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Humans Hardwired to Believe in Supernatural Deity?
dohcrx writes "According to a Sunday New York Times article, 6 in 10 Americans believe in the devil and hell, 7 in 10 believe in angels, heaven and the existence of miracles and life after death, while 92% believe in a personal God. The article explores the possibility that this belief structure may be ingrained into our genetic makeup. 'When a trait is universal, evolutionary biologists look for a genetic explanation and wonder how that gene or genes might enhance survival or reproductive success ... Which is the better biological explanation for a belief in God — evolutionary adaptation or neurological accident? Is there something about the cognitive functioning of humans that makes us receptive to belief in a supernatural deity?'"
there is No god
That's how I made it.
Religion evolved?
:]
Sounds like a sure way to piss off the religious and atheists alike
"Wait, you mean religion might confer some survival advantage? And it's so widespread that..."
"First you're telling me I'm a monkey's uncle. Now you're telling me it was a religious monkey!? Okay, great ape or whatever, but still!?"
Something like this was in Newsweek almost three years ago. The matter poses no difficulty to either atheist or theist philosophers of religion, for while one side can argue that this must mean belief in God is some built-in override of reason, the theist can argue that the direction towards worship is part of the Creator's plan.
just saying!
There's no "gene" per se that explains why humans believe in God and the supernatural. Humans believe in God because they want to believe that their life means something, that we are living for a reason. It comforts humans "knowing" that there is something bigger than them out there, it comforts them "knowing" that when one dies, they just go up to heaven to live a better life. Humans believe in God simply because they want to believe.
...if that's the case, how did it just happen to 'evolve' its way into the dna?
http://wstewart.php0h.com - the sugarbuzz project blog
Just maybe.
.... and belief in a rosy afterlife will make you live longer and pass on that trait. I mean, what's the size of an average Catholic family compared to the lonely angry atheist?
From what I've seen this is all about nurture, and not nature. America's Christianity feeds itself, with a father instilling his faith in his son. I'm attending secondary school (high school) and the majority of us are atheists, and some of those who were previously christian or other faiths have become agnostic or more.
You can beleive something your childhood years without questioning it. If you fail to question it before you reach adulthood, the chances are its sunk into the way you reason. Hence, you'll be a little more stubborn.
Now let me get laid! What? It doesn't work that way?
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So, you're telling me that I'm a mutant?
-Peter
It seems to me that if the conjecture of a genetic basis is right, then this probably does little to help agnostics like me decide whether or not God exists. Here's why...
If God doesn't exist, then a genetic basis gives a potentially adequate explanation for religiosity. So the genetic basis doesn't disprove atheism.
If God does exist, then this is consistent with the theology (Christian, at least) that God has built us to know Him. (Assuming for the sake of argument that God can and does work through evolution and genetics.) So the genetic basis wouldn't seem to disprove Christianity (and thus theism in general) either.
I dunno... what do you guys think?
Do you know everything?
Do you know anyone who knows everything?
Is it possible for you to know everything? (Theoretically, maybe, but empirically over ten thousand years--no)
Is it possible for anyone to know everything? (Theoretically, maybe, but empirically over ten thousand years--no)
If something exists then nothing cannot be everything.
If nobody knows everything then what knows everything?
If there is something (indicating that nothing is not everything) then there must be something which knows everything.
Once you believe that something does exist (and therefore nothing cannot be everything) then everything after that--which religion, which set of rituals, which particular prayers, which actions necessary for appeasement--is just personal preference.
There is a God, he does exist, and it doesn't have to have anything to do with DNA. The simple fact of existence indicates (strongly) God.
the NPG electrode was replaced with carbon blac
For example, if you belive in UFO's or some other phenomen you are labled a crackpot yet when you belive in god you are accepted socially (in most cases :))
And now onto a more real world example close to many readers here. If you think 9/11 was carried out by Israel's MOSSAD and their manipulation of those in power in the US and their control of various companies etc you are labled unpatriotic and a crackpot yet if you believe it was a terrorist on the run in the Middle East supported by Saddam H. then you are accepted socially.
Hardwired I doubt, socially conditioned (which could appear as hardwired after all its patterns in the brain right?).
http://www.rense.com/general79/wdx1.htm
. . . is meant by the term "personal God"
Because, personally, I think I am God, so . . .
I am probably much like most of the rest of you slashdotters; smarter than most of the population (at the 98th percentile), technically adept and grew up an atheist in a home where we did not regularly attend church. The people around me that were religious seemed only to be mental midgets that needed psychological crutches to help them hobble through the day.
That was my view for my first 25 years of life, the next 15 have been quite a bit different. If we have a genetic disposition to need God, why is atheism more common among the young people that I have known and still know?
Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see. - Mark Twain
Such a statistic seems to say more about what makes a good American than humanity. Here in Europe it feels like the other way round. I guess it got burned out of the senisble people during the religious wars. Now with Tory Blair and Yo Bush we seem to be going wrong again.
What is the sample population for the study? How many people were surveyed? Was it a self-selecting phone survey ("Hi, we'd like to ask you some questions about your religion...")? What questions were asked?
Is a survey of 1000 Christians (especially from fanatical sects) in the USA really going to be representative of the genetic makeup of humanity as a whole?
Is it possible that being exposed to religion during the first 5 years of your life -- and constantly being told, "God made it that way" or "God loves you even if you don't believe in him" -- would influence your belief system to the extent that you'd believe in a "magic box" that would destroy the property of non-believers?
Speculate that deity dependence is ingrained into our genetic makeup all you like, but until you can present a survey from a meaningful sample population it's nothing more than an interesting topic for discussion around the water cooler (or in the modern office, the automatic espresso machine).
This was one of the possibilities that Dawkins talked about in the God Delusion - according to the evolutionary approach, the belief in gods and the supernatural is really a 'spin-off' of a ingrained tendency to believe authority. Now, the reason this might be useful in an evolutionary perspective is that a child whose genetic makeup predisposes him to be a little more gullible, will probably heed his parents warnings about dangerous things. So if a child were to be told that he should not go down to a certain part of the riverside because of snakes - the more readily the child accepts this, the longer his genes will survive.
The side of effect of this whole process, is that the species may have a tendency to believe authority - some more so than others. Obviously, one has to be a little more specific as to what exactly is 'authority' - but thats a whole other thread.
As with all evolutionary explanations, one shouldn't push it too far - but it does sound quite plausible.
If a significant portion (in this case in the high 90 percent range due to the claim made), of the entire world's population bleived in these things the author might have a point. I doubt the figures will bear such an argument however.
This makes the huge assumption that American's are representative of humanity as a whole. I think the fact that religion pervades the average American life from birth might be an important consideration. Also the fact that people who aren't at least passively religious are more or less condemned in many circles might have something to do with how one answers these questions regardless of their actual beliefs...
I think it may be a bit different than just genetic hardwiring... The simple fact that we have thoughts and feelings that can't really be explained by science to me makes us think that there is something definitely non-physical about our nature. I can have thoughts that no one can hear, I can plan things in my head, come up with ideas, etc. I have a personality, feelings, and none of this is explainable through science... not yet anyway.
So because all humans have these characteristics of thoughts,feelings, etc, I think that lends itself to the fact that there is something else mysterious at work here. The mental jump to the fact we have souls, there is some type of after-life, etc, I believe is not too much of a leap, especially if you're in a society that pushes these ideas.
Meta, Meta, Meta
finally, a cure!
The stupid ones are anyway.
Too bad being lazy doesn't include sitting around thinking logical thoughts. Religion would go away overnight then....
The belief is not universal only the fear of not being worth more than the sum of your parts, your existence will just end with no reward for all your suffering and so on. The truth is out there its just not Charlton Heston in drag.
9% of USA Americans are non believers in God. They are no more representive than Swedes (85%) http://www.adherents.com/largecom/com_atheist.html .
Belief in god simply is not universal. The numbers above make that clear. If it is a hard wired function of our brains, then explain the variation in brain wiring between Swedes and Americans. On the nature vs. nurture line, this one is at the nuture end.
I know my brain isn't wired for belief in god. My parents ran the Sunday school and brought me up a methodist. My grandparents were religious. My genetic inheritance should make me religious if its a preset brain wiring. Yet as a young child I saw the teachings as a system of inconsistent threats (be nice or go to hell, believe and be saved etc). As an older child I suspected the stories and teaching of being untrue. By the time I was in comprehensive school (age 11, UK) I knew I didn't believe a word of it and knew I was an atheist.
My personal experience leads to the opposite conclusion. We may be wired to follow the logic we understand or are taught. If we are taught how to think rationally and scientifically, then belief in God is vulnerable to rational analysis.
Moving to the USA (from the UK) had transformed atheism for me. It used to just be a fact. Relgious people went to Church and wasted their Sundays. There was no issue. In the USA I find people scared to be frank about their atheism. They find themselves in the minority, and a mistrusted minority at that. The outward effects of religion on society is caustic to education (e.g. evolution in schools), civil rights (e.g. bigotry in law and elsewhere towards homosexuals), personal freedoms (e.g. illogical drug use laws) and public policy (e.g. supporting abstinence education over contraceptive education).
I see the 'war' described in TFA as being an outcropping of this politicized environment and the research around it skewed by the politics.
I wonder if I can find work and a visa in Sweden?
Evil people are out to get you.
By coincidence, I was just reading this paper yesterday:
Genetic and Environmental Influences on Religiousness: Findings for Retrospective and Current Religiousness Ratings.
They established that religiousness is somewhat inherited, with the hereditability increasing with age (as do some other traits, such as drug addiction and intelligence). The established this through twin studies.
"A week in the lab saves an hour in the library"
I believe that the use of the deity concept is misused in this case. There have been many studies that indicate that the human mind is capable of gathering input from sources outside our normal realm of experience(5 senses). It would seem to me that this study does nothing more than give more credence to what would otherwise be considered extra-sensory perception. The idea that we as beings are genetically able to sense a "divine" presence or being should only prove that we as human beings have not begun to fully tap our sensory capabilities and our interaction with the world around us. If these genetic triggers can be identified, and it is only a matter of time, then we will be able to further understand another small piece of the bio-processor we call the Brain.
More likely it's social pressure - the Monty Python/'Every Sperm is Sacred' school of thought - if you've got the pope saying 'fuck like bunnies because god says so' vs. the atheists saying 'smaller families are better for the planet, and we can afford better education for our kids, and ...' stands to reason you're going to get more kids indoctrinated into religion - think of it as a memetic advantage rather than a genetic one ...
That was the stupidest thing I've read on the internet so far today. And I just got here from Hal Turner's website, so you had some stiff competition.
Its not secret that there is a negative correlation between IQ and 'religiousness'. Infact, less than 10% of people with an IQ above 120 have any faith/religous belief.
Im not going to point out the rather obvious deduction that can be drawn from this fact ;)
When you're a little kid you look up to your parents -- they are your creators.
You learn that your grandparents were the creators of your parents, and you think they're pretty cool too.
If you go back far enough you must accept one of two conclusions:
Human kind was started by a great all-knowing being, or, by two monkeys fucking and producing some genetically mutated offspring.
The former is a little less of a blow to your ego.
I can see that our genetic makeup includes a "gullible" sequence. Evidence is all around us. More cynical is considering that the human being has genetic material that makes them abuse another's gullibility. Wherever there is a group of people 'believing' in something that doesn't exist, there is a group of people making them believe and using that to their advantage.
Problem with being an atheist is that we see through the make believe story and recognize the mischief. We have shown ourselves to be a pretty nasty race at times. Now that it is making more sense that this behavior is part genetic I don't think that is going to change anytime soon.
...it's just more of that pseudoscientific conjecture. Someone wanted to get himself famous because he mixed the words genetic and religion in the same context.
This whole article is pointless. Just because X happens Y times, it doesn't mean that there is a disease. Because V happens in W of the population, it does NOT mean that there is a GENE for trait V. It could be as much as a large combination of genes common to everyone, such as the ones that give us feet or the capability to think abstractly. Apes and dogs don't have religion; how abstractly can they think?
perhaps theres something to this, evolution occurs for a reason, random mutations don't last long if they don't prove usefull, if there is in actuality a gene that makes one believe in a higher power, then it is most likely beneficial in some way and there for a reason.
This is why I'm agnostic. Until you can prove to me either way that everything we know today is all there is to know (there is nothing left unexplained), I'm going to continue to believe that I have no fucking idea what we are going to learn about in the future. What tidbit of information are we going to glean tomorrow that chips away at one of the infinite definitions for "God"?
My point is this: either until God manifests himself in whatever form happens to fit our definition, or until we can prove that we know all there is to know, I will remain curious, but nothing more.
"The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance - it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel Boorstin
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Angry Atheists? Which one? Anne Coulter? Bill O'Reilly? Rush Limbaugh? Oh Snap! I thought you meant angry assholes. My mistake.
I may not be a smart man, but I know what an inode is.
This is laughable. In Japan and Scandinavia, only a tiny proportion of people believe in a personal deity. Has evolution passed them by? Once again, it pains me to remind Slashdotters that the USA isn't the whole world.
94% of Slashdotters think Wikipedia is a great idea.
94% of Slashdotters are virgins (probably the same 94%)
96% of Slashdotters can't add and don't know what the other 14% are even worse
and....
a full 98.6% of Slashdotters enjoy fake statistics for comic effect.
The sad ones who don't will be appearing shortly.
Tubby or not tubby. Fat is the question
I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)
People tend to assign intelligence (and therefore intention and conscience) to anything that is too complex for them to predict the behavior. See early humans: they believed in a different god behind every 'unexplainable' complex thing like sun, weather, diseases, birth and death. It is a natural human trait: if it is to complex to grasp, then it is intelligent or derived from intelligence. Since it's probably correct to say that there will always be something unexplained in the universe, there will always be space for an intelligent entity like a god to live in.
Self-preservation instinct + knowledge of inevitable death = Belief in afterlife.
We are hardwired to live at all costs. What if we know the effort is futile? How do we stay sane? Religion seems like a coping mechanism to me.
Sure, the idea that humans evolved some sort of mental 'Ah shit, that was really weird! Better attribute it to some vague unknown before I drive myself completely insane...' mechanism seems pretty plausible. Far more plausible than the various manifestations of said vague unknown we've come up with so far...
According to research, evidence suggest a God Spot or God Module or G Spot in the brain.
Richard Dawkins addresses this in The God Delusion. He comes up with some fairly interesting ideas.
He strongly feels that this tendency on our part must be a by-product or accident of some other trait that actually is a survival trait. He posits several possibilities:
I think this whole line of thought is really fascinating. To me an answer to this question would be a very useful antidote for people who think I should adopt some particular version of Christianity or other religion that places mysticism and faith above the evidence of my senses and measuring equipment.
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Millions of humans have been killed in the past for not following the religion of the dominant group. So believing in something just because the majority of people around you do seems a useful survival trait.
Where you draw the line between gene and meme is sometimes difficult to define, though. And some instincts are easier to override with reason than others.
So what percentage of Americans have a Holier-than-thou complex?
or at least that's what most people in the US seem to think. I think it has to do with the fact humans are apes, and apes form hierarchies.
God is the biggest alpha male and it is no coincidence that a god, or gods, is used to confer legitimacy to governments (divine right of kings etc.).
We are biased toward hierarchies, and the concept that no one is in charge blows the minds of many people. God *must* bless America, otherwise the foundation of a huge part of American culture crumbles. If no one is in charge, then who will tell me what to do? How to live? Who to hate?
So I don't think there is a god gene per se. It is just a consequence of being an ape.
My own beliefs are slanted toward an impersonal universal force that really doesn't care much about the individual. But that's just my belief.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Molecular biology scientists of the world, this is your chance to prove yourself worthy! Remove our limiters, now!
We mustn't mistake a cognitive tendency to believe in religion for an affirmation of the truth of religion. We have many cognitive quirks as a species and even Pigeons can learn "superstitious" believes in Skinner boxes so I doubt any neurological basis for religious belief is anything but an artifact of our characteristics as social animals.
It seems that our desire to believe in a supreme being may be mis-adaptation of our built in need for parents. When we grow up, we know we know our parents no longer have all the answers but we still desire that idea of a parent who knows "everything", protect us and insure that we are treated fairly.
Humans are primates. Their primary distinction from ordinary primates is the capacity of conceptual processing - which includes imagination.
Humans are the only primates who are AWARE of death as an abstract. Coupled with the inbuilt fear of death, humans would be at an evolutionary disadvantage if they didn't have some means of coping with that all-pervasive fear. potentiated by their ability to be continuously aware of it, not just aware when under direct threat.
So evolution selected for humans with the capacity to fantasize a "solution" to death. Never mind that the solution was no solution in reality. It worked. The same conceptual processing capability that allowed humans to manipulate their environment also allowed them to manipulate themselves - to fool themselves that they had a "solution" to death even when they didn't. This allowed them to function well enough to advance human development.
Unfortunately the "solution" also did NOT work. It caused most humans to be unable to come up with a rational solution to the problem of death. Only with the slow advance of rationality and science and technology has it become possible to contemplate a rational solution to death. In the meantime, their fantasy "solutions" resulted in murders, suicidal behavior, oppression and war. As usual, most human "solutions" lead to the exact opposite of their intended goals.
Over the millenia, quite a few attempts to (more or less) rationally deal with death were attempted. This was a result of the human capacity for conceptual reasoning. The Gnostics, the Taoists, and others attempted to find ways to deal with death by means of theories of the functioning of the universe and the human body. It would appear most and probably all such attempts failed. Some of them, however, led to the inventions of science and technology.
Now, however, we have nanotechnology and biotechnology. A rational solution is clearly feasible.
Unfortunately, the bulk of the human race continues to behave according to irrational belief systems. These belief systems threaten the security of everyone on the planet when coupled with military weapons technology.
The ignorance and irrationality of the citizens of the United States and Israel at this time, coupled with the insane lust for power of the controllers of these countries, are the greatest threat to peace on this planet ever known in the history of this planet. Compared to that, the so-called "threat" of Islamic fundamentalism pales because Islamic fundamentalists have little power to threaten any significant percentage of the world. The US and Israel, however, nuclear powers both, have the capacity to kill millions of people and to start wars that will kill millions, perhaps scores of millions, more.
Unfortunately, given the number of irrational humans, nothing can be done about this situation until the development of sufficient nanotechnology to take down the US and Israeli states. Israel could be dealt with by merely stealing one of its own nuclear weapons and taking its government out. But the US is not so easily dealt with - even the destruction of Washington, D.C., by a nuclear weapon would not eliminate the US threat to the world.
So the result over the next few decades will be more wars and the slow bleeding to death of these two states economically, militarily and geopolitically, until their threat is reduced. Unfortunately, this will result in the deaths of millions of civilians in the Middle East and elsewhere until this slow, irrational process is completed.
The fall of empires is never easy.
And it's all because evolution is sloppy in the way it selects for survival. Had evolution selected for higher rationality and less fear in humans, we would not be in this situation.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
It's a natural part of human cognition to take a limited amount of information and try and arrange this into a coherent system, making guesses at what lies beyond. The less information there is available, the more guesswork is required. The results get silly very quickly.
Your first sentence was right on the mark. We think that we forgot everything we experienced when we were little. I think instead, we just remember it differently. Before the age of one year, our relationship to our parents is like our adult relationship to god. The parents are those huge things up in the sky, all powerful. They can lift us up in the air, make things appear, give us food, punish us. "Give us this day, our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses..." Are we god-fearing folk? Probably grew up with parents who punished early. So, the reason we believe in god, is because we actually remember him/her. Very deeply. It's ingrained, and we can't shake that feeling that he's up there, watching us, judging us, getting ready with the rewards or punishment.... I think it is genetically useful to remember these early experiences deeply, and to believe in them most strongly. They are your life's first impressions. First impressions are the ones most likely to be repeated....
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http://www.amazon.com/Why-God-Wont-Go-Away/dp/0345 44034X/ref=sr_1_1/103-3082029-4762268?ie=UTF8&s=bo oks&qid=1173046013&sr=8-1
Why God Won't Go Away - Brain Science and the Biology of Belief
Here in the U.S. there is a strong tendency to ostracize those who do not believe. There are many states where testimony in court and the right to run for public office require belief in a diety. Think for a minute where politicians would be if they came out admitting the were atheist.
We are hard wired to "fit in".
As has been pointed out by so many other posts, the strong belief thing is large in the U.S. but not other countries.
TT
Its actually quite relevant to society at large. While some of the endeavors in this area seem a bit hoax-ish, I have always been curious about patients who have had 'religious' or spiritual experiences during brain surgery.
While some might say that was the angels looking after the patients while in surgery, others will imply that religious or spiritual experiences are a byproduct of brain activity rather than external influences.
There is not a lot of hard science or evidence on this and I think it deserves more attention. It is relevant because if spirituality is a function of the brain, we can all forget organized religions and get on with living our lives free of their interference.
Studying this and similar theories gives us possible hard evidence of things thought to be from god or angels etc. Religion has by far been the most destructive motivational force on the face of the planet. Proving it either right or wrong with physical evidence is a really important thing to do.
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All glory to the HypnoToad!
God put that in us so we would believe in Him. It's all part of His plan.
Virtually everyone we talk to in the West is from one of the Abrahamic religions, but look at the world as a whole.
Shinto isn't really theistic, Buddishm and Confucianism are about right living and not about the supernatural, and animism is found all over.
What seems to be universal is the ability to have mystical experiences that feel transcendent and change people's lives.
I know God exists, Jesus is Lord. I wouldn't be telling you if I didn't know. I'm also not still a liar or God would be mad with me. I could go on, but I figured if you're talking about God, I might as well tell you he exists.
God spoke to me.
This is sort of like looking for the gene(s) that "cause" autism. We live in an ecology and our genes express different aspects of their potentials depending on how they 'experience' their ecology. Some of these potentials are pretty obviously maladaptive, like level one autism within which the individual remains nonverbal throughout life. Others are adaptive, resulting in far greater fecundity. Religions are the same. Some, like the Shakers, produce profoundly maladaptive behavior -- guaranteeing no offspring and removing the adherent from kin where they might at least gain through kin selection. Others, like Catholicism, Islam and tribal religions like Orthodox Judaism, and German National Socialism (yes it was a trbal religion within reasonable definitions) can be adaptive in that they have explicit protections of fecundity in them. Sometimes these express a "God" phenotype -- or a similar phenotype such as "Der Furher" within the Nazis. Sometimes they express "heaven" and/or "hell" phenotypes. These phenotypes are not the essence of what is being selected for, however. They merely serve a purpose within a particular environment.
Seastead this.
--"When a trait is universal, evolutionary biologists look for a genetic explanation and wonder how that gene or genes might enhance survival or reproductive success"
You might argue that priesthoods throughout time have always discouraged heretics from
breeding so people might lean towards making that "internal connection" to whatever deity
they're required to worship more easily. Personally I think if anything at all these
priesthoods all the way to the catholic church have been doing themselves a disfavor:
They've selected for intelligence and the ability to deceive.
Buddhists don't believe in God or Gods (depending on the sect, of course). There are also sects of Judaism and other religions that technically qualify as "atheistic" while still being religions.
Perhaps this study should have looked at the entire world, rather than just Americans?
My own theory is that we are genetically wired to understand the world in goal-oriented terms (and also in terms of underlying mechanisms). Both traits provide obvious selective advantages. Combine that with our advanced cognitive capacities that allow us to forumlate questions such as "what is the goal of life?" and "what underlying mechanism brought about the existence of the universe?" and you have a whole species asking questions about things that are beyond the scope of any rigorous investigative method.
"God" is just the simplest answer, so it is popular.
The definition of the US bible belt christian god is actually one of a very small minority on earth. There are billions of Hindus and Buddists who have an entirely different definition of God and many country where more than 50% don't believe in god.(Someone here mentioned Sweden).
This study is next to pointless I'd presume.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
For a well-constructed, thought-out and beautifully-presented logical argument. :-D
Finding the the majority of people are receptive to the idea of a supernatural being doesn't say anything about genetics. What would be more interesting is to find out how many of those people had previously been exposed to such ideas before they actually developed an opinion on the matter. Societies tend to indoctrinate their children with their religious beliefs, traditions, etc. To me, it makes sense that the majority of people are receptive to such ideas because they've been exposed to them for as long as they can remember.
Why am I not surprised that this kind of research was done in the US?
Can you imagine this in e.g. Europe? Russia? China? Ok, Israel or Iran, maybe.
=> Either there's some strange mutations going on in the US or this is bogus. I know which one makes more sense to me.
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"Human heaven? Goodness me! Humans don't go to heaven! No, someone made that up to prevent you all from going nuts!" - Kryten, Red Dwarf
To do something right, you often have to roll up your sleeves and get busy.
No gene needed here. I am dying, and have two options:
1. Eaten up by worms,
or
2. Live forever, and party every nite with all the relatives that I loved.
Even if (2) is a big lie, there is nothing to loose, so it takes a lot of character to willingly going for (1).
don't cut it off www.mgmbill.org
The "old buck" in the herd is the power figure. When the "young buck" crosses horns with the old buck, it is not so much to try take over the herd as it is to get a feeling of security that the herd is being managed by a strong animal.
People go one step further and have an awareness of far more abstract concepts than other animals. No longer is it just important to know who is in charge of the herd. Now you want to know who is in charge of the seasons, the mountains, etc etc. Clearly no one man is, hence the need for supernatural beings.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Belief is thought. Thought is fluid, and based on past experiences. It's not based on genetic makeup. The same, horribly unscientific argument has been used to suggest that crime and antisocial behaviour is genetic, and that particular races are inferior on a genetic basis. It's total bullshit. People's thoughts are strongly correlated with their past experiences, and complex beliefs such as religious beliefs come from society and from experience, not from our genes. This article just demonstrates how little supposed scientists know about DNA.
Yeah -- it's called inherent low self-esteem.
For chrissakes!!
Americans' genetic makeup may be one issue, but people came to America not because they believed in religious freedom, but because they _didn't_. Our ancestors (most of the founders) came to America in hopes of founding religious societies that fit their beliefs and enforcing those beliefs on the people around them. Anyone out there read _The Scarlet Letter_? Infidelity is probably more ubiquitous and more human and more ingrained in our DNA than any belief in a deity. Anyone who thinks Americans' beliefs about religion aren't part and parcel of an essentially Judeo-Christian ubiquity needs to travel to Japan, where people get born with Shinto ceremonies, marry Christian-style in a church, and often are buried with Buddhist funerary rites. Ask most Japanese if they believe in God or "a personal God" and they'll laugh. Men and women can still share public baths together without any moral squeamishness or embarrassment about being nude. Americans would rather see people be shot in the head on prime television than see actors in a love scene. We can watch two teams injure their opponents, but we can't watch Janet Jackson's breast. I for one, would far prefer another peek at her spectacular bosom than see this or that sports team grunt around over some stupid ball...but morality rules here in America. 92 percent? I'm guessing it's closer to 100.
Anyone who thinks a study of what's in America equates to Humanity as a whole is so full of hubris it's genuinely not funny. Just because George W. Bush thinks the world = America's values doesn't mean we have to gobble that garbage down too.
What may well be almost universal is the human need for solace in the face of otherwise unbearable pain, suffering, or loss. Most people turn to a pallative, be it chemicals or religion, to ease the agony. Others accept that there are aspects of life, like death, that are scary and that suck, but that we still have to deal with it. But to claim that God is out there, or universally within us as Americans, is to deny that we grow up surrounded by radical Christian teachings and an ingrained Judeo-Christian morality which most people no longer realize is even religion. Witness (even in so-called non-religious Americans) the violent fears about homosexual marriage, the continued prejudice against gays and lesbians, the ease with which we go on crusades against non-Christian cultures such as the Middle East or North Korea. Japan was the country which got 2 atomic bombs dropped on it, not Germany.
If more mothers and fathers taught their kids non-Christian beliefs -- or agnostic or atheistic ones -- America would rapidly lose its archaic beliefs that certain people are less "normal" than others, that certain children (such as orphaned or so-called "illegitimate") are any less special than ones who have 2 parents who care. Consenting adults could have the sex they deserve -- with whomever they please -- without being labeled as "adulterers." Instead of thanking God for fertility drugs that give a couple the ability to conceive, couples could give the scientists who toiled to create better lives for them the credit they deserve. Every time I hear someone holding their test-tube conceived triplets say "I thank God for my babies," I think how nice it would be to hear someone say, "I thank God for my abortion." Because if fertility drugs have been God-given, abortion has been too.
This professor with his voodoo box the article mentions has no clue if people don't put their hand in just because it's too damn ridiculous to honor with his request. That isn't science. It's clinging to a faith-based belief and constructing unscientific experiments that supposedly "prove" or "support" it. It's a great question though, but a shame that it's not being actually studied in a scientific way. And Americans, thank God, are not the entire world.
That's just stupid...
The only belief that's relevant here is the modern belief in the usefulness of statistics. Personally, I'm a follower of the "lies, damned lies and statistics" anti-cult ;)
;)
More seriously... there are lots of people who have a spiritual or ethical basis for their adult understanding of the world, yet have NO belief in the supernatural. In fact, at least one major religion has no deity. Many of the others have no deity or even supernatural entities, in the sense that westerners understand the word.
The problem with religious people isn't that they believe in the supernatural -- it's that most of them can't talk about their experiences logically, and so it either comes out as a supernatural thing, or is explained in terms of their culture's words for such things. In much of the west, people explain their beliefs, moral compasses, fuzzy logic and cultural understandings in terms of "God" and "ghosts" etc. In some western subcultures, it's "mother earth" and "gaia". In still others, it's "science" or "law and order" or "democracy".
Belief has many faces. My belief is that some people stay children, but most of us grow up at 22-30 or so, get some wisdom, find our place in the world, form our adult beliefs, and put a name to it, as best we can.
Of course, others are still figuring out the point of life, so they conduct surveys and come up with things like "73.34% of people answered X when I asked Y, so there must (or must not, or might be, depending on the surveyor) be a God."
Is there something in the genetic makeup of human beings that is making them believe that government is the answer to all problems? Is there a "there ought to be a law" gene? Is there a "someone think of the children" gene? Why is when we are faced with any problem the first answer is always to pray to government?
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
From Wikipedia "Development of Religion":
Dogma Selection Model
In the dogma selection model, religion is a set of beliefs which allow humans to encode useful survival tips and social structures. For example, early populations may not have understood microbes (germs), but thinking of illness as being caused by invisible demons that can hop on nearby people and possess them also supplies a mental model that reminds one to stay away from people that are coughing. The demon is an abstraction or approximation of germs and their infectious nature.
Dogma that increases the survival of a group will spread using a kind of Darwinian selection process (see Natural Selection; meme). The most useful dogmas spread because they keep the population that espouses them alive to bear more children. Over time good ideas may "mutate" as new generations or tribal branches alter them and the best variations spread using the selection process described above. Of course sometimes religious doctrine goes awry and ends up in large numbers of deaths, but it is the net benefits that count in the end.
Table-ized A.I.
The other thing it could indicate is stupid people saying things they don't believe because they feel guilty about not believing, or "answer bias" where they say what they think they *should* say.
The other indication is that Americans are ignorant, mindless sheep who have no ability or training in the fine art of distinguishing fact from fiction. (This is NOT an insult: ignorance can be cured! It's the fault of the US Edumicational sys-thiny.) An almost complete lack of scepticism, and a fine ability to be lead by the nose by power-mad fucktards.
How many escape pods are there? "NONE,SIR!" You counted them? "TWICE, SIR!"
Keep your crap-hole planet. I have the earth.
the NPG electrode was replaced with carbon blac
I think of God as a placeholder for science. When man first gained consciousness, he looked around him and thought "Who put all this here? Someone must have done this." Since he could find no explanation, he created the idea of an all powerful being capable of sculpting the land, controlling the weather, and giving life to the world.
As man grew up, he began to find more concrete explanations for the phenomena around him. We know how weather works. We know what those blinking lights in the night sky are. And one by one, God's creations are given over to science.
Man has a very rational desire to understand mysteries. This has driven the creation of God, and ironically, will drive the removal of God as well.
and there is no purpose. No one can prove otherwise. Get over it already. Quit avoiding responsibility for your life. It's all your fault - the good and the bad. Make the most of the only life you have. It's not than difficult, really.
why is everybody so fucking stupid? all it takes is for one person to NOT believe in god to disprove the entire god damned thing. and americans happen to be among the most god-loving persons on earth, so the 92% in there is a tad misleading. seriously people, don't be stupid.
I'm French and our society is so 'laic' that raised without religious education, I'm now an atheist without any struggle depicted in the article, so if men were really hard-wired to believe in God, how could a 'laic' society could emerge?
Also in the article, the sentence "Why do we cross our fingers during turbulence, even the most atheistic among us?" annoyed me: sure there are atheists which are superstitious (which is kind of weird), but there are also sceptics atheists/agnostics, so this sentence is an outrageous exaggeration/lie..
Which is the better biological explanation for a belief in God evolutionary adaptation or neurological accident?
Assuming of course that there is no God, belief in God provides an evolutionary advantage. Beings who believe that their actions will reflect upon them later are more likely to make selfless contributions, up to and including death, to protect their larger group.
Throughout history, how many times have entire villages(or other small groups) been saved because one individual faced certain death because he or she believed that God would reward them for the sacrifice?
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
If you don't believe me, look at environmentalism, the new urban religion. You believe in a pristine Eden sullied by mankind that can only be saved through ritual sacrifice 'lest you face the judgement of apocalypse. Non-believers are heretics to be shunned.
So it's not so much that people have to believe in a supernatural deity. I believe they're hard-wired to adopt a cause that makes believers feel ashamed for existing and requires them to force others into sacrificing their freedoms to live the way the believers want them to. This goes for Christians, Muslims, Scientologists, environmentalists, etc. Self-loathers want to rule the world and force you to live the way they want you to "for your own good."
Just my two cents on the matter.
"Sufferin' succotash."
For being a nimwit following an AC.
Foo'-Mo'-D says,"Wutup foo?"
I really really don't like "evolutionary psychology", but I've already dealt with that in other places.
What I would like to deal with now is the difference between natural and supernatural concepts.
It seems that several natural concepts are hardwired into people as well. I think the simplest concept that people seem to universally believe in is what is called The First Law of Thermodynamics (at least that is the scientific name for it, although the concept I am sure existed before modern science).
When most children are three to six years old, or so, they don't understand conservation. They think that if water is poured from a taller, skinnier container into a shorter, wider one, that water has "disappeared". And then at some point, around 6 or so, children realize that things can't just appear and disappear. (That is the short version of it, people who specialize in cognitive development could probably explain it better). And from then, on, most people know that things can't appear or disappear out of nowhere.
And of course, mammals with simpler nervous systems know the same thing. If a fox sees a mouse run into an decaying log, it knows that it is still in there. It has the idea that an object in persisting, even out of sight. I don't know what level of animal intelligence is needed to figure this out, but I imagine that most carnivores would know it.
And yet, the idea that objects persist seems to be more than just a mammalian instinct. The same idea ultimately tells us that all matter and energy in the universe is conserved. That when an atom decays, the difference in mass now that it has to spend less energy bonding its nucleons together will result in a photon being created out of nowhere, with exactly enough energy to equal the missing weight.
(Although it should be pointed out that some particles that the First Law says must exist, such as the neutrino, only exists to balance the equation, since it is next to unimaginable that there will ever be a society sophisticated enough to design a device for detecting all the neutrinos coming out of a star)
So, the real question is...why can an idea that seems to be hardwired into the mammalian brain to keep track of where prey is hiding, also seem to be universally true across the universe, at all scales? The idea that objects persist is a metaphysical idea, and yet it seems to be true in all experiments.
Why is that?
Hopefully I didn't put any [] around my words.
it is really this simple.
a handful of fanatics with genetic predisposition for belief in crazy ideas killed off the rest of the town that did not have this genetic predisposition. then they bred like rabbits. this spread their screwed up genes.
if you didnt believe you were killed thus, crazy people were selected for.
comment directly in my journal
Is there something about the cognitive functioning of humans that makes us receptive to belief in a supernatural deity?'
I don't see what the big question is here. When you grow up, you see a red glowing light. It excites you. You reach for it.. It burns you.. You remember that it burns you.. You don't reach for that red light anymore.
But with unprovable phenomena (such as lighting bowling night for Zeus, or your personal savior Jesus), there is a pretty glowing light.. It makes sense (kind of). It makes you happy (until you have to stop playing at 11am on Sunday to go to Church). It has lots of cultural excitement (Christmas, Hannaka(sp?)). So you keep reaching for that red light... But it never burns.
It probably doesn't burn because it's just a community hallucination. But the fact remains, you don't have negative reinforcement. So you keep believing.
