I always asked myself, if God is just a fiction, how come there are so many religions? Does the idea of God fit into the theory of evolution? Is it survival of the fittest?

After giving it a lot of thought, I came to the conclusion that religions fit well in evolution… The social evolution…

Since the basic concept of evolution is survival of the fittest, Being part of a family, tribe, kingdom and, to bigger extent, religion makes you part of a stronger unit that has better chances to survive. In a similar way to what Richard Dawkins define as a meme – an idea that is passed from generation to the next.

So what makes Christianity followed by so many people?

If we take a look at the time of Jesus of Nazareth (if we can claim that he was a true historical figure) there were other rivals prophets claiming things similar to his teachings.

Appolonius of Tayana was believed by his followers to make miracles, that he is the son on god, born to a virgin, raised the dead… Does it sound familiar? Well, yes… But his problem to preaching to the educated elite of the Roman Empire gave him only a small group of followers, on the contrary to the poor society the Jesus preached to which automatically gave him a much bigger base of followers to expand from. So the stronger (in this case, bigger) survived while the smaller and weaker lost.

Another example is the story of Simon Magus, he also was another prophet at the time of Jesus, also made miracles, and his followers claimed he his God. His followers initially out numbered, or at least big enough, that the bible and early Christian writings, mention him as a heretic, that tried to buy the blessings for money (hence the word Simony). According to the Christian writings, Simon Magus lost a debate to Peter and converted. Again, since the victors write history, and since the weak cannot “evolve”, the followers disappeared gradually till around the year 300AD.

The last example, as a rival prophet to Jesus is John the Baptist who his followers were rivals to Christianity and at some point they out numbered those who followed the new religion (Christianity). Even jesus went to him to get his blessings and get baptized (does that mean that jesus was a sinner according to the bible? point to think about). Anyhow, John’s followers were persecuted after the Roman Empire became officially Christian when Constantine adopted it as his religion. Of note – some of these followers are still around today (Mandaeism).

So again, being part of a religion makes you belong to a stronger group defies smaller and weaker ones and so this group survives.

As with Christianity, also Islam, Judaism, and other big religions survive where they are surrounded with smaller and weaker groups, it all depends on the location of the specific religion. The bigger, the stronger, the fittest, the survivor.

Does that make religion and god real? Not at all, it’s just primitive and understandable need to survive. Society invented religions to survive in the face of external threats – natural disasters, wars, and of course, other religions, it was the bond that held societies together, and when this society got weak, its religion and gods also died got weak and vanished from history, and the new stronger one rules, and so on…

In our time, along with the vast scientific progress, in order to evolve to a better and stronger beings, our bigger and stronger group, which is humanity, needs to reject past false misconceptions, and use science and scientific facts to face the natural changes and threats (pollution, raising of sea levels, natural disasters and so on)… We need to understand the world we live in, based on facts, not man-made fiction, in order to survive… Believing in God and other fictional characters would bring humanity to its catastrophic end, with more death, wars, poverty and closed-minded weak human beings ruled by religious leaders.