1. WHERE MY UNDERSTANDING STARTED

In 2003, I was working as a school assistant for a blind girl in upper secondary school.

During a religion lesson, a teacher with degrees in psychology and theology, asked the class: ”Do you know the meaning of religions?” The teacher did not wait for the class to answer, but continued: ”Do you think you could know it when wise men have not figured it out over the millennia?”

The teacher saw this as a clear implication of God’s existence. As the teacher saw it, the existence of religions proved the existence of God.

This provoked me, a seasoned atheist and existentialist. I had never come across this question phrased like this; what is the meaning of religions, why is there a thing called religion in the world? I began to think about the idea.

As I saw it, the answer lay in humans. What is a human being? Well, a human being is clearly an animal, a herd animal. Then I started to think of the reason this animal needs religions, and the answer must lie in biology. And that is exactly where I found it.

The activities of all the World’s living organisms can be tracked down to two things, the survival and thriving of individuals and the survival and thriving of the species. The different religions must go back to the survival and thriving of these.

What do the religions do and what is their primary goal? Clearly, their purpose is to unite the herd. When all the members of a herd believe in the same things, the thought models of individuals resemble each other. All world religions also tell the individuals to behave and act in a manner that is in the best interest of the herd.

Then I began to think of the differences between humans and other animals. The most important difference is the self-conscious mind. This is a trait that animals lack, at least to the degree that they cannot utilise it for another purpose other than the survival of the individual.

Species-specific instructions coded in their genes steer animals and their activities, which is also true for humans. The difference with humans is the self-conscious mind that mainly strives for the survival and thriving of an individual.

Species-specific instructions, coded in the genes, do not always instruct this mind towards the survival of the species as it can supersede them. A self-conscious mind can steer the actions of an individual so that it takes advantage of other individuals on the cost of survival of the species.

This is not beneficial for the survival of the species, so our species has evolved so that it does not steer the conscious minds of the individuals through the genes.

A new kind of species-specific instructions have evolved for our species, the humans, ones that seek to instruct the actions of individuals so that the species will survive. This also involves the individuals not harming the survival of the species through acts in the self-interest of the individual.

These instructions are called the religion.

There, I’ve said it: The purpose of religions is to steer the acts of human individuals in order to support and promote the survival of the species.

Religions are biology.

Religions are human biology, a species-specific code that demonstrates itself in different variation, depending on the type the herd formulated by the humans. That is why different types of religions have emerged in different communities.

The main principle of most religions is the same: To instruct the individuals to live together, without causing harm to others in the herd, and to try to act in the best interest of the herd, not themselves.


From the perspective of the survival of the species, one problem appears to be that the individuals in these herds have, throughout history and maybe even today to same extent, thought that only the individuals in their herd are representatives of the same species. Double standards (hypocrisy) is another problem in this respect, with individuals appearing to act in a manner of the best interest of the herd, even though the individual is really only promoting its own interest (or that of its people or group).

I covered and understood all of this, all the aspects that the wise men have failed to realise in the previous millennia, while waiting for the bus to take me home from the school I was working at.

I began to think, back then in 2003, of the ways I could prove my realisation to everyone else. Back then, I did not come up with a good way.

This theory is extremely difficult to prove.

Well, we do have evolution theory that no-one has been able to prove either. The thing is that Darwin might have had a little more authority when he came up with his theory than I do.

He was a scientist and a member of the Royal Society, if I recall correctly.

I was just a secondary school graduate. If I had started to talk about a theory like this at the time, I don’t think I could have made it public at all. Everyone would have thought my theory was coined by some madman. I explained it to people myself and waited for them to realise that it was something that ”wisemen have not understood throughout the millennia.” I just kept it to myself then as it did not seem to take off.

I performed test talking about it though, for example, when I was studying to become a school assistant at the Laajasalo Christian College in 2009. I gave a presentation on this topic, but no-one seemed to understand that I was talking about a new theory I had devised myself. They all probably just thought that I had read it in a book somewhere and used it for my own presentation. I guess that’s the way presentations are usually prepared at school.

It was not until 2020, after I had managed to get my personal life on track and had a profession, job, home and a wife, that I returned to this theme. I then wrote down my theory and handed it out to people who I thought were capable of understanding it.


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