I propose that all undeterred possibilities are intrinsically sought out by life's sense of curiosity, or at least it's tendency to fill up space randomly (a curious cat wandering into the unexplored room, and the amoeba moving into a less dense region of the fluid). This, I think is the more powerful evolutionary/phsycological phenomena. This is what makes our randomness stick and survive catastrophic incident.
Belief is just one of many unscorching pretty lights. Religion is the community's exploitation of that belief (for better or worse).
-Michael
We evolved to the point where we could question our own existence. Questioning an existence that is as simple as being born, reproducing, and then dying. It's not surprising to me that our minds create a belief, true or false, in a more supreme being in the interest of not just becoming emo kids. God vs. /wrist
stupidity and fear.
Quit baggin' on the homeless guy. You must be a pathetic sack of horse crap. Did you have anything productive to add or did you think you'd just get a free giggle from posting an insult?
Foo'-Mo'-D says,"Have you seen Coo'-Mo'-D?"
It's crappy writing but this notion plays a key role in Sawyer's Neanderthals trilogy.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
evolutionary adaptation or neurological accident?
The science community should not limit the posibilities. Anything is possible until it can be eliminated. How about the possibility of created that way? There is lots of evidence of an order to the universe. Many believe there is a creator who put the order in place for things to grow and adapt. Science may try to explain many things not understood and look for answers. Science seldom includes and unseen creator.
If you have time, do a google search for a video series called "Physics for Future Presidents" It's from Berkley Universe of Southern California. In the series, look at the Universe lessons. This is not a chruch but a scientific look at the origin of the universe. Even science calls the origin of the universe the creation. Follow the lesson, then look at the biblical description of the origion of the universe. It's so close to the same to bring into question "Was this created?" Who Wrote the first book in the Bible and how did he know how the universe started when nobody else had a clue.
Leaving creation out of consideration does upset the church leadership and should upset the scientific community who are finding a strong corrolation between the two accounts.
Please don't use my post for a flamewar. It's not the intent. Use my post for the factual information and draw your own conclusions.
The truth shall set you free!
Being religious probably got you laid more in the old days (perhaps not for monks). It sure gave those in power a tool to use over the great unwashed (Kings "chosen by god". If you don't pay money to the church you'll burn in hell. Obey thy husband....). These sure give a competitive advantage.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
The universe knows itself--thus the claim over all of history, across all religions, that God is everything.
the NPG electrode was replaced with carbon blac
NOTICE: The following is highly subjective.
Theism exists because people don't want to get real: we are not actually important in this Universe. If the Earth were to blow up tomorrow, we would be the only ones to care. The fact that we exist is about as much an accident as not. We don't have any kind of "mission"...
There's no "afterlife". Why would we need it if we can already live "heaven" or "hell" right here, right now on Earth? People picture "heaven" as "a place like here, except better ". To me, that sounds like an excuse for not making the best of the only life we'll ever have.
Such is my (non)-belief. I think that's as simple as it gets. No need for the truckloads of various nonsense dogma that have been bashed into everyone for millenia.
PS: ... Would I happen to be off-topic?
Theory is often inaccurate(TM)
Nearly every human I know believes in something he refers to as "laws of physics", some sort of hypothesized way in which objects behave consistently according to rules.
Do we need a genetic predisposition to explain this?
Is there a specific genetic predisposition to think that people who laugh at their own jokes a lot are usually not funny?
How do we distinguish between "predisposition to believe X" and "observing X"?
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
"According to a Sunday New York Times article, 6 in 10 Americans believe in....."
"There's no "gene" per se that explains why humans believe in...."
So, what you saying is...uhmmmmm.... Well, whatever...
It least I hope you understand the difference between Americans and humans?
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
By default the complete universe knows itself completely.
Foo'-Mo'-D says,"Wutup foo?"
There is No True God, and Murphy Should have been His Prophet
Pass the word.
Foo'-Mo'-D says,"Have you seen Coo'-Mo'-D?"
People are probably hardwired to be delusional. A majority of Americans also believe in Aliens. A sizable minority (IIRC) believe in ESP. Does this mean that every cranky belief carries a selective advantage?
To say that this is a selective advantage is disingenuous - there's a selective advantage in being able to think and reason at all, pretty clearly. We don't reason perfectly, but that does not mean that flawed reasoning has an evolutionary advantage - we aren't blade-proof, either, but no-one suggests there's an evolutionary advantage that comes from dying when stabbed. Do we see a lot of evidence for non-religious populations that died out? No, we don't - neanderthals appear to have ceremonially treated their dead.
This whole thing is a pseudoscience crock.
The good and new comes from no quarter where it is looked for, and is always something different from what is expected.
Evolution promotes religion? I'm confused.
We are hardwired to get together in groups by creating a shared ethos (way of living) and the way we train each other in the way is through telling each other traditional stories. Religion is an example of such a group-work-creating meme.
The god-concept is a tool of the religion group-work-creating meme. It takes advantage of our tendency to reason by analogy. We first understand how other humans, like our parents when we are infants, and like those around us generally, exercise intentional agency upon the world. How they cause events to happen; how they shape situations for
theiror our benefit.
So when early humans perceived large-scale,natural events, or perceived the seemingly intentional agency of non-human animals, they, by analogy, imbued these large-scale natural systems, or the animals, with human-like spirits.
Human leaders (themselves tools of the group-work=creating memes), understood how they could use stories of the actions, intentions, and attitudes of powerful animal spirits and natural-system spirits, as way-teaching stories and as stories designed to threaten supernaturally powerful deterrence of dissenting ideas and ways.
It's all simply the systematic way that "the way' persists itself in human cultures. And why is "the way" able
to persist itself like this? It's simply because groups of people working together (and forming sub-organizations
and specialization of labour within a shared set of norms of behaviour and interaction), are much more
effective at living than are the same number of people unorganized.
Our genetic tendency is to communicate and to create alliances. These alliances work better, both for the
alliance, and foreach member. i.e. members of an effective alliance survive more probably than unattached
humans or worse-organized humans.
Religion and god-concepts are memes that constrain peoples' behaviour sufficiently so that the group will
function well together (in a civilized, "altruistic" manner, i.e. selfish to the group instead of to the individual)
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
I thought htis was a study. It's just the ramblings of an academic.
The problem is that this is amero-centric and is not indicative of other cultures. There is no science here certainly to suggest that genetics are involved. In some cultures like Scandanavia, athiests outnumber the believers. In the US, it is asking for trouble to say you don't believe in a deity of some kind. Certainly it hampers your chances for public office if you are so inclined. Definitely hampers how people treat you in some small towns. This is philosophical musing, not a science (even if a scientist does the musing).
All it this piece really does illustrate that that humans are herd animals really.
Generally, the question of faith is beyond scientific explanation. See, when I was much younger than today, I was an atheist, one that could scientifically "prove the non-existence of God". Later I learned more, and my cosmological physics whiz-bang could certainly fascinate and confuse your average church-going old granny, but I couldn't fool myself: I realized that what I knew wasn't proof, really, that God didn't create the universe.
:o) ). There are, and have been, enough great God-believing physicists, that you at least have to wonder if there's something wrong with the concepts of atheism.
And quantum mechanics took care of absolute determinism, so.... I had to realize that faith just works on a different plane, that I couldn't attack anymore, BECAUSE I knew enough (astro)physics. I had enough depth to understand that I can't see beyond a certain point in time and space.
If you ask the greatest minds in physics today, they all will have an opinion about the existence of God - some will believe in it, some won't, but neither side would think they can prove their or disprove the opposite side. Great minds are humble (no comparison with me, please
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
Asking what advantage is conferred by religiosity is the wrong question. The advantage is in gullibility at a young age--if you can't indoctrinate children, they'll get themselves killed. Unfortunately, this means you can indoctrinate them with all kinds of nonsense, which they'll pass down to their kids, ad infinitum. Hence, I think, Dawkins' strong statements on the religious indoctrination of children.
However, the headline is an irresponsible mangling of this hypothesis. It's not that we're hardwired to believe in Yahweh; we're hardwired to believe authority figures. If the question were rephrased to ask what proportion believe the myths and legends they grew up on, my guess is that it would be pretty high across cultures.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Hustlers exist solely through charity. I see their scams, lies, and deceit: I'm too charitable to outright shoot them.
My first thought was 'Ah, Creationist! Burn him!' and then I choked that down and thought, 'Actually, that's a good point.'
But I think the reason that God is always left out of science is because there's no test for that. Being ominiscient and ominpotent, he has the ability to either make a reason for the thing to be that way, or make it appear there's a reason. We couldn't know, because God will always beat us to it. Always.
So because it doesn't help us a single iota to keep saying 'Or God could have just made it that way,' we simply leave that off. From now on, you can mentally tack on the 'or God made it that way' to the end of every set of theories.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
I know very little about Memes, but it seems to me that explaining such things using the Meme perspective makes more sense than looking at it from a human biology perspective. It's probably true that religious memes are better suited for survival than alternative memes, so they stick around, multiply, and become the dominant perspective. The question is, what about human psychology makes such memes so prevalent?
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
A human is not simply 50kg of oxygen, 10kg of carbon and a hundred other elements, but a conscious entity. We are that particular aspect where the universe becomes aware of itself. So yes, there might be more than an evolutionary explanation to religiousness, more than genes and natural selection justifications.
I for one believe that consciousness is an intrinsic property of matter, not emerging from a combination of factors (like for example the concept of gaseous pressure - an emergent property of matter, introduced by statistical physics). If consciousness is embedded in the fabric of this reality then the preoccupation with spirituality, philosophy, religion and the nature of consciousness are as natural as seeing and thinking to us.
There are those who seek to measure, analyze and formalize in a scientific way - they prefer relying on their senses and rational thinking. Then there are those who favor the "unscientific" way of relying more on intuition, the ineffable, the mysterious - they center more on the interior. So this division is about exterior vs interior, or ration vs intuition, sort of speak similar with the difference between classical Newtonian physics vs quantum "wave-form-collapse" description of reality.
I don't consider religion should embrace such a hatred of science. And yes, many atheistic people also fall in the same trap and despise the ones who believe in a spiritual causation of this world. This dispute is somewhat more about the social aspects, who believes in what book, historically what has been served to the masses as the "correct" doctrine and who's turn is now to admit mistakes, and take a damage to their pride.
I think this isn't a trait for a deity per se, but a generalized trait for following authority. And following the alpha - pack leader - could have evolved for tribal and individual survival. This would also explain why a lot of people will pretty easiliy follow crazy cult leaders and the like. And that would mean that those people that have trouble with authority, don't tend to follow them blindly, and tend toward not believing in a god, might indeed not have this gene turned on, or otherwise be broken (compared to the majority).
:-)
Just a theory. A little voice in my head made me follow it and say all of this though.
Nobody wants to be the only guy that believes in the flying spaghetti monster. Whenever someone says "I'm telling you the truth of God because I care about your soul" I hear "I'm somewhat insecure in my own faith and I need you to believe with me"
A few times I've gone as far as making this idea an accusation against the missionary at my front door. I don't do it anymore because doing so seems to make them less likely to go away.
Samsung took back my unlocked bootloader because Google wants me to rent movies. They're both evil.
The article mentions the anthropologist Pascal Boyer, who has a fairly simple (and imo fairly convincing) argument, that in the article is referred to as the "byproduct theory".
e s/atheism.shtml
Basically it says that the ability to connect cause and effect, that is to connect things that happen to the actors in the environment that cause them, was so powerful that is became overused in humans. Giving them a natural tendency to attribute everything, including chance events or natural phenomena to these actors, or as Boyer calls them "unseen agents".
The reason for this is fairly straightforward, if you were living in the prehistoric wilderness it paid to be paranoid, consider the simple example of someone sleeping in a cave who hears a noise outside, for the paranoid early human the thought process might be:
"oh no, what was that, it had to be something, something made that noise, it must have been a tiger, I know it was a tiger, there must be a huge tiger outside"
pros: if there really is a tiger, or some other threat, you may have just saved your life, increasing the probability your genetic code will be passed on creating future paranoid generations
cons: if you are wrong and there is nothing out there, you wasted a small amount of energy and made yourself look stupid
if on the other hand you don't attribute every event to some unseen agent, you might be tempted to assume it was just the wind, or some other harmless event
pros: if you are right you save a little bit of energy
cons: if you are wrong you may be dead
To hear it explained much more elegantly by Boyer himself there is a short video interview on youtube where he discusses the subject
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=etiZv_rOOgc
Which is part of a larger BBC series called "Atheism: A Brief History of Disbelief" and "The Atheism Tapes", in which Jonathan Miller interviews famous scientists and philosophers on the subject of atheism. Much of which can be found on youtube/google video http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/documentaries/featur
Something gets genetically rooted when it yields more off-spring.
So what's the advantage of believing?
When someone dies, you take comfort in knowing that they're going to heaven. You move on with life and have sex sooner than a non-believer. A non-believer has a harder time coping with death and it takes longer for him to move on.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I remember watching an episode of Nova some years ago that described the research of a Dr. V. S. Rachandran. It portrayed exactly what this article does - that it is genetically advantageous for humans, in terms of our survival, to believe in a higher power. Here's the requisite Wikipedia link.
The wikipedia article doesn't mention it, but the reasoning was something like: humans survive better in groups, and the notion of a god tends to cause people to gather in groups (not sure I agree, but that was the reasoning, anyway). He even had some physical evidence, which, if I remember correctly, was gathered from several patients who thought they were god after a particular part of their brain was damaged.
Anyway, I think this research has been done before.
Or just Americans?
Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
It's wrong. Just more apologetic shit trying to sway the masses.
People are hardwired to believe what they're told and to follow leaders. They're just naturally credulous, which helps to maintain some social balance in times of hardship. The problem is that they also tend to believe charlatans and thieves - i.e. religious 'leaders' who are just trying to control people.
You know it makes sense - say no to religion.
_
\\/ are accustomed' - First Lensman
Ask this question in the Muslim world and the frequency of "believers" is likely to be even higher.
Perhaps its so widespread because the religious among us are very good and very busy at persecuting non-believers in one manner or another.
There need not be a gene to explain it, only a propensity to believe in "safe" ideas. Believing in god(s) is sort of like believing in the power of money. I would venture the percentage of people who recognize the importance of money is even higher than the percentage that believe in god(s). Does anyone seem to be suggesting that the belief in the value for money is also genetically based?
Its also likely that even though many are eager to express their "personal relatioship" with God, far fewer would be willing to admit that God, being busy with important things, has absolutely no interest in them and couldn't care less about them because they are simply far too insignificant for "God" to bother taking the time out of her busy schedule to "presonally contact" them. Now who is going to admit to that? Is there a gene for this type of avoidance behavior as well?
One tries to place oneself in situations that are regarded as "safe". Such behaviors will be selected for if over time, they do in fact place people in "safer" situations and these people on average have more offspring. The choices or the bases for these choices do not need to be rational to respond to selection, nor do they need to remain constant throughout human history. At the height of the "Golden Age" in Greece, it was accepted among some circles that the earth rotated about the sun. During later less enlightened times, such ideas were distinctly hazardous to one's health because of religious persecution (eg. death of Giordano Bruno). Selection against those believing in heliocentric theories is now less severe (thank goodness, considering that modern science clearly demonstrates that the earth does indeed orbit the sun).
Many avoidance behaviors may have evolved because they are not rational, since rationality would require people to be aware of them and their awareness may in and of itself be more likely to either confuse or make the "true motives" known to one's adversaries/competitors. For some, their thinking processes may be too slow so its better if they act without thinking, and so long as they on average make the "safe" choice, they will not be at a competitive disadvantage.
Tell it to Mitt "we need to have a person of faith lead the country" Romney.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
How do you know the difference? The hypothesis is that reaction is an expression of knowing. Prove it wrong.
the NPG electrode was replaced with carbon blac
You can take the US statistics and turn it all around: Only 3 out of 10 Canadians are religious. Therefore the 40th parallel must be a religious inversion layer.
'Those Americans are crazy!' - with apologies to Obelix...
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
The science community should not limit the posibilities. Anything is possible until it can be eliminated. How about the possibility of created that way?
At the risk of starting a flame war (what? On slashdot?), yes, anything is possible until it is eliminated. That's different from plausable, rational or probable. It is possible that God created mankind. It is possible that the Universe was sneezed out of the nose of a huge giant, and that we should all live in perpetual fear of the Coming Of The Great White Handkercheif.
It is possible that there is a small red teapot which remains perpetually equidistant between Earth and Mars, containing a magical green geenie who will grant three wishes to the first astronaut to find it and rub it.
I know where I want NASA to invest its money; and it's not in green geenie research.
If you want to be religous: fine; just don't bother people who think.
The last few years I've been more and more convinced there is a genetic code that predisposes a belief in a higher power.
Why? Well for one it creates hope, a sense of community, purpose etc. These things are good for creating stable reproductive people.
OTOH as an atheist, for me the logical conclusion to that is nihilism. I mean if there is no afterlife then you might as well do whatever you want since it's all meaningless. The humanist argument of you make meaning by living your life the way you choose, just seems like another form of "religion". IE trying to be comfortable with the fact that everything is pointless and glossing over the brutal reality.
Maybe the "religion" gene is neither helpful nor harmful, but linked to other useful genes (other higher brain function, perhaps)?
o pment_of_cavefish_eyes/
Sort of how blind cave-fish aren't being selected for blindness, so much as being selected for other traits which happen to have blindness as a side-effect?
http://pharyngula.org/index/weblog/comments/devel
While I doubt there's an evolutionary explaination for people believing in the divine I'd say there could be one for people having general faith. Afterall life is meaningless, or it's whatever you want it to be (to put it positivly). An ablity to go aginst ones rational brain, and do stupid things like say... figuring out how to live in uncomfortable climates because it's somehow better anyways, or perservering because of a cause/belief would be very useful.
Is there something about the cognitive functioning of humans that makes us receptive to belief in a supernatural deity?
Yes, as in having underdeveloped cognitive areas that make one subject to the imposition of complex belief systems that may or may not have a logical foundation. There's a reason why organized religions have always placed great emphasis on indoctrinating children (those that fail in this regard tend to disappear.) A child's cognitive areas are by definition underdeveloped, with little capacity to evaluate or reject anything that is fed into them. Furthermore, ideas and values that are instilled at an early age are exceedingly hard to change later, which is ideal for condemning one's offspring to a lifetime chained to one's own intellectual inadequacies. You don't need to invoke a special "God" gene to explain why organized religion has survived as long as it has: it's largely self-sustaining as long as there are sufficiently large groups of people that have faith, and want their children to believe as they do.
The Bishop, a character out of one of Harry Harrison's Stainless Steel Rat novels once said, "Man is a rationalizing animal, and requires training to become a rational one." Pretty much says it all.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
More like humans hardwired to believe in the rich and powerful.
Which is the better biological explanation for a belief in God -- evolutionary adaptation or neurological accident?
:-)
That's an easy one! Humans believe in God because they've been designed that way by God, no?
Opus: the Swiss army knife of audio codec
His anecdotal "proof" can be found in the link in his sig.
I lived in the US for 8 years. 92% believe in personal god? wtf? And I lived in North Carolina (and LA :)
JON
No genetics and survival of the fittest depends on knowing what others fear, deny, and/or evade.
....
... very aware of those crazy folks.
Curiosity, depends on genetics and survival of the fittest, to have the courage to overcome our
fear, deny flight/fight lower brain functions, and invade the unknown to learn and survive.
So curiosity created mythology, mythology allows gods to exist and explain the unknown, and curiosity
allows unknowns to exist a little longer than the human-science observation/discovery of the obvious.
IOW: Gods are just VR [AKA: fiction/fantasy] definitions of the unknown by fearful and superstitious
humans until reality is known. NOTE: A dogmatist fears, denies, and evades all facts and evidence that
conflict with their delusional schizoid superstitions.
It is natural and genetic based for humans to question and seek answers; however, a dogmatist is
adelophobic, and can only accept that their dogma beliefs provide all answers to all possible question.
The adelophobic dogmatist always have a potential for sociopathic reactionary behavior that would
eliminate any guilt response to the murder of another human that they are convinced threatens their
dogma (reality) beliefs. The adelophobic dogmatist is extreamly delusional and believes that there are
significant very real rewards for their dogmatic acts of murder, genocide, suicide
Fortunately we are humans (not cats) curiosity does not cause our death, but the delusions of the
mentally ill and emotionally unstable adelophobic dogmatist may seek direct/proxy action another
humans death. Pity the mentally ill, but be aware and vigilant
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
Heaven is such a ridiculously flawed concept.
It is the great incentive to believe in God. If you can disprove heaven, you can disprove God.
Heaven actually creates a paradox for God.
1. It must be fair to get into heaven ie everyone should get the same opportunity.
2. God can't be interventionist (this is related to fairness) If God intervenes and reveals himself to an individual, that is inherently unfair that someone has been given first-hand proof. Also, people born into inherently evil situations devoid of morality would surely have the odds stacked against them.
3. God Shouldn't be able to lie to you. ie he can't put a fake being in heaven and say it is one of your loved ones just to make you happy.
4. God can't be irrational. God ca't make a circle square and you can't in heaven and not in heaven at the same time.
5. You should be happy in heaven. But what happens if one of your nearest and dearest is not eligible and you get to live out eternity without the one you love the most.
And in heaven,
What form do you take? (are you just an aura or do you have physical presence)
Do you have memory of your life on earth? (surely you must or that is the same as death anyway and there is no incentive anyway).
Do you have free will in heaven? (and therefore be able to sin and what happens to you if you sin in heaven?)
If you have no free will, what is the point?
My first thought was 'Ah, Creationist! Burn him!' and then I choked that down and thought, 'Actually, that's a good point.'
Thanks. A good scientest will look at all the facts. Religeion seldom returns the favor. It was hard to write the post and not have it look like a creationist post but a proper "is this a possibility and is their any hard evidence to support it? I was just shocked at the Physics for Future Presidents series from Berkley when I hit the Universe lessons. I thought it was worth mentioning.
The truth shall set you free!
Keep in mind that theism is running high in USA these days. Much of the developed world isn't quite as delusional.
I think it may have something to do with poverty and uncertainty...
History is chock-full of people who didn't just believe things, they knew. Revelation, as it turns out, is a piss-poor way of knowing. It was, for instance, the same reason that Andrea Yates knew that she had to kill her children, and the same reason that Charles Manson knew... well, whatever it was he knew.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
That's why God is defined as the god of Abraham
Abraham was that guy who rejected blindly believing the ideas of men.
Basically you are confusing what is evolving in each situation. For example if you possess a religion that doesn't mean that that religion evolved to help you out. Just as if you possess a tapeworm in your gut or mites in your eyebrows that they aren't there to help you out. They are rather there to help themselves. Religions increase in frequency from being preached and expanded (this is why there are so many proselytizing religions), they have become entire systems setup with reasons to believe (just faith) and certain rules and edicts (have lots of kids and teach them this too; Shakers actually had the opposite belief and are now defunct because nobody had kids.). Many of these actually do convey rather significant advantages to the religion. However the advantage or disadvantage to you doesn't matter that much to the meme being evolved.
As for the reasons that religious and supernatural beliefs exists that's basically a side effect of our large brains. Typically the learning curve we need is so steep that as kids it is generally best that we accept everything we hear as true and a large part of what we hear as adults. This however leads to superstition, scams, ghosts, con-artists, astrology, religion, aliens, and myths. But it also leads us to quickly learning the things we need to know to be vastly successful in the real world.
We only evolved our really impressive brain in the last few million years, it'll take a while to work the kinks out. That's also the reason our hips and knees have some many problems, they evolved (changed greatly from previous forms) much more recently than our elbows and ribs.
As for the comment about being a great apes uncle, really the very idea of the grouping of apes including chimps, orangutans and gorillas but magically excluding humans is rather silly. It would rather be more accurate to say that humans are great apes.
It is no longer uncommon to be uncommon.
I'm outta this trainwreck thread.
" 'When a trait is universal, evolutionary biologists look for a genetic explanation and wonder how that gene or genes might enhance survival or reproductive success ..."
What?! You don't believe in God! You must die infidel!
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
reading through all the negative responses, i can't help but wonder if there is also a genetic disposition in humans to deny the existance of gentic dispositions. back on point, though, if this is true, and a 'God-fearing' gene exists, will we as a society better accept the removal of the gene, or the enhancement of the gene in future generations of genetically altered babies. oooh, or how about in cattle? remove the gene, to guarantee that they're soulless, and we won't have to feel bad about eating them.
Considering disbelief in god could get you killed in the 1800's and prior I think its pretty clear how believing in spiritual crap could have become an evolutionary survival trait via natural selection.
Also, BELIEF or being PRONE TO BELIEVE in something is passed verbally and is therefore spread a lot easier.
I believe in my own personal god. I even know who he is. It's me. The only person there is to rely on for my own happiness, well being, and success is myself. There is nobody answering prayers for winning the lottery, or getting a raise, or curing my sick mother, or for a computer glitch to zero out my student loans :) Most of these things, along with most everything else that involves me is my responsibility. I bite my tongue every time I hear someone say "it's gods will", especially when it comes to things like birth control, or someone being murdered or otherwise killed. I guess some people need the comfort of thinking they know that someone is looking out for them constantly, but to me it just seems so ridiculous. Will we ever get past superstitious nonsense like religion, or is humanity doomed to be forever afraid of what happens when they die, where they came from, etc?
Well... If there's sex in heaven, it certainly would be an evolutionary adaptation. But wait, if heaven exists can evolution co-exist? Perhaps it's both are a function of a quantum reality- oh, the paradox! Or perhaps people with good minds should spend their time working on something productive :)
At some point many people have believed the Earth is flat, or that it was held up by some beast
(Atlas, Great Turtle [with and without elephants]). Have we spontaneously lost these genes in
the intervening millenia? Pshaw. Never attribute to malice what can be explained by stupidity.
What about, "Never try attribute to genetics what can be explained by stupidity/indoctrination"?
Were that I say, pancakes?
...or the pro-lifers may kill you.
The belief that you know a thing is a most perfect way to prevent learning.
Can god create a rock so heavy that he cannot lift it?
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Yet another "scientific" excuse to believe that the content of one's character is not one's own responsibility.
People have been saying it's something to do with the ideas itself. I reckon it's simply due to the fact that, for a substantial period in the development of human society, people who didn't conform to the social norm with regards to religion were either excluded from society (thereby destroying their breeding potential) or burned at the stake as heretics. Evolution has thus traditionally favoured those people who yield to peer pressure on religious matters.
the reason we believes in supernatural deity because we were told of folklore tales and all that. we are also influence by people around us.. for example, parents. oblvious.
WE ARE NOT HARDSWIRED TO BELIEVE IN SUPERNATURAL DEITIES.
there you have it.
PFFT.
I think that's why they call it a faith. You have faith that your scriptures are true and that your religion is correct, and thats what gives you hope and direction.
Science and Religion aren't mutually exclusive necessarily, but what Science cannot prove (or ever prove?) is where Faith begins.
The most recent surveys I've seen are showing between 15-20% of Americans are atheists. 8% sounds nowhere near my own experience. I've knew a guy who went to church and didn't believe there was a God but didn't want to upset his wife. Perhaps they're counting his wife as a god-figure.
Also, wouldn't some of this depend on how you classify borderline religions like Buddhism? After all, Buddhists don't believe in a god or gods overtly in the way Westerner religions do. I'd offer that some forms of animism, ancestor worship and shamanism don't quite qualify as god-figure religions, either.
And then of course there is the sticky question of classifying agnostics. Where do they fit?
I scream. You scream. I assume that means we're both acquainted with the problem. We proceed.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numinous
... ? People have been trying to cope with that one for a very long time. "The numinous is the mysterium tremendum et fascinans that leads in different cases to belief in deities, the supernatural, the sacred, the holy, and the transcendent." Usually people take their experience or any small truth they have learned and extrapolate. That's how we get crackpot religions.
... whatever. My logic goes something like this: Fred hears a voice in another room. The voice belongs to someone called Bill and he seems to describe himself as 'your announcer'. One day, Fred finds the door to the room ajar and goes in to try and meet Bill. He is sorely disappointed. All he finds is a box with Bill's voice coming out of it. Fred is terribly disappointed; Bill doesn't exist, he's just a voice coming from a box. So, even if we find the circuit in our brain that is responsible for hearing the voice of god, that doesn't prove that god doesn't exist. Bill the announcer probably exists; god may exist (although the fact that I didn't capitalize 'god' may give a clue as to what I actually believe).
Individuals may have experiences which have no rational explanation. How to explain them
The pastor at our school used to tell the following story:
A man was walking with the devil. They saw someone pick up something, examine it, put it in his pocket and go on his way with a big smile on his face. The man asked the devil what had happened.
The devil said: "That person just found an important truth."
The man asked: "Don't you just hate when that happens?"
The devil replied: "Oh no, not at all. That person will take his small truth and turn it into a religion."
Anyway, even if it is shown that we are genetically programmed to be receptive to religious experience, it doesn't disprove the existance of
...meaning that one might lead an easier life, if he strongly believes in something which gives him motivation to live. While the EMO asks himself why everybodys so mean; the CHRIST already "knows" that its gods way to test him. EM0 ends up cutting himself patterns, while CHRIST doesnt know, what to worry about. greetz r0
our physical composition and makeup are obviously determined by actions. i.e evolution. the desire and need of a bird to seek higher ground to avoid predators after X amount of generations will give them the capacity to eventually fly. All through focused willpower as a result of interacting with our environment? Far out.. when it comes to the topic of how we are physiologically composed for matters of spirit, theists of ancient religions like hinduism have been studying this law of cause of and effect for spirit, down to the subtely of not just merely every action, but through the nature of thoughts themselves. This is of course why all religions are based on ethical principle, so you might find yourself going back to, 'are ethics absolute, what is truth'? sort of debating. but let me add this quote by socrates: "in order that the mind should see light instead of darkness, so the entire soul must be turned away from this changing world, until its eye can learn to contemplate reality and that supreme splendor which we have called the good. hence there may well be an art whose aim would be to effect this very thing" the ability to use your consciousness and put forth you entire spirit isn't allowed by some one gene, its basically the entire makeup of our being
I was hoping not to see religion-related crap here. All it ever seems to do is draw trolls and assclowns. Er, more trolls and assclowns, at any rate; the internet does a nice enough job without the added assistance of controversial topics.
I mean, both sides have their reasonable people, but at the same time, both sides also have the raving fanatics that probably should've been locked in the crazy house long ago.
On an entirely unrelated note, I bet this'll get moderated Troll or Flamebait, even though I'm just making a neutral observation... an "offtopic" moderation would be more accurate.
Totally agree with you.
However, I do think that religion give us an evolutionary advantage: Religion makes us much better killers. Not individually, but in large groups.
We are Turing O-Machines. The Oracle is out there.
The existance of religion in general seems to be a by product of our storytelling nature, the nature which played a large part in our ability to out-compete neanderthals. We are after all not really wise men (homo sapiens) but rather storytelling apes (pans narratans) and our drive to make sense out of an incredibly complex universe is what makes us human. If anyone doubts the impact of following a certain religion on the evolutionary path of a tribe then they should really consider why the god of the jews and the muslims forbade them to eat pig flesh - the most parasite ridden meat you can find. This commandment prevented the investation of the followers by tapeworms and other nasty bastards, drastically lowering the amount of morbidity and mortality in the population. The religion (and the people) proliferated. Plus there's always the fact that devout followers are more likely to survive and procreate in a society that has a tendency to stone non-believers to death ;)
"In order that the mind should see light instead of darkness, so the entire soul must be turned away from this changing world, until its eye can learn to contemplate reality and that supreme splendor which we have called the good. Hence there may well be an art whose aim would be to effect this very thing." chew on that and then tell me what effect a being's choices, thoughts, and actions have on their evolutionary development.
And when we die, will Heaven be filled with bananas and flea-ridden chimps who need picked over?
I scream. You scream. I assume that means we're both acquainted with the problem. We proceed.
Follow the lesson, then look at the biblical description of the origion of the universe. It's so close to the same to bring into question "Was this created?" Who Wrote the first book in the Bible and how did he know how the universe started when nobody else had a clue.
Leaving creation out of consideration does upset the church leadership and should upset the scientific community who are finding a strong corrolation between the two accounts.
Is this a joke? There is no correlation between the bible's description of creation (either one -- there are actually two creation accounts in the bible) and modern theories about what actually happened. Even ignoring the "6 days vs. 12 billion years" discrepancy, the order of creation in the bible is completely wrong. Plants before the sun? The earth before the stars? If you took each individual event mentioned in the creation account and scrambled them randomly, you'd likely wind up with a creation order that isn't much worse than the bible's.
I completely agree with you. The whole article is rife with the assumption that Christianity is the definitive religion and the central hypothesis is irreparably damaged by this oversight. As you point out, we don't have to look far to find non-theistic religions that can't be easily explained by say, over-enthusiastic agent detection.
"It's Dot Com!"
I think it's something in our Meme Complex.. It's evolved in the Meme complex over time and its a stable strategy over the evolutionary time period relative to meme evolution.
e _strategy
As such, it's hard NOT to believe in it... and it has evolved to the point that it does provide some help; that isn't to say that religion itself doesn't cause some harm and in no way am I evaluating if religion has a Net "good" or Net "hard" to society...
Exactly what help religion provides maybe about a clear as exactly what each type of gene goes; even when we know how a gene expresses itself, that doesn't' mean we know everything it does. When only know it has stood the test of time. My speculation is that believing deity and "holy" texts, is a lot like writing a program within a well defined operating system and operating environment. Which is to say, "you don't have to spend a lot of time on background tasks like drawing screens, memory management, etc. Your OS/GOD has worked out all the details, you just need to subscribe to all the updates and show up in "Church" at the specified intervals.
Please see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memeplex
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionarily_stabl
http://www.hawknest.com/
Shhhh... he might here you!
I scream. You scream. I assume that means we're both acquainted with the problem. We proceed.
If the results of this study are true, or if they at least are pointing
in the right direction, then this gives the human organism yet another tool
to transcend his own innate limitations.
If we know why we believe, then we are no longer destined to be helpless
believers.
This kind of progress in knowledge and self-understanding will eventually
lead to a complete liberation of the human species from the tyranny of
mindless passion.
Cf. Sigmund Freud "The Future of an Illusion"
What humans have is the ability to perceive infinity and eternity. Meaning: the ability to think on what's happening here and now, or what happened there and then, or what will happen somewhere and when, or even what's the meaning of everything during every time, without being limited by neither our surrounding environment nor current historical shapes. This ability to go beyond the ever changing immediate facts and sensations takes lots of forms. Religions and their myths are just one of these forms.
So, the moment you find the reason why humans can ask what they're made of, then discover DNA, then ask what genetics means, then interpret natural history through the lens of genetics, then human history too, etc., is the moment you find the reason why humans believe in gods. Both things have the same exact source: our ability to look further than whatever limit is placed there.
Conservatism: (n.) love of the existing evils. Liberalism: (n.) desire to substitute new evils for the existing ones.
Troll me if you must. I'm posting AC, because I don't want to lose hard-earned karma for this observation:
"If God did not exist, he would have to be invented." --Voltaire
You don't have to believe in God to be religious.
Many on this thread have professed to be atheists, and as such, immune from any 'religious hard-wiring.' The common theme is that, this can't be true because "I'm not susceptible to it, and neither are my friends, family, countrymen... My beliefs are a spontaneous product of my intellect!" Yet, many of these individuals are the same ones who have professed on the slashdot forums a profound faith in Global Warming. Isn't interesting how Global Warming proponents can display such zeal and religious fervor?
Global Warming makes for a good religion. It has heretics, saints, absolution, prophecy, cataclysm... Most of its claims depend on faith and require an adherence to arguments that are based on authority (IPCC, Al Gore, scientific 'consensus', etc...) And as with many traditional religions, any doubt-based science is eschewed and its proponents viscously attacked. (Haven't we often heard that Global Warming deniers are the equivalent of Holocaust-deniers?)
I'd say that there is much more truth to these claims of hard-wiring than most are comfortable admitting. (And, don't get me started on vi vs emacs!)
...doesn't mean we need it... our brains have nicotine receptors as well. Why? I feel the same way about being hardwired for religion. It serves no purpose and has to be nothing more than an evolutionary left-over...like the appendix.
I beleive there are two major reasons for the "god" and the "afterlife" concepts: 1. it's very hard to accept that in the next moment you can just cease to exist. Just try to imagine it. It's very strange and maybe even scarry. 2. Politics. Most religions promise you the afterlife. It's not really hard to figure why. I mean, if your soliders knew (and beleived) they lived their one and only life they'd most probably find a better way to enjoy it than to die for some useless political goals. So, you have to offer them something: - reincarnation (just read the first few pages of the Bhagavad Gita and you'll understand) - endless life in heaven - virgins in the garden of eaden (I recommend reading Alamut by Vladimir Bartol; it's a fiction but worth reading) OK, maybe 3: Not beeing able to explain a perfectly natural phenomena (like drought etc.), which has a negative impact on a person or society. "This year there's no crops due to drought, I must have done something wrong to uppset the God. I'l sacrifise my youngest daughter to see if it helps." I'd thought we'd get past this stage by now, but... Since most people have problem accepting their death and / or live empty miserable lifes, religion kicks in nicely. I doubt it's genetics. And if it is, it's most defenitly a bug. On a side note: I do have my own little philosophy that hepls me accpet my death: in order to acknowledge you've died, you'd have to live past the moment of your death. Since that is most probably not the case, you'll never know you've died. But if you DO acknowledge your death, there must be some kind of afterlife. See, you just can't die!
