In 2014 and 2015, our featured artist Baba Brinkman realized his Rap Guide to Religion. It’s one part rap concert, one part comedy and one part TED talk. Most of all, it’s science explained in a very modern and entertaining manner. It has already been the third of Baba’s Rap Guides, his fifth and newest is playing at the Soho Playhouse in New York during all of March and April.
Baba Brinkman
Baba Brinkman is a Canadian rapper, science communicator, and award-winning hip-hop playwright based in New York, NY.
Best known for his “Rap Guide” series of science-themed plays and albums, Baba has toured the world and enjoyed successful runs at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and off-Broadway. The set so far includes rap guides to Evolution, Human Nature, Business, Wilderness, Religion, Medicine, Climate Change, and Consciousness.
Baba’s unique brand of “peer-reviewed rap” is bringing together hip-hop, comedy, and evolutionary behavioral sciences. He is striving to make sense of nature’s most unpredictable primate: us!
Rap Guide To Religion
Baba finds the world full of religions, thousands of them. New beliefs are formed every day, while others are forgotten. As an atheist himself, Baba sees no truth in the supernatural claims of religion. So instead, he looks for the evolutionary benefits of belief. His conclusion: Religion evolves.
As Baba explains, theologians and philosophers have sought the meaning and purpose of life for thousands of years, often finding it in religion. Then Darwin’s theory of evolution turned the world upside down. The supernatural was discarded as the source of answers to the natural world and replaced by the blind force of development. And today, with decades of scientific research on hand, Baba finally makes sense of religion using the tools of evolutionary thinking, called “Evolutionary Religious Studies.”
As always, Baba explains his theories and opinions in an amusing way. Have a look at his talk at Canada’s renowned ideacity conference in 2015: