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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?'"
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.
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.
.... 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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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?
As Grissom would say: The evidence doesn't lie. What happens though when the evidence doesn't speak at all?
Who's No and why do you worship it? :)
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
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...
stop insulting logic you piece of shit
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.
[If nobody knows everything then what knows everything?]
There is no requirement that there be a what that knows everything.
TT
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 ...
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.
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I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)
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.
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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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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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.
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."
That we know of.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
But are you agnostic to **all** religious claims?
You write:
"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."
Indeed, a thinking person must keep his mind open but there are limits. If you are keeping your mind open to the general idea of "god" are you also keeping it open to the possibility that the entire pantheon of Greek Gods? It is one thing to admit that certain general and un-restricted propositions, like a vague "god", cannot be disproved or falsified yet it is another to actually keep your mind open to all possibilities. I would be surprised to find out that you are **truly** agnostic and believe that any and all specific claims of god(s) are possible and I'm going to guess that you actually have ruled some of them out. Zuess? Thor? Mithras? Ganesha? L. Ron Hubard? The Rev. Moon?
The reality is that "true" agnosticism is as untenable as absolutist, positive atheism.
well, try this one for size...
Just as science can "prove" that a shape made up of straight lines and 4 corners of 90 degrees is a square and not a triangle, and circles don't have corners...
It is possible to attribute qualities to a deity figure that simply cannot co-exist. Attributes such as "all-powerful" and "all-knowing" are two such attributes. If a deity is "all-knowing", meaning that they are said to know everything that has happened, is happening and will happen, then such a deity themselves do not have any choice as to what they are able to do - because they already know what it is that they will do. Therefore they cannot be "all-powerful" enough to exercise free will.
Just a thought, that's all.
Once I was a four stone apology. Now I am two separate gorillas.
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"?
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And what happens when a rational atheist, holding no irrational fantasies about any mystical nature of man's existence, is in charge of the military weapons technology instead?
I'd answer that for you, but I'd be invoking Godwin's Law.
Don't put atheists, deists, or anyone else on a pedestal. They are all susceptible to the same foibles as the early crusaders. In your own post, for instance, you suggest that the solution to "the greatest threat to peace on this planet ever known in the history of this planet" is, in essence, genocide itself. If that's rational, you can keep it. It's not even human.
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
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
Summary of the above:
"The invention of a god or gods will occur when a self-aware organism comprehends the inevitability of its own death."
Pick up the bread knife and carve your way into forensic history
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.
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
Galactic Overlord Xenu??!?
IAALS.
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.
However, when a treatment for life extension becomes available, it seems very likely that religious leaders will call it an aberration and unnatural. Those who refuse to take the treatment will die off in a generation. Those who shun technological advances quickly become a minority, e.g. the amish.
Talking to a ________________ (fill in your favorite - ie. priest,rabbi, imam,...)
Q: how do you know that *your* scriptures are the true word of God?
A: It is written in the scriptures!
Q: Yes, but how do you know your scriptures are authentic?
A: They came from God!
Q: Ok, how do you know that?
A: Well, it is written right here in the scriptures!!!
Sometimes one has to think that religious people have some kind of mental blockade when it comes to critical thinking about (ones) religion.
OTOH There lies a great comfort in following religious rules. You can do some of the worst things a human being is capable of and just say "God wants it!". If things go bad, "God is testing me!". If things go well, "Thank God for this". Should you really screw up, "God forgive me"....
Taking responsibility for your own actions is often a very uncomfortable way; so, why don't we just delegate responsibility for *our own* actions to a higher deity?
As long as there is "religious freedom" there will be people justifying their deeds with the wishes of a deity, thus giving the rest of humanity a bad time!
I am not opposed to religious feeling, but many people tend to abuse these feelings, and even more people let themselves be abused; thus delegating responsibility for their actions. When will we have a religion that truly holds you responsible for your actions?
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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.
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 ;)
For most people, religious belief is a replacement for moral values, and for some it's the entire basis of their lives.
