Imagine yourself standing in front of a dark room, dark basement or dark corridor. Most of the time we are perfectly aware of what is there. Just some ordinary stuff, nothing special. There are no reasons to be afraid, we’ve been to this basement multiple times already and nothing bad ever happened. So, it feels counterintuitive to be anxious while standing at the stairs to the basement. And yet, many of us experience uneasiness. The dark is, well, dark, so our eyes do not perceive any light waves. We know what’s in our basement, but we don’t see, we can not one hundred percent confirm that there are no scary ghosts or ghouls or aliens from space. Or maybe a maniac with a knife who got into our house somehow. Only when we turn on the lights, we see for ourselves that there is nothing to be afraid of, we feel relieved. This might feel rather silly or even stupid to fear your own room or basement. The fear of the dark has a specific term. It’s called “nyctophobia”. It comes from the Greek words “nyctos” and “phobos”. Which translates as “night” and “fear”. This nyctophobia is part of a larger fear – the defining fear of our lives. The fear of the unknown. Doesn’t really matter where we might live, in a commie block apartment somewhere in Minsk, Belarus. Or in a house in suburbia in Chicago. Or in the slums of Rio-de-Janeiro. Doesn’t really matter how old we are, our gender or skin color matter not either. We fear what we don’t know, what we don’t understand. We don’t see in the dark – we fear it. We don’t see what’s in the depths of the sea below us – we fear it. This particular phobia is called “thalassophobia”. We inherited fear of the unknown from our ancient ancestors. Imagine yourself a Neanderthal woman living fifty thousand years ago in, say, Crimean Peninsula. You are standing in front of a tall grass. You don’t know whether to go through grass or avoid it and find a different route. The grass might be a shortcut, however, you can not be sure that dangerous predators of your prehistoric world aren’t lurking there in the grass waiting for you to come. So, after some contemplation, you decide to avoid the tall grass, you spend more time walking home, but you come back alive. You give birth to your children. You pass your genes to the next generation of humans. But a man who ventured into the grass despite not knowing what’s there was killed and eaten by a tiger. He didn’t come back and he didn’t pass his genes to the next generation. The genes of a woman who feared the unknown territory survived and developed in later generations of humans. The fear of the unknown is, as we can see, an evolutionary thing. We must fear the unknown if we want to have better chances of survival.

Now, what does it have to do with gods and religions? Well, we, humans, fear what we do not know. And in ancient times there were too many things that we didn’t know. We didn’t know why the Sun was rising and setting. Why it rains sometimes, why it snows. Why the stars flicker, why the Moon changes its phases We didn’t know that. But we always hated not to know things. We always tried to rationalize everything and pretend that we actually do know. We absolutely hate the answer “I don’t know”. Or “We don’t know”. The tire broke in the middle of the road between Chicago and Milwaukee. How do we replace it? I don’t know. The rent increased again. Our salaries didn’t. How are we supposed to survive the next month? I don’t know. What do thunder and lightning happen? Instead of just admitting that we don’t know, we start coming up with different stories to explain what we can’t comprehend. To make ourselves feel better. The lightnings happen because Zeus makes them. Or because Thor plays with his hammer somewhere high above. The Sun is a god Ra riding his fiery barge across the sky. These explanations, albeit completely false and not based on anything, served, nonetheless, as some kind of consolation to people. Humans pretended they knew how everything worked. They pretended they knew what the Sun and the lightning were and could explain it. People less feared things this way. Let’s take the Milky Way as an example. We know what the Milky Way is – this name was assigned to our galaxy in which the Sun and billions of other stars are located and they all orbit around the center of the galaxy which is believed to be a massive black hole. We know this because of our scientific development. Ancient tribes and civilizations could not know that, obviously. So they came up with different stories of what the Milky Way is. The Kaurna people who inhabited South Australia believed that the Milky Way was a river in the sky and that numerous campfires surrounded it. Cherokee used to believe that the Milky Way was cornmeal. A dog stole some cornmeal and was chased away. The dog ran to the North and spilled the cornmeal along the way. This is how the Milky Way was formed. Ancient Greeks had a very different story. Zeus allowed his song Heracles to suckle up the divine milk of Hera’s, his wife, while she was asleep. However, Hera woke up and immediately pushed Heracles away. The spurting milk became the Milky Way. This is why we call it the Milky Way.