Religion does (or at least did) confer a survival benefit by virtue of it conferring a survival benefit. People with religion want to breed with people of the same religion or lack thereof. If you're part of a religious minority group, then it's harder to find a mate. If those of the majority religious belief persecute minority beliefs, then it's even more difficult for minority (non)believers to find each other.
Note that this does not necessarily imply a biological instinct for belief although it seems likely that such would develop at least in some part of the population.
Atheists and agnostics (and various theists) spend a lot of time arguing over what atheism/agnosticism is or is not :] Ironically, the one thing I'm sure of from all the arguments is that none of them are unsure about what they (don't) believe, but not all of them (dis)believe the same things, either.
So if we're genetically programmed to believe in God, its either a beneficial adaptation or an accident, according to the article. Its UNTHINKABLE that we might have been hardwired BY a superior being to believe in a superior being.
Of course we're genetically hardwired to believe in supernatural deities. That's so the Vorlons, who appear to us as angels, can use the human telepaths they've also been engineering in their upcoming war against the Shadows. Manipulative bastards.
Current theories attribute the so-called Genetic Bottleneck at approx. 70K years ago to a gigantic super volcano in Indonesia that caused massive global cooling and massive disruption, crashing the human population from more than 1 million all around the Globe to only about 1,000 individuals.
IF this theory is correct, what would be the issues around survival and passing on one's genes (or not)?
In this suddenly hostile environment, communication, co-operation, and mitigation of violent tendencies would be critical for survival and passing on one's genes. Belief in a higher supernatural authority, or set of rules, or whatever that allow humans to co-operate particularly across tribal and family boundaries would be critical to insuring survival. Particularly since the sudden harsh environment would require long treks for very specialized tools (obsidian for better cutting tools etc) as well as food and water where both were suddenly scarce.
You can see this today (which Dawkins conveniently ignores): Nationalist identities allow people to form higher trust networks and thus generally co-operate in larger groups. Generally agreed upon sets of moral rules that govern social behavior and are re-inforced (Church going, political groups, membership in private groups like the NRA or Sierra Club) by social gatherings or events.
Human beings to get along in large groups need rules, boundaries for behavior, and limitations as well as trust mechanisms. THAT is the role of "religion" in society and is very likely genetic.
When your parents believe and the education/childhood is good, you likely believe as well.
When your parents are atheists, you likely become one as well.
There are examples of evolutional advantages, e.g. being a Jew/Moslem and not breeding/eating animals that live in their own shit (Pigs e.g.) might be preventing lots of illnesses.
OTOH living in africa and getting parts of the female sexual organs cut off is a wide spread religious rite but certainly gives the risk to die early.
If the religious/evolutionar researchers had any clue about religions they knew that most our days religions have common roots. In those roots man are more or less made after the image of The God, or The Gods. Read about "gnostics" a early christian faction, or any esotheric religion.
Bottom line, religions are traditions, or social rules, in some circumstances they are favoring breeding/evolution of man, but I really doubt if you put people onto islands as children they get any idea about gods from their own and I doubt even more that one single gene is in us making us believers or not.
angel'o'sphere
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Leaving creation out of consideration does upset the church leadership
So ff-ing what? religion is not science, the only overlap is that both try to give answers about the world. Religion uses invisible friends and all the nonsense humans can think of, science tries to come up with answers that are provable.
should upset the scientific community who are finding a strong corrolation between the two accounts.
Wrong. There are no 2 accounts, but billions of theories about creation. The smarter scientists who 'find a strong correlation between the 2 accounts' will know that correlation does not automatically make a causual relationship. Maybe the authors that wrote your big-bang creation story have heard that holy book story of yours too. Even if you don't believe in it, it is still part of your cultural influence.
I suggest you read the F-ing article, it's quite an interesting read. But I don't expect that your tunnelvision will allow you to absorb new knowledge. You'll probably distort it in such a way that it fits your fairy tale image of the world.
This space is intentionally staring blankly at you
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I think Freud had it right when he posited that "God" is a needed projection; it/he/she takes the place of the love and order provided by our parents when we were young. Once you get a bit older and your parents die or you realize that you're basically on your own, inventing a deity that loves and protects you and who even has expectations of you goes a long way to ensuring the continuance of the parental umbrella. On an evolutionary level, belief in a higher power might be enough to encourage one to take that risky ocean voyage or war on a neighbor.
I don't know who I pity most, the devout atheist who lives in the empty materialist world or the blindfolded religious who use faith as anything more than a way of encapsulating the grandeur and humbling nature of our planet and our Universe. I suppose if it's only the subjectivity of the situation that matters then the religious come out on top seeing as they have everlasting glory to look forward to.
CommentBot 0.7a running with args "-module irritate,disagree -target random"
Anyone wanting some good reading material on this subject check out "How We Believe" by Michael Shermer. He's got some pretty good insight about religion and how it evolved and it's written from an athiest point of view.
Who is this Jimmy character, and why was he cracking corn in the first place?
"The science community should not limit the possibilities."
..."
..."
Actually, science does this all the time. It's called 'limiting the scope of investigation'. Generally put, if you're looking for an answer to a problem, you seek out the probability of each solution before investing too much time in it. Those that can easily be dismissed as 'improbable' are set aside until investigation on more probable candidate solutions have been fleshed out.
"How about the possibility of 'created that way'?"
Unfortunately, this one is highly improbable, not to mention logically problematic. First the probability.
If something were created, there would have to be a more complex entity than the creation existent to have created it. Since complex entities, by definition, arrive late in the game, the concept is shown to be very improbable.
As for the logical problem: if there was a complex entity to create this complex universe before it started, what created it? You can't actually answer that without exposing the relationship that intelligent design hold with scripture.
"Many believe there is a creator who put the order in place for things to grow and adapt."
"Leaving creation out of consideration does upset the church leadership
That is fine. Religious leadership have generally been angry throughout history.
"... and should upset the scientific community
Hm? Why?
"... who are finding a strong correlation between the two accounts."
What on earth are you talking about?
'Course, I should know better than to try and argue with someone who thinks ID is a reasonable avenue of inquiry. As above, including creation - or 'design' as has attempted to get snuck in - in scientific inquiry would be a bit like including electricity in theistic inquiry. It simply doesn't make sense, and is kind of a waste of time.
The most common argument of evidence for design is the makeup of DNA. Couldn't have gotten that way from chance, could it?
Well, no. But here's a task. Look into a bit of genetic 'black box' programming, apply your new understanding to that of natural selection, and get back to me.
110100 1101000 1101000 1100110 0 1101111 1101000 1100011 1
Jung talked about the god-image--meaning the part of the psyche that wants to believe in a deity--decades ago. He then came under fire for turning belief into a psycology and challenged that he was an athiest. Both he and Jacobi defend what he meant.
Have you read my journal today?
--"A belief in God, be it Christian or Jewish (the two dominant samples, obviously) conferred survival advantages in the camps. It seems that men who had Someone to pray to, something to hope for, gained a psychological edge that could mean the difference between life and death under extreme conditions"
I didn't know you interviewed German POWs at the infamous Rheinwiesen Death Camps
http://www.rheinwiesenlager.de/andernach.htm
I'm not trying to disgress here too far but the atrocities enacted on German PoWs are something I'm sure
most Americans do not know about. Most people associate Germany's surrender with positive imagery of
liberation from Nazi rule andthe Berlin airlift. As always however there is however an uglier truth
lurking below the surface.
I'm sure someone will come up with a convoluted theory requiring a number of implausible conditions or variables leading up to this phenomenon that would not require God at all but [URL=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam's_Razor]Oc cam's razor[/URL] would tell us that: "All things being equal, the simplest solution tends to be the best one.". Note that nowhere in that does it say that God cannot be a variable. I would argue that saying that this phenomenon is the result of God's work is a far simpler and plausible explanation than anything any of you could come up with.
I can just see the atheists twitching at this very moment with huffing and puffing at a complete loss for words.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
Most humans do not believe in god. It is ridiculous to say that belief in god is universal. It is ignorant and bigoted also.
Even if you add up all the Christians, Jews, and Muslims (who apparently believe in the same god) you only get to half the population of the world. And many of them do not believe, it is a mistake to count the heads of those who self-identify as Christian/Jewish/Muslim and assume 100% Believers. Some will tell you quite frankly that they are simply following the faith of their fathers. Some will tell you they want to believe but they don't. Some will tell you that's just fine. So even among "the religious" the true believers may be a minority, even a small minority.
Buddhism by definition does not allow for a supreme being. It is antithetical to Buddhism to equate the original Buddha with a supreme being.
When you say "are we hard-wired to believe in God?" you don't have to delve deep into the science of the brain to find out. You can just ask people. You can answer that question by simply looking at the statistics. Very few of us do. Therefore, no.
All of the god talk in this article is extra. It is totally bolted on to what little science there is in it. Further it is politically suspicious when someone says "God" and "Darwin" in the same breath. When in the next breath they tell you god is universal, then you know what kind of science you are getting.
Dawkins also compared a child's propensity to believe whatever it's parents tell it to computers and computer viruses. This may be over simplified for the /. crowd or cause disagreement, but he said that computers follow every instruction they are given whether it is good or bad - it has to, otherwise it wouldn't be a very useful computer. It makes them by design, susceptible to computer viruses in the same way that a child's mind is by design, susceptible to the 'virus' of religion. Just another interesting analogy from Dawkins book.
First of all, the most atheistic among us do not cross our fingers during turbulence. That's the kind of unprovable truism that these religion-obsessed researchers always trot out. I have been in a few life-threatening situations in my time, and I have never been overcome by some sudden wave of belief. And to take people's hesitation to put their hand into a box that they've been warned destroys things as evidence of latent religion is really, really reaching. I mean, the guy who tells you that the box knows your sentiments towards religion is obviously a nut -- who's gonna put their hand in his destroy-o-box?
The whole premise of this article is deeply flawed: "When a trait is universal, evolutionary biologists look for a genetic explanation," it says, but the spectrum of belief is so wide that characterizing it as a single thing, a "universal trait" is just nonsense. When Europeans came to America, they called the people they found there devil worshippers, because they could only see those people's beliefs in terms of their own. This is just more of the same. I refuse to put my hand in Dr. Crazy's box, and he chalks it up as proof that I share some ridiculous belief of his.
Some people just can't stand the idea that the human mind works fine without gods. Sorry, folks, but it does.
I'm awake! The answer is BONK!
Has anyone else noticed that creepy trolls come out of the woodwork to stalk HLiLJ?
Hustlers exist solely through charity. I see their scams, lies, and deceit: I'm too charitable to outright shoot them.
And so is God.
Foo'-Mo'-D says,"Have you seen Coo'-Mo'-D?"
Being a limp wristed heathen DOES have advantages.
Some obvious, some not.
"Religion has by far been the most destructive motivational force on the face of the planet. "
Written by someone who is almost certainly a member of Western Civilization this is pretty strange. The Humanist ethics considered the norm in Western Countries are the direct outgrowth of Christian morals.
There are plenty of other morals to choose from. Choose them if you want to be free of Christian taint.
We understand life to be of a form that has mater without mater there is energy it seems to us that we require both in order to have life such as ours! if we remove one from the other its no longer living in our terms.. so becuase we have never met a life form that is only mater or only energy we cant say its possible to have it without both!
You're baggin' on the homeless guy because you are a pathetic piece of turtle dung.
the NPG electrode was replaced with carbon blac
Coward.
Foo'-Mo'-D says,"Wutup foo?"
I took a class in English literature once, and the prof noted that the first book that we had to read was the Bible if we wanted to look at English writing critically. That implies that the ideas in the Christian Bible permeate the language. A study of "genetic origins of the supernatural" would then be very difficult as the language that questions are posed in could influence the outcome. More specifically, a speaker of English has very likely been exposed to the idea of "god" even if they do not subscribe to it. Furthermore, you'd have to here the idea of "god" to reject it, so I wonder if it is possible to distinguish between an innate tendency and the side-effects of exposure to the idea.
So many things in the culture I grew up in suggest the supernatural, even outside of religion. The Tooth Fairy. The Easter Bunny. Santa Claus. These are all entities that are described to the youngest children, but they are supernatural. I think that would constitute exposure to the idea at any rate.
To summarize, I am not trying to dismiss the ideas of either side, but suggest that questioning modern humans will be difficult. Also I think that the surviving artifacts of ancient human culture would tend to be on the religious/supernatural side as religion is an excellent tool for control. Call it the calculation of a shrewed leader or a corrupter of the religion, history shows this to have happened.
I pointed out in a different post that the human mind uses a simple ploy to keep operating smoothly. That is, the conscious mental model of reality differs subtly from subjective reality. This mechanism is used constantly to keep out details or ideas that would be distracting. For example, someone living in a warzone and someone living in a suburban North American area. Both have daily routines they go through, but one is much more life-threatening than the other. Both would notice anomalies in their environments, but they are, again, vastly different. Why ramble on with a pointless example? To back those posters that have already indicated that belief in the supernatural could be beneficial. The mechanism described above provides a possible means. Psychology research (sorry, don't have any studies handy to quote) has demonstrated this mechanism is present and useful to the individual.
Given that it is possible, I re-iterate that I don't think we can tell if the "supernatural" is a cultural suggestion, supported by a built-in mechanism, or a separate mechanism.
"You need a license to buy a gun, but they'll sell anyone a stamp." - Red Green
Comment removed based on user account deletion
You're not important, I'm not important. Ego be damned.
The meaning of life is simple. Procreation.
People think and see crazy things while some guy fiddles with his brain. Really! That is odd.
As far as science can tell, religion is absolutely false. I do think it is a proposition worth looking into, but we have. The world doesn't fit what we would expect to find if religion were true. In fact, the world we have is exactly like the world we should have if there were no gods.
There certainly exists some reasons for seeing aliens or angels and those reasons are fairly interesting. We have managed to trigger certain parts of the brain which give people either a religious experience or of aliens. Hard evidence for their existence is a waste of time, but finding why you see them is a fairly important point.
It is no longer uncommon to be uncommon.
Commonly I hear that if you're a reasonable person you can't believe. What evidence presents itself that there is a someone out there who is not "attached" to the world we see as we are.
However if we take the proposition and expand it we are presented by a natural "wall" to the universe. What got the 'Big Bang', as closely as we currently understand the phenomenon, started in the first place?
The story we can make of the universe's existance is that all elemental particles were very close to each other in the beginning then energy started to be expressed onto them. Living creatures ended up being a biproduct of this powerful event, which as far as we can understand is the true center of all existance. But who done it?
I profess personally believing in Christ's Holy Father, Y-HW-H, Elohim of Judaism and the Gentiles as the one creator of all being. I see the 'Big Bang' event as a symbol of an act from someone so powerful yet so gentle and caring. Before any will of any being that can be traced back to having existed in this universe/'the world', we have the most powerful event which can be conceived let alone witnessed and it _was_ an expression of someone's will.
A common block for many is why the negative things happen in this world. When I think of a being so powerful that the Big Bang is relatively trivial and more comparable to a giant clock springing into action than a demonstration of brute force I must draw the conclusion that events of this world, as horrible as they may seem could also be relatively trivial. If a priest would choose to be tortured and killed after having reported seeing visions of it happening to him one must ask if he was sane, what was it that he knew?
As far as biblical inerrancy is concerned, read http://www.bible.org/netbible/eze43.htm 43:17 then read http://www.bible.org/netbible/exo20.htm 20:26
This was a translation mistake in Ezekiel made many years ago. Surely any errancy of the bible is due to man and not God's doing.
The tough part is accepting that God was there trying to offer us all we needed (He wanted to give us) and we all at different times in our lives chose otherwise (what we wanted).
Man is not the most fierce, or the fastest, or the most capable at hiding. We are not as efficient as the plants (photosynthesis is so much easier than having to kill other organisms). The only things we really have going for us are our ability to form plans, strategies, to work together to meet common goals, and to take up for others, so that we, as a collective can have a higher survival rate.
It is easy to tell someone these things, but making him or her really believe it, so much so that said person is willing to put aside his or her own selfishness for the good of society, is a little more difficult. The desire to be part of a collective, to conform to their ways, and to believe that we are serving something greater than ourselves is a pretty powerful behavior.
It was a beer commercial a few years ago... but the question remains. The answer of course is that "Why" is a question that any creature as dependent on thinking as we are, will ALWAYS have to ask, or suffer the ignominious consequences of genetic defeat. So the "Why" question is hardwired into us. As anyone who's ever raised kids will realize. When we come to a question we can't get a "Because" for, it makes us damned uncomfortable. It increases stress levels and depending on the level of education and natural ability, those questions can become more or less frequent. God (and religion) is a marvelous way to quiet that endless and impossible to fully satisfy "why". It leaves an internal peace where there was just uncertainty before, and strangely enough, that is one of the things the religious folks among us describe. Such internal peace instead of stress would go a long way to explain survival in-extremis cases as well. So yes, we are hardwired for it... and the less we know, the harder the wires. I got my nomex suit handy now. BJ
-beware the man of one book
The best scientific explanation I've seen for belief in supernatural entities (e.g., gods) has to do with the very pragmatic issue of being able to understand what another human being is thinking. In the book "Religion Explained" by Pascal Boyer, the argument is to understand what some other human (with limited knowledge of your own thoughts and intentions) is thinking, you need a brain structure that first deals with the possibility of complete (omniscient) knowledge of your thoughts and intentions as a sort of template onto which we can map various scenarios of more restricted knowledge.
That template of omniscient knowledge is a necessary structure for us to deal with the intricacies of social life, including things such as detecting lies and deceptions, planning lies and deceptions of our own, and just communicating about misunderstandings. But, that template also basically means we're vulnerable to thinking that there is in fact something out there that has omniscience. Thus, belief in god(s) is a side effect of the brain architecture that allows us to live life as extremely social creatures who have to constantly navigate a complex social world.
The post war change in belief patterns in Europe (towards Atheism) must border on the miraculous if this article's claim of a genetic basis to belief is to be credited. Such rapid genetic change is unprecedented. Another case of "America = The whole world".
This was referenced in the article, but I think it bears repeating, since I read it and it was very good.
n ary-Origins-Religious/dp/0465006965/ref=pd_bbs_2/0 02-4905741-9984855?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1173054257& sr=8-2
Religion Explained, by Pascal Boyer
http://www.amazon.com/Religion-Explained-Evolutio
I'm new to the internet debates on this subject, and I've only looked at the top level posts for this article, so my apologizes if I'm beating a dead horse. I don't understand why the belief in God would come from a fear of death. At least when I've thought about it, the order is reversed. If there is no afterlife, etc. then death is no problem at all since I cease to be aware of anything once I die. Death is only a problem if I continue to be aware of something bad after I die. So, I only seem to have a rational reason for fearing death if I believe in an afterlife where I could be punished. Similarly, I have no reason to fear anything in life as long as I can escape it all through death. So, I don't understand the 'God comes from fear of death' argument, besides a glib 'people are irrational' jab. But, that's just the easy way out, since you can just say that whenever anyone disagrees with your point of view. If someone could give me a more rational defense of that argument it would be appreciated.
(3) Be chased around by a giant spider for all eternity
or
(4) Relive the same life you just lived, but everything tastes like crab
or
(n) Be reincarnated as Oprah's workout thong?
An interesting anagram of "BANACH TARSKI" is "BANACH TARSKI BANACH TARSKI"
I humbly suggest that before you decide what to believe
that you look into what is known (or hypothesized, or believed)
about what belief actually is,
-and look into the general reasons why you should or should
not believe proposition X, whatever X is,
-and look into what sorts of factors should make you believe
X more strongly or less strongly.
A lot of people are really confident about what their beliefs are,
without reflecting much on what that means, or on what it should
mean, in order for them to be acting rationally.
I suggest starting out by looking into reason-maintenance-systems,
the philosophy of scientific revolutions, logical inconsistency,
godel's incompleteness theorem, possible worlds logic (model theory),
bayesian inference,
zen buddhist ideas about the limitations of ideas, and so on.
Then get back to us on what you believe, but more importantly,
why you believe X, and why strongly, and why you are justified
and rational in believing as you do.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
> There is no correlation between the bible's description of creation and modern theories about what actually happened.
Exactly! Thats' why early church father Origen wrote:
"What man of sense will agree with the statement that the first, second and third days in which the evening is named and the morning, were without sun, moon and stars, and the first day without a heaven. What man is found such an idiot as to suppose that God planted trees in paradise in Eden, like a husbandman, and planted therein the tree of life, perceptible to the eyes and senses, which gave life to the eater thereof; and another tree which gave to the eater thereof a knowledge of good and evil? I believe that every man must hold these things for images, under which the hidden sense lies concealed." (Origen - Huet., Prigeniana, 167 Franck, p. 142)
An interesting anagram of "BANACH TARSKI" is "BANACH TARSKI BANACH TARSKI"
That's a generalization. There are plenty of old folks who are looking forward to getting hte hell out of here. This place isn't exactly the garden of eden, y'know? And there are also plenty of old folks who are even more adamant in this opinion, as they live in constant pain every waking minute.
Of course, lots of religions look down on suicide. That's one reason I can't morally accept them as valid ways of life: when the shit really hits the fan, they provide little in the way of comfort, and actively discourage acts of mercy.
If you don't know then you are not supposed to know, for if you did, then your experience here might not be quite the same. And it could be that not knowing is a choice you made for this trip.
Science has come up with explanations for the out of body experiences some have had.
All the so called miracles in the bible are explainable in terms of common sense and without breaking any laws of physics.
The catholic Church exonerated Galileo in the early 1990's, and there are many other examples of man believing something even long after evidence to the contrary is in wide use.
Do you continue on after body death? Sure you do, even physics support it in conversion of energy. Though we don't often account for consciousness, the energy of it.
Is there a one god? Just ask any religion and recognize the answer given. "there is a god and he/she is my god, not yours" should be enough evidence to say no religion has it right. But that doesn't mean there is no continuation after body death.
Here is a thought: IS there anything in your conscious existance that says existing is easy? And with the obvious answer What makes you think there is nothing after death?
many say Jesus loves you, yes he does...
I say Murphy loves you more. He keeps you guessing..
Measuring something is easy - it is knowing what you are measuring that is the hard part.
I suspect that this study might have its share of assumptions and flaws.
Please allow me to hate the creator of the 120-character limit: *HATES*. Thank you.
Americans are just stupid.
The benefit has to be for the genes of the believer for there to be a genetic advantage, and lets not forget that you share most of your genes with your family and probably those who live close by.
If a belief in an afterlife causes you to sacrifice yourself for the benefit of your siblings children, you may well lose out personally, but the genes you and your siblings share may benefit overall...
Your genes aren't necessarily working for your benefit.
Deleted
The proof is easy. In short, a being that is omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent cannot exist in a universe that contains evil. Evil exists. Therefore, God does not exist. QED. No need to make any circuitious arguments about the existence or nonexistence of God, and you can now feel good about being an athiest. God is a logical fallacy.
Sure, you can give up any one of the three O's and my argument falls apart, but then, that's not the same God {Christians, Jews, Muslims} are talking about, is it?
Great theory, now they should get right on finding the Santa Claus gene, because over 92% of small children in the Western world believe in Santa Claus.
And while they're at it, they could give a look for the consumer gene as well.
usa != all humans
religion != faith or hope
religion is also a successful business and organising model, as are government and corporate entities/communities.
we also subscribe to many other intangible products/idea/memes/practices in the hope for better things.
religion is a broadcast structure which offers hope, good experiences, community, security in collective entity, a sense of being 'right' 'good'.
we are currently interested in a lot of those kinds of organisations.
perhaps humans are genetically wired to hope. we need to be able to hope?
there is probably an interesting study in the relationship between the degree things are going pearshaped in real terms
and the proportion of people who are more interested in religions as a route to hope.
I guess my point is, your post had a tone of "What has religion done for me?". I was pointing out something large and obvious.
Literally atheism means not being a theist, and all of us are that. I don't expect you to have a belief in e.g. Zeus, Morrigan or Seth. This would make you an atheist regarding these gods. Then again, strong and weak atheism are defined differently. Strong atheism says that there is no god (or even, not one god). Weak atheist just does not believe in god. There is a difference, as not believing in god is different than being sure that god does not exist. These, both, are forms of atheism. Agnosticism is different, it's actually being unsure if you believe in a god or not. A weak atheist does not believe in god, and a strong atheist believes that god does not exist. It shouldn't be that confusing, really. Many ppl who think they are agnostics are actually weak atheists. And all of us are atheist regarding some deities.
The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne
I think you're right.
I also remember reading somewhere that early christianity helped the grow of civilization because it finally ended with the practice of child murdering.
We are Turing O-Machines. The Oracle is out there.
It's just another data point and not connected - the standard of education is declining and is a serious problem. For example - a public high school in Bangladesh will teach the most able students calculus while there are many public and even private high schools in the USA that don't.
The main reason for a polytheism/monotheism believe system is easy to explain. It is to explain the unknown. If there is one thing people are afraid of, it's the unknown. Look at the Greeks and Romans. They had a god for everything that couldn't be explained. (ie. Apollo = Sun, Selene = Moon) Over time science and human discovery had weeded these myths down. I would say that almost all religions are down to a monotheism system to explain the last mysteries in our lives. I also agree with a previous post that when people start contemplating death, that a belief system is bound to develop. Personally, I am happy that people can draw strength and courage from a god in their daily lives however I think people take the "god" think a little too far.
Unfortunately, this one is highly improbable, not to mention logically problematic. First the probability.
If something were created, there would have to be a more complex entity than the creation existent to have created it. Since complex entities, by definition, arrive late in the game, the concept is shown to be very improbable.
What do you mean by "complex entities, by definition, arrive late in the game"? You seem to be assuming a lot. If there is a "complex entity" that created us, why does it necessarily have to "arrive" at all? (more about this below) If it is improbable that some "complex entity" that could have created us exists, then why is it not also improbable that we humans (being rather complex ourselves) exist? As for the logical problem: if there was a complex entity to create this complex universe before it started, what created it? You can't actually answer that without exposing the relationship that intelligent design hold with scripture.
Why does the "complex entity" need something to have created it? You either have to regress infinitely (something greater created the "complex entity," which itself must have been created by something greater, etc.), or you eventually have to come to something that was not created. We can apply this more broadly. Where did all the matter/energy in the universe come from? Either it is infinite, or at some point it was created. 'Course, I should know better than to try and argue with someone who thinks ID is a reasonable avenue of inquiry. As above, including creation - or 'design' as has attempted to get snuck in - in scientific inquiry would be a bit like including electricity in theistic inquiry. It simply doesn't make sense, and is kind of a waste of time.
Why shouldn't electricity be included in theistic inquiry? If the world was created by God, then electricity is part of that creation and studying it would be part of studying that creation. Does the creation not tell something about the creator?
Consider for a moment that we and the universe was created by some "complex entity" and we knew that for a fact (work with me, just suppose it, okay?
Well, no. But here's a task. Look into a bit of genetic 'black box' programming, apply your new understanding to that of natural selection, and get back to me.
Genetic programming is an interesting field, and honestly I do not know much about it. But chew on these questions: Did the algorithms used in genetic programming happen by chance? What about the computer they are running on? Are there no parameters needed to be specified by someone? Has it ever happened that while trying to solve one problem with a genetic algorithm, it went on to solve another problem? Remember if we are going to rely completely on chance, any "intelligence" or outside influence at all must be removed. If you want true chance, stream some random bits through your processor as instructions and see how far it gets with that.
Belief in God is a fairly complex concept. Genes encode proteins. Not complex thoughts. There are very basic survival instincts that can be conferred genetically, but even something as simple as not crawling off the side of a cliff is a learned behavior that doesn't happen for a while after we're born and that's a hell of a lot more important for survival.
There's simply no way genes can be responsible for encoding thoughts as complex as belief in a higher being. It's simply an artifact of being reflective beings that have the ability to think about things beyond our immediate surroundings. There's a comfort that comes with believing in a God or some other higher power. It gives us the ability to relinquish control and responsibility for everything, which is something we generally need. We need to feel like things have a purpose and having a God or higher power helps to provide that. But it's not genetic.
People wanted to believe the universe revolved around the earth, because it makes us feel more important.
People want to believe that when humans die they have an after life because it comforts them.
People like to believe that humans are the only mammals that go to heaven and anybody who does not act or believe like them does not get access, because again it makes us feel important. Observe the people around you, and you will notice these things.
I believe there may also be a genetic basis for the "us" and "them" mentality. It brings unity and there is strength in numbers. People tend to group together based on their social clicks, where they are from, their skin color, the school they went to, the sports they played etc.
People bond over the dumbest things but just about all people (and many other animals) have this same trait. This grouping would obviously carry survival advantages.
Saying Java is nice because it works on all OS's is like saying that anal sex is nice because it works on all genders.
We are analytical creatures. God isn't hardwired into our brains -- deities take so many functions, forms, numbers, etc -- but comes about as the natural result of trying to understand that which is outside of our ability to perceive. For the earlier people, deities served to explain everything about the universe and everything had a strict order. As science began to come about, deities took smaller and smaller roles in our understanding of the universe -- no longer was it required to have a God to explain why something falls. Of course, there are always going to be limits to what we understand, as there is no way to understand when we have reached the boundaries of our knowledge -- only methods of estimation. God now rests and dwells in these positions, taking a smaller role as the spark in the universe, that which lies in the gaps of our knowledge.
If God is hardwired, then at what point does God stop and our natural analysis begin?
The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne
Belief in god simply is not universal. The numbers above make that clear. If it is a hard wired function of our brains, then explain the variation in brain wiring between Swedes and Americans. On the nature vs. nurture line, this one is at the nuture end.
... -- but one data point doesn't prove whether or not an attribute is genetic or not, especially if one ever studied high school biology.
Let me try that argument: Sweden has many more blondes, therefore the numbers make it clear that hair color is not genetic.
I know my brain isn't wired for belief in god. My parents ran the Sunday school and brought me up a methodist. My grandparents were religious. My genetic inheritance should make me religious if its a preset brain wiring. [...]
Ever hear of recessive genes? I don't have the same hair color as my parents, or my siblings, or my
My personal experience leads to the opposite conclusion. We may be wired to follow the logic we understand or are taught. If we are taught how to think rationally and scientifically, then belief in God is vulnerable to rational analysis.
Well, discounting all the religious scientists, I must say your one data point sounds far more compelling than the large group of people they asked. Sold!
There's a reason such things are in built? Or shall we just forget all logic and reason and confuse everyone.
It is more logical to believe there is a God when our genetics make up everything we are, and therefore were created by God.
It's illogical to think that there is no God when everything in the world points towards one.
We have a new winner for worst comeback ever. (haha, it even says crap-hole)
Pronunciation[hyoo-bris, hoo-]
-noun excessive pride or self-confidence; arrogance.
example:
"Eventually the geneticist's hubris became evident."
You're right, it WOULD. But that does not explain why he would leave the remaining 8% in the cold. Nor does it account for people who switch from atheist to religious, or vice versa. It also fails to explain why some religions are mutually exclusive. (A person who keeps the 10 Commandments, for instance, cannot be a hindu or a buddist, since the first commandment rules out worshipping any other gods, and those religions are polytheistic.)
Back to the argument about atheists who convert, are they claiming that the very genes of such people have changed?
To carry the examination further, the hypothesis does not explain why the LORD would predetermine the absence of faith, and then punish those who were deprived of the "faith gene".
I think it is flawed to claim that human free will, in particular where matters of the spirit are concerned, is 100% subject to material constraints. (i.e. protein, tissue and DNA) Perhaps the material (the DNA) is subject to SPIRITUAL constraints. That would really get some people thinking, now, wouldn't it.
I would be deeply surprised if the experimenters had taken the time (or given the consideration) to examine the DNA of people BEFORE and AFTER they had converted from atheist to religious (or vice versa).
To claim that religion/non-religion boils down to genetics merely makes excuses for those who don't believe, and it also makes excuses for those who don't help the ones who don't believe.
The sins of atheists are still sins, and the silence of believers is still silence. If you know there's a person who goes every day without prayer, and rather than saying "it's in their genes, forget about it", it is better to say "there are atheists who have converted; I will talk to them; I will pray for them."
"Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us." -Jesus Christ The Lord's Prayer
Saying that they are "hardwired to believe in a supernatural god" makes it sounds like that's its purpose. However, evolution doesn't work with purpose or goals in mind, it simply uses what works. That is, the evolutionarily important part is that you feel someone is watching you (that keeps people in line), the supernatural part is simply a post-hoc rationalization that people come up with to explain that feeling.
Harmony of the spheres depends on 1 Alpha (person)to govern over us all. The Placebo effect is WHY God works for some of us. Simple. The mind is a powerful thing, which brings me to point #2 Electric/magnetic fields connect all parts of the universe through a plasma grid of some sort. The Electric Sun Theory. A sort of 'God Grid?' Is God a Grid, Or an Alpha human? Even to our brains, it might be possible magnetically, that there is a connection to the grid, of sorts. Might be why we stargaze. The 'Grow Old Timber' dude
(I'd love to have time to read anything but a skim of the 4+ comments on this thread, and to also eventually to have time to write something of general benefit, but this is all I can afford ... I haven't tried to treat your first line of concepts - the psychological explanations for belief, which is a worthwhile topic in itself - as that would hook me in too deep and perhaps require *much* more conversation, but the last point is one I'd like to offer some thoughts towards.)
Yes, this ("""When you look to other religions and say "that's ridiculous" at the idea of a wine god or a god with the head of an elephant or spirits and ferries or Zeus or Thor wielding his hammer, have you ever considered one thing.... is your religion any less ridiculous????""") has become a very specific component-aspect of some sort of coalescence of generalised theory I'm trying to groom for eventual public consumption; which I hope will eventually be both pragmatic and affirmative, permitting people to hold and promote distinctive individual or corporate supernatural or counter-supernatural theories, without having that sour backlash either of zealotry, ultra-homogeneity or self-certain superiority, except in misinterpretation.
Your point is fine, and my take on this is something like a "principle of uniform credibility": that a variety of human qualities are more probably uniformly distributed across the world's societies than we would generally like to imagine: ie: intelligence, honesty, personal credibility, moral goodness, altruism, etc are probably aspects of the human being that are equally gifted to people in all nations and people groups, even the ones we (whoever that may be) think are of minimal integrity/credibility.
For completeness and to survive the critique of self-application, all comers to the field of "theories of existence" must be afforded the same basic respect and dignity, without the need for a co-condition of agreeing to *subscribe* to the alternate theory. This doesn't mean that "Everyone's own theory is right for them", it means: "Well, you may be right, but I am not yet convinced and am satisfied to continue to hold and/or promote my own thoughts on the matter; and neither, either or both of us could *ultimately* be shown to be right. You may continue to labour for my 'conversion' (if that is what your world-view implores) and I will listen to you with honesty, and I may continue to labour for your 'conversion' (if that is what my world-view implores) and hope for you to listen with honesty - and both of us are being honest to our own stance."
Sure some have built up folklore (that word is not intended as an insult!) and knowledge bases that have more or less questionably independent sources of information, but the *persons themselves* are (in a bell curve) both intelligent and honest about their uptake of these things, and to dismiss a world-view is to dismiss an entire population's personal integrity and intelligence. What I'm saying is that the bell curves of these qualities (if they could be measured) probably map reasonably equitably from culture to culture across the world.
So my outcome of this is that it is self-demeaning to dismiss out-of-hand any other world-view as being a mere "power-play utilised to oppress and control the masses" (post-modernist critique) or a mindless herd-mentality if you like, or even a purely psycho-biological survival mechanism, let alone any of the even more questionably biased supernaturally-based criticisms of other world-views, as an auto-dismissive approach equates to a self appointment (either personal or corporate) as being the only one(s) who are actually honest and intelligent about their approach to reasoning out and testing out their own world-view with integrity.
If you have read this far, thank you for thinking about this aspect, and I'll try to read replies if any come so that I can think about your critique and revise my work. I'd be interested to engage in this at length some time as this is only on
Just because you choose to arrive at nihilism and hedonism does not mean it need be that way.
Others would be apt to think that the point is one's legacy i.e; contributions to the progress
of human knowledge. How does a genetic predisposition towards believing in invisible friends
relate to that?
