Song information On this page you can find the lyrics of the song Religion Evolves, artist - Baba Brinkman
Date of issue: 22.10.2015
Song language: English
Religion Evolves |
Religion evolves |
You can watch it |
It evolves |
I spent my whole life perplexed by religiousness |
Front doorstep 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 & 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 & 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 |
Vision, except based on philosophical naturalism |
Which means no counterfactual claims, no supernatural, |
Nothin' but reason & evidence, |
troops salute the rational |
In my religion the truth is sacred |
& science adjudicates it |
& meditation is cool if you wanna find your buddha nature. |
But human nature exists too |
& it’s not rude to face it |
Enlightenment comes when we understand how evolution shapes it. |
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 kill us first, |
Let’s hope religion evolves. |
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 behavioral ecologist, |
Religion is all of this |
2 or 3 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 & followers & 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 |
12, 000 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 |
& if you’re in my tribe, |
well then I’ll die for you |
& you’ll die for me. |
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 kill us first, |
Let’s hope religion evolves. |
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 Bringman? |
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 |
& 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 button, which is amazing, |
but it’s not really for naval gazing; |
Nah, it’s a side effect of your umbilical cord |
So religion might be a viral meme that’s parasitic |
Or it might be an adaptation that maximizes descendents |
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 button byproduct |
or adaptive in the past |
and maladaptive in the present |
These are good questions to ask |
& science can find the ansswers |
& the answers are non-obvious |
Except the answer to where religion doesn’t come from: |
Devine providence. |