| Re: Fear and Religion
Fear is the strongest instinct. It is based on fight and flight, with the needed response having to happen, quickly, to assure survival. If we compare this to desire, desire although also strong, doesn't get the system going with the same level of survival urgency. Sexual desire, which may be the root of all desire, is more for survival of the species, where the slack can be picked up by someone else. The idea of using fear, was it is the trump card of all the instincts, able to override all of them.
For example, one may desire that chocolate cake, but if I have a gun, you will back down with fear trumping desire or hunger. One will have to try to work around the fear by being sneaky or charming to be able to satisfy the desire. Take away the fear, and we just pig out on the cake like an animal. Add the fear to the blend, we need to become a little more ingenious to satisfy the desire, like a thinking human. The global warming fear is helping us to satisfy our desire for a clean environment. Rather than just desiring it, with longing, we are more urgently doing something. There is a lot more thinking and ingenuity at work.
The old saying, the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom, caused people to have to think before just acting on any impulse. A quick impulse is what animals can do. But a human is suppose to use their mind. The fear sets up a conflict of coming (impulse) and going (fear). The animal in us will have to stop in the middle, and has to think about it first. Philosophers may write an entire book stuck between fear and desire trying figure out a way to get the chocolate cake. Without the fear he would eat the cake and then take a nap. There would be no need for this well thought out work around, which may help the common good.
At the time of Jesus, he preached the removal of the fear. Humans had got all they could get out of the old testament fear angle. The problem was, fear was no longer being used to expand the mind, but to enslave people. What was suppose to take the place of the polarization of fear was a polarization using love. For example, we desire that chocolate cake. With fear we stop short and then back off. We then may develop an ingenuity to get around it. There is often a temptation affect, as we fixate on the desire, which can not be satisfied quickly out of fear. The result is the ingenuity needed to get it.
The change was to replace the fear polarization with a love polarization. Although we know the work-around, and can now get the cake, one stops to ponder, not out of fear, but out of love. OK, it took a while, but I have the cake. But I also love my little brother so maybe I will share. I feel sorry for that poor person, so maybe I will give him part of the cake. It was a new polarization that was designed to fan out the modernized human instinct and ingenuity for the common good. Now the philosopher is pondering his desire and his love and he comes up with new ideas like democracy.
The earliest Christians preached, " let no one be your judge with respect to food, drink, festivals, etc.". Forget the fear angle that is passe. The new law is summarized in only one sentence, so it is easy to remember and hard to legally manipulate, love your neighbor (and God). One only has to think in the middle between their totally legal natural and calculated desires, and love. Try to fan out for the common good, no more fear, just love. But as history shows this pure love polarization movement didn't last.
After a few centuries and enough gladiator competitions, we settled on fear and love. That completed the trinity, impulse of desire, fear and love. We act with impulse but stop short due to fear. There we think and use our ingenuity to work around. Then we get it and stop again because of love and find that compromise that has extended benefit around us.  | 