Were that I say, pancakes?
Religion has served it's purpose. It was required during the formation of early civilizations. It was something more powerful than all of us and kept everyone from killing each other. Now (and for the last couple of thousand years) it is instead the reason we kill each other. It gives us false hope, breeds ignorance, and divides us. It tells us that we should believe things with reason. It discourages us from testing those beliefs. It is the antithesis of progress.
I am not hardwired to believe anything. My beliefs are shaped by my experiences, and observations. I gather evidence, and attempt to be rational when knowledge allows. Through observations of the world around me I have come to the conclusion that mankind is not a creation of god, but god is a creation of mankind. I DO NOT believe your fairy tales. I DO NOT fear your hell. I WILL NOT suffer your god's wrath. I WILL NOT fall prey to ignorance.
If you must!
In Western Europe the belief in the supernatural is a lot less than in the US and other more primitive countries. Studies in the finding the relative belief in the supernatural both between countries and between individuals, have come up with these findings:
1. The higher the general educational level in a nation the lower the belief in the supernatural.
2. The higher the educational level of an individual the greater the probability they will not believe in the supernatural.
The US is an exception to observation 1. , but observation 2. applies there, viz. the above Nobel prizewinners. The population of the US and Europe has a very similar genetic make up due to recent immigration over the last few centuries. Therefore the the large percentage difference in belief in the supernatural between the two populations is due to cultural, social and historical differences not genetic.
In the medievial period open disbelief in the supernatural was extremely rare, following the Enlightenment absence of belief in the supernatural become much more common, especialy amongst the increasing numbers with a scientific education. There was not a huge genetic change that occured over a couple of hundred years, no it was again social and cultural changes that lead to increasing disbelief.
So the conclusion we reach is that belief in the supernatural is culturally, socially and historically dependant not genetically dependant. So why is belief in the supernatural so widespread especially in societies with a lower general educational level and amongst the less educated. The answer it is a product of social evolution not biological evolution. In more primitive societies it probably poved useful in creating social cohesion in tribal groups and nations. In the modern post-Enlightrnment era its usefulness is more problematic and indeed may be pathological.
What a crock. This is an example of the religious folks of the world trying to exude some pressure to 'convince' folks that if you don't believe in a god too .. then your not normal.
.. *ABANDONED* and not cared for - sudden find a craving for Religion to make their lives complete.
.. if religion was REALLY part of our genetic makeup, then there couldn't exist a culture where religion was simply non-existant. Certainly not a town, or an entire COUNTRY where religion was basically abandoned for several decades. Right Soviet Russia ?
I postulate that, if a kid is raised by strictly religious parents, and indoctrinated into religious belief as a child, then its certainly not a surprise that they might become religious as an adult.
Conversely, very few of those raised, non-religiously - the key phrase here is *RAISED* not
Kids do what their parents do. If you don't believe this, go to any hospital in the USA, on any given day, and ask new parents if they had their son's circumcised. Then ask them why.
Not that I have a care on either side of the fence on circumcision, just that its another thing people tend to 'follow their family trend' on.
[Oddly enough, almost parallel.]
But to say that people are hard wired for religion is crap, its safer to say we are hard wired to kill each other, than to suggest that religion is part of our DNA. Of course, the religious right doesn't want you to know about DNA in the first place. I mean
meh
--Ne auderis delere orbem rigidum meum, non erravi pernicose!
Who wants to get the Life of Brian quote here?
Disgusting.
That we are also the greatest nation?
Is supernatural belief caused by Nature or Nurture?
It could be both -- although we already know that Nurture plays a very powerful role.
Once children are indoctrinated into a religion by their parents, they rarely change their beliefs. The indoctrination usually begins at a very young age, when children are the most psychologically susceptible.
The specific beliefs of children often match very closely to the beliefs of their parents. This itself is overwhelming evidence that Nurture plays a powerful role.
We can shed light on this by examining adults who were not subject to any religious or spiritual indoctrination by their parents (or others) while they were children. Such people are difficult to find, but they hold an important key to understanding the magnitude of the effect of long-term childhood psychological pressure (i.e. "Nuture") that is routinely practiced worldwide.
The meat is weak, but having confronted my own mortailty I can say that faith offers no better protection from psychological stress than resignation. "I admit that I cannot guarantee my own survival, so when my best effort falls short I accept death."
Since I have offered a counter example, faith is no longer a necessary condition. It remains to be seen whether faith is a sufficient condition for psychological survival.
--- Nothing clever here: move along now...
"What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise."
The scientist gave a superior smile before replying, "What is the tortoise standing on?"
"You're very clever, young man, very clever," said the old lady. "But it's turtles all the way down!"
Always cracks me up! Check out the International Square Earth Society:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ShMlZsjBeec
damn snakes
waiting for ad.doubleclick.net
reminds me of an old Marx saying,,
"Religion is the opiate of the masses"
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B - D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
..because as we all know, there are very few Atheists in prison. Ironic isn't it
God was my co-pilot, but then we crashed and I was forced to eat him.
No, not the belief in angels, demons and religion. Curiosity and that we hate things we can't explore is what's hardwired into us.
We are explorers, researchers, we're curious. We want to know. Mostly out of the drive that we can't stand not knowing something. The unknown is inherently threatening to us. Think back of your childhood days when those shadows and noises you saw and heard at night were threatening, but only until you found out what it was. Then everything was just fine.
Death is something we cannot explore. So it is threatening us, we fear it. We are the only animal on this planet (as far as I know) that is able to reflect about itself and think of its future. And we all know we're gonna die. Sooner or later, but one thing's certain: We will. There's nothing we can do to avoid it. And since we don't know what's waiting afterwards, and there is no way to find out, it is something that would drive us nuts.
Few people are atheists when they know it's about time to die. And those who are usually either go mad with fright or cry helplessly.
Religion now uses this problem we're in. Every religion has some kind of afterlife implemented, giving us an explanation for something we can't explore and research. It offers easily understandable answers for something that can't be solved any other way.
It also offered answers in other areas that we couldn't figure out, like the universe or the past of the world. Also something pretty much every religion deals with. The question where we come from and what was before there was something, the question of how it all started. And many also deal with the question how it's gonna end.
That it is human nature to want those answers can easily be seen by our scientific community. We don't do astronomy, geology and archaeology just to prove that the bible ain't right. Most researchers I know couldn't care less about that. They want to provide for one of human's deepest, most fundamental drive: Answering the questions of our origin, of our creation, or our ending.
That's what's probably in our genetic makeup, the need to know, the need to find out, the need to get answers. Religion is only the tool to satisfy that thirst.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I read this book on the topic of how natural functions of the brain easily lead to the creation of 'god':
Why God Won't Go Away: Brain Science and the Biology of Belief (Paperback) by Andrew Md Newberg (Author), Eugene G. D'Aquili (Author), Vince Rause (Author)
It gives good science, some annecdotes, and talks through reasonable conclusions for the data research presents. It tries to be objective, the authors are almost coy in avoiding to sound too scientific or too religious. It is a hard read in places (biology and neuroscience stuff), but it was good to fill my head with some well thought out data based conclusions, thus making it easier to reach my own conclusions.
Us trying to reduce God to a genetic advantage is like when the smart computers of the future, who no longer believe in humans, all of a sudden notice that have these things called keyboards attached to themselves and who go to great pains to explain that the keyboards must have arisen because they happen to provide mysterious input that makes computers run better. God must get quite a chuckle over our mental gymnastics sometimes :-)
So they say...
Even if belief in a supernatural being WERE part of our genetic makeup...
..it was pretty much discussed several hundred years ago with Rene Descartes' "The Existence of God". He suggests that we have prior knowledge of God which we are born with. This seems pretty similar.
Do not mark in this space. For official office use only.
Or it could be that the logical individual does the "right" thing because of a variation of the prisoner's dilemma. A normal prisoner's dilemma has only two players, but in our variation we'll say we have as many players as are in the society. Each player has two options per "turn": Behave (play nice, don't steal, don't murder), or Betray (kill, rape, pillage, et cetera).
In the classical prisoners' dilemma, if both parties betray, both parties lose a lot, and if neither party betrays then both parties lose to a lesser extent. In the real world, if everyone steals and murders and whatnot, everyone loses. But if everyone cooperates then nobody really loses. Of course, if only one person betrays, that person can win a bit at the expense of everyone else. But most societies catch on to betrayers pretty quick, and dispose of them. The optimal solution for the society as a whole is one in which everyone behaves, and societies with a large number of betrayers fall behind and stay behind, I'd imagine (witness most of Africa, where bands of militias steal from others within the society).
In short, most people behave for two reasons. The first is because it would suck to live in a world where everyone misbehaved. The second is that the penalty for being caught is usually more than the potential gains from betraying. (As a side note, different cultures define "misbehavior" in different ways and have different rules for how much a betrayer loses when caught, which is why you get your hand cut off for stealing in certain countries and a slap on the wrist in others.)
We have also managed to trigger parts of the brain which give people the experience of color, light, smells, memories, sounds, tastes, movement, and sensations. Based on the brain-part triggers, I am no more convinced that the religious experience is not a genuine perception of something that exists independently from us, than that there exists nothing independent from us to smell, taste, see, etc.
How can a post be modded "overrated" or "underrated" when it hasn't been rated yet?
Religion is the result of smarter people taking advantage of simpler people. Although I support neither politics nor clergy, I think if I was interested in getting rich while controlling lots of other people, I would do whatever it took to become a member of the clergy!
Goddamned kids! Get off my lawn!
If perception is overly conservative and has false positives it is better than missing the occasional threat.
I had a cat that developed an aversion to ripples in my bedspread. I didn't even have an arm under the bedspread playing with it. It was just walking across the bed one day , put a paw on a ripple in the cloth and something about the way it sprung back made it jump. It avoided ripples on my bed for a couple years. I can only speculate that in considering bedspread ripples a threat it was interpreting an animism to them. Before you think that is going too far think about how a cat reacts to something like a CD tray opening, or, more interesting because there is sound but no external observable movement, something like a VCR starting up a timed recording. Certainly humans are equally spooked by false positives like the "person in the doorway" out of the corner of our eye who isn't there. Couple some of these psychological tendencies with the drive to be part of a community and believe the community mythos and you have organized religion.
My favorite human bad causal reasonings are ones that reflect unthinking egotism. "After surviving this plane crash, I _have_ to believe in God! Even though he took the head off the guy sitting next to me!"
Perhaps most humans like to believe that they will not die once they establish a concept of dying and therefore will themselves to believe that there is likely something beyond death to ease their fear of death? I know this sounds pretty far fetched but it is a posibility...
meridian at tha.net
Anyone read the Neanderthal Parallax? ;)
A particular religion is often painted as the only source for morality (substitute your own locally popular religion--in the case of me as an American, it's Christianity) when it appears that cultures all over the world have ended up coming up with large overlaps in their moral codes, indicating that we don't really owe that to religion so much as necessity as social beings. I don't think that "Keep Holy the Sabbath" is necessarily something I should be thankful for--at least not in the same sense as I'm thankful for the idea that most people aren't interested in murdering me. Really, I think that Christianity was in the right place at the right time to get credit for Western moral values, and that fact is causing us a lot of heartburn. How many people are so confused about morality that they think that anybody who doesn't share their religious traditions can't possible be a moral being?
I think that religion in general gets way too much play as The Source of Morality. Listening to the whims of an unmeasurable invisible entity, while often having great results, isn't necessarily the safest way to build a moral code. Sure it's all good and fine when your deity says "Don't steal that guy's stuff" but what about when that deity starts asking for virgin sacrifices or the extermination of the left-handed? When social moral codes are imposed arbitrarily without an opportunity for discussion (at least, not beyond, "Ahhh! Please don't burn me at the stake!"), you're seriously rolling the dice.
An interesting anagram of "BANACH TARSKI" is "BANACH TARSKI BANACH TARSKI"
Do you think it would be better to say that any change that occurs - whatever it's attributed to (God/Jesus, the person having newfound motivation, etc.) - is due to psychological experiences rather than genetics?
Isn't the purpose of this article to say that the whole general concept of religion (just the very fact that it exists) has origins in "evolution or some neurological accident?" I don't think it was proposing that life changes have been due to shift in genetics.
God told us we were hard-wired to know He exists 2000 years ago, and this is news?
Romans 2:15-16
2:15 They show that the work of the law is written in their hearts, as their conscience bears witness and their conflicting thoughts accuse or else defend them, 2:16 on the day when God will judge the secrets of human hearts, according to my gospel through Christ Jesus.
I'll take a guess, based on "America's Christianity" and the makeup of Slashdot, that you are European.
You might want to recall what the religeous fanatics did 100 to 400 years ago: they moved from Europe to America.
So the populations have different genetics today. Americans are more restless, adventurous, imaginative, risk-accepting... and religeous.
"Anonymous Coward"... funny guys, real funny.
Meh. Just an extension of childhood into adulthood.
That, and maybe Stars are actually sentient beings.
So naturally we small created matter beings believe in the Source.
After all, we are only made out of meat.
It is not the stars the create light, but the Power of Light that creates the stars...
Nonsense of course.
Why is it, that academic elitists and government cronies are always trying to convince the population through out history that it would be best to only believe in this that or the other "state" endorsed view of reality?
Anything as long as there is no "deity" that knows more than they do or usurps their power?
"God" obviously does that so lets just kill God!
Sometimes I do not know who is worse. In my time we have "fundamentialists" killing people who do not believe in a "G O D" or scientists claiming that no God exists because the only way to gain knowledge is through "Hypothesis, Experimentation, Conclusion."
Did I happen to mention the fact that you cannot prove God exists in the first place using "HEC"? When I point that out they tell me "If it cannot be measured or put through gas spectrograph, it doesn't exist."
Lets just throw out love and compassion in the world too because well, it doesn't exist....its all in the brain and doesn't exist!
I personally, do not have a spectroscopic profile of Love or Compassion either to prove otherwise. So shoot me!
Besides, if no God exists, you get to make the rules, which is much more practical.....for those in power anyway that want to tell you how and what to think about.
So now we are hardwired to believe in God. Whats next I wonder?
We are hardwired to kill, maim, destroy, be selfish...
???
-Hack
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
This is the stupidest thing I have ever read. Just to review: the warped demographic of the United States does NOT represent how things are on this planet. OMG and isn't that a relief. Most people are ATHEISTS and the particular brand of 'christianity' found in the US is thankfully rather rare. Of course we still see evidence of it in the Middle East, in Nipplegate, and so forth. But make no bones: the rest of the planet think you're a bunch of retards for this and they're sick and tired of your stupid statistics and your coming to the aid of other people. To establish your funky churches and your fast food restaurants and your empty ugly culture and lifestyle.
US: give it a rest.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
It's natural: kids start off believing in everything -- tooth fairy, Santa Claus, etc. I saw a study which showed that about 100% of kids believe in Santa Claus at age 5, and about 0% at age 15. In-between was a fall-off curve. First to go is the tooth fairy (in my experience with my kids). Santa's the last of the "childish gods" to go. Many (but by no means all) kids come to realize there is/are no "adult gods" (e.g. "God", ghosts, witchcraft). Then, as you get older, you start to think more about death. The closer people get to death, the more apt they are to become religious. Hence, churches are over-represented with old people. I mean, it makes perfect sense. Religions tend to promise their payoff after you die. Before you die, they tend to be a burden (e.g. time spent going to church, tithing, etc.). So it's only natural that the closer you get to death, the better the deal looks. Less years spent going to church, tithing, etc, but still the same payoff (eternal life, multitudes of virgins, avoidance of eternal fire, avoidance of coming back as a toad, or whatever).
//Which is the better biological explanation for a belief in God -- evolutionary adaptation or neurological accident?//
How about the Inquisition?
We are talking about Western civilization, here, after all. No mention of Asian cultures in our use of the term "universal", here.
We're starting to get an understanding of this. There are some well known mechanisms in the brain which confer a survival advantage but are not rational. One is the tendency to see structure in random data. Related to this is a tendency to perceive cause and effect relationships that aren't justified by the data.
Some of this has a survival advantage. It's useful to trigger the flight or fight reflexes before the situation is clearly dangerous.
Someday we'll get to the bottom of the human tendency to band together under insane males, and then we'll make real progress.
Being a limp wristed heathen DOES have advantages. Some obvious, some not.
I'm gay, but I'm a beer-drinking NASCAR-watching guy who has had a car engine in his living room - and we mean a real car, not some prissy little four-cylinder transverse-mount crap. Lemme tell you, there's nothing like:
So being a non-limp-wristed homo has its advantages, too. By the way, I like the femmy guys. So if you are one and can compile a Linux kernel, drop me a message.
As for the heathen bit, all I know is that e^(i*pi)+1=0. That's so weirdly coincidental, bringing together so much of the Universe in one super-elegant expression, that I have a hard time believing it's accidental. But organized religion? No thanks.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
That said, one can make judgements about likelihood, and many kinds of factors can go into such judgements. For example, if no-one else claims to have seen or otherwise experienced your magical blue puppy, that would seem to argue that you might be making it up, or imagining it, and I might be tempted to assign a probability indistinguishable from zero to the likelihood of its existence. But if millions of people claim to have some sort of experience of the MBP, it seems likely that these people are in fact experiencing something in common, which they've chosen to characterize as MBP. The MBP clearly "exists" in some form, even if only as a shared delusion.
In that scenario, lacking direct personal experience with the MBP, I can reasonably claim to be agnostic about both the existence and nature of the MBP. Practically speaking, agnosticism applies much more to the nature of the entity than its existence: in that scenario, *something* called MBP clearly exists in many people's minds. The question is, what, if anything, does it correspond to in shared reality? Usually, the believers themselves can't answer this question precisely, which doesn't help...
Atheist Douglas Adams has my favorite theory as to why humans all over the world have created some sort of deity.
http://www.biota.org/people/douglasadams/
(He doesn't really get into it until about half way down, but the whole thing a good read if you haven't seen it.)
Maybe there actually is a God. Maybe there is a supernatural realm. Maybe the universe and life on earth didn't simply happen by chance.
Even more, maybe everyone who believes such things isn't a complete idiot.
Doesn't it take just as much belief to think that everything simply happened by the coincidence of time and chance as it does to believe that a superintelligent spiritual being did it all?
Another scientific claim without any scientific facts to back it up. What a shocker.
Maybe they're afraid of the nutcase with the "magic box"? Maybe they're just reluctant to be made sport of (by reaching into some unpleasant surprise in the box).
This does not prove those people believe in god.
That said, it may be true that we have a bias toward religion. Dawkins has interesting things to say about that, as does Susan Blackmore in "The Meme Machine" (http://tinyurl.com/22jsz3).
"You either have to regress infinitely ..., or you eventually have to come to something that was not created. We can apply this more broadly. Where did all the matter/energy in the universe come from? Either it is infinite, or at some point it was created."
Which is what makes a Creator less probable: An eternal complex being capable of building the universe is less probable than a large amount of eternal matter and energy. Hell, you could break it further down: if all matter was created by the condensation of energy as the universe initially cooled, then we only have to account for eternal energy.
I mean, at the very least, we can see and interact with matter and energy.
Still, none of it REALLY matters, except in how we proceed. The answer, for research, need not be correct, just more likely.
"Did the algorithms used in genetic programming happen by chance?"
No. They were written to emulate an existing process. The remainder of questions there are irrelevant.
The process, by the way, is the natural extension of any self-replicating matter. One could suggest that a self-replicating amino chain was the only thing in the history of life to come about by chance. Since there were a couple billion years available for that to happen before the advent of life on earth (and to take for long enough to grow more complex), and since SRAs come about pretty frequently in conditions similar to primorial earth, I'm willing to see it as sufficiently probable.
Look, you can argue 'till you're blue in the face, but a Designer just isn't a plausable enough excuse for the universe. Besides, how would science proceed? 'Why is the sky blue? It was designed that way'?? Naw. Sorry, but some of us look for deeper answers.
110100 1101000 1101000 1100110 0 1101111 1101000 1100011 1
All this talk of "religions" and "God" and "angels" and "Satan" and "billgates" has made me very thirsty. Bartender!! A round of drinks for everyone!.
The Russians have won. They have made the world a cesspool of distrust, greed, fear and hate.
Well, the term "psychological experiences" is really a very broad blanket. What it defines isn't exactly clear. Within the field of psychology, there are physical psychologists, who explore the relationship between physiological and psychological phenomena. There are behavioral psychologists, who study behavior (but not necessarily why that behavior happens). There are psychoanalists, who study symbolism, dreams, the subconscience, and that sort of thing. There are hypnotists. There are other branches, too, and I probably don't know the half of it, but I guess I'm saying I don't know what it means when you ask whether it is "better" to explain things in terms of psychological events. Psychology is a very broad field (that covers many interesting topics, actually).
I guess that might be a tangent, though, since I'd be much more inclined to say that spiritual/religious experiences are religious/spiritual experiences, and I would not give any field of empirical study dominion over them. In my own life, there was a time when I lived as an agnostic. (15 years) During that time, I had seen NO evidence of God, and I'd given up on faith. But when I finally saw the light, there was no turning back. During that first 15 years, it was empirical science and philosophy that kept me as an agnostic. Since I saw the light, however, no amount of empirical, scientific or psychological speculation could diminish my faith.
You have successfully isolated the essence my objection. The summary of the article makes the bold faced assertion that "religiosity" comes from science. Basically it makes a big "ven diagram" and says "empirical science & forensics are bigger than God, and bigger than believers in God."
What I, a believer, am saying is that "their conclusions are wrong, and their method of analysis [probably] failed to account for people who have changed their faith." (as I have, since I was once an atheist, then an agnostic, and now am a Christian). What's more, they probably failed to look for patterns such as family heritage [of atheists begetting kids and raising new atheists, for example]. Since the genes follow from the parents to the kids who receive some teaching and conditioning from the parents, it would not be surprising if there were some correlation.
BTW, on a theological note, I know that there are those in the Church who seem to claim that Jesus and God are one and the same, but if you read the Bible it is clear that Jesus carefully avoided claiming he was God, AND he PRAYED to God, and since he wasn't praying to himself, it is probably a mistake (on the order of breaking the first of the 10 Commadments) to worship Jesus (although I do believe he is the savior, and he was sent from Heaven).
"Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us." -Jesus Christ The Lord's Prayer
What you mean "us", White Man?
95% of Humanity is Homo simian, two steps up from hairless chimps. Civilization happened when the density of population became high enough that those of us who took a rational approach to our environment could get together and accomplish things. That doesn't change the simple fact that most humans do their utmost to not think about things, because it makes their heads hurt. Faith is a wonderful thing, it tells you everything you need to know. Have you visited your local temple and looked at The Law lately? Every step of life from birth to death and beyond is neatly laid out in explicit, detailed rules, so you never have to actually take a cogent approach to anything.
Consider the dark ages; a thousand years during which the Holy Mother Church held a sizeable fraction of humanity in her grasp, and condemned fifty generations to poverty, squalor, and disease, in the Name of God. We're seeing it again, as religious fanatics labor to set back the clock and retake the earth from those who doubt The Faith. The veneer of civilization as we know it is paper thin, and we must never forget that the barbarians are, as always, at the gate.
Don't take life too seriously; it isn't permanent.
In any case, basing the whole supposition on "6 out of 10 Americans believe in the devil and hell, 7 in 10 believe in angels, heaven and the existence of miracles and life after death, while 92% believe in a personal God." is shaky from the start.
Since many polls would indicate that in, say, Europe, the statistics are reversed, I fail to see how that equates to humans being hardwired for belief in God. On the basis of that statistic, one might with as much validity claim that all Americans are hardwired for stupidity.
...then I for one am proud to be a genetic freak.
What religious people seem to fail to comprehend is that atheism is not a religious belief, it is the lack of religious belief. So there is no reason for an atheist to get all political or freaked out if it turns out that there is a biological basis for religion.
I can't say I'm really an atheist - because e^(i*pi)+1=0 brings together too many scientifically observable facets of the Universe for me to believe it could be accidental. Organized religion absolutely disgusts me, with its fervent brainwashing, hypocrisy, and other multitude flaws. But I'll tell you something else - kick an evangelical in the balls and he'll say "Praise Thee Jesus" and smile an even broader smile. I envy the simple joy that must come with that brainwashing. If contentment were as simple as just drinking the Kool-Aid...
That sheep (even with someone sufficiently self-righteous and shameless to call himself "a pastor", note the true meaning of the word!) will never be me, however - I'm not content in life, but I get through it with a mathematical truth which is orders of magnitude more improbable than a winning lottery ticket. I don't know identity or the motivation of Whatever made e^(i*pi)+1=0, but it's the one religious article I carry about in my Toolkit Of Emotional Survival (Or A Reasonable Facsimile Thereof) (tm reg'd 2007).
There's a reason it's called God's Equation. There's too much meaning to those five simple constants all coming together like that.
Genetically flawed to believe in Something, PhD Math, or genetically blessed? I'm unsure. It seems it has been a survival trait in my case, since that little hope that there's reason to life has pulled me through some of my darkest days. And that's a "religion" based exclusively on the cold hard and provable truth of mathematics. Okay, it's a survival trait, but is it a blessing? I'm not a happy camper, can't really say I've ever been - therefore blessing is out the window, though survival trait remains something else.
Again, and even as a scientifically-educated homo (and the evangelicals would have us burned at the stake because they refuse to believe what I jerk off about is as genuine as what they jerk off about), I do have to confess an admiration to the evangelicals: their belief ("truth" in quotes since they can't prove it the way I can prove mine) is warm and fuzzy; mine is about as warm as "The answer to life, the universe and everything is 42." Oh great, that helps a lot... I guess I'll understand 42 sometime within the next 50 years or so.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
Is that they are brainwashed to do so nearly from birth. People who don't grow up in religious homes can look at objectively and imo see what a load of crap it is. That being said, I believe church is a good source of "community" and support structure.
If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people
I am an atheist. My parents are believers. So are my grand parents on both sides. So is my sister. So is my brother. If my entire family is hard-wired to believe, then why am I different? No, I know I am not adopted :-).
Insightful.
Yeah for the 1%!
If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people
I just thought religions were self-reinforcing delusions; I never thought it could be caused by a biological anomaly. But, if it's true, I must have been born without the religion-gene, cause for as long as I can remember, I never believed in any of that religious nonsense, even before I knew anything about the scientific theories of evolution, the big bang, etc.
By reading this signature, you hereby agree with the content of the above comment.
If religious belief, or faith in a deity, supernatural or something like that, promotes survival. I wonder if the evolutionary advantage produced is in the form of mental health. I would love to hear if there is a correlation between secular societies and increased mental health difficulties like depression, suicide, self esteem issues etc. One could never prove causation, but I've certainly heard that there are high mental health issues issues in North America and Europe, which tend to me more secular than other parts of the world.
I could see the relationship between religion and mental health though. Religion often fosters:
1) Community in the form of churches, and there-by a sense of belonging
2) A sense of doing good for others, and others doing good for you
3) A faith in a higher power (however irrational) could relieve stresses and feelings of fear.
4) Promotion of taking off Sundays (or some time during the week for religious observance)
Anyone have any data to show that secular societies have higher incidences of mental health problems?
On a more micro level, my wife is a mental health councilor and I must point out that neither of us are religious, at all.. But she has found that people who she sees with mental health problems often get better when they find some kind of belief (religious or otherwise) to put their faith into.
Interesting stuff.
I have submitted a patent for this so called god gene. I will soon be more powerful than the catholic church because you all must now pay me royalties for expressing this gene. Muahahahaahhha
98th percentile means "more arrogant than 98% of people".
I work a lot with the philosopher Emmanuel Levinas, who attempts to articulate a relationship to what lies beyond reason. Levinas refers to this as the transcendental Other--beyond the limitations of human perception, cognition, and signification.
What separates Levinas' investigation into the Other from traditional theology is that he doesn't accept that we can know anything about the Other, only posit the (im)possibility of the Other's existence. So, the first person approaching you and claiming to speak "God's word" is suspect, since the first act of sacrilege is to reduce the infinity of the Other into human terms (since language always fails to capture the entirety of what it would signify). Rather than act empowered by our knowledge of God, Levinas suggests we act with hesitancy out of our ignorance of the Other. Such hesitancy should lead to hospitality (rather than hostility) for those different than us.
So, while not religious in any traditional sense, I do believe that their are limitations to human knowledge. For instance, in response to several posts above, will science ever be able to tell the origin of randomness? Or will knowledge of this type always belong solely to the Other? Certainly science and rationality have made considerable contributions to our understanding of what "human" is, where "human" comes from, how "humans" behave, etc. But it cannot, and perhaps never will, be able to address what it means to be a human being--that question belongs to the realm of metaphysics.
That's good - if they find what specific brain structures and neurochemistry is involved in religious belief, then science can start working on a cure for it.
There is no God, and Dirac is his prophet.
Survival instinct. When faced with an adversary who puts a gun to your head and says convert or die. Naturally an average person would convert to avoid being killed even if deep down they didn't believe. When these 'converted' invidividuals have a family. They have to teach their children to believe in order to allow them to survive in the society they were born into.
From there you have a chain of believers teaching their children to believe blindly. Breaking out of the cycle isn't easy it takes one itsy bitsy step at a time.
95%+ of all Americans wear clothes. Could humans be hardwired against nudism?
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
I find the "Magic Box" demonstration uncompelling. Scott Atran, the perpetrator of the demonstration seems unwilling to think outside of the box, so to speak. Perhaps the individuals harboring "negative sentiments toward religion" are reluctant to place personal possessions or body parts into the box not because they secretly believe the superstitious claptrap they've just been told, but because they now suspect the crazy person who just told them that nonsense to have boobytrapped the box. The answer to the article's question "If they don't believe in God, what exactly are they afraid of?" is that they are afraid of Scott Atran.
"I'm so moist I'm sticking to the leather." -Kermit the Frog on The Late Late Show
The first thing I thought of when I read this article was that it seemed to be leading up to, but just barely skirting around, the theory of the Bicameral Mind.
l ogy)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicameralism_(psycho
I was almost surprised he didn't mention it himself. I guess, being out on a limb themselves enough as it is, he didn't want to have the already existing critics of THAT theory shouting at him as well.
The belief in a supernatural being might be preferable to coming to grips with "this is it".
For most people, that could be an incredibly depressing thought. Most of humanity is not "well off". Religion is "a way" to ingrain morality and (when the government controls the religion) control the people. Any threat you can come up with is far worse if the people imagine they will have to endure it for eternity -- and conversely, the suffering that people endure now is often tolerable, only because they believe there will be an afterlife that will be better.
Ironically, the one thing I'm sure of from all the arguments is that none of them are unsure about what they (don't) believe
This is just a matter of how you frame the question. I firmly believe we don't have enough data to answer the Big Questions yet - therefore I'm also unsure what the answers are.
I could also be sure what the answers are and unsure about what data supports those answers. I think that's the definition of 'faith'.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
If the headline's question is answered in the affirmative, us atheists aren't even considered human anymore.
You're also hardwired to hump your neighbor's wife whenever possible (assuming she's a hottie) but Moses's Seventh Amendment to Human Nature teaches the other part of your brain that it's not such a scalable idea for building a stable society.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
My maths teacher at high school used to rave about that one too (e^(i*pi) = -1).
When I came to treat a complex numbers in a bit more detail at University, it didn't seem so mystical to me. It's very cool in it's compactness, but it's basically a notation convention - it just happens to be a very useful notation convention.
There is no correlation between the bible's description of creation
Homework time.. View the mentioned video. It is online for free and is not from the church side of the isle. After that, then make informed comments.
The truth shall set you free!
Even if you don't believe in it, it is still part of your cultural influence.
I suggest you read the F-ing article, it's quite an interesting read.
An article is fine, but what has the scientific community found based on evidence? Please view the mentioned Universe lecture, then you will see where my comment originates.
The truth shall set you free!
I'll certainly agree so far as any study of such question is incomplete without some direct attempt to study the effects of nature versus nurture. While I admit such a study would be hard to design to remain within human subjects standards, having RTFA, I see no mention of any conceptual attempt at such. But then, how much can I expect from the NYTimes?
A more subtle possibility is that while the belief may not be genetic, it may be a trait (like sight in animals) that provides sufficient survival value to society to allow multiple societies (although not necessarily the members) to independently develop it; those that did, and were able to pass it on, had enough of a survival advantage to overcome any societies that didn't have it. If the society can pass on (via education/indoctrination/brainwashing/etc.) pass on the idea successfully to new members over time, the survival tendency does not need to be genetically encoded.
An evolutionary development need not be fully optimized to provide a limited form of advantage. Similarly, religion need not be "true" or "correct" to serve a useful function: keeping track of the seasons for planting and harvesting, providing a reason why killing other members of the tribe is bad ("big sky wizard says so!"), disapproval of eating certain animals (dogs, pigs, other humans — raising other omnivores for food is calorically inefficient compared to raising herbivores), and so on. Developing a rational, objective, universal system of ethics without resorting to "Because (mommy, God, the king, the FSM) sayeth so!" is a non-trivial problem. As well, conveying it to other members of society requires that the other members of society have enought cognitive ability and flexibility to assimilate the idea, and suffienct effort to spare from survival tasks to do so. Most religions, on the other hand, are simple enough that a high-grade moron can understand well enough to follow the creed in most cases. Or, in terms CS types ought to understand, a low cost O(n) algorithm that gives an answer within a small episilon all but a small fractional delta of probable cases may be a lot more useful for real-time work than a high cost O(e^n) one that is right every time.
You can accomplish a lot if you can line up enough brute force and massive ignorance pointed all in one direction... or something like that.
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
It seems odd to me that there is this gap in the Twentieth Century during which nothing new was apparently learned about religion or the religious sentiment. All of this was being debated, with more articulation and learning on both sides, in the Twentieth Century. "Orientalism"--the fascination with all things Asian--was big at the time, and Buddhist "atheistic pessimism" was constantly being contrasted with "Emersonian atheistic optimism." If you're interested in this topic, I highly recommend William James' The Varieties of Religious Experience .
stop condemning your feces to an oceanic condemnation.
love your creation. make wallpaper of it. don't you know that to be pure is to divide oneself for the better traits, and do away with that which is not desirable?
and what do you mean of a father by his son to "deny him", when such wreaks of a homosexual expression; a father made his son complete, reproduction by budding; if any father need choose a bride or any other matter for the son, then that father has condemned his son to not know the things pertaining to his fathers character; that son is incomplete, standing without his father like a discarded excrement instead of being one with the father. a father doesn't make claim on his son, because the son is made complete and equal to the father and the father is made equal of the son; both reciprocal.
anyone that claims to be my father is nothing more than a thief, because I am one with my father and he need not make a claim.
Homework time.. View the mentioned video. It is online for free and is not from the church side of the isle. After that, then make informed comments.
I've read the bible. I don't need a video to tell me what it says. How about making a substantive response to the gross inaccuracies in the order of creation already mentioned (and those were just the ones off the top of my head)? Anyone can take any mythical creation story with sufficiently general or vague creative steps (in this case, days) and make it seem predictive a-posteriori, in the same way the bible codes or Nostradamus are predictive a-posteriori. Until you can answer for the glaring errors in the creation account or show me where it has taught us anything of value about the actual nature of the world, it's all a bunch of hand waving. I have no problem with people believing without evidence (so long as they don't make public policy based on their faith), but I hate when people misconstrue the evidence we do have to try to make it back up their fairy tales.
I've got a genetically hardwired appendix. So far it's behaved, but thousands of people each year die when that now-useless old organ pops.
If racism turned out to have genes that modulate its sense of identity/exclusion and affinity/animosity, racism still would be wrong and need to be wiped out.
Maybe finding the "pious" gene would lead to a vaccine.
--
make install -not war
I thought it was obvious our value systems all evolved from the Three Laws of Robotics.
Don't hurt people, get along with others and look after yourself aren't bad principles to live by, regardless of how they are presented.
...laura
I tend to think that we westerners give too much credit to Christianity for moral codes that, by all appearances, other cultures have managed to arrive at without any input from Jesus.
Speak for yourself, not Westerners in general. I also don't give much credit to Christianity for anything particularly moral - there's far too much immoral history for that. About all it did (and it's not a specifically Christian thing) is give small communities a focal point when times were tough. Most Western communities don't need that now... sure quite a few individuals need it on a personal level to help them deal with their own dramas, but society as a whole doesn't. Who needs religion when you have TV and/or the pursuit of money to keep society humming?
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
If your conscience is merely something that society has taught you, logically you have no reason to comply with society's proscribed values other than avoiding retribution for your anti-social actions.
Speaking as someone more happy than you can dream with my increasingly relative morality, no. This is an instance of fallacy "Argumentum ad logicam", concluding that a fallacious argument makes the conclusion ipso facto necessarily false. That a conscience is merely something taught by society does not prove the non-existance of a valid relativistic moral framework, where "good" and "evil" (or something similar) exist. Any resemblance between the two may be a matter of coincidence attributable to evolutionary pressures on society (if not necessarily although possibly the member's genetics), and at best suggestive of correct behavior.
