The Poker Game

Imagine waking up to find yourself sitting you down at a poker table. You've never played before and you have only the vaguest idea of the rules. The room is dark and as far as you know sealed all around. In front of you is a stack of plastic chips of various different colours. The other players at the table are ghostly cloaked figures - all you can see is the cloudy light of their eyes shining out from under dark hoods. You get the distinct impression they won't react if you try and talk to them. You have a larger pile of chips than they do but you suspect that they are nonetheless hardened veterans of the game. A sadistic voice starts speaking to you from behind. You turn to look but can't see anyone in the darkness. The voice sends chills down your spine as it speaks. You're told the game starts in one hour and that once it begins it will run for a minimum of four days straight. There's a gun to your head. You're told if you try to leave or even sit out one hand it'll be the last thing you ever do. Finally, you are told with a sly laugh that the only way you will ever be able to leave the game is if, at some point after the four day mark, you manage to accumulate more chips than when you started. If at any point you lose all your the chips, that's game over.

Just as you start to panic, a strange man appears alongside you. He has a scraggy beard and a faraway look in his hollowed-out eyes. He says nothing, only reaches into one of the pockets of his enormous overcoat and pulls out two books. Holding one in each palm, the strange man gestures both books towards you, his eyes still staring off into the distant dark. You have a look at the books. The first is called 'The Definitive Modern Encyclopedia of the History and Rules of Texas Hold'em Poker: Complete and Unabridged'. It's absolutely pristine - still in it's original wrapping. The font is smart and there is a helpful looking picture on the front cover. A caption on the bottom tells you it was compiled by leading experts in the rules of poker, one of whom had even earned a Nobel Prize for their work in the field. You breath a sigh of relief. "Phew", you think "I can learn everything I need to know in the hour before the game begins, I'm going to be fine". As relief washes over you, you wonder why even bother with the other book. As you turn your attention to it you see that the other book is a mess. There is no title and half the coffee-(and you suspect worse)-stained pages are on the verge of falling out. The black outer-binding is badly ripped. So much so that you can just about make out some of the writing on the first page. Barely legible, written in the blotched ink of an ancient pen, you discern the words: 'Write here, ye winners, thy call to beginners'. Below that you see the tail end of a sentence in completely different handwriting (indeed you can't be sure it's even written in English). As you reach out to take a closer look, the strange man steps back, his gaze unmoved. The deathly voice speaks again: 'pick one'.

'A bad plan is better than no plan'

Look at your body. Think about the aspects of it you have in common with a significant number of other human beings. Every one of these aspects, every cell, every organ , every limb, every system, every brain function has contributed to one or more of your ancestors' survival and reproductive chances [1]. Anything even remotely harmful is washed away by random deviations and the unrelenting passage of time [2].

The same concept can be applied to whole societies. Any beliefs, ideals, practices, rituals, structures or sets of ideas which are harmful to the survival of that society will be surely weeded out over the ages. Societies with harmful ideas will simply die off and be replaced. Conversely, anything which has evolved and survived independently in many different societies is practically certain to have positively aided the survival of those societies and the individuals in them [3].

Let's apply this evolution view to religions and religious belief.

Why do we tell each other stories? (and what does that have to do with religion?)

Some people seem to think that stories are pure entertainment, a form of escapism from the mundanity of every day life. But this cannot possibly be the complete picture - there are many ways of killing time, but stories are a universal. Every successful tribe of humans has evolved to be good at telling and remembering stories. Our ancestors who did not have the ability to listen to, be interested in, learn from and pass on stories died out. Why? A story contains a lot of information. They distil hundreds of observations about the world into compacted, memorable and entertaining strings. Everyone knows what you mean when you say 'the moral of the story'. Stories help us learn how the world works and how we should act within it to improve our chances of doing well.

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