People who find meaning in life and have moral values without religion are really lucky. Most people would crash and burn when their most basic concepts are revealed to be just a mean to control them.
Daniel Dennett has some interesting views on how Darwin's theory affects religion.
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.
"If you don't believe me, look at environmentalism, the new urban religion"
I'm sure that there are lots of people who behave like it's a religion. On the other hand, the 'scripture' of environmentalism has hard science to back it up. There's really no need to believe in it; the pressures caused by environmental effect such as global warming will be felt and dealt with.
No, I'm not of the school that there's some mythical 'point of no return'. Even if there is, we'll get close, we'll notice it's a bit too warm out, and we'll fix it. Hell, we're doing that now.
By the way, calling environmentalism a religion is a disservice to low-emissions engineers and environmental scientists everywhere.
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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.
The historical Buddha is not considered a supreme being, but a human being who transcended attachment, suffering, etc. There might be lots of Buddhas around, for that matter. Karma != fate, but is closer to Newton. A lot of times Buddhist teachers call it "karma cause and effect."
I love that donkey. Hell, I love everybody.
Prove that I don't have a wonderful magical blue puppy (fluent in five languages, including the long-dead tongue of the Hittites) in my living room. You can't?
Do you see the problem? The burden of proof is on the claimant, not the claimee. Agnosticism is not a logically tenable position to hold.
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--"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.
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.
"And what happens when a rational atheist, holding no irrational fantasies about any mystical nature of man's existence, is in charge of the military weapons technology instead?
I'd answer that for you, but I'd be invoking Godwin's Law."
Are you referring to the Nazis, and their exalted leader Hitler, who believed that he was fighting for God? Check this out:
"My feelings as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter."
""Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord."
Hitler, and the whole Nazi program, was extremely religious. Wikipedia says this:
"Volkism was inherently hostile toward atheism: freethinkers clashed frequently with Nazis in the late 1920s and early 1930s. On taking power, Hitler banned freethought organizations and launched an "anti-godless" movement. In a 1933 speech he declared: "We have . . . undertaken the fight against the atheistic movement, and that not merely with a few theoretical declarations: we have stamped it out." This forthright hostility was far more straightforward than the Nazis' complex, often contradictory stance toward traditional Christian faith."
You might think that they were wrong, or otherwise disagree with them, but that does not make them atheist.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
Perhaps true. Ignosticism, on the other hand, is probably the only logically tenable position to hold. But then some consider ignosticism to be a form of agnosticism anyway...
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
Omnes stulti sunt.
I'm one of those people who goes back and forth on ideas of God a lot, but one thing I know for sure is I don't believe in hell. Being a father is the closest thing I can acquaint to the idea of a God - and as a Father I could never condemn my son to such a thing, for any act.
Another thing I believe, as a father, is that the most hurtful thing a son can do to his father is deny him.
Lastly, while I do question all these things frequently - I also believe that if there is a God - he made me this way. He gave me this ability to question these things, and what father would condemn his son to eternal damnation for merely doing what is natural?
Certainly no father I'd care to believe in.
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.
Furthermore, the organism is likely incapable of creating a god any greater than itself. Most deities seem to have all the wonderful flaws of character that humans have --- jealousy, anger, hatred, etc.
The historical buddha has little to do with the religion of Buddhism. Pure Buddhism is almost non-existent. The Buddhism that exists is subsumed with Hindu mythology and is why there are no end of Buddha statues and "rub-the-tummy" fat Buddhas. Hell, he isn't even Siddhartha!
Thus, most "Buddhists" believe in the super-natural, even though they don't call it/him "God". The story of Siddhartha's birth is a perfect example of what I'm talking about, as is the believe in literal reincarnation or transmigration of the soul.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
Look at it this way:
If God is our father and we are here to learn to be like him, then some are going to be better at that than others. Let's say you have two kids - one is dutiful, always listens, and is completely trustworthy. The other is a druggy, always take the easy way out, etc. Now you are retiring and you want to leave the family business to one of them. Obviously, you choose the dutiful one. The other one believes that you are leaving him in hell - but really, he just made his own hell.
