I spent my whole life perplexed by religiousness

Front door step 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 and 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 and 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

Visions, except based on philosophical naturalism

Which means no counterfactual claims, no supernatural

Nothin’ but reason and evidence, troops salute the rational

In my religion the truth is sacred, and science adjudicates it

And meditation is cool if you wanna find your Buddha nature

But human nature exists too, and 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 behavioural ecologist, religion is all of this

Two or three 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 and followers and 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

Twelve thousand 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

And if you’re in my tribe, well then I’ll die for you and 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 Brinkman?

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

And 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 amazing, but it’s not really for

Naval gazing; Nah, it’s a side effect of your umbilical chord

So religion might be a viral meme that’s parasitic

Or it might be an adaptation that maximizes descendants

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

And science can find the answers, and the answers are non-obvious