Baba Brinkman - Religion Evolves lyrics
[Verse 1] I spent my whole life perplexed by religiousness Front door step 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 and 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 and 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 Visions, except based on philosophical naturalism Which means no counterfactual claims, no supernatural Nothin' but reason and evidence, troops salute the rational In my religion the truth is sacred, and science adjudicates it And meditation is cool if you wanna find your Buddha nature But human nature exists too, and it's not rude to face it Enlightenment comes when we understand how evolution shapes it [Hook] 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 k** us first, let's hope religion evolves [Verse 2] 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 behavioural ecologist, religion is all of this Two or three 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 and followers and 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 Twelve thousand 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 And if you're in my tribe, well then I'll die for you and you'll die for me [Hook] 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 k** us first, let's hope religion evolves [Verse 3] 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 Brinkman? 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 And 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 bu*ton, which amazing, but it's not really for Naval gazing; Nah, it's a side effect of your umbilical chord So religion might be a viral meme that's parasitic Or it might be an adaptation that maximizes descendants 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 bu*ton byproduct, or adaptive in the past And maladaptive in the present, these are good questions to ask And science can find the answers, and the answers are non-obvious Except the answer to where religion doesn't come from… Divine providence