Monkey Business

After the #SomosTodosMacacos trend, I remembered something I read a few months ago. I can't remember if this is a real experiment or just something made up, but I find it really interesting.

"A group of scientists performed an experiment. They placed 5 monkeys in a room, as well as a ladder. Every once in a while, they put a banana on top of the ladder and when any of the monkeys tried to climb up the ladder to get the banana, they'd cold shower all the monkeys. Eventually, the monkeys learned not to climb the ladder and if any of them tried to do so, the others would beat him up. After this, the scientists replaced one of the monkeys with a brand new monkey. He obviously started to climb the ladder and got beat up by the others until he learned not to. They replaced all the monkeys, one by one, until none of the 5 monkeys were part of the initial group. Surprisingly, the monkeys kept beating any monkey that tried to climb up the ladder, even though none of them had ever been showered as punishment."

Interesting, isn't it? The experiment instantly reminded me of religious beliefs and I thought of something my dad once said. We were discussing religion and I told him I was an agnostic and he said he agreed with me. When I asked him why, he answered "If I did believe in a God, which religion would I choose?". I wasn't expecting that. He never became a religious person because most religions think some other religion is wrong and there is no way to decide which one is correct or not.

So, from then on, when I was talking about god and faith with my religious friends and family, I started asking them "Why are you a Christian, and not Jewish?" and every person gave me the same answer: "I don't know. I was brought up this way." From this, we can establish something right off the bat: religion is taught. If you don't think other religions are wrong, you don't think your religion is wrong, you don't think other's religion is worse or better than yours and you still claim to believe only in your own religion, then religion is taught.

The other thing we can establish is that we're just the same as monkeys. Just like monkeys were taught not to climb the ladder, so were half the people I know to believe in Christianity. When I was a kid, I asked myself why should I believe in god or not. I was too young to consider other religions, so I made this argument with Christianism. Is there proof God exists? No. Is there proof he doesn't exist? There can't be. You can't prove something doesn't exist. If I tell you that there is a Rock that turns everything it touches into gold, you can't prove I'm lying because you don't have all the pebbles in the planet and in the universe to prove it.

However, believing something to explain things we don't understand (which was how Gods were created, to explain night and day and fire and every other phenomena on this world) seems like a human instinct that exists today and probably existed thousands of years ago. Greedy men trying to take advantage of others would probably proclaim salvation from this world to satisfy their own selfish needs. If I lived 500 years ago, I would probably be one of those greedy cunts, to be honest.

But anyway, this is a mute point. No one but God can prove God exists. But just like you look at an insect and don't waste a single moment thinking about it, an omniscient and all powerful being will probably have the same opinion of us humans. However, I ask of you to think about your religion (if you have one) and why do you believe your god and not any other god from the thousands out there.

Hoping I didn't offend you,

David