The Scientific Case for Divine Inspiration

One of the most important differences between traditional religions and secular society is their view of human nature. Modern book-based religions claim that their version of culture is divinely inspired. One way or another, God sent messages to humans about how to conduct their lives. Humans need to constantly observe this divine inspiration. Otherwise they will fall down into their base nature. Also non-monotheist Eastern religions draw a sharp limit between nature and enlightened states.

In Modern Western secular society, on the other hand, there are important currents that say the opposite of this: Human nature is in itself enlightened. If humans act in non-enlightened ways, it is because they have been corrupted by bad culture. If humans are just allowed to exercise their nature, they will act in an ideally civilized way. This ideological vein gave rise to ideas about The Noble Savage, in spite of ample anthropological proof of ignoble behavior in primitive societies.

The origins of culture

I believe that from a scientific point of view, the traditional religions are more right than the current secular world view. I don't mean that it would be scientific to say that literally, God handed down cultured principles to people at some point of history. God has no place in science. But I do mean that culture arose from very unusual and improbable events. Traditionally religious people would call those events divine revelations. I call them freak events.

When I grew up I was taught that human development from the ape stage to the stone age to modern society was all about technology. Sometimes through unusual ingenuity, sometimes by accident, human technology evolved until we reached today's society. The necessary steps to take were always described as technological. On a naive level it looks self-evident: Humans use advanced manufactured tools, animals do not, so the more humans got the idea to make more advanced tools, the more they diverged from the other animals.

But advanced technology is not the only thing that makes humans different from other animals. Also large groups of cooperating males make humans different. In nature, male cooperation is unusual. Herd animals are commonly only herd animals on the female side. It might look like technology is the killer app of humans compared to the other animals. But numerous genetically unrelated males living together and comparatively peacefully dividing females between them might be equally against nature.

Throughout ...