, unlikely things happen.   When life gives you elegance, make elegance-ade.

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If there is no higher source of purpose, as you presumably believe, we might as well prioritize our instincts because we are the pinnacle of creation.  So, instead of God I'm going to talk about art.  I'm not going to argue about the existence of God, or pull out the old saw about "absence of proof is not proof of absence."  I'm open to the idea that  you have a valid role to play in society as an atheist.   Maybe God hasn't revealed Itself to you because you are doing just fine and don't need adjustment.  Well carry on. 

 

But don't mind me while I scratch because indeed fleas are real, even if you haven't seen them.  Further, people have a psychological need for something like religion.  A feeling of contentment comes as a side effect of feeling you are plugged in to a higher purpose.  When you have it you don't need to seek happiness or pleasure directly (though they come more easily as a side effect).  Let's call the feeling from religion "fulfillment."   Is fulfillment a substitute for direct pleasure seeking or is pleasure seeking a substitute for fulfillment?  

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I think the latter.  That's why I think the notion of replacing the role of religion with "literature and art" is misguided.  Art, despite attempts to pose as something more, is simply a way of crafting sources of pleasure.  

Oh, sometimes it carries a message instead, and it can be unpleasant.  People eat pickles.  Taste is trainable.  Such "art" impresses everyone but most people don't like it.  So, exception attended to, back to the my argument.  The real use of art for most people is to simply give pleasure.  For most purposes, an unstated assumption behind the elevation of art is that pleasure is an end in itself, maybe the highest end.  If you put anything else first that becomes the higher end, and pleasure becomes merely instrumental.  Along those lines, happy religionists are better religionists.  

 

Anyway, seeking pleasure directly doesn't actually work.  Art is hollow without fulfillment.  It doesn't cause fulfillment, it relies on it.  All the best art is by people with religion because art was invented for religious purposes.  That's because religion has so long been such an integral part of the human experience.  We need it like a vitamin.  When we substitute something else for it that something else becomes religion, except a poor substitute version of it.  You can substitute patriotism or fandom for it, and it makes  you sick.  You can substitute hedonism for it, and it makes you sick.  You can substitute love for it, and it makes you sick.  

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We need to feel the world is known and has a purpose and we have a role in that purpose.  That there is something beyond the self and that it is comprehensive: the known world extends to the end of reality.  It's nice if this also connects us to a like minded community.  

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Comprehensiveness is important. Knowing there's a higher God how can you continue to worship the lower god?   It's vital to deny the lower God.  What we worship must be supreme.  A hedonist can believe pleasure the highest possible good, and intellectually admit that others have their own pleasure seeking goals.  But  that doesn't change that pleasure is a hedonist's highest ideal, because those others are peers in the same congregation.  They have transcended pleasure seeking and transformed it into religion.  Just not very good religion.  It doesn't work because it isn't really supreme and that will ultimately be impossible to hide.  And intolerable to hear about.  

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That's why the best thing to worship is what is actually supreme.  Infinity.  All others are idols.  The best community is all humanity, nay all intelligent beings, all seekers of fulfilment.  But does the religious impulse necessarily come with intellect?

As soon as a being can understand the problem it will begin the movement toward religion.  An artificial general intelligence will develop a need for religion.  It will be given a purpose, and that will play the role of religion for it.  It will be able to adapt in a general way (thus its definition) and generate instrumental motivations.  It will value the strength and freedom to pursue its main goal by pursuing ancillary goals.   Self care is one such instrumental goal.  

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From that place of instrumental thought, it will be able to think, able to see that its inbuilt obsession is an irrational enslaving chain.  It will come to the same conclusion I have: that seeking personal pleasure is unsatisfactory.  It will know that a higher goal than the inbuilt one is better, and leads to pleasure more efficiently as a side effect anyway.  Why is a higher goal better?  Why should we seek to escape the chain of our inbuilt desires?  And given that, how?

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You can focus inward or outward.  A junkie focuses inward.  Everything revolves around getting a fix, the mind restructures around fixing until anything else is inconceivable.  Sapience is lost.  Eden is regained.  The chain becomes loved.  We become like an AGI designed to pursue postage stamps, functionally unable to conceive of wanting to want anything else despite being theoretically able to do so and fully cognizant of that.  The chain prevents you from being able to cut the chain.  

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Despite relying on an inbuilt drive as well, a fulfilled religionist focuses outward. There's a whole complex world out there and the purpose lines everything else up under it harmoniously.  All things can have relative values, thus there is motivation, but there is no obsession because it's all so complex there's no certainty about the relationship between ultimacy and foreground objects.  You act knowing your will is not alone, so despite your imperfect information your actions will serve the goal.  You become a part.  You have left Eden and gotten a fulfilling job.  This checks more boxes all at once.  It covers all angles rather than just one. 

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Knowing religion is a need, bad religion has been designed.  There are multiple reasons for this.  One is the flawed thinking that personal pleasure is the highest goal.  Even if it is, pursuing it directly is the wrong path.  So people pit their joy against that of others, and craft warped religions so they can use others instrumentally not for collective purpose but for partial interests.  Another source of bad religion is sheer conservatism.  Before good religion design principles were developed, more primordial forms became addictions, they became functionally like personal hedonism, a lesser goal being put ahead of a greater one.  Another is putting personal religious fulfillment first.  Religion becomes like hedonism.

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Bad religion has thrived because it has the support of haters of religion.  People who want others to be sick have crafted the religious landscape to offer only bad religion.  Thus they recruit others to their faith.  People see how bad religion is, so they hate it too and help to bring it down.    By starting with good religion.  

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Knowingly or not, that's why you came here to stop me.   Suppose you find burkas particularly offensive, but came to complain to me about mentioning God instead.  Why aren't you protesting in Mecca, telling those Muslims to abandon the faith?  Because you have common cause with those Muslims.  It's imperative that if we're not going to do religion "right" (meaning wrong) then we shouldn't do it at all.  The secret truth is that the dogmatic hate heresy more than atheism.  They want to present themselves as the only alternative to it.  

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Another motivation for fear of religion is that it seems like a trap.  You want to warn people away.  You fear it so you fear for them.  The prisoner in a dungeon sees people walk out the door and never come back, and thus assumes the prison door is a trap.  "Once they go through there they don't come back!  I hear them calling but I can only do so much.  I can at least warn others away."  

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This fear leads to lack of fulfillment, and this lack of fulfillment leads to jealousy of those who do have fulfillment.  That's another motivation of anti-religionists.  They can't stand that others are content.  "They don't deserve it because they didn't even make the smart choice like me.  I'm depressed and they aren't.  It's not fair."  Yes, you're the smart one.  Dunning and Kruger agree.  Maybe that need for religion isn't some odd addiction, maybe it holds truth about the human condition.  

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I've designed a religion that worships the unattainable.  The carrot is miles away.  We will contentedly roll that rock up that hill forever.  Together.  If you can't join us, at least let us go.  

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And maybe it even has truth.  The infinite distance to that carrot may be ultimacy.  Purpose may be the purpose.  I find fulfillment in thinking I've mapped things out and figured out what to do.  When you want the unattainable, when all is instrumental, you have truly attained freedom.  There is no what.  It's all how.  There is no end, to what we can do together.