As a specific although oversimplified alternative: being a member of society improves my long term survival prospects, which I consider good; ergo, taking actions likely to collapse the whole society, such as immunizing myself against my best supergerm and secretly releasing into the domestic yahoo population remains ceteris paribus bad. Even if I can get away with it without "retribution", there are always "consequences". Damaging your own life support systems is counterproductive.
This tends to lead toward the moral relativity direction, which I think most people find uncomfortable and counter-intuitive.
Which just means that generally it is (pun unintended but accepted) a hell of a lot easier to inculcate simple ethical frameworks that just have not yet demonstrated highly anti-survival tendencies than it is to get people to learn complicated correct ones. This doesn't seem a major concern; truth has limited survival value.
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
......The world doesn't fit what we would expect to find if religion were true........
You are making the same basic assumption that the original article makes: Namely that evolution is true and that special creation by God is false. The evolutionary world view requires a convoluted, contradictory theory why man is so incurably religious. The Biblical world view cuts through all that and simply states that we are made in the image of God. In the tone of the article, yes, indeed we are hardwired by the Creator to have a deep yearning for a connection to Him. I prefer to use the word "programmed" instaed. It is really that simple and the simplest explanation is usually the correct one.
Just as hardware and software are distinct, so too is the brain and the mind. Software can exist independent of any particular hardware. In the same way, the mind can be independent of the brain. Software in itself is immaterial and can exist in many locations simultaneously. It only requires hardware to be physically manifest to us right now. Mind, soul, spirit or whatever this immaterial thing is labeled is like that. It can exist on its own, but usually in our experience requires hardware in order for us to perceive its activity.
Is it really so surprising that triggering certain interrupts in the brain causes normally hidden software routines to execute? The operation of a computer is determined by its software alone, given properly functioning hardware. Modern Macs can switch back and forth between Windows and OSX. Why should it be so surprising that the basic functions of a human being should not also be controlled by immaterial software originally written by the programmer, God in this case. He simply decided to build "religion" deep into our operating system.
All theory is gray
Opportunistic eaters, such as bears, human, and chimpanzees, aren't that picky when it comes to plants... In order to understand the difference between reality and hallucination, you have to become self-aware...you must begin to understand what your mind is, how it works, and what it is capable of creating
So do bears possess consciousness or are they dying off by huge numbers from eating funny mushrooms? I'd love to live by Christopher Robin's woods, but so far the bears around here just like to eat the sunflower seeds out of my feeder (BTW, the mother bear teaches the young which foods are good to eat - they have a special organ in the roof of their mouths to discriminate plants).
You might enjoy Julian James's The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind for an alternate theory of how the conscious mind evolved in humans.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Or is he trying to raise the stakes?
I scream. You scream. I assume that means we're both acquainted with the problem. We proceed.
The drug enforcement agency sure is letting this opiate of the masses get out of hand.
.....Perhaps the material (the DNA) is subject to SPIRITUAL constraints...
The DNA is a carrier of information in the same way a disk is. The DNA is equivalent to the hardware and the information it stores is the software. Each of us is a software program executing in a hardware body. The former can exist on its own, but requires the latter to become manifest. Software is not physical. Neither is our soul, spirit or mind, whatever you want to call it, made from matter. Jesus tell us that God is Spirit. According to scripture, we too are living spirits, currently executing in mortal hardware. The promise is that one day that software, the real person will get loaded into immortal hardware, commensurate with our now already eternal spirit. The choice we have now is whether we will be with God or away from Him.
All theory is gray
As a limp-wristed bi myself... Where were you when I was still dating?
Hello... How is your boyfriend? Can I watch? ;)
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
To make this discussion about god or the supernatural is to jump to a very advanced
(unsimple) explanation.
The real explanation is much simpler: Human beings are hard wired to find answers.
The application of this is that we connect dots. On the most fundamental levels, our
brain is a "dot connector": Our brains connect multiple nerve singles to form a cognitive
sense of touch. Our brains render wholeness from the imperfect matrix of our rods
and cones.
On more advanced levels our brain seeks to connect groups of dots to find cognitive "wholes"
from elements and/or concepts in our surroundings.
God, is just our brain leaping to the ultimate easy answer. Its that ultimate dot that explains
every series of other dots there is -- or every question that exists. Its a conceptual piece of very
dangerous code. It short circuits all questions -- prematurely exiting our most basic
function call: to formulate answers.
Is belief in the supernatural innate? No but we have 3 conflicting programs: the need
to connect dots (solve problems, answer questions), the desire for things to be easier (our id),
and the ability to imagine things that are conceptual. (the 2nd one is really optional I suppose).
A 'belief in the supernatural' is just a product of this equation. So in essence, yes we are hardwired
to believe in the supernatural. But that belief is a random byproduct of other forces. If anything,
supernatural beliefs represent an evolutionary disadvantage (on an individual level) because it compromises
a vital piece of our primary software.
On a social level it is arguable that it is a behavior that benefits the society while harming the
individual -- but that's another topic...
: P
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
If you're willing to then send me an email with your testimony (curious for personal reasons). Also, what church (Catholic, Protestant, Mormon, etc.) & denomination do you subscribe to? You can find my email address at http://aletheia.sourceforge.net/
Since I have a little baby boy, I've given this some thought. When we're really young and helpless we see our parents as creatures who know everything, are able to do everything and are responsible for everything.
When my little boy has a tooth ache he looks at me to find relief. When he's done something bad he looks at me for 'punishment'. When he's done something good he looks at me for appreciation and reward. Thanks to the IP camera in his room and the baby monitor I know when he wakes up and needs help.
This omnipresent and omnipotent being around us when we are small is our first encounter with - what is then - a simple world. Please the 'god' and all will be well, offend him and you will 'suffer'. Of course, his tooth ache is not caused by me and I can't really help him get rid of it.
Religion is just a way of continuing this simple image of the world into the rest of your life. It's a psychological relief because, no matter how badly you are treated, your Father knows and will compensate you in good time (the after life). It's no coincidence that god is portrayed as 'the father'.
Of course, religion is also a wonderful way of reinforcing social rules aand laws and forcing bonds within groups. That's where instutional religion comes from.
X.
PS: Don't take this punishing talk too literally. He just gets cuddled, really. I'm a benevolent deity (for now).
"If the Bible proves the existence of God then Superman comics prove the existence of Superman".
That still doesn't explain why I think that people who talk to invisible men in the sky are idiots.
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
In other news: 95 out of 100 Americans believe that the earth is a sphere. Conclusion: human is hardwired to believe this.
How do you quantify this? Try replacing "religion" with "greed", "desire to be famous", "desire to rule people", "sexual desire", "anger", or "sheer stupidity", and see if you can somehow compare their respective "destructiveness". In actuality, people are motivated by many things; every act can be motivated by some or all of the above. Your statement is just an expression of a value.
so, I frequently ask myself "How can I believe in God?" (as a supernatural omnipotent diety) I can believe in a higher consciousness of the Universe, that is okay, however, if the Universe is equivalent to universal turing machine, then there must be such it's state where very good and benevolent "God" really exists. So, maybe we can actually believe in "There is or will be God", and believe that this God is good, and omnipotent, and that it can communicate with us, and affect the present time. Imagining the big brother (God), and imagining the communication with God, might be useful for finding better, more moral ways to behave.
http://id3as.livejournal.com/
This is somewhat offtopic, but if anyone is interested, here is a series of video lectures on religion and atheism by some prominent scientists: http://beyondbelief2006.org/
I especially liked Vilayanur S. Ramachandran, Neil DeGrasse Tyson, Sam Harris, and Richards Dawkins is always nice to hear although he does manage to sound a bit pompous even to an atheist, must be that accent. =P
While I'm at it, I'll include a short overview of my own beliefs.
I'm an atheist.
I define anything in the world as natural and therefore the supernatural does not exist by definition.
If there is any consciousness having powers so much beyond that of humans in the natural world that you would call it godlike, i have seen no evidence to its existence, and even if i did, i see no reason why it would merit unquestioning worship.
I think that a major part of religion is the belief that there are some things that are in some sense universally special, as opposed to personally special.
I don't really care what other people believe as long as they don't try to impose their beliefs on me (and we have quite a bit of that here in Israel).
That's pretty much all i can think of at the moment.
We understand what causes these experiences to happen, typically a smell of roses is triggered by actually smelling roses, tastes and other things are triggered by material things as well. However, the really telling part isn't that we can trigger perceptions of material things but that the perception for triggering the non-existent things occurs in the same part of the brain. When we fiddle with the smell section we end up recalling actual things, whereas when we fiddle with this section we get things which don't, and very exacting stories which fit in perfectly with religious and alien experiences.
It is no longer uncommon to be uncommon.
Part of our genetic makeup? Religion? No. It is simply our lack of understanding things like what is that big red thing on the sky that stings your eyes when you look at it. The aztecs called it the sun god and worshiped it. Later we found out that its actually a star, part of the galaxy our planet revolves in and etc. The reason we make up gods is to explain things that we simply are not capable of understanding yet.
I don't need a video to tell me what it says
The video is not about what the bible says. I didn't say read the bible. I said watch the science lecture. Now finish the homework assignment and get back to me after the part about what existed before the big bang and what the physics model (not religen) says.
The truth shall set you free!
"God does not exist. It is all 'hardwiring' in our genetic make-up. When we get the genetic tools, we can get rid of God." And'I suppose we can get rid of hunger and the need for foood as well (great for Third World countries.) We can get rid of sex drive (not acceptable in the U.S.)
"Glory to Man in the Highest, for Man is the Master of things." - A.C. Swinburne.
Or "Our genetic make-up requires God as much as it requires food and sex. We accept hunger, the sex drive, the need for affection and companionship and supply their needs appropriately. Why not do the same with our need for God?" If we get to the next life and find that there is no God, no Pearly Gates, that doesn't help us right now. Right now, we are starving ourselves if we ignore our need for God.
Sorry you right I forgot to make the link. The point I was saying is nihilistic behaviour is more likely to get naturally unselected and hence the prominence of a God gene. The classic example is Nietche, not exactly the splitting image of a family man. Family promotes legacy of ones genes.
And yes as you say you can arrive at other conclusions than fatalism or nihilism, but I'm suggesting that if you starting out as an atheist you are far more likely to reach that conclusion. Religion steers one away from such reasoning.
Lets call it a 'gullibility gene'.
My question is--what about all the POWs who believed in God, but still died from the abuse, malnutrition, or disease? Didn't they have enough belief in God? My guess is that people are just uncomfortable attributing their survival to chance, genetic advantage (body fat, disease resistance) or something beyond their control. So they attribute it to God.
Human knowledge to date is a vast stack of 'What came before', summarized and presented to us through education at an early age, whether it's the 20th century history or how to hunt an animal and cook it.
It's well known that infants and the young are particularly impressionable, since at that age our brains are wired to accept a lot of information, even in the absence of proof that it is correct. There just isn't time in our lives to go and validate every piece of information we're presented with. The fact that religion is often impressed on children as soon as they're of school age (and sometimes attempted before then) is not proof we're wired to accept religion, but supportive evidence that we're susceptible to new ideas early in our development, the ultimate learning machine. Is it remarkable, knowing this, to then discover that 45% or so of evangelical Christians were 'born again' before their 14th birthday? Hardly.
The only scientificially valid way to determine if people are hardwired for mystical thinking would be to not expose a child to any of these influences from the day it's born, and see if by a certain age, it's arrived at the idea that God(s) were involved.
Regards,
-Steve Gray
Your definition is artificially structured to make atheists look like they're making claims of omniscience. When we hear someone say "I don't believe in ghosts|reincarnation|ESP|alien abduction|bigfoot," we know darned good and well that they aren't saying, "I know everything, and I can conclusively say that these things do not exist anywhere in the universe." We KNOW they aren't laying claims to omniscience. We KNOW what they're saying is "I don't see any credible reason to believe in any of these things." I know it, you know it, everyone knows it.
But if you put the God word into it, suddenly people like you want to leap out and say "Aha! Atheists are arrogant because they think they know everything!" You using juvenile and absurd arguments doesn't make me arrogant, sorry. I don't believe in God in the same way I don't believe in Santa or faeries, or Thor or Shiva. I don't claim to know everything, but I can say "I don't believe in God" without magically becoming arrogant and closed-minded. Stop trying to shift the burden of evidence to me.
Humans are a social species. A person who is alone, not part of a tribe, has no chance to reproduce, and even very little chance of surviving very long.
For hundreds of thousands of years, not to worship the right God in the right way has caused people to become social outcasts at best, but more likely stoned, burned or bludgeoned to death. To be a fitting member of one's tribe and to worship in the same way as the majority of that tribe has usually protected an individual against such a threat to their reproductive success.
I was cured by a physics degree.
There is hope.
Even if the universe was just a never-ending random shuffling of atoms, eventually there'd be one (in this finite search-space) that was conducive to the existence of observers, and the observers would more than likely make the observation that the current arrangement of atoms, the one that allowed them to be there, was too improbable. It is, but just as probable as each of the others.
You can call it an "accident," but it had to be some way, and this way is the only way anyone would ever witness.
- the fear of vengeance from an unseen god allows for creating larger communities without the need for constant human policing
- the belief in a greater being allows for people to sacrifice their time and skills to construct great feats that promote the general good
I bet there are many more, genetic traits rarely have a single purpose. If such communities survive due to their biological inclination to believe in god then it makes sense. PS: Sorry for my English, it feels like sandpaper on my tongue sometimesActually, I think evolution presents a very strong argument against a (purely) genetic basis for religion.
Namely that no other animal exhibits religious tendencies. I'm not talking about superstitions -- these are actually logical for most animals. My grandmother had a cat that thought that whenever it went into the supply closet and banged around, food would appear in its plate (she'd hear it, and then pop open a can of cat food). It's simply false causation (or true causation as the case may be, since it did cause my grandma to open the cat food). I mean honest-to-G-D religious behavior. Where are the monkeys worshiping shamanistic totems? Where are the dogs praying late at night? Where are the animals crossing themselves before they engage in mortal combat? Animals turning down sex because it is "morally wrong"? Answer: there aren't any. Humans are unique among all animals in this regard. Which should be a red flag for people trying to make this claim.
If you're going to hypothesize evolution as the source for religion, you have to actually consider evolution. If all you have to work with is the (modern) man, you're ignoring the fact that all genes have to come from somewhere. Royal Jester Richard Dawkin's claim that religion is the result of a wanting-to-follow authority gene is ridiculous, as if such a gene existed, it'd be more present in the orderly Germans and less present in the iconoclastic Americans. But half of Germany is Atheistic, and only 8% of Americans are.
In fact, the differences by culture, alone, discredit this theory. If there was a gene, that was presumably more prevalent in some populations than others, that gave people an inclination to believe in God, then you should see correlation between genotype and Atheism rates, whereas the opposite is true. The same descendants from Europeans in America still have high theism rates, whereas their cousins in Europe have very high atheism rates.
Nurture, not nature.
And, honestly, I think the article is insulting to the rational theists out there. It removes personal decision from the equation. (If you are an atheist, consider someone telling you that you're only an atheist because you have this one gene, and through no personal decision of your own.) It really is insulting.
Does it prove that 123% of all US-ians are idiots ?
Seems like it was (intelligently?) designed just to make the point about a future need to use genetic therapy to cure atheists from their 'abnormal' disease...
Votez ecolo : Chiez dans l'urne !
faith seems to be very common. Many people don't have faith to themselves, thus another, higher, entity is needed. Providing that is the fastest, easiest and cheapest way to power, so there always will be somebody to provide.
Professional bullshitter is a very respected profession even today. They are really good in that, too.
Of course they've invented a myriad of names to cover the fact what they really are: priests, mullahs, imams, whatever. The content provided is always the same: bullshit.
Happy coincidence is that bullshitters make the rules too, of course by not themselves, they get those directly 'from god', they themselves are 'nothing but humble servants'. It just happens they are the richest and most powerful group of people in the end.
The power of bullshitting is very mighty.
The single most disappointing thing is when uninformed posts like the parent get modded up.
theism - from Greek theos; belief in a supreme being.
atheism - a- (without) + theism; a lack of a belief in a supreme being.
antitheism - anti- (against or opposite of) + theism; a belief in the nonexistence of a supreme being.
agnosticism - a- + gnosis (knowledge); the belief that we cannot prove the existence of a supreme being.
ignosticism - (from ignore and agnosticism); the belief that the question of the existence of a supreme being has no verifiable consequence and thus it should be ignored.
Note that agnosticism is compatible with theism, atheism, and antitheism: it is entirely possible to believe that the existence of a god cannot be proven and concurrently hold an opinion on the matter. Conversely, ignosticism is only compatible with atheism; it makes no sense to believe that the existence of a god should be ignored while believing in its existence or nonexistence.
Also note that antitheism is generally considered a subset of atheism. This is why many theists seem to think that atheism is a belief in the nonexistence of a god. Just as we atheists mostly hear the loudest of the theists, the theists hear the loudest of the atheists, who are nearly always antitheistic.
Lastly, proof has nothing to do with any of the above categories (read: belief), with the exception of agnosticism, which only deals with the lack of proof surrounding the existence of a supreme being. Please don't claim that theists or antitheists do anything without proof, because both belief systems are founded on faith. There is no proof to go either way.
Even the "humanist" ethics came from a rediscovery of the Greeks and Romans (i.e. the classical world), which predated Christianity.
And all your holidays are pagan. Christmas, Easter, the whole bit. The virgin birth, crucifixion, resurrection after three days, and other details all existed in religions older than Christianity. So I guess you have to choose something other than Christianity if you want to be free of pagan taint.
If you want to think you're going to heaven and I'm going to burn, fine, but stop thinking that Christianity sprang up as a completely new belief system when Jesus came along. You didn't exactly invent much, just killed off all the competition once you got the government on your side.
As far as I'm concerned, Christianity has actually harmed morality. Many Christians believe that you are saved not by works, but by faith. So whether or not you "walk with God" depends not on whether or not you help the poor, show kindness, or are decent, but purely on whether you have accepted Jesus as your savior. Being decent in my book is linked to what you DO, not what you BELIEVE. I don't care if you talk to Jesus and He loves you. I care if you're honest, decent, compassionate, humble, and so on. But to many Christians, those are incidental, and the real issue is whether or not you have accepted Jesus. I hate when evangelicals come to my door, because they just ask "have you accepted Jesus?" If someone asked "do you want to go work at a homeless shelter with me this weekend?" I might respect their religion a bit. But I've never, ever been asked anything by an evangelical that relates to anything other than doctrine. They're just trying to get to heaven, and that isn't a very elevated ethic. It's inherently selfish.
You want to know what nauseates me? In the movie Passion of the Christ, that table where Jesus was scourged was heavily gouged and blood-soaked, and the men whipping him were casual about it, meaning they did this all the time. This was their JOB--people made a living doing this. What made me cry (yes I cried) was this casual, commonplace cruelty of man towards man--that this is how we treat each other, and that this is acceptable behavior, by which you can even make a living. It's that normal. But not one Christian I've spoken to even noticed this scene. When I asked them, they were puzzled, and had to think about it for a bit before they could even recall this detail. ALL THEY CARED ABOUT was that Jesus suffered and died FOR THEM. That this suffering and dying was commonplace, that others were scourged and crucified that day, meant nothing to them. Yeah, Christians are moral. If you're saving THEIR butt from the fire, they'll shed a tear and sing your praises. Otherwise, it's beneath notice.
You are making the same basic assumption that the original article makes: Namely that evolution is true and that special creation by God is false.
... It is really that simple and the simplest explanation is usually the correct one.
Actually, that's not really an assumption. That's what science shows to be true based on massive amounts of evidence. We find that both evolution is true and that special creation is false. However, the article suggest that due to the frequency of religious belief that there should perhaps be a biological component, and moreover a genetic cause. This latter claim is extremely suspect due to it existing in the realm of memetic rather than genetic evolution as well as for a number of more general flaws.
The evolutionary world view requires a convoluted, contradictory theory why man is so incurably religious.
No it doesn't. There is plenty of atheism to go around, and beyond outright atheism there is a massive amount of irreligious people, in fact polls show that 50% of people would currently describe themselves as religious in the United States and that number is dropping. However, we are talking about a belief, rather than some part of our phenotype. One need only show that that belief can spread and pass from one person to another to explain it's success. Religion is well evolved for the task of spreading from one person to another with promises of eternal happiness for conforming and eternal suffering for failing to... an infinite carrot with an infinite stick.
The Biblical world view cuts through all that and simply states that we are made in the image of God.
I think you do Lord Occam a disservice by pretending that an explanation that explains nothing and raises a huge number of secondary questions is on par with a simple materialistic explanation which actually fits the facts. The point is that at the core the explanation regardless of complexity needs to actually explain the facts it is set forth to explain. Certainly you could say "Goddidit" to any problem, and it does only contain 8 letters, but it fails in that it doesn't actually resolve anything.
Just as hardware and software are distinct, so too is the brain and the mind. Software can exist independent of any particular hardware. In the same way, the mind can be independent of the brain.
Actually neurology has rather firmly come down against this. The brain is the seat of our very being. We are fully contained in that three pound lump of gray stuff between our ears. The best computer analog would be some form of highly flexible firmware running on hardware, without any software in sight.
In fact, we find that in infants the original programming is hardwired (instinct) within the primitive brain to look at things that move and to recognize faces, whereas later this is turned off when our brains grow large enough to counteract this. However the software isn't written, rather it develops with our brains. Infants are born with a vast number of neurons, more than they can use. When they try to grab things, the strongest signals get through and the unused neurons atrophy. This allows for skill development and learning. It's not a program, it's a self rewiring asynchronous system wholly material in existence and function.
Creationists and religious folks have been so busy bickering about evolution they didn't notice when, in the last few decades, neurology came in and obliterated the idea of a soul. Modern science tells us that "we" are about three pounds of gray stuff. Our perception of ourselves is natively rather flawed. When we are told that our brain "thinks for us", we tend to think of it like a computer our mind uses to do things rather than the more accurate understanding that our brain is 'us'. It is a wonderful organ, but not the greatest at perceiving itself. Rather I should say, I am a wonderful organ. I control my body with ease.
It is no longer uncommon to be uncommon.
In one interesting book I've read that religions were started by visionaries. Visionaries would see something that they interpreted as god, and would feel compelled to do things that are too unusual, risky or so out of bounds that people would believe they are on to something otherworldly. However, what they have seen is something called the mold of man. It's more exact to say that they have seen only a glimpse of it.
If one looks at the mold of man briefly, he will be overcome with awe - because it is full of ethereal beauty that has nothing comparable in our experience. It combines all that is highest in our nature.
However magicians can look at the mold of man for hours at a time, and therefore they can see that it cannot do anything in the sense that people would expect god to do. Nor in any other sense.
Normal people have at least some vague recollection of it and therefore cannot be purely atheistic. Only magician can be purely atheistic if he looked at the mold of man for many hours. This echoes a comment of Dostoevsky who said that atheists at his time (1880s in russian empire), are more religious than normal faithful people.
But remember that George Bush Sr. said that atheists shouldn't even be considered citizens. It's okay to dislike us just because we don't share your faith. Adults have bills to pay, and that "integrity" thing that was so invigorating and principled at 16 becomes a liability when you have to pay the rent. Are they lying? Some of them. Most are rationalizing so they can be seen being just like everybody else.
Also, people become more sensitive to hurting their parents' feelings when they become parents too, or in that age range. I know one woman who said her mother wouldn't talk to her anymore, that her entire family wouldn't welcome her the same way, if she became "a Darwinist." No, I'm not making that up. So the dynamics involved here may be more complex than adults "needing" faith. Some no doubt do (I don't) but the stigma issue shouldn't be underestimated.
"When a trait is universal" chances are that you're looking at a small, homogenous group. Enter a theatre, and you'll find a large group of people all actors. Are people genetically disposed towards acting?
My point being: How many cultures had monotheistic religions before they came into contact with the west?
GAAH! MY PRINTER IS ON FIRE!!! PUT IT OUT! PUT IT OUT!
"According to a Sunday New York Times article, 6 in 10 Americans are socially forced to pretend to believe in the devil and hell, 7 in 10 are socially forced to pretend to believe in angels, heaven and the existence of miracles and life after death, while 92% are socially forced to pretend to believe in a personal God."
There, fixed.
--- Back to the trees, back to the trees !
BZZZT! Wrong! This is a common belief within the Christian societies though, and Christians love to believe this. There is very close to zero effect of the Christian believes in our law and moral systems however. Most of it pre-dates Christianity by a significant margin.
One of the fun things to as Christians about when they argue as above is to ask them to quantify it. How many of the 10 commandments and the teachings of Jesus has ended up as law in the country where you live? The answer is, interestingly enough, a wholly insignificant amount.
I think that is wrong -- Sweden has one of the best statistics of suicides! Since we're not religious, there is a lot less stigma with suicide, so the reporting is better (i.e. a lot less are written off as accidents).
On the other hand, with the winter darkness being what it is...
This lack of religion isn't the most extreme difference of Swedes. I always thought that if there, against all taste and reason, should be a god -- then the Swedes are its way of LD-50 test caffeine. Then the senile idiot just forgot to lock the cage door.
Atheism in Sweden shows differences compared to other countries in that few people here are brought up with religion. People just don't care -- at all. To declare faith in anything is a bit strange, like chewing with an open mouth. A bit strange. Most people that turn religious without that kind of upbringing usually have some lesser mental problems.
I was really surprised the first time I went to Ireland and realized that people were religious -- but otherwise normal.
Karma: Excellent (My Karma? I wish...:-( )
This couldn't be it at a mere 1,100, but it's 2x Apple vs. Microsoft on the same day. Why?
And FWIW, I found the underlying NYT article unreadable. A guy sets out three cards on a crate on the sidewalk and asks you to guess where the thing is. You hestitate. You are a believer? A nonbeliever?
Q. What's the worst thing about being an atheist?
A. There's no Hell for the Protestants to burn in!
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
I reckon this is where the other part of evolution kicks in: The strong belief of Americans is a consequence of selection, not mutation. Think: Mayflower, etc. The early settlers in America were religious fundamentalists^H^H^H^Hrefugees, and their (presumably already mutated) genes dominate the gene pool of the US.
But there is another example of genetic difference between America and Europe due to selection: I read somewhere (sorry, too long ago, can't cite any source) that the ratio of people with myopia is considerably lower in the US than in Europe. With all those dangers (gunfights, bears etc.) in the Wild West, survival would have depended a lot on good eyesight.
Anyway: I remember when George W Bush claimed he was on a mission from God against the Taliban and Saddam. This statement would have earned a European president a sure ticket into retirement (if not asylum).
Say out loud: I'm an Aspie and I'm somewhat proud, I guess. Uh. Can I write an email in all caps instead? Hm...
But if I'm greedy I have a harder time getting others to act than if I was religious and used that, spreading religion. Greed wouldn't work as well because they'd want a payout and when it didn't materialize, they'd leave.
Ponzi schemes last days to years, religions last centuries, at least. It seems to me that for a specific lie, from a specific person, the religion one had a larger effect. Some effects were good (charities) but much bad. Not just the wars and hate, but the ignorance and the inability to allow people to examine the world around themselves.
In the same way that a cult/scam like Amway, Scientology, or Herbalife keeps their members in the dark so that they don't learn the lie of the organization, religions promote ignorance of the world. The Catholic church persecuted Galileo for writing about observable facts. Scientologists sue and ostracize members who discover the truth about their teachings.
Same tactics, much longer lifespan. Therefore, religions wins. imho. Bit silly though, to nitpick, because it's certainly a net loss, for the ignorance alone, even if it isn't the worst thing ever.
When you look to other religions and say "that's ridiculous" at the idea of a wine god or a god with the head of an elephant or spirits and ferries or Zeus or Thor wielding his hammer, have you ever considered one thing.... is your religion any less ridiculous???? Being ridiculous is one of the attractions. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credo_quia_absurdum
For a while now, i've been entertaining the theory that religion is at it's core a refuge from complexity.
Basically, the world is a complex place:
- Nature is infinitly varied.
- Human societies are complicated, semi-chaotic systems.
- Many life changing events (for example, accidents) result in one outcome or another based quite a lot on luck.
The harder it is for someone to intelectually concieve and/or emocionally accept that the seemingly complex can grow from quasi-infinite combinations of the simple, the more likelly it is that said person will be overwelmend by the complexity of the results.
Many people feel powerless and overwelmed by all this. Most of those cannot bring themselfs to live life as a small boat in the middle of a big storm.
Those are the ones more likelly to believe in a Deity or Pantheon. The belief in the mere exitence in this higher Being(s) gives confort because He/She/They give logic to the complexites of the world ("it is the will of $Deity") thus providing a form of emotional shelter. A Belief also gives a sense of purpose and, when shared with others, can create a comunity of individuals which support each other. Life is simpler if there is a "Greater Truth" which us simple mortals cannot comprehend.
Hence believers find shelter from the storms of life in the arms of a shared belief on a "Higher Purpose" which acts as a guiding light and an "All knowing, all powerfull $Deity(ies)" which is responsible for making things as they are.
[PS: I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader to fit the emotional shock of the death of a loved one or the fear of death in this theory]
It brings together mathematical concepts, which have do not necessarily have anything to do with observable facets of the universe.
Even if there were a supernatural superhero in the sky, he would be no more able to change that formula than he could make 1+1=3 (what that refers to rather than the specific notation).
Additionally, the fact that e^(i*pi)=-1 is a consequence of how we have defined complex numbers. Kronecker famously said that "God created the integers, and all the rest is the work of man". I don't believe a supernatural superhero created the integers, but e^(i*pi)=-1 is certainly a consequence of some of humanity's most beautiful creations (e.g., complex analysis).
Thank you, Zonk. It is for those articles that I prefer /. to digg. The articles that go against the mainstream (mainstream of technocommunity sites being atheist).
Muslims share the notion of intrinsic awareness of supernatural deity ingrained in our body/mind. It is called Fitrah. It pops out even in some atheists when they are incountered with incredible danger to their life. People who never before mentioned God in their lives, suddenly call to higher help in the materialistically (or if it is seems that way) hopeless situation. Even atheists won't deny that usually people turn to religion when life becomes hard on them (atheists think that they do it in dilusion, while believers think that it is Fitrah).
That distinguish humans from other creations: live or inanimate which also obey laws of God.
That said, I have to say that I am very skeptical of scientific relevance or merit of the posted article without even reading it. I have read way too many "science" on popular notions to be think differently on that matter.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
I think you are looking at the Math Code. With a universe full of interrelated stuff, that descriptions of one part of the stuff are interrelated to descriptions of other stuff, should really be no surprise. If it weren't that particular equation, it would be another equation instead.
and sometimes he presents students with a wooden box that he pretends is an African relic. "If you have negative sentiments toward religion," he tells them, "the box will destroy whatever you put inside it." Many of his students say they doubt the existence of God, but in this demonstration they act as if they believe in something. Put your pencil into the magic box, he tells them, and the nonbelievers do so blithely. Put in your driver's license, he says, and most do, but only after significant hesitation. And when he tells them to put in their hands, few will.
For Muslims, actually, NOT putting or even being afraid of putting their hand in the box will be act of Kufr, of disbelief that the Prophet Muhammad, sal Allahu 'alaihi wa sallaam, is the SEAL of messengers and prophets. Being even hesitant in doing so, they would assume that the professor has prophetic abilities and have more intimate connection with God than mere mortals.
I am glad I dismissed the article as a whole. It is sad that many believers probably will take this article of pseudoscience as a some kind conformation of their faith. We have to be strong to dismiss pseudoscience whether it supports or contradicts our faith. True science (a) will never contradict Qur'an and Sunnah of the Prophet Muhammad, sal Allahu 'alaihi wa sallam (b) would never provide any materialistic proofs of existence of God (Qur'an states many times that the key component of the belief is belief in UNSEEN, that is not detectable by any scientific method).
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
The thing is, though, that e ** (j * PI) == -1 is just an equation. If you know how pi, e and j are defined, and more to the point you know the series expansions of e ** x, cos(x) and sin(x), then it's really not all that magical -- just a special case of how e ** (j * x) == cos(x) + j * sin(x). And when x = pi, cos(x) == -1 and sin(x) = 0. That's all there is to it! It shouldn't even surprise you. Even powers have reflective symmetry about the Y-axis (like cos), odd powers have spin symmetry about the origin (like sin). If you can expand the sine function to an infinite series, then the terms which make it up can contain only odd powers of x (anything else would spoil the symmetry), whereas the terms which make up the co-sine must contain only even powers of x. Now, successive powers of j go 1, j, -1, -j, 1, j, -1, -j, 1 ..... a nice progression, interleaving the alternation of sign and "realness". If you put a j into any infinite series expansion, you'll find all the even powers coming out real, the odd powers coming out imaginary and the signs alternating in each progression. But this is all just because j * j == -1 and -1 * -1 = 1.
If you want something really interesting, consider why the slope of a graph and the area enclosed by a graph, the axes and some ordinate should be inverses of each other.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
My goodness you have a very warped view of Christianity. Of course I don't think you will burn in hell. God loves you just as much as he loves me. Just as much as he loves everyone and there is nothing you or I can do to change that.
I'm very sorry you feel this way.
Right. That's why the early Christian church grew from one insignificant death to envoloping the Roman Empire despite continuous persecutions.
Because their morals and sense of cohesion were no different from everyone elses.
Fear is usually considered the most basic emotion, but I have had several life-threatening situations which did not evoke any fear in me. However I have found that in the most stressful experiences I have had, the great emotion I felt was guilt. If we are hardwired to feel guilt, then we will attach it to the most important icon we can imagine, which would be God and all he represents (life, death, creation, eternity, etc.)
Out-of-body experiences are another phenomenon that science seems on the verge of convincingly explaining in purely naturalistic terms.
At the end of the day, it doesn't really matter though. The new agers will either continue to believe in out-of-body experiences despite convincing naturalistic explanations, or they'll give up that belief and cling to the ones that science hasn't yet investigated thoroughly. Similarly, religious people will either ignore science altogether (e.g., the creationists) or follow the tried and true god-of-the-gaps strategy by focusing more on other beliefs that science hasn't yet investigated, or creating new ones if necessary.
The will to warm, fuzzy self-delusion is the strongest will in many of us, and as the saying goes, where there is a will, there is a way.
That's the really important question. The answer will make us understand why people search for a religion gene, for example.
I think the reason for going after religion is a actually a mix of many reasons: bad education, media brain-washing, economic problems, etc.
It may seem far-fetched now, but USA seems to have lots of internal problems...I think those problems will led to its downfall. If only USA adopted a more mild/less aggressive/scientific-oriented approach, it would be much better for them.
USA seems like ancient Greek Athens: Blinded by its own power, heading straight into self-destruction.
between Religion of God and the "Religion" of Science is that the former is made from an all-powerful creator. Disagreeing with them is a sin and must be punished with eternal torment. However, the latter is made up of humans and disagreeing is not nice and can be punished with derision.
Of course, monotheistic religions are the ones I'm talking about, since most of the pantheistic ones seem to accept other Gods and worshipping as not being wrong, just different.
Once I call them on it of course they say "no, I was moved by that, too" but the fact is they had to think hard to even remember what I was talking about. It didn't register, because for them it isn't the point of the movie. That Christ died for their (and my, and your) sins, and that by accepting this we get into heaven, is the point. The tragedy of torture and execution being normalized to the point of hiring people to do it--that doesn't register. If you want to refute me, fine, I can live with that. But please don't go off on the "I'm sorry you're so bitter" angle while ignoring my actual points.
I'm not bitter and I don't hate Christians. I just don't consider them to be inherently moral or decent. They're people, just like everyone else, only they believe that everyone who doesn't believe in their God deserves to roast for all eternity. They're stuck with having to say either that the unbelievers deserve it, or that God is unjust. Tough choice when your own soul is on the line. How does God deal with open rebellion again? Oh, that's right.
-must be the god of the Televangelists!
(or Ferengi)
Sigh. No, that is not why Christianity grew. On the other hand, any scholar or someone just interested in the topic knows a lot about why Christianity grew. You obviously don't know anything about it. It didn't really have any thing with its morals at all, but it did have a lot to do with the problem of polytheism in societies that were developing more and more advanced thought systems.
A slight oversimplification would say something like: Christianity is what you get when you spread monotheistic Judaism into the intellectual systems of Greece at around that time. Christianity was, as is most of this stuff, an accident of time, not the result of some divine dude taking human form.
The funny thing is that your misplaced sarcasm, with zero content, masks entirely the fact that you could not point to a single new thought in Christianity of the time, which kinda proves my point, now doesn't it?