I don't think God sends people to hell for the most part - he just elevates people out of it.
while (sig==sig) sig=!sig;
An interesting anagram of "BANACH TARSKI" is "BANACH TARSKI BANACH TARSKI"
"So if agnosticism and atheism are both untenable, what's left?"
You've mis-summarized my point. I said that " 'true' agnosticism is as untenable as absolutist, positive atheism." The difference hinges on the absoluteness of the two qualified positions I laid out. "'true' agnosticism" would be the "we can never know anything for sure" position and "absolutist, positive atheism" would be the "it's physically impossible for any kind of god whatsoever to exist" position. Both extremes are untenable.
In everyday life and in science when something is sufficiently proven it becomes a "fact" and we accept it as true until proven otherwise rather than say "until we can prove that we know all there is to know, I will remain curious, but nothing more." We will never "know all there is to know" and to withhold judgement until then is a silly solipsistic position which isn't practical, or, I think, reasonable or valid.
So, I think one can take the strong atheist position and say that there is no reasonable, scientific reason to believe in the existence of the god of Christianity--and to say that absent such reason it is reasonable to say such a god doesn't exist. Someday, incontrovertible evidence could prove such a position wrong but one does not need to consider the question an open one in the meantime.
Keeping an open mind can mean being able to change it, not pretending their are no facts in the world and that everything, including the question of god and if the world is real, is an open question. The absolutist "agnostic" position eventually becomes the solipsistic one when taken to its logical conclusion.
And saying you don't know is a cop-out, and not really an answer.
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
(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
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 without 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!
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"
One belief that C.S. Lewis espoused was that one can only go to Hell if one, in fact, chooses to. Since (to Christians) God is the source of all goodness, if you choose to isolate yourself from God you isolate yourself from all that is good and pure. He phrased it something like this: "There are two kinds of people in this world - those who tell God 'Thy will be done,' and those who God tells 'Thy will be done.' The gates of hell are locked from *the inside*." People who end up in Hell choose to consign themselves to the outer darkness of non-entity rather than submit themselves to God.
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.
For an atheistic regime, they sure had an odd motto: Gott Mit Uns
P.P.S. I'm doing Science and I'm still alive.
Agnosticism was an attempt to soften the absolutist tone of atheism. The position was that there's little or (more likely) no credible evidence supporting the existence of a deity, but it's logically difficult to prove a negative, so there's always going to be a provisional element in such a judgement. This is very different from a position of being undecided. It's quite possible to be agnostic but to believe that the evidence in support of atheism is somewhere between "beyond a reasonable doubt" and "beyond the shadow of a doubt." But if a deity showed up tomorrow and bought me a Guinness, or unzipped the sky from the horizon, the preponderance of evidence would shift. Meanwhile, I'm not going to be out slaughtering ruminants on the solstice Just In Case. Pascal's Wager doesn't make sense when you have mutually contradictory religious beliefs to choose from.
Get your teeth into a small slice: the cake of liberty
That is the biggest problem with religion, it's used all the time as an excuse for immoral acts. It's so ironic considering that their main recruting strategy is to appeal to morality by saying that if we believe we should not steal, we should not kill, we should be nice with others, it means we are a one of them. This is utter bullshit having a sense of community, ethics and morality is quite natural and totally independent of your faith. More often than not, religions end up circumventing rational morality, sometimes in very gruesome ways, instead of making people more ethical.
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
In Christianity, the rule is "Christ chooses anyone who sincerely chooses Christ."
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.
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 :-).
I think religion came about because of humanity's need to find explanation for everything. When presented with a question that we don't have an answer to, humans are more likely to make up an answer using their existing knowledge rather than say they don't know. Not everyone of course, but most people. An example from the past: What causes lightening and thunder? Well nothing I know of can create those sorts of things, it must be the Gods making it. No doubt some people would provide the same answer today, but we now know the real causes of lightening and thunder and the answer is not as mystical as was previously thought.