What does the majority of people fear the most? Death. People are scared of death. It is scary to think that after we die, there will be nothing. All our thoughts, emotions, aspirations, our love, anger, everything will disappear. There won’t even be dark. There will be nothingness. Similar to sleep without dreams. Eternal sleep with no dreams. If it’s true then why should we do anything? Why try to explore or invent? Why wake up every single morning, go to the field, work until we can’t work any longer. Why cook food, fall in love and make love to each other if there is nothing after death? It can’t all be for nothing. There must be some sort of eternal afterlife where we will exist forever outside of the spacetime continuum. There must be someone who runs it all, who controls everything. To whom we can all turn for help. Abrahamic religions, Judaism, Christianity and Islam have one single God that is responsible for everything. Religions existed as a reflection of humanity’s struggle to understand the world around us, fear of the unknown which resulted from natural selection. Humans needed to explain stuff they couldn’t study. This is why religions were created all throughout the world from Hawaii to Palestine. Religion became an instrument to control people and make people do what you want very similar to patriotism and nationalism. How do we motivate high school students? We promise that if high schoolers study well, they will go to a good college or university, graduate, get a degree, and find a well-paying job. Everything that high schoolers do now, however hard or unpleasant it might feel, will pay off when they become adults. Religion is largely the same. Behave properly now, do as I say, and you’ll go to Heaven where you’ll experience eternal bliss. Life of an Ancient Egyptian peasant might have been miserable but it’s only temporary. He will experience endless pleasure after death. So, don’t try to overthrow the Pharaoh, just obey, or you’ll go to Hell instead of Heaven. How do you make a group of warriors obey you and do what you say? You promise them rewards in the afterlife. Muhammad promised his male followers seventy-two virgins in Heaven if they do what he says, if they kill and conquer whoever he tells them to kill or conquer. He was a warlord after all. Do what your commander says now and you’ll go to Heaven. Disobey and you’ll be in Hell. The punishment had to be very serious to instill enough fear in people. You won’t scare people by threatening them with spanking in Hell. You need something much more terrifying. Do bad stuff and your soul will be burning for all eternity. Bad stuff is arbitrary, though. It can be adultery or homosexuality. Whatever your warlord doesn’t like is automatically considered a sin. This way empires and kingdoms existed for centuries. People were scared to fight off their oppressors because they were scared of going to Hell. The warlords, the kings and emperors were all very much interested in spreading religion among people. To simply control. Peasants always vastly outnumbered the elites, yet elites could do practically anything to peasants. Mutilate them, starve, kill, sell. Fear of the unknown was replaced by fear of Hell. This is how religions survived through ages and even today, when we made so many great scientific discoveries, when we learned about neutrons and pulsars, when we looked into the deepest depths of the observable Universe – many people, even those who embrace science, still believe in the Bible or Quran. Kids are indoctrinated since childhood. If your parents believe in God, your sisters, brothers, school teachers, everyone, then this can’t be a lie. This all must be true. You can both study astrophysics and believe in creationism. Many people these days do not closely follow the religion. Those who do, we call them fanatics or extremists. ISIS, Hamas, Boko Haram, they all essentially do what the Quran says. But to us it all looks barbaric. Because humanity evolved through centuries. Especially in the West. Religions are used not only to control people, but also to profit from them. In medieval Europe the Roman Catholic Church used to issue indulgences to people. Pay us money and the Church will grant remission of your sins so you won’t go to Hell. In many cults like Jehova Witnesses or Mormon Church followers are still expected to pay tithe to participate in religious activities.

It’s not just religious people who tend to rationalize unknown things. Scientists accept that there is no intelligent alien civilization nearby us. According to Carl Sagan, the first radio signal powerful enough to leave the Earth’s atmosphere was during the Olympic Games in the Nazi Germany in 1936. It’s currently 2023. Since radio waves travel at the speed of light, our radio waves already covered 174 light years. We sent radio broadcasting, sports games, music to space. We sent Nina Simone, Chuck Berry, Led Zeppelin, Nirvana and Taylor Swift. And yet, we didn’t receive a signal from an alien civilization. For over one hundred fifty light years across, there is no one to receive the signal and to send something back. Thus, scientists suppose there are no developed forms of life in our near cosmos. But what if radio waves already became obsolete? What if there are super advanced civilizations that can easily travel between the star systems? What if we are like ants to them? They know we exist, they watch us, but we are too primitive to understand and communicate with them. This is the Fermi Paradox.

We try to rationalize space. If we don’t hear from aliens, if we are not visited by aliens, if we don’t see them, we haven’t reached them yet. Or they haven’t reached us. Just like in Ancient times, we didn’t know what Sun and stars were, so they must have been gods somewhere up above. We can’t prove there are aliens watching us right now. Ancient people couldn’t prove the Sun is not a god riding his badge. We are stuck in pretending we know more than we actually do. Because it is more comforting than admitting that we don’t know anything. But unlike religion, science is in constant search of answers. Actual answers that we can prove. So, someday we might discover the whole truth of the Universe. Someday science we’ll be our only instrument and all the religions will fade into obscurity.

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