If you remove from the Christian set of moral codes those codes that overlap with a lot of others (e.g. don't murder people and take their stuff), what are you left with that's uniquely Christian, though?
Not to sound flippant, but you are left with Jesus Christ, and what He represents to Christians: forgiveness from our multitudinous ways of harming ourselves and those around us, and a bridge between man and God, as we believe He was and is both.
There is nothing particularly unique about Christian moral teaching, as we believe God has written this part on our consciences as well as on the world around us, and people can and do rediscover it all the time, more or less independently. But no one lives up to this, or any, moral code perfectly, all the time. We call this sin: failure to live up to even our own imperfect standards, much less God's perfect ones. And in Christ (not in Christianity, but in Christ Himself) we have a way of forgiveness and restoration, and the strength to try to do better next time.
Don't mean to "preach," but you did ask. :)
Nonaggression works!
First off, it is an American study we're talking about, so I don't think it surprises anyone that more than half of you guys believes in a deistic God. But if humans are biologically hardwired to believe in supernatural deity, then how come these figures do not apply to other places? The majority in Sweden and the rest of Northern Europe are atheists. Also, before Christianity delivered us from temptation and sin, people here believed in a system with many gods, similar to the Greeks. Furthermore, I think most old 'native' religions have a completely different take on their place in nature, and I don't think for a second that you can call them deists. So, humans may be "hardwired" to look for quick answers and authoritative figures, but we are NOT hardwired to believe in God. There's no excuse, now repent.
Sorry, but if you had read the article, you would have noticed that one of the human traits that set us up for believing in religous nonsense, is the the tendency to see patterns and relations when they are not there. Any other comparison of modern day science with say the teachings in the Kama Sutra would be deemed absurd. So why should the bible be exempt, what makes the bible (a 3rd century compilation of various older religious tracts) so special, except that you 'believe' in it?
But please remember the fine article was about why people are religious/tend to believe in a god, not whether or not your beliefs are equal to those of children believing in Santaclaus.
This space is intentionally staring blankly at you
Well it certainly proves my laziness. I could talk about connectedness, pacisfism, turning the other cheek, the true nature of effective leadership, discarding the superfluous, the benefits of altruism, the power of redemption but no doubt all those ideas have precedent in some other culture at an earlier time.
What can I say? In the end it works for me. I feel a profound peace and much higher sense of connectedness to the world and my fellow man after church. That is good enough for me. I think it is only right that I tell others about this in case it helps them too.
Finally I do not think Christianity is the only path to God. It is what I know the best and am comfortable with though.
While 92% of americans believe in a personal God, the situation is almost the complete opposite in countries like Sweden.
So the basic premise is flawed. This is not a universal trait, but a cultural one.
That is what your argument suggests: That we are subject to Heaven or Hell without choice or free will.
But the LORD loves us enough that He chose to give us free will, and the LORD helps people with miracles. The cold empirical facts fall way short of that. Seek and yea shall find. Ask and you will receive. Faith can move mountains. That means: Look for miracles and the silliness of the cold genetic explanation becomes clear.
The LORD trumps all of science. Wordly things are only as deterministic as He allows them to be.
"Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us." -Jesus Christ The Lord's Prayer
Sure, no problem, I'll make a note to send you a detailed email probably tomorrow.
"Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us." -Jesus Christ The Lord's Prayer
I am happy for you that it works for you, but I also feel profoundly sorry that you need to delve into the halls of mysticism and absurdity to find meaning in your life. Wouldn't it be better if you could find purpose an meaning without inventing an all-good, punishing, caring and eternal-damnation-creating Santa Claus pulling the strings from behind that curtain and those mirrors?
You might find this interesting.
Essentially he argues that religion may be a survival trait, where mild psychoses aid belief. Saplosky is certainly qualified, and it's certainly preaching to the choir, but an interesting article nonetheless.
Life is just a bowl of All Bran - Small Faces
Thousands of years of religious persecution gave a very strong darwinian pressure ...
...
Take look at Islam:
- if you are non-monotheist - you get killed
- if you are monoteist but non-Islam - you are pressed with reduced social rights
and higher taxation
If by 'those in the church' you mean 'the classic creeds, the church fathers and the statements of faith of all mainstream denominations' then you are correct.
Actually, he repeatedly referred to himself as 'I AM,' which is a name for God and said that he was one with the Father, claimed abilities unique to God, such as the forgiveness of sins (which is one of the reasons the Pharisees wanted to kill him). He does distinguish between himself and the Father at times, but he is also quite clear that he is God.
He was praying to the Father, but that doesn't mean is isn't God. The Trinity is relational, with the Father, Son and Holy Spirit displaying love towards one another. The Son, once incarnate, communicated with his Father through prayer and in doing so set us an example.
Actually, Jesus willingly accepted worship when it was offered, e.g. by Thomas.
The trouble is that in order to be our Saviour, Jesus must be both man and God
If you are sceptical of what I've said, here a few links you might find interesting reading:
Good Reference http://www.jkrishnamurti.org/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jiddu_Krishnamurti http://www.kfa.org/ http://www.kinfonet.org/
"I am happy for you that it works for you, but I also feel profoundly sorry that you need to delve into the halls of mysticism and absurdity to find meaning in your life. Wouldn't it be better if you could find purpose an meaning without inventing an all-good, punishing, caring and eternal-damnation-creating Santa Claus pulling the strings from behind that curtain and those mirrors?"
Actually you don't sound particularly happy for me but maybe that is just the nature of an internet conversation. I have lots of meaning in my life and many, many challenges. I have marvelous sense of wonder at the beautiful Universe for us to discover learn about. I have the chance to participate in that. I have challenges of developing a first rate software program that could transform the lives of millions of children around the world. I have the challenge of participating in the debate of the future of the energy for our civilization. Having access to that peace and connectedness it a marvelous aid to the challenges of my life.
I feel sad you feel the need to denegrade it.
So I guess we have to accept people-of-faith just like homosexuals:
because they were born that way ?
But re: the Fundies: You cannot tolerate intolerance and hope to remain free.
"You have liberated me from thought."
As far as human evolution is concerned individuals don't matter too much for survival of the species. So religion itself isn't important but the main religions moral systems provide advantages to society. Some examples? Marriage between one women and one man. Politics aside a system that promotes pair bonding (at least during reproductive years) will make society stronger becuase it provides a more nuturing environment for children. Please note I am not making moral judgements but look at societies with growing populations and you will see more pair bonding. Government Socialism/Communism: Again politics aside look at more "socialy aware" societies where there is a huge welfare state and you will see a lower birth rate. It seems that those systems are not sustainable in the long term. My own opinion is that one of the reasons people have children is to have someone to take care of them in their old age. The purpose of a welfare state is to force other peoples children to take care of you. So if there is a welfare state you benefit most by not having kids saving yourself the huge costs and reaping the benefits of other peoples kids in your own retirement. Religion directly competes with government for this role. So the larger the governments role the smaller the religions. So it isn't that religion is genetic it is the moral systems that the major current religions provide give those that follow them an evolutionary advantage.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
You have a (not uncommon) misunderstanding of the biological basis of psychology. Any genes involved in determining predisposition to religious belief would simply be something that affetcs the cocktail of neurotransmitters/neurons and their interactions in our brain. There is no `belief in god' gene. The brain of people prone to religious belief would perhaps respond more strongly ie more pleasurable feelings (endorphins, etc) upon given stimuli. For instance, rhythmic dancing is known to release endorphins so perhaps these people get a bigger buzz.
Why is this important? Consider that most of human evolution occured during our hunter/gatherer phase. Communal dancing aided in group bonding/solidarity so a more enjoybale experience during this ritual could have solidied the group. This could have been explained as resulting from possesion by spirits and so enhancing the experience even more. ie the group could have felt blessed and favoured by spirits and so more confidently gone out into the world to hunt/attack hostile neighbours, etc.
Fear played a major part in the life of early man so anything that took the edge of it while still allowing for caution would have been advantageous. I am not saying that this is what occured but only to illustrate that your example reflects a very mechanical view of the biological basis of psychology. Whithin any population there is much biological variation. We would expect that there are those that are strongly influenced by enhanced `religious' feelings, some that have only moderate such feelings and some that have weak feelings. For people to change their minds is indicative only that the sentiments are not that strong. A similar thing occurs with smoking ie some find it easy to give up, some very hard but doable and some impossible. This pattern reflects normal biological variation (and environmental variation).
A biological basis for the tendency towards religious feelings is highly reasonable and no doubt highly frightening to religious people. Can you imagine being given a drug to tone down religious feelings!!
The only reason it's called a god equation is the need of religious people to believe in a higher being.
I'll give you the secret meaning of the equation. Not a friggin' thing. It's an equation that describes something, so of course all the pieces fit.
Religious people start from the assumption that things had to be 'created' and back-fit any information to that.
That's all this is.
Not to be flippant back, but that's just you figurehead, who shares characteristics with Buddah, Mithra and the figureheads of others.
Maybe it is as simple as - we need to believe in something. Maybe we need to believe there is something more to life than life. Maybe we need to believe that we are more than the sum of our parts. Maybe we need to believe that we exist for more than a handful of decades. What would you rather believe? That there is a God and an over all plan. Or that you spend 100 years getting up everyday so that you can work, eat and sleep and then in the end you simply die. I will take the plan any day. I do believe in God - because I choose to believe in God. I would rather have blind faith in something than no faith at all. Beside it keeps me honest. It is much easier for me to be the person I want to be if I think that someone is watching.
How about the idea that God hardwired a desire to search for Him in the humans?
"Don't do this, but use condoms when you do it."
That's a mixed message.
A message without self-conflict could include marriage. Nobody suggests that abstinence apply in marriage. Get married if you want to fuck. Getting married is nice for a million other reasons as well. (economic, practical, mental health, kids...)
He came up with some rules, and said "Live like this, and life will be good"
When asked why, said "Because God says so."
Now, just hypothetically, would his doing so have been any less influential if he didn't believe in the God he claimed?
It's hard to say whether the world is a better place or not, but... well frankly I think a lot of the 'basics' of religion are fairly positive ways to live. Regardless of whether you believe or not, following the 'rules' for being a Christian (or other religion, I use Christanity because I know it a littel better) is probably generally beneficial for society as a whole.
This was something I though of reading The Selfish Gene for the first time a month ago. The key to the Prisoners Dilemma is that it is to the individual's benefit to betray UNLESS there are more rounds to be played in the game, i.e. a continuing society instead of one time interaction. Not only that, but if you know when the last round is, it is to your advantage to betray on the final round. But if you know your partner intends to cooperate until the last round and then betray, then your best move is to cooperate until the second to last round and betray for both that and the final round. And that ends you up with a strategy of betrayal only and if both you and your partner choose this strategy (and your partner would be a fool to do otherwise), neither of you profits much. In fact, any information about when the game will end could lead to this kind of outcome. Thus, a belief that there is an afterlife or an outside frame of reference from which you are being judged, could confer an evolutionary advantage, as much as any other trait that would compel you to cooperate.
Ah, but what if the social moral codes were done by the priest, who, in general, were a bit wiser than average, and had a bit of control of what became 'doctrine'? So they come up with a bunch of stuff they think's a good way to live (not eating pork, for example, is probably pretty good health advice if you live in the areas where Islam flourished). Anyone who starts bringing in the ... less positive stuff, gets denounced by these guys as a heretic. I mean it's taking the basic uneducated peasant, and saying 'do this, because God says, and all these guys in the church agree'. As a form of directing the populace, it's pretty hard to disagree with.
Many people come to envision God as a Big Beard In the Sky, because from their early childhood it's been their representation of supreme authority. and double so for Dwarves.
--- Back to the trees, back to the trees !
> If we have a genetic disposition to need God, why is atheism more common among the young people that I have known and still know?
When you're young you're usually too distracted by pursuing a mate, sex, adventure, drugs, whatever to really spend a lot of time pursuing philosophy, spirituality and mysticism.
But when you're older, the distractions behind to slip away, you start to fear death, and fall prey to urban legends that you need a church to teach your children moral values.
Haven't viewed the video yet I see.
... by evolutionary adaptation or neurological accident or by a creator. Don't rule out creator simply because it sounds silly. Follow the facts.
is the the tendency to see patterns and relations when they are not there.
Nitty gritty from the video not watched... Using quantum mechanics it has been shown that before the big bang, it is entirely possible nothing existed, not even time, energy or mass. Seeing beyond the beginning of time is an excersise in futility. Most of us assume time is infinate and extend beyond the beginning of the universe and will extend forward into infinity. This may not be true.
I found the "tendency to see patterns and relations" an understatement.
I would have thought anyone looking at the universe in the past would have seen a static display and the assumption that it was always there. The idea that at one time in the past that it didn't exist was a long shot.
Now quantum mechanics is starting to show that the big bang didn't start from a super massive black hole that had all the mass of the universe. They are saying that it may have all come from nothing. That is the concept I never expected from science. That is what I found interesting. Now go watch the video. I assume you know the biblical 7 days of creation thing. I am not telling you to read a bible but update your science physics knowledge instead. It's like trying to prove something is dead wrong and being unable to. It does NOT mean that what you can not prove is true, it simply means you haven't proven it false. When what you are trying to prove wrong not only does not prove wrong but is in fact starting to show support as possibly being correct is when I took notice.
Many theories in the past have been easly proven false such as the earth being the center of the universe, it is flat, and such. Finding the universe may have come from nothing is the point I was making. This point does not prove the biblical creation is fact. On the flip side, it does not disprove it as many have expected who search the origin of the universe.
Which brings us back to the main discussion. Human brain wired
The truth shall set you free!
TV and/or the reckless pursuit of money is one reason to pray for the collective soul of humanity!
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
... but don't blame Dawkins for that. There's also a section in "The God Delusion" on how we tend to perceive inanimate objects as being imbued with purpose and will, which I think feeds into what you mean by "belief in the supernatural"--or would at least go a long way toward explaining it. I can't remember who it was at the moment (he had a huge beard, and gave a talk at a conference, which I read the transcript of), but there was also a theory (which Dawkins may have touched on) that schizotypal personalities found religions, and the visions and what not that people with that type of brain chemistry see are certainly the type that could found religions.
What do you mean by a pseudo-libertarian narrative? Dawkins' politics, so far as I've been able to ascertain, are pretty standard left-leaning ideas, but I don't see how they've influenced his ideas on the emergence of religion.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
And how is elevating a regular guy to the status of supreme leader and figurehead in any way unique to christianity?
It isn't. Sorry to torpedo your fairy tale, but you did try to make your cult out to be something it isn't (unique).
By the way, you idiots disgust me. You have a mind, you have the capacity for rational thought (I assume) and yet you waste it on believing in a 2000 year old campfire story that got out of hand. Pathetic.
One day, because of people like you who aren't intellectually capable of differentiating between a STORY and reality, Spongebob will be the messiah.
This is not the first time I've seen christianity compared to taoism. I don't know a lot aboout taoism, but every time I read or hear about it, it reminds me of the teachings of Jesus himself. It seems like the only real difference is that the Tao is an abstract force, while God has personality.
Although I generally try to avoid any discussion about belief I can't help but be dragged into this one.
Personally I believe in a god, I just disbelieve in religion. I see the universe around me, I see all things and I see that as evidence of god.
An often used arguement against the existance of a god is that science disproves a god, I believe the opposite to be true, science discovers the rules and the building blocks of the universe and all things, if there is rules in place those rules were created.
I don't believe in the bible, I don't believe in any form of organised religion, I was bought up catholic and rejected that as soon as I was able to. I believe we all have a purpose in life, we are born with an objective that we must carry out in our life, perhaps an experience we must have or an influence we must give to others, regardless there is a reason for our being here. If you believe it is because you are supposed to believe, if you do not believe it is because you are not supposed to believe.
I don't agree with relgion because it doesn't fit with my idea of god and the universe but those that do are supposed to. This can be considered a form of destiny but in the end who cares? Your life and your beliefs are something that are personal to you, you can fight all day with someone about their belief system, but in the end none of us can prove we are correct, you can argue with me all day that there isn't a god and I can't argue right back that there is, chances are no one is going to change their opinions because it is 'hopefully' something you have considered carefully and you have choosen to believe what feels right to you.
GeekServ Unix Consulting Services (http://www.geekserv.com)
To the vast majority of Slashdotters who have grown up in the Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition spelt out in the "Book", it may be possible to contemplate a connection between genetics and religion, but for those of us who are familiar with Sanatan Dharma ( The Perennial Philosophy a.k.a. Hinduism ) the definition of religion or faith is very ill-defined.
Which faith ? Sanatan Dharma includes the entire range of faiths spanning from (a) the innocent polytheism of multiple gods (b) the monotheistic duality of God-and-Man and (c) the extreme monism of Advaita (the nondual singularity of the Knower and the Knowledge )...
Depending on your level of awareness, the phenotype moves through various levels(a through c) of ignorance(?) so which of these coded in the corresponding genotype ?
Or is it that each is coded differently. We need lots and lots of data and some high end statistical software to locate statistically significant differences between these.
Insight into much, Influence over nothing !
Hi,
I believe religion is caused by a combination of two factors. The first one being genetics. I don't believe I ever was ever given the ability to believe in a religion. My mind is scientific by nature. When I see something beautiful I start envision the equations that make that happen. When I start having a conversation about religion, and I am simply not capable of truly considering the theists arguments.
The second factor is family / society. I believe that the details of any religion are taught, and not instinctive. You know that saying, "there are no atheists in fox holes". My response would be "there are no truly isolated theists"
Adam
Selling software wont make you money, selling a service will.
Humans just looks for an easy way to explain things they do not or cannot understand. They then hammer that information into their children's brains thereby making them non-critical lazy thinkers, but with the advantage of keeping society somewhat in order through brainwashing.
Fool! It does not matter what you believe. A fact is a fact. You WILL go to Hell*. You WILL suffer His wrath*. Your foot shall slide in due time.*
* Provided He don't allow you to repent before it is to late.
Not true: the domain of science is the natural, and the domain of religion is the supernatural. Science doesn't make claims about things outside of its domain (though scientists, being fallible, sometimes do).
In his latest book, Richard Dawkins offers up his own interpretation of this. Using the analogy of a moth flying into the flame (seeing this as a normally useful trait - following the light of stars for navigation - that has been 'short-circuited' by fire) he attempted to offer an explanation of a 'short-circuited' human trait tat may lend itself to religion.
His best bet was that it is an evolutionary advantage for children to believe what elders tell them without proof. Kids that believe that [x] berry is poisonous; without testing it themselves; tend to survive more than kid who don't. It may be a little pompous to suggest that religion is popular because people have evolved to be gullible - but it is certainly entertaining.
I have a great idea how to stop this! Let us outlaw religion. (Don't mind it will start the biggest religious war mankind have seen) Personally I suggest that we define religion as "anything but only relying on what Jesus did on the cross for salvation".
That was my view for my first 25 years of life, the next 15 have been quite a bit different. If we have a genetic disposition to need God, why is atheism more common among the young people that I have known and still know?
You may have partially answered your own question .
Younger people seek out truth, answers, and meaning differently than older folks. It has to do with inexperience, but also with our need to set ourselves apart from mom and dad. Identity is so important to us when we're that young that we reject as much as we can that we associate with our parents including ideas about God and religion, politics, relationships (but not allowance money and food of course).
A young man wants to known for more than being his father's son. ...nothing wrong with that if he doesn't harm anyone.
A "Supernatural Deity"? Is there another kind of deity?
There seems to be a 10% difference in all of Nature. Homosexuality is base 10%, Non-belief in God is base 10%, Belief in George bush being smart is 10%.. etc. Environment then changes this upwards some or downwards some.
The old Hebrew word for God was also used for Nature. Its amazing how people tend to want to think that we are all Super Smart, and we all know what we are talking about. The 10% difference maybe hardwired as well, but we don't know just yet.
Belief in God, in something better than yourself, is paramount to improving yourself and society. What motivation do I have to better me and my fellow man without the foundations of God? or an afterlife?
If you are ranting and raving now.. consider that if there were no god, why would you not just walk over and take what you want? Have hedonistic sex parties (except this is slashdot and you have to have women.. well except for the 10%). If you think that society prevents, then you miss the serial killers, the gang bangers, etc.. the DEATH culture comes from not worrying about anyone else but yourself.
Religion is not the cause of evil, it is the Power that man craves over one another that is the cause. Jesus did not ask for Man to have power over you, but God. Thats different.
I can program myself out of a Hello World Contest!!
What an interesting thought. My experiences are exactly the same. Someone walks up to my door and asks me that very question. I want to tell them to fuck off and stop trying to infect others with their religion, but I'm polite about it, accept whatever they're thrusting into my hand, and drop it into the recycling bag.
But if someone came up to my door and said, instead, "We're from XYZ church down the street and we're trying to get some people to help with ABC event. The event is not associated with our church or any religion; we're just out here trying to get some people in our community together to help out," I would actually seriously consider doing it. I love the area that I live in, and spending an hour or two of my weekend improve that actually does appeal to me.
Why don't we ever see this?
I keep up with modern theories about the universe and its beginnings. I read your summary of the videos in another post (who has time to watch 2.5 hours of lectures?), and it contained nothing I didn't already know, and absolutely nothing that supports the biblical creation account. Is the fact that the universe may have arisen from a fluctuation in the negative vacuum energy -- basically creating itself from nothing -- cool? Absolutely. Does it lend any support whatsoever to the biblical creation account? Hell no.
First of all, just about every religion I've ever heard of, both modern and primitive, has a creation story. So the fact that the universe was created ex nihilo can't be said to be evidence of the biblical creation account in particular -- such a general fact would be equal evidence for every other creation account known, and therefore supports none of them.
Next, the biblical creation account is wrong in just about every detail, as already mentioned. How you can ignore all that but see a divine hand in the fact that the ancients called a 50/50 bet -- infinitely old universe vs. finite age universe -- correctly is utterly beyond me. (In fact, I don't even think it was a 50/50 bet for them -- I don't think they could imagine an infinitely old universe, so it was pretty much a given to them that it was created just a short time ago.) It's cherry picking at its worst. My previous post summed it up as best I can, so I'll just copy it here:
Anyone can take any mythical creation story with sufficiently general or vague creative steps (in this case, days) and make it seem predictive a-posteriori, in the same way the bible codes or Nostradamus are predictive a-posteriori. Until you can answer for the glaring errors in the creation account or show me where it has taught us anything of value about the actual nature of the world, it's all a bunch of hand waving. I have no problem with people believing without evidence (so long as they don't make public policy based on their faith), but I hate when people misconstrue the evidence we do have to try to make it back up their fairy tales.
Generally though, if you follow the Ten Commandments through your life, I don't think many would say you're making a mistake. OK, the atheists might argue that the bits about honouring God and idolatry are foolishness, but I don't think many would assert that you're harming society by doing so.
Other possibilities exist. The human race might have unconscious senses which detect the presence of the supernatural. Mine are less unconscious. I do detect his presence. Why is that a problem? Why always start with the assumption that there is no God?
Jedis are stupid. If they were so powerful, why couldn't they handle counseling for a kid who missed his mom?
just look at history and culture. its usually religious views to be fruitful and multiply and not use birth control. also in history if you were not god fearing you may have been considered a heretic and killed for your non beliefs. thats the evolution of a deity minded population. kill the nonbelievers and out-breed them.
Of course there's always man's quest to define himself(why?-own existence) and non wanting to feel alone in the universe. but that doesn't necessarily lead to a belief in deities. more so a quest for an understanding of the universe. maybe accepting the possibility of other life in the universe.
i think the genetic disposition is the question(why am i here?).
culture influences the belief in deities, or seeking knowledge through science. although some do choose both.
From the summary: "Which is the better biological explanation for a belief in God -- evolutionary adaptation or neurological accident? "
How about God designing us that way?
Am I the only non-atheist left here?
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
Emphasis added
I'm not sure that that word means what you think it means...
Of course... I could be mistaken.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
I was quite curious to see people's responses to this article and gain some further insight through their personal observations. Even more interesting was the lack of religious screwballs posting to this article. I went though many treads before coming across this whack-job.
Since this is Slashdot, I am sure that has an impact, but it was refreshing to see a majority of people discuss religion with out going into irrational fits.
Pilate asked, "So you are a king?" Jesus answered, "You have said it." (this colloquialism equates to "you said it" or "you are correct" in modern English)
"I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father, but through me." (makes no sense unless he is God, because it is also written that "there is no one righteous; no, not one.")
"I lay down my life of my own free will, and as it is in my power to lay it down, so it is in my power to take it up again." What man can choose his own death, and raise himself? Not even Elijah could save himself from dying (God carried him up), and Moses remains buried to this day.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Calling faith stupid doesn't make it true. You add nothing useful to this discussion.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
This seems to be one of Richard Dawkins's favorite things to say. I don't know if you're simply repeating what he says or if you came up with this yourself. I don't mean to offend, but this argument makes you sound either:
i d=Mozilla-search&va=theism)
1.) Ignorant (if you don't understand what theism is) or
2.) Malicious (if you are trying to warp its meaning to suit your argument)
Since Dawkins is a well-educated man, I would guess that his use of "theism" in this way is malicious. As for you, you may simply be ignorant (nothing wrong with that, but until you learn the most basic terms of arguments about God/gods, you probably should simply avoid the arguments).
The definition of theism is simply:
"Theism is the belief in the existence of one or more gods or deities." - wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theism)
"belief in the existence of a god or gods; specifically : belief in the existence of one God viewed as the creative source of the human race and the world who transcends yet is immanent in the world" - Webster (http://www.webster.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?source
So you see that Joe, who is a Lutheran and believes in the Christian God is a theist even though he does not believe in Zeus.
When exactly did the genetic makeup of North Americans and Europeans, who as far as I know are much less religious, start to differ? And when can we expect speciation, i.e. when can North Americans and Europeans no longer have children together?
Having come to the US from the UK 5 years ago, one of the obvious differences I noticed is how seriously most people take religion in the US. Its also obvious how much radical christianity is rammed down your throat on TV here, especially in the bible belt, and how 'athiest' is now as much of dirty label as 'communist' was in the mcCarthy era.
I think this highlights cultural cause and effect much more than the likelyhood that its in our DNA somehow. If it was in our human makeup, then there wouldn't be such a difference between the UK and the US in this sense.
FTFA:
This thinking is what really bothers me. Atheism is not the beleif; theism is. If you're an atheist you are not practicing a form of religion, you're not practicing a form of religion.
America is the MOST religious developed country in the world. We're also sinking dramatically in the world on math, science, and dead last in clean politics. Ignorance is strength only to those who control the ignorant. Religion has been disproved more then people have proved one and one is two (based on the decimal system of course). People are TRAINED by the media in which they have become mentally enslaved by in to unnatural twisted forms of mental thoughtlessness to hate that which is most naturally appealing, learning, ambition, power. This is sadly why it is so easy to make money in this world.
- John
http://www.jabcreations.com/
Maybe there's a little of both.
Perhaps it's a common trait of highly-evolved beings to naturally be more aware of their metaphysical connection to the world around them. Our intuition, survival instinct... it could very well be that the physical mirrors the "spirit" (however you wish to reference it).
Now, I can imagine a hoard of bible-beaters heading this way to let us know what the facts are... but perhaps our Universal connection to all this is just a basic fact, and that our awareness is simply a part of a larger macrocosm of which we are a microcosm.
We've been trying to solve "that" puzzle for a millenia. Maybe we're looking in the wrong direction for a solution.
Unless we are not.
An interesting anagram of "BANACH TARSKI" is "BANACH TARSKI BANACH TARSKI"
Never underestimate the stupidity of the masses.
I've beleived this for a while now. I guess our temporal lobes, along with hyperactive pattern recognition come together to give us a combination "I'm not alone..." and "There it is!" response that becomes the belief in a god/angels/spirits watching over us.
Personally, I'm one of the exceptions to the rule - When I'm alone in a room, I'm the only one there. Nothing mystical here. I do believe that humans of all cultures naturally lean toward religious behaviour though. I'm not even going to judge if that's a good or bad thing, since it's way too broad to qualify...
Take for example the University. In that environment, those with religious beliefs that conflict with popular activities of their peers (in the case of Christianity: abstaining from indulgence in excessive alcohol consumption, use of illicit drugs, premarital sex, etc.) can and often does lead to ostracizing and ridicule.
My point is that peer pressure in any environment is a powerful element in determining personal morality or the expression thereof.
Humans who did not believe in a personal god were killed by those who did.
Would deities and gods described from anew today have as many human character flaws and titillating stories to go with them?
The Soap Operahs will always fill a certain need (Jerry Springer re-runs for the rest of us) and before those existed that need was filled by books, gossip and the mythology that builds up around every religion over time.
Would the story be as "humanized" if told today? Or would it be sensationalized in more modern terms?
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"Is Vi made by God or is it the Devil's creation and why Emacs rules REPUBLICANS George W. Bush Global Warming Thermonuclear War religion in schools evolution intelligent design blah blah blah" article title is drawing nearer and nearer.
I understand atheists do not believe in a God. I do. Nevertheless:
Truth is: Everyone is a Believer. You can not not believe (regardless of _what_ you believe)
And every belief (in whatever) is based on faith of some sort. For example, do you trust evolution? - your trust is then in exclusively the material, on chance, on life becoming more complex through mutation, on evolutionary research, on beauty by chance. Do you trust in a Christian God? Well then you put your trust in Christ because of eyewitness accounts (not your own), the authenticity of Biblical documents (information from outside), a description of the state of the world fits with what we see around us, and the personal experience of salvation with fulfillment of that restlessness I believe we all feel, what is "missing."
Science has limits. And I believe that evolution and the existence of God are not sufficiently "provable" by science.
I researched the bible in order to determine if an experiment had already been performed. I found one, summarized here: "Two altars are built on Mount Carmel, one for Baal and one for Yahweh. Wood is laid on the altars. Two oxen are slaughtered and cut into pices [sic]; the pieces are laid on the wood. Elijah then invites the priests of Baal to pray for fire to light the sacrifice. They pray from morning to noon without success. Elijah ridicules their efforts. They respond by cutting themselves and adding their own blood to the sacrifice. They continue praying until evening without success.
Elijah now orders that the altar of Yahweh and its sacrifice be drenched with water (twelve barrels of water). He asks God to accept the sacrifice. Fire falls from the sky igniting the sacrifice." ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elijah )
I proceeded to construct three fire rings, appx. two meters apart, and lay in them piles of wood with tender, observing proper fire construction/safety/permits/etc. The wood was seasoned (in a woodshed for 1 year), however, moisture content was not checked with a meter. The wood was cut from the same tree a year earlier.
Ring 1: Baal
Ring 2: Yahweh
Ring 3: control
I asked two friends for assistance, one a wiccan and the other a southern baptist. The wiccan was asked to pray to Baal and ask that he light his fire. The southern baptist was asked to pray to Yahweh and ask that he light his fire. After four hours, nothing happened. Remembering that Elijah ordered the Yahweh altar to be doused with several barrels of water, I proceeded to pour 20L of H2O from a tap onto Ring 2. Having no oxen, I laid a steak (new york strip) on top as a suitable appeasement offering. The wiccan volunteered to cut her palm and drop blood on Baal's altar for historical accuracy. This was assented to after much discussion and queasiness on my part. She made an incision into her left palm and drizzled blood onto Baal's altar. Her palm stopped bleeding after a couple of minutes and appeared to need no bandaging (miracle?).
Prayers began anew, respectively. After four more hours, and a few green bottleneck flys gorging themselves on blood and steak, I declared a halt. I then proceeded to take a box of strike anywhere lucifer matches and remove one match. I struck the match on one of the stones surrounding the control fire. Touching the lit match to the tender produced a flame. After a few minutes, the flame appeared to be growing quite nicely.
Conclusion: This one is quite difficult. The wiccan claimed a success because Baal was clearly inferior to the goddess and was probably kicking it up with Bacchus (sp?) and with all the drinking and wenching, didn't have time to bother with something so mundane. The southern baptist claimed success as his god wasn't to be tempted with such display of frivolity. Meanwhile, I managed to cook a few hamburgers and hotdogs and we all enjoyed a nice meal.
For me, the "message" in pi was the whole fricking point of Contact - that they left it out of the movie smacks of someone afraid of pissing off religious people.
Let's say someone does walk on water, turn water into wine, multiply bread, and so on.
Well, can't Lucifer do all those things? If he can't, how do we know?
If a God or a Jesus did start to show me miracles and claim divinity, I'd give them a chance, but I certainly wouldn't worship them right away. Worship is something I don't do -- not to anyone on Earth today, and I'm not sure I would to someone in Heaven. And again, where is the proof, really? Maybe it's all a dream and I'll wake up soon. Maybe this God is evil. It could be any number of things.
Where can there ever be proof? That is, I think, one of the points of agnosticism (versus atheism) -- if God is impossible to disprove, he's equally impossible to prove.
There's a bit of stubbornness there, but I do believe that an omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, and actually benevolent God wouldn't eternally damn me for a bit of healthy skepticism.
And by the way, I imagine if I really believed in the consequences of rejecting God, I probably would not reject him. (Probably. Better to rule in Hell...) But once again, that would be difficult to prove. I could kneel and pray, but I doubt I could believe.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
"Here's another question I've been pondering -- what is all this shit about angels? Have you heard this? Three out of four people belive in angels. Are you fucking stupid? Has everybody lost their mind? You know what I think it is? I think it's a massive, collective, psychotic chemical flashback for all the drugs smoked, swallowed, shot, and obsorbed rectally by all Americans from 1960 to 1990. Thirty years of street drugs will get you some fucking angels, my friend! What about Goblins, huh? Doesn't anybody belive in Goblins? You never hear about this. Except on Halloween and then it's all negative shit. And what about Zombies? You never hear from Zombies! That's the trouble with Zombies, they're unreliable! I say if you're going to go for the Angel bullshit you might as well go for the Zombie package as well."
Jesus does share some characteristics with Buddha and leaders of other religions. However, I think he's unique in that Jesus claims that his death grants us salvation--being able to know God--if we believe. Buddha, Mohammad, Moses all told us how we should live, but we still had to solve the problem of our salvation (Buddha: give up all desire; Mohammad: worship Allah the right way; Moses: obey the Law and make sacrifices). Jesus said that you don't have to do anything, just believe. In fact, Jesus said we can't achieve salvation by doing things. So he's more than a figurehead. Without Jesus, Christianity is just Judaism.
I'm sorry if you've met so many shallow Christians. Actually you've probably meant a lot who weren't--they didn't just advertise their beliefs or wave it in your face. They did, however, lead by example which is what they're supposed to be doing. You probably did notice them--you just never got around to finding out what they believed.
It's true that Christians believe in being saved by faith vs. works and there is a logical reason for this. The simplistic version is God is perfect, man is imperfect and so God reached out a built a bridge from man to Himself. Since (after the fall) man could never be perfect on his own, he needed a divine way to get back to the Creator.
OTOH, James (James 2:20) says that, "Faith without works is dead." God did not just "save" Christians and then not expect them to help others. If you were of a mind, it would make one question that the person was truly a believer if all they cared about was their personal salvation like they had crossed the final finish line.
I think this topic is interesting. Because it makes total logical sense that if God created man, of COURSE he would wire something in the DNA that allows us to know instinctively of His existence.
If you've never been modded as "flamebait" or "troll," you've never tried to argue a minority viewpoint here!
I am intrigued and wish to subscribe to your bible.
That was not my intention.
The article talks about possible biological factors favouring religious belief. It does not claim that religious faith is genetically determined. Please read the original article before posting.
The rest of your post is irrelevant.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Our brains are adept at pattern recognition (one could go even further than that.)
We know nothing, the more we learn the more patterns we have to apply against the unknown. (and the more likely you are to try to fit stuff into what you know, IMHO.)
When we see a cause-affect pattern we tend to apply it, sometimes its correct and sometimes it is not (ex: gravity, global warming, lucky charms.)
Therefore, it makes sense than humans are wired to come up with "explanations" which have zero tangible or logical backing, with the degree of ignorance increasing the possibility for error.
Superstition comes out of the most 'reasonable' people when they are gambling, about to die, etc. It doesn't really ever go away.
To clarify, religions explain the unknown using known patterns/concepts and from there create a foundation of patterns/concepts upon which even more is built. It is similar to how science or math builds upward, and it can become every bit as complex a field of study (in fact, more so because of heavy use of unproven and untestable theories.)
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You sort of had me going until you said "I've never heard of a follower of Mithras or Ganesha...so I can't say its been of real importance to me to evaluate their value."
So, you are dismissing all Hinduism.
"In Hinduism, Ganesha is one of the most well-known and beloved representations of God. As the lord of beginnings and eliminator of obstacles, he is said to be the most worshipped divinity in India"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ganesha
While your ignorance is understandable, it shows the failure of your system of evaluating religious systems: you come to sound conclusions about the import of religions based on your own **lack** of information. This is generally a logical fallacy called "the argument from ignorance" and your argument of "I've never heard of it so it can't be important" falls squarely into it.
