Humans instinctively require membership in a pack

To add to my previous two post, my dog just reminded me why humans feel the need to join a church.

My dog, Foxy, is a mixed breed sheltie with something else. A lovely and loving little animal with a sad history. She had belonged to a family, and either ran away, or they moved and abandoned her. She was skin and bones when she politely came up to my Buddhist daughter-in-Law begging for food as she was going into work one day. Foxy was still outside her office when she left work that afternoon. Since no one was caring for her, my daughter-in-law brought her home. We tried to find her owners through the Vetinarian named on her rabies tag, but could not do so. The phone was disconneted and the Vet would not give out the name or address. That was about eight years ago and the newly named "Foxy" (with her skinny features and reddish fur she very much resembled a fox - and besides, she is a beautiful dog) is still with me long after my son and daughter-in-law moved out.

The thing is, with that history she has abandonment issues and frequently needs reassuring that she is a member of the pack. The pack is, of course, me and my daughter who live here along with the other dog of the house. Dogs, like wolves, instinctively must be members of a pack. Part of the evolution of dogs is that they have accepted people as the alpha members of the pack. Foxy's feelings of abandonment surface easily, so she is frequently appearing and looking up expectantly asking for reassurance by a few head scratches or by petting.

So what's this got to do with humans and religion as I wrote about in the previous two posts? Simple. Humans are primates with much the same instinctive demand to belong to a pack as dogs and wolves have.

Foxy just reminded me why humans feel the need to join an organization when they are "looking for roots." The humans are looking for a pack to join that will accept them. It is one of the essential emotional needs of most human beings. Family provides one pack, but with Americans and their mobile life style, the family is often not available. So people often choose to join the pack that clearly wants their membership - Churches.

The opportunity to join with others is a much stronger draw than religious doctrine for all the fact that it is instinctual and below the level of consciousness. In fact, for many of us the exclusiveness of the doctrine is often a strong turn-off. It becomes an all or nothing choice. The choice is to accept the doctrine as the price of becoming a member of the human pack, er, uh, church. That membership is probably the strongest element of the so-called "search for roots."

That's my opinion, anyway. Of course, it is an entirely secular explanation with no consideration of the unobserved, unproven and unprovable magical intervention by God.