We created Gods and Goddesses to explain how things came to be and we created good and evil to explain why people commit things like murder, adultery, and pedophilia. We also created places like heaven and hell to provide justification for adhering to or not adhering to a perceived good or evil life. Religion brought people together and was a key to creating civilized societies. Religion laid the groundwork for societies to create governments which lead to civilizations that eventually lead to the modern world we live in today.

Religion also separated us from the natural world since, after all, we had modeled religion around ourselves and had put us above all else on earth. The gross over simplification of humanity as either being good or evil led to very many misunderstandings of what it is to be human.

To understand what it is to be human you must first understand that we are after all animals that evolved from apes. You must understand that good and evil do not exist and that human consciousness is not a magical gift from god. We feel we have complete control over what we do but in fact we do not. Things that cause human conflict are not the result from an evil force, but is the result of our evolutionary past.

Territoriality can be traced directly back to our evolutionary past. Chimpanzees just like many other animals are territorial just like we are but we do it to a much larger scale. It ranges from an old man yelling at kids for walking through his yard to waging war to attain or defend land and natural resources. We separate ourselves from one another according to not only where we live but what race or religion we are. We act this way because it once was and still is, to a certain extent, a means of survival even though we may not see it that way.

Adultery is also a leftover of our evolution. It is instinct for a male to spread his seed even though the the mans only conscious reason for wanting to commit adultery is just for sexual satisfaction. It is in much the same way that a silverback gorilla mates with multiple females. We know that the point of this is to ensure better chances of offspring by the gorilla which in turn ensures the continuation of the species but that is not the gorillas motivation. And the same goes for female humans, the only conscious reason a female may want to commit adultery is for sexual satisfaction but sexual satisfaction itself is rooted in survival of the species. It is similar to how we eat because we feel hungry but we know the only reason we feel the sensation of hunger is to survive.

Male dominance and female submissiveness is also natural to humans as with chimpanzees and gorillas. Fortunately though Western civilization has culturally changed within the last 100 years for a more equal society as far as womens rights but still most families are patriarchal. Men still hold most of the authoritative positions in the government, military, business, and household. This of course developed naturally because, as with most animals that live in groups, it is the males job to defend the group and, in some species, hunt for the group.

Humans are not perfect. It Is obvious we have not yet evolved enough to remove some of these instincts that cause conflict, but the very fact that something like adultery is perceived as conflict shows that we are steadily changing. If we all could just step back and see ourselves for what we are, we may be able to more quickly move beyond many our leftover evolutionary traits and become a more peaceful and understanding species.