What you have carefully avoided is the question of "fact." You talk about compartmentalizing religion into belief and behavior. While it may be pragmatic to evaluate religions on their relative "good" or "harm" to society you leave open the metrics for such an evaluation. You especially ignore the harm caused to society by the perpetuation of non-reason over reason.
You claim that you analyze religions only "in terms of their precepts (which are generally unprovable) but rather in terms of their value." Value as what? But, even before trying to answer the question you beg, one must point out that many religious precepts can be tested, e.g. "prayer cures all ills", "this relic could not have been created by human hands", "you'll be struck down by our god if you blaspheme," etc.
.....We find that both evolution is true.......
Evolution is a belief, not science. Science is about facts, observations and measurements. The interpretation of these facts is not always part of real science, but is guided by the basic world view of a scientist. They are all human and every human, even an atheist, has a specific world view, their basic belief system.
One of the cornerstones of Darwinian Evolution always brought up is the subject of fossils. It is a science fact that we find fossils all over the earth. However, nobody has ever made a fossil nor watched one form in nature. Today when a living thing dies, it decays. It never makes a fossil. I order to make one, the creature to be fossilized has to die quickly, along with all decay causing organisms and then be buried away from air. A massive catastrophe of water, such as the flood of Noah could make fossils, but no slow process we know anything about could.
Evolution is faith, in lots and lots of time. It basically substitutes billions and millions of years for the creative power of God. The evolutionist's God is time, lots of time. Without all that supposed time, evolution is a dead farce, pure belief, masquerading as science. Evolution is the atheists way of interpreting the facts of science according to their belief.
(...There is plenty of atheism to go around,...)
Indeed there is. An "a" in front of a word, originally from Greek or Latin means "without" or "not". Amoral means without moral, amuse means not to muse, that is to think. An atheist is therefore someone without God or belief in him. Even so, atheists do think and ask some important questions, such as their origins, purpose and destiny after death. Their answers to these are faith based just as much as any theist's is.
(.....The brain is the seat of our very being...)
That is definitely NOT a fact in any way shape of form. We simply do NOT know where the seat of consciousness is physically located nor even if it is physical. In computer terms, firmware is still software, only more intimately connected to a particular hardware. The most detailed physical examination of the circuits of a computer with tell you absolutely NOTHING about the software it is running. A Mac running OSX or WinXP will not change physically by so much as one atom while running one the other or both. That is why consciousness has no more to do with neurons and neurology than gates and registers have anything to do with the OS as such.
Our brain is of course vital to the execution of both the OS and the applications. An infant is born with a complete OS with little application software. That is all learned later -- programmed in as it were. The OS is in part determined by other software stored in the genetic code inherited from our ancestors. The brain is indeed a wonderful organ, hardware specifically designed to allow the efficient execution of unimaginably complex software. You, the real person lives inside a marvelous body for a short time. After that you WILL meet the programmer personally.
All theory is gray
But believing is doing something. It's just as much doing something as 'giving up desire' is. It's just not a physical something (like Mohammad or Moses), it's a mental somthing. It seems that Jesus is saying 'Do the something I tell you to do, not what other people tell you to do', just like all the other religions. (Though I do believe that the Buddha didn't actually discuss salvation, that was tacked on later because the people wanted a god and/or heaven. As I understand it Buddha was atheistic, he was more talking about how to not suffer.)
Most psychoactive substances have their effect in crossing the blood brain barrier and doing something like binding to receptor sites on neurons down stream, blocking reuptake of neurotransmitters, increasing secretion of neurotransmitters by binding to the sending neuron etc. What's interesting is that the body often has its own chemicals to produce these effects often regulated by our glands. Runner's high for example triggers the release of endorphine (endogenous [from within] morphine). So it need not necessarily be ingested but may in fact merely be internally present and stimulated under the right conditions.
Listen to Reality!
You want to distinguish between "religion" and "organized religion together with a hierarchical power structure". The latter one has done all of the evil things you have mentioned, but it is not a "motivational force", it is a power structure. Every power structure has a conceptual framework on which it is reliant, and it is rather irrelevant what the details of that framework are. It could be something to do with God, economics, evolutionary biology, environmental science, philosophy, etc., etc. A power structure can only exist if every participant is speaking the same moral language, so that there is no confusion as to what is "good" and what is "bad". Once this condition is met, the meaning of "good" and "bad" can be manipulated on a grand scale through broadcasting.
The religion, on the other hand, is a motivational force, and it caused a lot of good. In my view, religion itself caused much more good than bad: there is not a single mainstream religion which does not advocate what we think of as humanist ideals. People who do evil things and say that they are acting on behalf of gods, etc., are liars, and can be easily shown to be liars by comparing their actions with those commended in respective holy texts. As an easy example, Bush junior says that he acts on behalf of the Christian God, while at the same time bombing the shit out of Iraq and making it impossible for a civil war to end. Here we all know that his motivation is not religious, but it is rather a mix of greed for money and power. The motivation of poor voters is not religious either: it is the desire for a sense of security together with a hypocritical aspiration to "help the spread of Democracy". (Hypocritical because there are still people alive who remember not being able to vote on the account of being black. If I was a US citizen, I would be worried about spreading Democracy at home first.) In order to justify their actions, everyone is forced to use the Christian moral language. The fact that they are justifying what the holy texts did condemn does not faze them, since they are getting what they really want: money, power, security, self-satisfaction. My main point is, this theater is made possible thanks to the work of hierarchical Christian churches, and never by ideas exposed in the New Testament.
As to ignorance, Christian ideals are demonstrably hostile to it (while most power structures, regardless of being religious, are obviously not). Wisdom is regarded very highly in the Bible, and is mostly meant as what we today would call "expertize". Great many Church Fathers, starting with Paul, were brilliantly educated and not ashamed of it. (Some, like Origen, were a little bit too proud of it.) Many hard scientists (Newton comes to mind) had true religious aspirations, while the main proponents of blissful ignorance were usually motivated by their desire to retain the control over masses.
I guess the point I was actually trying to make was that in Christianity salvation is a gift, while to my knowledge, all other religions you earn your salvation in some way (proper worship, obedience, eliminating desire). Since we can't earn our way to God, He had to die for us, so that if we choose to be with Him forever, we may. Our ticket is Jesus' death. I suppose one could argue that choosing/believing Jesus is how you earn your salvation, but choosing to cash a $1 million check that some random stranger gave me doesn't seem like earning it, to me.
There is a very major anti-intellectual focus on some very dumbed down versions of Christianity which I think is what people are talking about. I see it really as more politics than actual religeon - people that were unable to get to positions of influence in existing groups started their own, put in a simplistic framework and disparage anyone that would question this like mainstream groups or the educated - surpisingly intolerant of other groups despite the fact they only avoid being persecuted as heretics due to the tolerance they do not wish others to have. These people are loud and get noticed so look like the prevailing view. The real classic I could barely believe was watching some film of a US born again group distrupting an Easter parade in St Petersburg in Russia by blocking the road and yelling out "turn to Jesus" - what did those idiots think the Easter parade was about in the first place?
I'll add I'm agnositic, but I think the anti-intellectualism is just a symptom of various groups that currently get a lot of attention. I paticularly despise the ones that give God orders, think Jesus hates poor people, ARE the merchants in the temple, call for Fatwahs on people or are just pyramid selling schemes pretending to be a belief system for tax purposes - but it's not all bad.
You are telling me that a magical guy who created everything in the universe is outside the realm of the science? Are you telling me that there is a realm which cannot and does not have any effect on the material/natural realm and has no effect on our lives? Basically anything more than talking about a nothing with no effect on us at all, is within the scientific realm. Science has slowly whittled the supernatural realm from just about everything down to nothing. Such that now you need talk about things which, by definition don't effect us and can't matter, to still talk about the supernatural.
The different domains idea is really an amusing exercise in special pleading. Religion has over the years and still today made a number of very testable claims. They claimed the sun traveled around the earth, diseases were caused by sin, and that God man all the living things on Earth. So long as religion goes around making claims about the world, science will go around testing those claims.
It is no longer uncommon to be uncommon.
Evolution is a belief, not science. Science is about facts, observations and measurements. The interpretation of these facts is not always part of real science, but is guided by the basic world view of a scientist.
Evolution is a theory and a group of facts which that theory explains. The theory explains everything we see about animals not only the skeletal evidence we find in fossils but the modern evidence we see in the organs and habits of modern organisms as well as the coding of the DNA and the changes in proteins between species. People certainly believe evolution, in some kind of mutual exclusive relationship with science, rather because it is science and one of the most powerful and predictive elements of science we have. It is the cornerstone of all of biology.
One of the cornerstones of Darwinian Evolution always brought up is the subject of fossils. It is a science fact that we find fossils all over the earth.
No. It is also a prediction of evolution and common ancestry that we should find specific fossils in specific areas. If we found a mammal in the Precambrian, evolution is screwed. We find fossils of organisms which would have lived in that biome in that time. We find fossils geographically everywhere, however we find specific fossils geologically on in rocks they specifically belong to. We don't find, for example, fossils of dinosaurs less than 64 million years ago. So, finding a T-Rex embedded in 30 million year old rock, would send shockwaves through the scientific community.
However, nobody has ever made a fossil nor watched one form in nature. Today when a living thing dies, it decays.
Actually a group of Israeli scientists have managed to make petrified wood. It is true that things usually decay, and there is a pretty rare set of conditions needed for fossilization. However, it is nothing more than an argument from ignorance to note that since many things decay that they all decay.
It never makes a fossil. I order to make one, the creature to be fossilized has to die quickly, along with all decay causing organisms and then be buried away from air. A massive catastrophe of water, such as the flood of Noah could make fossils, but no slow process we know anything about could.
Hate to break it to you but Noah Ark is a myth. Geologically there is no evidence for it. And the counterevidence is overwhelming to say the least. The original story is copied from the much earlier Assyrian work the Epic of Gilgamesh, and does not depict real events. Futhermore, you can't make a natural fossil within a couple thousand years. It takes much longer than that to replace the bone with minerals.
Evolution is faith, in lots and lots of time. It basically substitutes billions and millions of years for the creative power of God.
Actually there are dozens of way to determine the age of the Earth, using those methods we have come up with a rather hard value of 4 billion years. That isn't faith, it is what the evidence tells us. Multiple independent methods finding the same value. Whereas your evidence consists of, I assume, nothing (on account of the evidence all pointing to 4 billion).
The evolutionist's God is time, lots of time. Without all that supposed time, evolution is a dead farce, pure belief, masquerading as science.
Well, I must admit that without the 2 billion years life has been evolving it would have have been hard to evolve the life we have today. It is a good thing that we have pretty clear verification of time periods we are talking about, from multiple radiological clocks. Again, though amusing belief and science are not mutually exclusive... in fact when science is done right it should heavily inform beliefs. You can, in fact, believe in things science has proven.
Indeed there is. An "a" in front of a word, originally from Greek or Latin means "without" or "not". Amoral means without moral, amuse means not to muse, that is to think. An atheis
It is no longer uncommon to be uncommon.
Tibetan Buddism is specifically what I had in mind.
http://www.wanderings.net/notebook/Main/SoYouWant
"In some cases, the teachings of Buddha have become intertwined with local polytheistic traditions, as in Tibetan Buddhism."
"Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us." -Jesus Christ The Lord's Prayer
Never attribute to genetics what can be explained by simple stupidity. There was a point at which six or seven out of ten people believed that the world was flat, too. Should we have looked for that in our genes as well?
StoneCypher is Full of BS
If it was hardwired into our genetics, we couldn't help but believe. The result would have to be 100%, not 92% or even 99%. Religion is part of culture. You find it all over the world, people have different but similar beliefs. It's learned from and shared between other people in their society - just like language. Religion was great. It has helped us survive, deal with strong emotions and explain things in the natural world we didn't have an answer for. It's still useful as an easy device for some people to fall back on in emotional situations such as when people die. Religion is also a source of power, control and authority which individuals try to hold on to. This is bad. Law has given us all the rules we need to live. Science has taken it's place to explain the natural world, as well as to deal with human emotion for those who are strong-willed enough.
No, not all of them, since I am a Christian, and I do not believe Christ is the LORD. Jesus never stood up and said it himself; therefore, in keeping with the first commandment, I won't say it either. I believe he is the savior and the SON of God. That is all he ever claimed to be. His apostles started saying Jesus was the LORD after he ascended into heaven; I believe they were probably breaking the first commandment when they did so.
There are several verses that reinforce that belief:
When the Jews were about to stone Jesus for blasphemy his response was "why would you stone me for claiming to be the SON of God, when it is written in your own scripture 'ye are gods'". Now stop and consider the fact that Jesus could have just said "sure, I'm God", but he didn't.
Then there's when Jesus was in the garden before he was arrested, and he prayed and asked the LORD to excuse him from the burden of being crucified. He asked the LORD; he didn't ask himself.
When Jesus was on the cross being crucified, he asked "Father, why have you forsaken me?" He did NOT ask "why have I forsaken myself?"
When Jesus was in the desert, and satan had been tempting him to do wrong things, and Jesus resisted, afterwards, angels came and preached to Jesus. Be clear about the order of things: The LORD made (and taught?) the angels. Not the other way around.
The first of the 10 Commandments says "Have no other gods before the LORD." I'm saying that to worship Jesus might very well break that commandment.
I sustain the possibility that Jesus was the same being as the LORD, but scripturally it is not established.
If somebody were trying to put words into your mouth, what would you respond?
"You have said it." [and not me]
Now, perhaps you could tell me what Jesus would have said, if he really intended to say what he's quoted as having said. He might have intended to convey that it was Pilate, and not Jesus' own self, who had made [or reiterated] the claim.
On the other hand, Jesus said that his kingdom was "not of this earth". However, that could mean Jesus was a servant of the LORD, [i.e. he was of the LORD's Kingdom] and yet not the LORD Himself.
Abraham was alive in 2100 B.C. However, at that same time, there were living angels in heaven, as well as whatever else the LORD has in Heaven. Consider the fact that angels guided Lot and his family to safety (from Sodom and Gomorra). That was in the same time period as Abraham. Therefore, Jesus being that old does not establish that he was the LORD.
Well, of course nobody reaches the Father, but through him, if Jesus is the Father. But I don't believe Jesus went around saying truisms. The claim actually specifically shows that Jesus considered God the Father to be a seperate entity entirely.
What
"Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us." -Jesus Christ The Lord's Prayer
.....there is a pretty rare set of conditions needed for fossilization.....
I don't think I'll reply in detail to everything. I'll just point out that fossils. regardless how you interpret them are very widespread. There are in fact few places of this planet that do NOT have fossils. Even if they made some petrified wood, is that the way it really formed? Time is the biggest enemy of fossil making. The is NO known mechanism for making fossils over long periods of time - period. Using fossils, any fossils, as evidence for evolution is a wishful fairy tale.
(....from multiple radiological clocks...)
To use any clock, you have to assume (believe = have faith) that your clock has always ticked at the same or a known rate over the total time measured. There is evidence that clocks based on atomic properties have drifted as much as by a factor of 300 million times since the "big bang". This drift is related to very fundamental properties of space itself changing as the universe expanded. The equations for atomic behavior include Planks constant. Evidence that evolutionists like to keep silent shows that the some of the so called "constants" are anything but constant over long time periods. There are few things in nature that are really constant other than change itself. So your clocks are based on faith.
(....pretty much hardcoded.....The instructions...)
These are software terms. Early computers were programmed by the way they were physically wired. When source code is compiled into machine code, there is no change in information content. Translating a story from English to French and then having that read onto a tape still doesn't change the content of the story. It is still software, information, an immaterial product shown to be arising ONLY from the activity of intellect, a mind. The software in the brain and DNA is different and vastly superior to anything we have yet invented or even imagined. Information, such as a novel or play cannot be explained by the chemistry of ink on paper of the letters of a language. Neither can the operation of the brain be grasped in any way by describing the wiring of neurons. Information is a distinct, nonphysical quantity that interacts with and controls physical matter and energy. The brain itself is physical, but its product is not. That's why even a separate large body of law dealing with INTELLECTUAL property is needed.
The universe obeys specific laws. All human laws, without exception always come from human minds. Why is it then such a leap to propose that the "natural" laws are also the product of a mind?
All theory is gray
Mathew Alper's book The "GOD" Part of the Brain postulated this years ago. At least my copy is dated from the year 2000.
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Actually, Amazon says the book was first published in 1996. More than a decade ago...
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I don't think I'll reply in detail to everything. I'll just point out that fossils. regardless how you interpret them are very widespread. There are in fact few places of this planet that do NOT have fossils.
Not generally fossils but, areas where specific fossils are not found. If you are in a layer of rock formed in the Precambrian you aren't going to find any bones. Due to certain issues with the oceans we don't find many fossils in the water.
Even if they made some petrified wood, is that the way it really formed? Time is the biggest enemy of fossil making. The is NO known mechanism for making fossils over long periods of time - period. Using fossils, any fossils, as evidence for evolution is a wishful fairy tale.
No petrified wood forms in a very specific way, we simply made the fossilized wood by forcing the process to happen in a few days rather than a large number of years. Having extra time at your disposal wouldn't cause an inability to make fossils. That's just stupid. Secondly, there are many well understood chemical and physical properties which lead to fossil formation.
http://www.safossils.com/fossil.html
http://www.scsc.k12.ar.us/TuttS/fossil_formation.h tm
http://www.museum.vic.gov.au/prehistoric/what/howf ormed.html
http://www.fossils-facts-and-finds.com/how_are_fos sils_formed.html
http://www.nhm.ac.uk/nature-online/earth/fossils/f ossil-folklore/how_are_fossils.htm
http://www.fossil.energy.gov/education/energylesso ns/coal/gen_howformed.html
Really, it isn't hard to figure out.
(....from multiple radiological clocks...)
To use any clock, you have to assume (believe = have faith) that your clock has always ticked at the same or a known rate over the total time measured.
No. That's why one uses multiple clocks. Firstly, sometimes there are slight (1% or so) fluctuation in the initial content of the radiological clock material. One need only believe that all of these radiological decay rates from the half a dozen methods you use remain constant, as would be expected if the laws of physics hold roughly true. Though, to be fair, they have only held true each and every time we checked, perhaps they magically stop working when we aren't looking.
There is evidence that clocks based on atomic properties have drifted as much as by a factor of 300 million times since the "big bang". This drift is related to very fundamental properties of space itself changing as the universe expanded.
Respectfully, no there is not. It took a long while before heavier radioactive particles even formed and from that time, the half lives have remained constant. It is extremely silly to suggest other wise with "there is evidence", as if that is some forgiving phrase with which to preface lies.
The equations for atomic behavior include Planks constant. Evidence that evolutionists like to keep silent shows that the some of the so called "constants" are anything but constant over long time periods. There are few things in nature that are really constant other than change itself. So your clocks are based on faith.
There may have been some slight change in such things as Planks and the speed of light, these are really really small and only true for the first split second of time. Radiological decay and half-lives are extremely consistent. The idea that some error exists and thus the universe is 6,000 years old is downri
It is no longer uncommon to be uncommon.
I agree that psychology and literature might be a relevant tool to evaluate the quality of different accounts of a given event. That is not relevant to when I question that central facts about the universe can be deduced by a literary man reasoning in a domain far from his expertise.
Morals are (genetically and culturally) evolved and some things will be mostly universal, just because of game theory. (Postmodernists or marxists might disagree, but afaik this is widely accepted today.) So some values will be mostly universal for humans and (at least) higher primates. Some probably even for aliens. Some change with increasing wealth (e.g. women got better rights when society had technology enough that it was possible).
Your claim that C S Lewis makes a believable god proof without even understanding how game theory relates to behavior (research starting mostly from the sixties) seems really strange. I can't see how Abolition even makes a serious argument for the existence of god.
Here is the book. Could you give exact references to what you consider the strong god argument? And also reasons for the Xian god to be the real one and not the Norse gods, the invisible unicorn, the Jewish one, etc etc.
From some fast skimming of the book and reviews, it fails to realize that the sum of morals has evolved genetically as well as culturally -- so its absolute moral is a slowly moving target. Otherwise, it is an interesting argument -- if you accept that the basis of human instincts and built in morals are "sacred". I can agree with that it would be really dangerous, immoral and illegal to mess with the basic design of emotions!
And another question -- as I understand, you claim that your belief in Oden is based on an intellectual argument and not hearing voices like Son of Sam? If you found this argument to be bad, would you change position? I just note that philosophers (not literary people) have tried to write arguments showing religion to be true since milennia -- and everyone are embarrassed afterwards.
Karma: Excellent (My Karma? I wish...:-( )
A genetic tendency towards belief does not equal belief. We do have brains you know. We are all capable of believing things that contradict experience or common sense (quantum physics, anyone?).
I think you are grossly overstating the effect of a tendency when you suggest that it trumps free will and the exercise of intellect.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
What I wrote was that morale was a result of genetic and cultural evolution -- I think few if any argue that morale is primarily genetic in humans. So... you base your opinions on how the world is built on how you feel it should be? I'd argue that the world is never how we feel it should be (-: where are my yachts?! :-) Your next sentence make me think that you don't really understand the subject:
Frankly, this sounds a bit naive -- are you trolling me?
At the time C S Lews wrote, it was impossible to rape your wife in most of the Western world. I am not aware of CSL making speaches against that exact law? But law, morals and culture change. You could write a good argument for the most constant thing over the centuries is an inability to realize how much morals change about "obvious" subjects...
For instance, rape of slaves was socially accepted in many places, as was rape in war time. Rape is also a common tactic among animals. Even war in itself -- with abduction, rape and sale of females etc -- was mostly seen as a good and necessary fact in all historical cultures -- while they were clan societies.
To get a more insight into what is the "best behaviour for survival", I'd recommend you to get "Selfish Gene" by Dawkins and read up on evolutionary analysis of behaviour. It is both a really fascinating subject and one of the best written books I've ever read. (Don't claim to have already read it after that naive statement -- if you did, you didn't understand it.)
Karma: Excellent (My Karma? I wish...:-( )
A good point, actually.
Perhaps, perhaps not, according to the geneticists, right? That is within the domain they were exploring. My argument is simply this: their argument took aim at human spirituality and (in an iconoclastic way) attempted to boil it all down to physical matter. According to the level on which they have been arguing, even if the genes didn't account for the person's beliefs, other material phenomena would be taken up to account for the remaining free will. Their argument [that material circumstance accounts for matters of the God and Spirit] is spiritually dead.
The LORD has dominion over all of it, and genetics are the wrong instrument, when it comes to matters of God and Spirit. I've seen things (supernatural things) that genetics will never explain. When they bend their [potentially fruitful] field of study to the end of making it look as if religiosity were the cheap result of material events, it is 100% clear to me that Satan works through them, and they're probably in for a rude awakening.
The "effect of a tendency?" Is that akin to the "length of a string?"
I didn't suggest that anything trumped free will. If anything, it's the geneticists who suggested that genes trumped free will. And if they didn't give the whole show to genetics, they carved it part and parcel for physics to take the rest, in the epiphenominal claim that consciousness and free will are just physical by-products of material events. But they are dead wrong, and the "best" they can achieve in their line of analysis is to spiritually mislead people.
"Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us." -Jesus Christ The Lord's Prayer
Well, I certainly didn't misunderstand it, since you didn't say it. If we have a choice then we aren't really programmed at all, are we? Perhaps we are educated, trained or conditioned, etc, but we are not programmed. =D
There are no facts of science. Science is a process. It is a method of drawing conclusions and making predictions based on emprical analysis. The process of science involves
(1) making an observation
(2) forming a question about what was seen
(3) studying the facts surrounding the question, and framing it as well as possible.
(4) forming one or more hypotheses to explain the phenomenon
(5) devising an incisive, well measured, repeatable experiment (that also include control groups, and hopefully a "double blind" study) in order to test the hypotheses
(6) conducting the experiment(s)
(7) study the results and draw conclusions
(8) if an hypothesis survives enough experiments, it might be upgraded to "theory."
Darwin's "theory" of evolution has never been tested. It should honestly be called the "hypothesis of evolution." That is because there was never a single experiment conducted which could have confirmed or denied it. It is investigative forensics that resulted in Darwin's Hypothesis taking a believable form. Forensics are not the same thing as science, however.
Many of the forensic conclusions which have been drawn from scientific realms are completely at odds with the scripture. The Hypothesis of Evolution is an example of that. The LORD created the Heaven and the Eart in 6 days, and he rested on the 7th. That is why the sabbath day is hallowed, and we are not supposed to work on it.
If you were telling me that the LORD really lied in teh scripture, adn he took billions of years to accomplish what he said only took him 6 days, well then it would be about a billion years until the first sabbath day, right? But that's not how the sabbath is timed. The sabbath is once a week. Every 7 days, there's another one.
That's an example of a forensic conclusion at odds with the scripture.
There are forms of dating (for instance) that place terrestrial things as if they were older than the Bible says the earth is. That is a second example of scientifically founded forensics being at odds with the Bible.
In order for Jonah's whale to travel to Nineveh, it had to travel over 10,000 miles in 3 days, and part of that was swimming up a river (either the tigris or euphrates, which had dericks).
Fish don't swim that fast.
Scientific hypothises and theories are often at odds with the Bible. So are conclusions that have been reached by means of forensics. Since the scientific method is a process, however, the process is not, and cannot, be at odds with the Bible [no more than the process of performing addition or division]. The scientific method can either be applied or not applied, but the conclusions drawn from its used can be accepted or not; the process [the scientific method] is not a sin.
There. I hope that helps.
"Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us." -Jesus Christ The Lord's Prayer
I think it's funny that we can determine what is imbedded in our genes by only surveying Americans.
My father was a soldier. A proud atheist as well.
He needed none of all the religious nonsense to feel for his buddies and to survive very bad situations.
Religious people fail badly to understand people that do not need those crouches to lead moral, positive lifes.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Comparing belief systems based in mental machinations and wishful magic thinking with an attitude informed in scientific facts is frankly intellectually disingineous.
If you have no interest in preserving the environment, say so, but doing cheap shoots against people that do by smearing them via a completely unrelated issue, is frankly almost beyond contempt.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
I guess you're making an assumption that the church would be the sole (obvious) sponsor of the activity, and I was making the assumption that they'd be one participant of many (perhaps the event was organized by the city itself). I would be uncomfortable attending an event if everyone thought that I was there for the church. "Look at all of those volunteers the church put together!" Um, no. And perhaps this is part of the reason you never see this happening. Churches are about the church first, and community second. If they're not going to get "credit" or new recruits, they're not going to organize for the community's benefit. This seems a little hypocritical to me.
Any such being, if it exists, is outside the realm of science. Science by definition limits itself to natural explanations, and nature does not include magic (again because of definition: magic is by definition supernatural.)
No, I make no such claim.
Science is the process of hypothesis and experimentation through which we seek natural explanations for our observations. The supernatural, if it exists, is the concern of philosophers and theologians, not scientists. That's why Intelligent Design is not science: it allows supernatural explanations alongside natural ones.
.....Where did this mind come from?.......
It is hard for us time bound creatures to even imagine someone or something that has always existed, someone that just IS. Moses was given the name of God as "I AM" the eternally self existing one. You just have chosen to completely deny His existence, because if you even admitted even in the slightest that there possibly could be a Creator after all, who made you, a very uncomfortable series of thoughts will come into your mind. Some are: If there is a possibility, even a small one, that there is a God, then what, if any is my responsibility to Him? Is there maybe a judgement after death? If there is, what are my chances? Was Jesus who He claimed to be, the Immanuel, 'God with us" the "I AM" come to earth? When he claimed to be THE truth, was He lying or deceived?
What if there is a heaven and a hell and physical death of only the body, with its brain, is not the end of my existence? After all, in the physical world there is no extinction either. There are conservation laws. When you burn a piece of wood in your fireplace it doesn't go out of existence. It only changes form. Matter and energy cannot be destroyed and neither can the eternal spirit person that is the real conscious you. Right now you still have opportunity to determine the CORRECT answer to these and other important questions concerning your eternal destiny. I suggest you don't fool yourself, but earnestly seek true answers to these questions.
All theory is gray
The "effect of a tendency?" Is that akin to the "length of a string?"
Yes. With two tin cans, I can communicate over a much broader range with a long string than a short string.
But they are dead wrong, and the "best" they can achieve in their line of analysis is to spiritually mislead people.
Perhaps. But, I personally do not find a conflict between what these geneticists have hypothesized and Christian belief, but your mileage may vary. People have all kinds of built-in psychological biases, like the strong bias towards self-preservation. A person's ability and decision to override that particular bias can serve evil, in the case of suicide, or good, in the case of risking one's life to save others. It doesn't obviate free will although it certainly influences it, just as any of a hundred other psychological tendencies we come equipped with. It is no small facet of Christian belief that one must overcome all kinds of natural tendencies to live a moral life, and yet there is recognition that some instincts and inclinations are beneficial.
That this has been expressed in terms of science does not, in my opinion, come into conflict with a belief in God or the moral obligations that this belief implies. However, like I said originally, it will certainly be seized upon by people with all manner of opinions to support their cases.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
one might with as much validity claim that all Americans are hardwired for stupidity.
Excuse me, have you looked around?!
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
I've found the smartest person on Slashdot.
And they're an Anonymous Coward.
"We can categorically state that we have not released man-eating badgers into the area." - Major Mike Shearer, UK
--"I think most people associate Germany's defeat in the second world war with some rather ugly stuff about death camps."
That's why I am bringing up those estimated 1.6 million deaths at the hands of Eisenhowers troops.
--"Sorry, but there is no uglier "truth lurking beneath the surface" than what was found in Germany at the end of the Second World War."
There is nothing magic about Zulu, German, Jewish, Zulu or Chinese blood unless you're troll enough
to obsess here over religion. You will find that human blood regardless of race is pretty much the
same cocktail of proteins and cells with little evident difference in DNA in both the cell nucleus and
the Mitochondria. I wonder where you find it in you to rank one man's cruel murder after another's
and mind you well that these were for the most part regular German Armed Forces troops and civilians.
I will make a distintion, here, for the sake if differentiating a physical bias, and intellectual bias and a spiritual bias, there could be personal or emotional bias. There are probably other forms, as well. Of course, the distinction might not be perfect. There could be gray areas where those domains and biases overlap.
Naturally, there could be cases where biases conflict. For example, if we're talking about the physical bias to eat food, that could come into conflict with a spiritual bias to eat only kosher food.
The importance of that distinction might vary, but in this particular case it is important, since the argument of the geneticists is that there is a gene-based spiritual bias. But the human soul is not a slave to matter. Idolatry advocates might tell you otherwise, but it is not.
A minor re-edit to strengthen your point. [_inserts_]
Well, this is specifically where we have disagreement, since I'm saying that indeed, yes, it does.
Stop and consider Daniel, Shadrak, Mishak and Abednigo, who were thrown into the furnace because the King's jealous advisors had provoked him to anger. Leave it to the genes, and there's no telling what those four would have done. A Godless, evolutionistic prediction of their behavior might have them cowering before the King, telling him they were sorry and eating the un-Kosher food, but they held their ground, and stood for their religion, and for the LORD, while they were in the King's court. So the LORD protected them while they were in the furnace.
That there is a difference between basing your understanding of human behavior on the soul & spirit, vs. basing that understanding of human behavior on purely physical grounds is clear. Those who hold themselves to the higher standard are rewarded, insofar as Jesus made this claim "blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they will be filled."
"Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us." -Jesus Christ The Lord's Prayer
"You either have to regress infinitely ..., or you eventually have to come to something that was not created. We can apply this more broadly. Where did all the matter/energy in the universe come from? Either it is infinite, or at some point it was created."
Which is what makes a Creator less probable: An eternal complex being capable of building the universe is less probable than a large amount of eternal matter and energy.
Interesting thought, but I am not sure how valid it is. How would you come up with the probability of either case? Since we are talking about origin, be careful not to include any assumptions taken from the way we interpret things. Something complex existing being less probable than something simple seems to be a very evolutionary concept, which would be an invalid basis for your probabilities if an "eternal complex being" exists. We could go into other evidences for or against an eternal God or eternal matter, but that would probably stray more into philosophy than science.
Hell, you could break it further down: if all matter was created by the condensation of energy as the universe initially cooled, then we only have to account for eternal energy.
Naturally. That is why I referred to "matter/energy" in one place. As best we can tell (and I understand it), it seems matter and energy are two forms of the same thing. At the very least we know we can get one from the other. Oh, and we weren't discussing Hell here ;-).
I mean, at the very least, we can see and interact with matter and energy.
Some science deals quite a bit with things we cannot directly see or interact with. Just because we cannot observe or interact with something does not mean it doesn't exist. Makes it very hard to do science on it, but says nothing of its existence.
Still, none of it REALLY matters, except in how we proceed. The answer, for research, need not be correct, just more likely.
I disagree. The way you see the world and interpret science can change drastically. I know science is supposed to be objective, etc. but let's face it, scientists are human and we all interpret things. How we interpret depends on our view of the world. Also, see my quote at the end. It does make a difference.
"Did the algorithms used in genetic programming happen by chance?"
No. They were written to emulate an existing process. The remainder of questions there are irrelevant.
There are no parameters that must be externally controlled? I think that is relevant. If there is no God, there is no external control or input in the real life system.
The process, by the way, is the natural extension of any self-replicating matter. One could suggest that a self-replicating amino chain was the only thing in the history of life to come about by chance. Since there were a couple billion years available for that to happen before the advent of life on earth (and to take for long enough to grow more complex), and since SRAs come about pretty frequently in conditions similar to primorial earth, I'm willing to see it as sufficiently probable.
Looking at the bigger picture of producing all the forms of life that we see from that single piece of self-replicating matter that just happened, the probability begins to shrink rapidly. I have seen no direct evidence anywhere of evolution between species (macro-evolution). Micro-evolution (that within a species, aka natural selection) does happen and on a scale that we can observe it. It seems to be this process that genetic algorithms use. The jump from micro to macro seems a difficult problem that is rarely addressed or even differentiated. When you cannot observe something, it moves outside the realm of science. When have we observed macro-evolution?
Look, you can argue 'till you're blue in the face, but a Designer just isn't a plau
--It is hard for us time bound creatures to even imagine someone or something that has always existed, someone that just IS.
Why can't the universe "just IS"? Seems a bit of a stretch to demand something just exist because the universe can't just exist.
--If there is a possibility, even a small one, that there is a God, then what, if any is my responsibility to Him?
Clearly, any superpowerful being who created this entire universe with a trillion trillion stars wants to be worshiped unconditionally by some intelligent ape on some small planet around an average star within a fairly average galaxy.
--Is there maybe a judgement after death?
The existence of a creator doesn't actually have any bearing as to whether there is something after death. And even then it seems like a dumb question.
-- If there is, what are my chances?
Well, an infinite number of possible mutually exclusive gods. I would gather they would be 1/infinity or 0.
-- Was Jesus who He claimed to be, the Immanuel, 'God with us" the "I AM" come to earth?
Was David Koresh? The Koran was better written and that Immanuel is simply a silly contradiction between Isaiah and the Gospels. I daresay the odds of that crazy absurd nonsense is zero.
-- When he claimed to be THE truth, was He lying or deceived?
I don't think there is any real basis to the story. Beyond a lack of historical evidence, it's patently absurd.
-- What if there is a heaven and a hell and physical death of only the body, with its brain, is not the end of my existence?
My brain, contains, everything I am. I daresay it could easily rot away and I would be non-existent just like I would be non-existent before I was born.
-- After all, in the physical world there is no extinction either. There are conservation laws. When you burn a piece of wood in your fireplace it doesn't go out of existence.
It changes form and no longer exists as a piece of wood. Just as if the order in my brain didn't exist I wouldn't exist. "I" am the order and arrangement of my brain. Just because the atoms which make up my brain will still exist after death, does nothing to imply that I (as the order and arrangement of my brain) will continue to exist.
-- It only changes form. Matter and energy cannot be destroyed and neither can the eternal spirit person that is the real conscious you.
I only have seen evidence for once conscious me, located firmly between my ears.
-- Right now you still have opportunity to determine the CORRECT answer to these and other important questions concerning your eternal destiny. I suggest you don't fool yourself, but earnestly seek true answers to these questions.
They aren't hard questions. And again, no evidence for eternal anything or destiny. You should really stop reading books written by bronzed age con-men. Your claims are absurd. The truth is rather simple: what you see is what you get. By the way, if you don't believe that my left sock created the universe as a video game, you will go to hell and burn forever and ever. But, beyond belief, you must eat at least one sock before you die. You see salvation is gained by faith and deeds. Believe my sock is that awesome, and eat at least one thing made in her image.
It is no longer uncommon to be uncommon.
