The following is an examination of the parallels between the factors leading to the creation of religious worldviews and the development of species.

This essay is best appreciated after a long walk through an abundant countryside during the spring.

In England we get about 2 weeks of perfect weather a year, and we all rush out to get badly sun burned, then rush back in to grumble about how we don’t get enough opportunity to get sun burned.

I go through the fields at the back of the house, and the world seems like paradise to me, and I cease to wonder about the nature worshipers of old. To see nature at it’s most congenial to us, warm, full of life is to what to live forever, and be content with life as it is. I contrast this to the attitudes of other cultures, and faiths, Buddhism with its emphasis on escaping the cycle of suffering on earth, xtinity with its promises of life in a better place, and I understand why you don’t get such faiths developing in places like this.

In natural selection the environment, as well as the conditions created by other creatures has a profound effect on the way life evolves. The mutations in species DNA is practically constant but environmental change is erratic, sometimes fast sometimes slow, and so is the way nature takes advantage of mutation, and the environmental conditions reflects the "final" resulting animal. The remaining factor, other creatures, creates predator and prey induced arms races, competition for resources, mates and symbiosis, and that basically all you need for the variation in life.

Now imagine, you’re a human in an environment, within a culture, what goes on in your head? The infinite potential of the human mind is akin to the mutational possibilities in species DNA, and while many ideas can seemingly come out of nowhere, most products of the mind are fashioned by what is outside it.

If you study religions you notice a correlation with the faiths outlook and the surrounding locality. This effects belief systems in many intimate ways, from the type of gods to the ceremonies. An you imagine native American spirituality without the dramatic north American landscapes, flora and forna? Can you take the desert out of early Judaism, its sandy prophets, or windy god of cloud and barren mountain? Same for Islam and the Arabian desert, Celtic Paganism and the forests and fields of Europe, not to mentions the colourful Hindu tales, and their very Indian characters and philosophies.

It’s not surprising when the religion in question remains remote, tied to its birthplace like Sikhism or Hinduism but when a faith spreads it self around, some essence of the original locality seems to remain.

To illustrate I’ll compare xtianity to Celtic paganism in England.