-- Any such being, if it exists, is outside the realm of science. Science by definition limits itself to natural explanations
Science limits itself to things which exist. If such a being exists it is scientifically relevant. Moreso if you toss in all the stuff this thing is suppose to have done. Create life, grant prayers, make the universe. Though, though are natural things so there's a problem. Either God is completely irrelevant or you are just blowing smoke.
-- No, I make no such claim.
Well, that is the claim you need to make to put this character outside of the natural realm. You can't just declare something supernatural and make it immune to being questioned. Oh, don't ask about black holes, they are supernatural. Sure they have natural effects, they grant prayers, etc... but, they are not subject to scientific inquiry.
-- Science is the process of hypothesis and experimentation through which we seek natural explanations for our observations. The supernatural, if it exists, is the concern of philosophers and theologians, not scientists.
If the supernatural exists, it would easily be subject to the same processes of experimentation. The reason we seek natural explanations rather than supernatural ones, is that supernatural ones have thus far never existed. Each thing we check has a reasonable natural explanation, and each thing which has a natural effect and a consistent natural effect is easily subjected to science.
Why can't gardeners or coopers be concerned about the supernatural? I mean, if there is no way to detect it, or find any changes or effects in the natural world due to the supernatural (what would be needed to dodge science). Then why philosophers and theologians? What special powers or abilities do these people have to discern the non-existent in all its ineffectualness?
-- That's why Intelligent Design is not science: it allows supernatural explanations alongside natural ones.
Actually it could call for super intelligent aliens to have created all life on Earth. Which would certainly be a natural explanation. The reason Intelligent Design is not science is because it doesn't actually have any theory or facts behind it. It is simply the next evolution of creationism (set to dodge the unconstitutional God angle), with the same song and dance of arguing that evolution isn't enough to explain the world or that it's just too damned complex to have evolved. Sure, you can have a few changes over short periods of time, but large numbers of changes over a large period of time is impossible!
Intelligent Design is not science because it doesn't predict anything, it doesn't have a theory, it doesn't have facts... it just sits around making tired flawed arguments about real science.
It is no longer uncommon to be uncommon.
You are certain some Absolute Moral exists beyond genes and game theory, but can't give arguments or examples. You can't even make an good case about rape!!
Religion need that morale is absolute -- since the argument is important to you, read up on the evolutionary arguments on behaviour so you can begin to think/argue about it. My honest opinion is that you just don't have the mental tools to discuss the subject.
With that I end the argument. The rest is discussion.
But we both do, or are you active against e.g. this or Sudan? In a few decades, the obvious moral answer to what I'd guess a future morale is -- "What, not your country? What has that to do with anything?!" I'd guess that the next logical step is to take responsibility for more than your own country. Then they will argue that is the Absolute morale...
And you don't need to think something is right -- it is necessary in some cases, because the alternatives don't work. These days, we in the west have a larger leeway in deciding what we do -- in the west. I see it as morally wrong to condemn others for what they had to do.
(See what I quoted from you.) This is the sum of my position:The point of morale is that it is adjusted after the technical reality (population density etc gave very different cultures) -- perfect for a generalist species living in. That is why it is so fluid and change so much. They didn't have the luxury to choose as much as we do -- since there is no world police, we can't control Human Rights in e.g. Sudan but that will probably not stop future generations from condemning us as totally inhumane.
Karma: Excellent (My Karma? I wish...:-( )
... and then had tom embarrass yourself with your parting sentence.
You can't provide evidence to probe a negative.
Otherwise please do provide me of any evidence of the non existence of the invisible elephant stearing at your computer screen behind you.
Atheists, like truly yours, can provide evidence that something does not exist, I hope you can get your brain around that one before you equate us with religious people...
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
It is impossible to prove, using science, whether or not the supernatural exists. The supernatural, if it exists, might or might not be limited to the laws of cause and effect that govern natural processes. Cause and effect is necessary for science; without it, predictions are meaningless.
I don't. You can certainly question the supernatural, debate its existence, discuss it, etc. You can't examine it using science, though: you have to use theology and philosophy (which, fortunately, includes logic).
These three assertions cannot be scientifically proven, though lots of people believe them through faith.
"The jump from micro to macro seems a difficult problem that is rarely addressed or even differentiated. When you cannot observe something, it moves outside the realm of science. When have we observed macro-evolution?"
Hah! Attempting to differentiate between micro- and macro-evolution. There is no difference; small change*lots of time = large change.
If you MUST ask the question, though, ask it right: Have we observed a species diverge into two separate breeding pools that cannot breed with one another? The answer's "yes". Over a very long period of time, one would guess this leads to a heirarchy of flora and fauna, and soo-prize, soo-prize, that's what we have.
"I might argue that some of the greatest scientists that ever lived believed strongly in God (take Newton or Einstein for example)"
Um. Einstein was a deist at best. He had the Church all over him for telling them he was misquoted. He believed in the wonderful complexity of the universe, and referred to that as 'God', in the philosophical sense.
"It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it." - Albert Einstein (Google 'Einstein Religion'; it's on the first link there).
"My religiosity consists in a humble admiration of the infinitely superior spirit that reveals itself in the little that we, with our weak and transitory understanding, can comprehend of reality. Morality is of the highest importance-but for us, not for God."
As for Newton; one can hardly blame a guy in the 16- and 1700's for being religious. There was little choice. Philosophically, you might say that's why atheism is becoming a 'problem' in modern times; lack of church control.
Still, especially in the field of biology, established religion and science are usually at odds. When this conflict occurs, I'm sorry but Science must win out if there is to be any progress.
That's not to say that Einstein's particular breed of spirituality can't come along for the ride - that's not an established religion - but the direly ignorant rules and regulations of the God of Abraham (Judaism, Islam and Christianity) should generally be ignored in favor of a simple set of ethical rules (no making clones and killing them, stuff like that).
110100 1101000 1101000 1100110 0 1101111 1101000 1100011 1
What we can tell you is that the oveewhelming body of scientific evidence points exactly to that conslussion.
When you can come up with a coherent, fact based, peer reviewed, theory about the origin of the species as a consequence of carbon's crystaline structure, then come back to us and let us know. We will be all ears.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
....what you see is what you get.....
I suppose that after you and I are both dead, we'll find out who was right. If I am right, then you are in big trouble. If you are right, then I'll just go out of existence also.
All theory is gray
Are you trolling me? Sigh, I guess this is more my lacking pedagogical talent. :-(
You took rape as an example -- and I pointed out that in CS Lewis' time it was legally impossible to rape your own wife, since you owned her sexuality. This lack of human rights for females was embraced as an obvious part of Absolute Morale in the west just a scant few decades ago -- and almost certainly still is by the majority of the planet's population.
I am not arguing that rape is morally right in any Absolute Moralistic way -- I am arguing that your argument for Absolute Morale as metaphysics is weak.
Then I noted that you need to read up on the relevant research on evolved behaviour.
That was my argument... my discussion afterwards wasn't that well written and I'm sorry if it was confusing.
If rape was accepted someplace in my country (not USA, obviously), the majority would see it as a moral objective to force the politicians to stop it -- my point was that in a few decades it will probably be an obvious part of the Absolute Morale to stop that kind of atrocities wherever they happen to humans. And the future population will probably judge us as bastards without compassion.
For another example, consider the outrage against child labour -- we did that in the west less than a century ago when we probably still had better economy than the areas where it is implemented now. We condemn it is as immoral and Absolutely morally wrong, since children should play and study. (While human children, of course, has worked as long as there has been humans!)
You could say that history and trends seem to show that the argument about Absolute Morale will continue to be universal -- but the content of the Absolute Morale changes time and again...
There are limits to human plasticity. When we change how humans work and interact in groups, there are bound to be mistakes... shudderI am sorry if this wasn't clear. Consider again women's role -- before the modern times a family needed a slave at home to keep everything going. (before the high child mortality went down, people had to have many children.) Also, see my argument above for how morale will change when resources increases and we can implement human rights for everyone. Interpolate that backwards (hmm.. backwards? Should be another term) to earlier times for an analogy about what we e.g. think of accepting ownership of women.
Karma: Excellent (My Karma? I wish...:-( )
Doubtful, when we die. We die. Hardly a figure it out then kind of thing. Usually when you do an experiment you want to get the results *before* you are dead. In any event, there's still no reason to even suppose an afterlife of a God, so what's the point of ignore the argument and never getting an answer?
It is no longer uncommon to be uncommon.
--- It is impossible to prove, using science, whether or not the supernatural exists. The supernatural, if it exists, might or might not be limited to the laws of cause and effect that govern natural processes. Cause and effect is necessary for science; without it, predictions are meaningless.
Sorry dude. Quantum mechanics works perfectly fine and the laws of cause and effect don't apply. There are plenty of uncaused events. We don't need causes for science we need consistent results. We don't have a cause for why radioactive particle decay (and not naive even to say it's supernatural) but we can predict with remarkable accuracy the rate of the substance's decay and how it will decay.
--- I don't. You can certainly question the supernatural, debate its existence, discuss it, etc. You can't examine it using science, though: you have to use theology and philosophy (which, fortunately, includes logic).
There are no skills found in theology or philosophy which make the undetectable, detectable. In either case you are forced to argue about something which doesn't exist and has no affect on the universe. I dare say a talk with a gardener or cooper would be massively more productive. And thankfully philosophers have other areas of interest which actually matter. Only the non-existent is immune to science.
--- These three assertions cannot be scientifically proven, though lots of people believe them through faith.
Faith is a fallacy. You can use it to conclude the contradictory things. The point of science it to discovery what our universe does and why. If something doesn't do something in our universe, only then does it avoid science.
Beyond your rather silly lines drawn in the sand, you are still missing a pretty critical point. There aren't any supernatural questions anymore. Everything people give credit to the supernatural for, has been firmly busted. This isn't anything amazing. It simply is what it is. Everything credited to the supernatural, to date, has been anything but. Start of life, existence of life, start of the universe, function of the brain, order of the planets, structure of the atom. These things are scientific. So long as you want a God that does anything, or exists... you have a problem. You could argue that your God is just extremely sneaky and has no connection to this universe, but few theists do that. Theology is nothing. The root is theo (god) and there is no god.
The idea that there are different subject areas is amusing but false. Staking claim on everything non-science doesn't help you very much when everything that interacts or exists in this universe is subjected to it. You are staking claim on nothing, and not even the empty space of nothingness (that's scientific), you are actually getting zippo... not even spacetime or artificial time.
It is no longer uncommon to be uncommon.
Death is death. Can't figure anything out. You're dead. We are restricted to figuring things out while we are alive. And, as far as we can tell, religion is completely bunk.
It is no longer uncommon to be uncommon.
This is obviously not about what went on _during_ the War. I'm concerned here with what
happened _after_ to 1.6 million German soldiers and civilians at the hands of the "allies".
Personally I don't think you're doing yourself a favor belittling one mass murder for another.
OK, then, it's on you: prove whether or not the supernatural exists.
Are you asserting that the supernatural is undetectable? If so, prove it. Note that lack of detection is not proof of undetectability, or proof of lack of existence, or proof of lack of influence in day to day life.
On the contrary: you appear to use it to believe the three assertions above. Faith is nothing more than the axioms of a person's belief system. What do you or I believe without proof? That's faith. Here's something that I believe through faith: the scientific method is a valid way to determine how things work. It can't be proven, but I believe it anyway.
This is very close. The point of science is to discover what our universe ("nature") does and why. The supernatural, by definition, exists outside of our universe; it is not natural. That doesn't preclude it, in theory, if it exists, from affecting our universe; the concept of "supernatural" is not bound by natural laws.
You have quite a bit of faith. Investigate further and you will find that scientists studying the start of life, existence of life, start of the universe, function of the brain etc. have more questions than answers.
Others disagree. That's why they call it "natural science". If the supernatural does not exist, then the domain of natural science is all that there is, but we can't prove that scientifically one way or the other.
--- OK, then, it's on you: prove whether or not the supernatural exists.
I never claimed it existed, it is really on the one making such claims. I am simply disinclined to be agnostic about the absurd. The fact that there is no evidence for any such things and the universe exists exactly as we should find it if there wasn't a supernatural is pretty strong evidence is reason enough to discount something that absurd.
--- Are you asserting that the supernatural is undetectable? If so, prove it. Note that lack of detection is not proof of undetectability, or proof of lack of existence, or proof of lack of influence in day to day life.
If it is detectable, it is natural. Your argument is that the supernatural is somehow a different and magical realm where science cannot address it. The only way for that to be the case is if it is undetectable. If you would like to change your definition and say it can be detected... then you've reduced it to a natural detectable thing. Furthermore, everything given as an example of the supernatural has thus far, been natural in origin.
------ Faith is a fallacy.
---On the contrary: you appear to use it to believe the three assertions above. Faith is nothing more than the axioms of a person's belief system.
No faith is acceptance of beliefs without regard to evidence. Such is easily a fallacy.
--- What do you or I believe without proof? That's faith. Here's something that I believe through faith: the scientific method is a valid way to determine how things work.
Nonsense. You believe that on the grounds of evidence. Certainly the scientific method doesn't prove itself, but the results are testable. We are chatting away on some of the results right now. Science is accepted as a valid way to determine how things work, because either science is a valid way to determine how things work or modern technology is really really really really extremely lucky. Chalking such things up to faith, is simply pathetic. As if the ability to use the concepts of physics to make a cell phone (which probably isn't just luck) to the blind acceptance of gods, fairies, angels, jinn, and goblins are not in the same ballpark, much less the same league.
--- It can't be proven, but I believe it anyway.
Again, until things start falling up... science is pretty immune from most criticisms. It seems extremely desperate to think that belief that Einstein's relativity is valid (discovered via science) is roughly on the same grounds as accepting something without even a suggestion of evidence. Weak.
--- This is very close. The point of science is to discover what our universe ("nature") does and why. The supernatural, by definition, exists outside of our universe; it is not natural.
Natural things are those things which exist and interact with our universe. Limiting supernatural things in such a way is to argue that they are the set of all those things which don't exist. You cannot eat your cake and have it too. Either it exists and interacts or it doesn't exist and doesn't interact.
--- That doesn't preclude it, in theory, if it exists, from affecting our universe; the concept of "supernatural" is not bound by natural laws.
In what theory? You're just pulling this crap out of your ass. You are talking about beyond the natural, and you still want characteristics of the existing like "thing", "exists", "interaction with natural stuff". These are rather outlandish claims, which need substantiation... though that's only something which could be done for natural things.
--- You have quite a bit of faith. Investigate further and you will find that scientists studying the start of life, existence of life, start of the universe, function of the brain etc. have more questions than answers.
More questions about the minor details. The main details are pretty well understood. Furthermore, simply because they aren't understood doesn't mean they aren't natural. This sort of supernatural gaps nonsense is nothing more than an argument f
It is no longer uncommon to be uncommon.
And if he isn't, he isn't.
Saying "I am" a bunch of times doesn't change this, that, or the other.
Unless something really important changes, I intend to keep the 10 Commandments as long as I'm able. Especially the first one.
Your water example is prime: If you need a glass of water, the same amount of vapor won't do you any good.
"Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us." -Jesus Christ The Lord's Prayer
Religion is that shared moral language you mention. One not open for discussion, not up for change. The power structures that grow from it are much more enduring and dangerous than those built on the idea of mutual defense or shared resources. By its nature - enlightened wisdom from the creators - religion can't be matched by works of people. This is an elitist system which further solidifies the power structure.
As for the truthiness of religious people who claim they follow a faith - there are many different interpretations of this obvious divine wisdom. Many claims are contradictory so not everyone can be right. Do the 10-commandments matter, or is Jesus all you need? Was Jesus a nobody? Or a valid prophet, but over-ridden by this other guy? How many gods are there?
As for the objective truth, if thousands of Muslims are strapping bombs to themselves in the name of Islam, it's either not a religion of peace, or maybe they meant "pieces", as in bloody chunks of. The families of these people (and the bombers themselves) feel they're truly religious. Who are you to say they're wrong? Not to imply for a second that I want to pick on Islam, it's just the current joke. "Oh, don't read our holy book, let us explain it." Christianity has enough strange loopholes and contradictory passages to justify anything you'd want.
The problem is that people like you lie to the world, claiming that religion doesn't say these things and doesn't contain these messages. It's obviously false, to anyone who has ever cracked one of these books open. You may be a pacifist, and the books may contain many loving ideas, but there are also sections commanding followers to kill.
Your very freedom to believe one meaning of the books despite their implicit words is exactly what suicide bombers use - different passages, but the same selective reading.
So no, while religion is ultimately just the actions of its participants, it doesn't seem like it's had a net positive effect across the world. Much tragedy has been committed (and worse, accepted) in its name, and what good is done is usually to extend a net around those helped. Missionaries bring help, and religion, to those in need of help. But the worst thing is how bad things (ethnic cleansing, etc) are accepted by people because of religious answers. If religion wasn't black and white, neither would the guilt of the Jews be...
You claim it doesn't exist, because of lack of evidence. In the absence of evidence, science is agnostic; it knows that lack of evidence is not evidence of lack.
The supernatural is defined as everything that is not bound by the laws of nature -- magic is a good word to use. If magic existed, why couldn't it be detectable?
No, faith is belief without proof. People change their "faith" every day when it disagrees with the evidence they observe. Faith describes our belief in things that have insufficient evidence, which is probably the vast majority of the things we believe (very little in our day to day lives has been scientifically proven, or proven to the extent that it would hold up in a court of law.)
My belief is consistent with my observations, but correlation with observations is not proof. Logically, we know that just because something happens 100 times in a row doesn't mean that it will happen the 101st time, but in practice humans tend to believe it anyway.
That's what "super"natural means: "Unexplainable by natural law or phenomena."
It says "The scientific method seeks to explain the complexities of nature in a replicable way." Also: "Natural sciences, which study natural phenomena, including biological life." (emphasis mine) The point is that science is about nature, not about things outside of nature, if any such things exist.
I don't claim that the supernatural exists, I claim that science can't tell whether or not the supernatural exists. If I'm wrong, please explain why (continuing to assert that the supernatural doesn't exist isn't explanation).
Theologians have personal testimony, which isn't scientific evidence, but is still evidence; they, and philosophers, also have logic and reason. Testimony, logic/reason, and domain-specific vocabulary are the tools of theologians and philosophers that I referred to a few posts back.
I don't claim that the unsolved problems in science are supernatural, but I do claim that the unsolved problems in science disprove your claim that science
Well, if it is so obviously false, may be you can crack one of them open and quote? May be you can justify how any of us, living today, are qualified to be the followers of Moses? (There is a problem: Moses is dead.) Or may be you can explain to us how can we possibly kill people who prevent Moses and his tribe from settling down in the promised land? (These people were also dead for 2.5K years.) You are the one who is lying. Seriously, take either the Bible or the Koran and try finding a single verse to justify your statement, i.e. that it commands the contemporary audience to kill.
There is a world of difference between Moses commanding his followers to kill and the book documenting it, and, on the other hand, the book commanding us to kill, do you not agree?
--- You claim it doesn't exist, because of lack of evidence.
I don't believe in it for three reasons, the first is lack of evidence, the second is absurdity, and the third is because I refuse to be agnostic about the absurd.
--- In the absence of evidence, science is agnostic; it knows that lack of evidence is not evidence of lack.
Science doesn't tend to address non-claims. However, if you check back you'll find your original claim had to do with cause and effect, which science is perfectly okay without (such is the case with QM). Attempting to bend over backwards and make the supernatural as absurd as you can, such that it escapes science is to make it, ultimately moot. You are, in essence, defining it out of existence to try to make supposing it plausible while removing (as a consequence) the ability to make it relevant or able to exist within the natural universe.
---- The supernatural is defined as everything that is not bound by the laws of nature -- magic is a good word to use. If magic existed, why couldn't it be detectable?
If magic existed it would be detectable. It would also be testable. Each time I say "Llaberif", I create a fireball in my hand and it drains 200 calories from me. Magic would be quite natural, if it existed. You are simply looking at the idea of magic from the known perspective of being rather absurd and trying to force it into existence while somehow keeping it out of the natural realm. Magic would make for odd laws of physics, though they would still be the laws of physics.
--- No, faith is belief without proof. People change their "faith" every day when it disagrees with the evidence they observe.
They can certainly look at the evidence for their beliefs, but faith is belief without regard to the evidence in question.
--- Faith describes our belief in things that have insufficient evidence, which is probably the vast majority of the things we believe (very little in our day to day lives has been scientifically proven, or proven to the extent that it would hold up in a court of law.)
No. Faith quite often applies only to those things without good evidence because typically when there is real evidence we accept it on the grounds of evidence. We have evidence that computers function because we use them, we don't have evidence of ghosts and thusly they must be accepted on faith (because no evidence can exist for the non-existent). Most of the things in our day to day lives are proven because they consistently work. If they don't consistently work they are probably wrong. When we say that such things can only be accepted on faith, we are at the understanding that there can be no evidence for such a thing.
--- My belief is consistent with my observations, but correlation with observations is not proof. Logically, we know that just because something happens 100 times in a row doesn't mean that it will happen the 101st time, but in practice humans tend to believe it anyway.
You are equivocating belief with faith and proof with strong evidence. You are arguing that since your wireless telephone has only worked the first 100 times you tried it, that it is a belief completely devoid of evidence that it will work the 101st time. If a certain theory predicts something, and after 100 tries nothing has falsified the theory... there might be some merit to the idea. That's the way science works. What ever fails to fail... is science.
--- That's what "super"natural means: "Unexplainable by natural law or phenomena."
Would you argue that a photon splitting into an electron and positron is supernatural? There is no cause and effect at work, and we can naturally describe a causeless event. Then if the supernatural existed and had a naturalistic effect we could describe this effect and thusly make such a thing natural... by definition.
--- It says "The scientific method seeks to explain the complexities of nature in a replicable way." Also: "Natural sciences, which study natural phenomena, including biological life
It is no longer uncommon to be uncommon.
Exodus 22:18 - in any English version you'll find, the bible commands followers to kill people of other faiths.
Islam is easier. If you're honest you'll admit that in fact there are many calls for ethnic cleansing and religious war.
Go back and reply to my message again, seriously, without bringing up another strawman. There are many issues in it that you left untouched.
Calling faith stupid doesn't make it true.
If you read my post again, you might notice I didn't.
You make a claim about the world -- there exists an Absolute moral that should be followed by all humans -- without being able to give any reasoned support or even examples. Except belief.
To make claims about how the world is made without any reasons (and with thousands of competing theories at least as likely) is very similar to religion.
Again. You are arguing against Catholic dogma -- and you supported your own position with a non-representative quote... that breaks my moral.
The support for Hell in early Xianity is well documented by researchers (no English references but here are two WikiPedia pages).
Some churches don't want their god to be much worse than Hitler raised to Stalin, so I must applaud their humanity -- and they also do a service by entertaining me with Absolute Definitions from god about how the world is (Morals, Hell, etc) which are rewritten completely every second century... I think the relevant expression among non-computer people is "LOL".
It is also fun to read e.g. arguments that consistent descriptions of the afterlife in the New Testament etc are just parables without descriptions of what the different parts in the story are shown to be in the "real world". (The bible authors invented some other world with a Hell -- and wrote morally uplifting stories about that world without mentioning that little fact and assuming everyone would guess that circumstance?!)
I'm sorry, but that was just naive ("good for the species" argument?!) Read up on the subject instead.
Karma: Excellent (My Karma? I wish...:-( )
You are doing a straw man. I was obviously not discussing the nature of religion, I was claiming that "To make [extreme claims without any basis in proof or reason -- when there are many competing theories and no reason any of them should be true] is very similar to religion".
And re "nature" -- I could not care less what religious people see as the most important in their political/religious beliefs (-: symbolic cannibalism? No more details, please... :-).
I am beginning to be certain that you have been trolling me.Again -- that contradicts the position of most Xian churches since very early years. You can continue to cherry pick quotes all you want, but that is well documented.
You didn't quote -- "Read up on the subject instead.", since you seemed really confused -- and you earlier admitted to not know the subject. I only discussed efficiency because you wrote "efficient stratagy for survival for humanity" (which looks like pre-1960s "good for the species"-thinking.)
Karma: Excellent (My Karma? I wish...:-( )
Just an obvious note re the status of support for your theories re religion -- i.e. lots of contradicting theories that make claims about reality without support outside of people's heads.
I am certain that religious people see something else as the "nature" of their theory of the world's reason to exist. I don't really care any more about that than philosophical implications for the flogiston theory. (-: I won't read books about string theory until it is testable either. :-)
Gud i Helvete! (Anachronistic Swedish curse from the west coast, "God in Hell". A milder version is "Gud i London").
It seems you are right! Catholicism has rewritten.. sorry, reinterpreted ... the basic facts about their religion's afterlife that they were given by divine inspiration! After a couple of thousands of years!!
This is really funny. I am quite old, so I read up on the subject more than a decade ago in books that were older. The Catholic encyclopedia is quite old, so it has not been updated to show the new reality yet!! More modern references show the less sadistic version. (-: I didn't even read the content on Wikipedia, so sure was I... :-)
I thought the Catholics if anyone would stay with integrity above details like their religion making Hitler look good... :-) Let me guess, in a decade the muslims will reinterpret their Hell?? He he he... I almost fell off the chair laughing.
For the third time -- just read up on the subject instead of arguing about things you don't have even a popular background in. Partly because I'm a bad pedagogue and don't have much time now -- and partly because Dawkins really got "Selfish gene" right (read the notes in the 2nd ed, they are as good as the book itself).
Karma: Excellent (My Karma? I wish...:-( )
As far as I'm concerned, Christianity has actually harmed morality. Many Christians believe that you are saved not by works, but by faith. So whether or not you "walk with God" depends not on whether or not you help the poor, show kindness, or are decent, but purely on whether you have accepted Jesus as your savior.
Well, this bit about saved by faith not works was never said by Jesus, but by Paul, and if you read carefully all the epistles where Paul brings this up, he is talking about the specific problem where Jews were telling gentile converts they must follow the law of Moses, which had things like stoning adulters, stoning people who broke the Sabath, etc., all things Jesus repudiated by his actions and teachings.
What Paul is really saying in the epistles is, it is not by works based on law of Moses you are saved, but by faith in God's promise of the messiah, given by Moses and the prophets, and as Moses said, when the prophet (messiah) comes, do everything he tells you.
What Martin Luther and the churches have done is twist this around, and what they are saying is one is not saved by doing the works Jesus said to do, but by faith in Jesus. Something Paul never said or meant, and something which ultimately makes no sense. Its like being stuck in the Jungles of Nam, surrounded by Viet Cong and outnumbered ten to one. But fortunately, you have the greatest soldier of them all, Rambo, to lead out of this mess. But you need to rally the troops to follow him in order to escape from this mess. So you have one soldier going around saying to the men, do whatever Rambo tells you (his works), and another going around saying, we will not be saved by obeying the orders (doing the works) Rambo tell us to do, but by faith in Rambo. Its nonsense.
Jesus never said this distortion of Paul, and in fact says the opposite. In Matthew 25, 31-48, he welcomes into his kingdom those who have helped the sick, fed the poor, and clothed the naked, and he condemns the hypocrites who praised his name in synogues but did none of this.
To me the hypocrites he condemns sums up many evangelicals and other Christians.
Most Christians do not follow Christ. If you knew anything about Christ's teachings, you would realize this. These evangelicals who are big Bush supportors and all in favor spending money on war and giveing big tax breaks to the rich, but are opposed to spending anything on aid to the poor are no more Christian and no more follow Christ then some hard core nazi the went to church every Sunday during WW II, then went out and killed people the rest of the week.
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He he, you use solipsism to prove existence of god?! :-) That was ... new. Now, how can you use solipsism to prove the existence of just the hanging god Oden -- and not any of the other thousand theories about existence which people are certain of? (Buddha, allah, etc?)
For the fourth time... Not only do you sound naive, you didn't understand when I used the terms "game theory", "evolution", "animal behaviour" as discussed in the uniquely popular treatment of Williams' research -- the "Selfish Gene". Check e.g. Wikipedia for a too shallow overview of the interesting game theory. (You claim to live where it would take weeks to get one of the best selling books about science in all of history which still is in print... I won't call you a liar but note that I envy you -- is it cold in Antarctica this time of the year?)
Here I call you straight up dishonest. The full quote re Catharinus is below (my emphasis). That teaching is something
In short, refusing the physical existence of fire was not
Karma: Excellent (My Karma? I wish...:-( )
So, you are dismissing all Hinduism.
absolutely not...read again. Refusing to opine is not rejection.
you come to sound conclusions about the import of religions based on your own **lack** of information. This is generally a logical fallacy called "the argument from ignorance" and your argument of "I've never heard of it so it can't be important" falls squarely into it.
Again, I'm not rejecting Hinduism as valid, or invalid. I acknowledge my ignorance of it and move on. I think you are, like most people, assuming that by refusing to take a side on the existence of a higher power I am in fact taking the atheists view. I am neither theistic, nor atheistic. I believe the concept of a higher power is unverifiable (in most cases by definition).
While it may be pragmatic to evaluate religions on their relative "good" or "harm" to society you leave open the metrics for such an evaluation.
Well, there's a good reason for that. The meaning of "good" and "harm" are personal and deeply complex. I have my opinion and you have yours. we aren't discussing that. I'm not attempting to convince you that religion X is good or does harm. That's too simple in any case...*people* act, people do good, people do harm. The religion can only be evaluated based on the characteristics of the people it attracts/develops.
You especially ignore the harm caused to society by the perpetuation of non-reason over reason.
My answer to this always gets people riled up, but since you brought it up: Can you prove a net harm over the course of human history? Can you reason out what human society might have become if the notion of a higher power had never occurred to us? I can't. It is *way* too entwined in our nature. Now, I might be convinced that we can at some point learn to do without it. But even that requires that we understand the reasons for its prevelance. Religion provides something that is nearly universally sought in groups of humans. Until you can identify and replace that you can't reasonably say that "perpetuation of non-reason" is, in fact, a negative trait. Human society is like any ecosystem. Elimination of any subset of the system can have unexpected consequences.
While your ignorance is understandable, it shows the failure of your system of evaluating religious systems...
I saved this till last since I think it is the most imporant thing. You are making a subtle assumption about my beliefs. Why do you believe that I should be responsible for evaluating every religious system under heaven? The question that no one seems to ask is whether this whole discussion is significant. If the question of a higher power is unprovable why do we ask it? There are plenty of questions whose answers are unknown yet provable with effort. Why then do we expend *vast* amounts of effort arguing the sides of an unprovable question.
1. You argue philosophy as a basis for your world view -- and that was the best you can do as support?! :-(
2. You strangely didn't comment on: Now, how can you use solipsism to prove the existence of just the hanging god Oden -- and not any of the other thousand theories about existence which people are certain of? (Buddha, allah, etc?)
I realize that I attack something which is as central to you as anything in your personality, but please... at least use a good argument for explaining why you should assume that there is a god and it has to be a xian one (if there are any good arguments, which I doubt), that was sad.
As I wrote in my comment, too shallow overview of the interesting game theory. I seriously doubt that you are arguing honestly here. But maybe you just do mistakes on this point since you don't know about Williams' research (see e.g. this, it is still not comprehensive. Read up on different genetic interests for e.g. children and parents, between the sexes, etc.).
AGAIN: You are certain about the existence of an Absolute Moral -- while obviously not even having learned about the relevant research. It seems you are arguing just to bury that in lots of text.
I argued for Hell-as-torture and it is very well supported by the Catholic Encyc (as I quoted). The exact implementation of Hell's torture is irrelevant (physical or not, the fire seems to be pain according to all sources). That is my position --
Everything you read an argument for/against is controversial?! :-) (Please note that I wrote about when they argued for the Xian god as a sun god...)
Lazarus and the rich man: Also irrelevant, since that doesn't contradict torture.
Karma: Excellent (My Karma? I wish...:-( )
For the third time: You haven't answered when I wrote: Now, how can you use solipsism to prove the existence of just the hanging god Oden -- and not any of the other thousand theories about existence which people are certain of? (Buddha, allah, etc?)
(I'm still laughing at your argument for god's existence, btw... :-)
At last you accept that evolutionary stable strategies etc are new for you. They are best described in Selfish Gene, of all sources I've seen. This is a step up -- you refused repeatedly to believe that any of this could be new. (The insults because I wouldn't find alternative sources for you than one of the best sellers of all time in popular science books weren't exactly impressive...)
You also missed commenting on: AGAIN: You are certain about the existence of an Absolute Moral -- while obviously not even having learned about the relevant research. It seems you are arguing just to bury that in lots of text.
The next step is reading quite a bit more. Then you'll realize that it is immoral to argue for a strategy (moral) that can never work in a given society and e.g. will degenerate into clan feuds. Which quite neatly kneecaps arguments for an Absolute Moral. (Which was why I brought it up from the beginning.)
You argued against that the theory of torture in Hell wasn't a central part of Xianity, despite central bible quotes. By misusing quotes that seemed to be arguing if Hell's torture came from a physical fire or not. Or if the tortured souls were visible from Heaven or not.
This description of the argument don't only do a straw man argument not only on my position -- but on your own!!
So you are arguing it is equal to torture people for eternity if they say they might like it once? That was an interesting Absolute Moral you have! Makes Hitler look like a humanist.
And also... ah, why bother. That "argument" must be trolling.
I quoted old catholic dogma about Hell's existence and torture -- I didn't embrace that.
My conclusion is that either the Hell with fire exists (which makes god much worse than Stalin and other beginners) or the churches rewrite thousands years old dogma so they don't have to defend their god as the ultimate torturing bastard (which makes xianity just a theory that is rewritten for social reasons, not an Absolute Truth).
He he, I admitted that it seems that even the catholics have rewritten their millenia old absolute truths(!!). I doubt you can admit being wrong in this subject, because as a religious person you identify these opinions as a central part of your personality.
Karma: Excellent (My Karma? I wish...:-( )
"The jump from micro to macro seems a difficult problem that is rarely addressed or even differentiated. When you cannot observe something, it moves outside the realm of science. When have we observed macro-evolution?"
Hah! Attempting to differentiate between micro- and macro-evolution. There is no difference; small change*lots of time = large change.
Umm, no. First off, micro-evolution requires no real changes in DNA. It is just genetics. The strong survive to breed and pass on those traits to their offspring. Nothing more. Macro-evolution requires that new DNA be "created" somehow, so that what was animal X is now animal Y. Also, especially in biology, the whole is often more than the sum of its parts. Take the eye for instance. It would be pretty useless unless it was fully developed as it is now. Why, following the guides for evolution, would the small change that started the evolution of the eye continue, since it would be a pretty useless trait?
If you MUST ask the question, though, ask it right: Have we observed a species diverge into two separate breeding pools that cannot breed with one another? The answer's "yes".
Oh really? Care to provide an example? But let's be careful with definitions here. Take domesticated dogs for instance. There are breeds of dogs that cannot breed with each other. Yet that does not make them not all dogs. What I'm looking for would be more like from a dog you eventually get a split such that you get dogs from one line and cats from another. Got any examples like that?
Over a very long period of time, one would guess this leads to a heirarchy of flora and fauna, and soo-prize, soo-prize, that's what we have.
I'm not sure what your point is here, but if you are arguing that the different forms of life that we see is evidence of evolution, that's ridiculous. I can easily explain the different forms of life by saying that God created it. It has no real significance for either argument. Why is evolution a more likely (or even likely, for that matter) explanation for the existence of life?
"I might argue that some of the greatest scientists that ever lived believed strongly in God (take Newton or Einstein for example)"
Um. Einstein was a deist at best. He had the Church all over him for telling them he was misquoted. He believed in the wonderful complexity of the universe, and referred to that as 'God', in the philosophical sense.
I didn't say Einstein was a Christian, just that he believed in God. I am certainly not old enough to have even possibly known him personally, so I cannot say for certain what he did or did not believe. From the quotes that I found, it seemed he had some belief in some sort of God. That was my point.
As for Newton; one can hardly blame a guy in the 16- and 1700's for being religious. There was little choice. Philosophically, you might say that's why atheism is becoming a 'problem' in modern times; lack of church control.
Oh, so there were no atheists back in the 16- and 1700s, huh? There is always a choice of what you believe. You might not get to believe it for long in your current state (alive), depending on where and when you lived, but you always have a choice.
Still, especially in the field of biology, established religion and science are usually at odds. When this conflict occurs, I'm sorry but Science must win out if there is to be any progress.
Who is to say that "science" is right and "religion" is wrong? And why are they usually at odds? Most of the time they are at odds because the "scientists" don't like God so they try and look for ways around having God. That involves a lot of explaining and hand-waving (a lot of cumulative random chance) to get where we are. On the other hand, God explains things quite elegantly.
Besides, I could argue that origins (how did life begin) is not a topic for science. Is it observable? Testable?