This can be evidenced by the pre-curser (or original, can't remember exactly) to Judaism where they believed in Yahwey and Yahwee (spelling?), the Male and Female gods. The theory went that all living things come in either male or female varieties. It requires a male and a female of any species to create life, so if God(s) created life they there must be both a male and female God.
So I don't think we are hard wired to believe in a Deity, otherwise I've been wired wrongly for a long time. I think it's more our desire to seek an explanation for everything we question, our general failure to admit not having all the answers, our imagination, and attempts at logical reasoning using limited knowledge.
Shitdrummer.
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
Sorry, that doesn't work. No reasonable and informed person would ever choose hell.
I think you underestimate people's capacity to be stubborn and wrong-headed. People will knowingly do stupid things just so they won't have to back down, or admit they were wrong. It's exactly the same sort of arrogance C. S. Lewis was talking about.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
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)
If there were no Voltaire, it would be necessary for God to create him. :)
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
You claim it's arrogance, but I'm not buying it. Take me for instance, I was raised as a true believe in a fundamentalist Baptist church. If I was arrogant and stubborn I would still be believing what I believed when I was a teen. Instead I have slowly been won over by the arguments that the Bible is not infallible and God is probably just a myth. BTW, that change in belief happened very begrudgingly at first, so you may be right. Maybe I was pretty stubborn as a Baptist.
To me none believers seem much more like people using their god given judgment the best they can given the lack of evidence as opposed to the stubborn arrogant gits you are implying. Admit it, if there is a god he sure doesn't make his existence obvious, does he? If he made all the stars, how hard would it have been to put up a few that spelled out "believe in me or go to hell", or how about making a monthly appearance in the skies over Israel reminding his chosen people of their covenant? Yet he does none of these things, so if anyone happens to have doubts about his existence maybe it's not stubbornness or wrongheadedness, maybe it's just a best effort at making sense of the world.
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
.....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
Ahh, so one reminder seven thousand years ago in a document in an obscure language is sufficient notice when the fate of someones eternal soul is on the line? I think an almighty god could try a little bit harder if he really cared about his children.
And you're extension to the analogy doesn't make sense either since god doesn't pick up all the none believers after they die give them a stern talking to and drop them off at heaven, does he? Well, maybe he does but that isn't Christianity.
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
"If the Bible proves the existence of God then Superman comics prove the existence of Superman".
How is you swearing up and down that having religion equates to ignorance any different from a bible-thumping redneck swearing that evolution is a sham?
The big question is: what if? There could be a God, there could be seven, there could be millions, one for each grain of sand. Regardless of your personal beliefs, there is no way to know for sure.
No matter how loudly you might say it.
You are right. In Christianity at least, the idea of Hell as a place of eternal torment is untenable. A good example appears below: amRadioHed destroys C.S. Lewis' "free will" argument in just two paragraphs. He is, in some people's view, the best of what the Catholic (Calvinist, whatever) church has to offer in terms of theology, and yet his argument is totally inane. You just cannot reconcile the notions of God being the benevolent, omnipotent designer who designs some souls to suffer forever... For what? For not appeasing God in some way? But he has no lack. There is no way to hurt God or to be in debt to him. He would not miss a penny, would not drop a single tear if he allowed everyone in Heaven.
I have a good friend who is a professor of Biblical history. Hates Hell, hates Augustin's "original sin" (another big theological blooper), and always says that the church keeps these around because they are the easiest ways to get people to come. And to pay. Why make the community relevant? Too much work. Here in US you would have to go door to door and explain to people why God matters, why the community matters, since people are so well off that they do not readily see how they could possibly benefit from it. In order to be effective in US, Christianity must fight the extreme selfishness which resulted from the universal welfare. But why do that? Much too easier is just scaring everyone with Hell. It is a straightforward appeal to an egoist. I used to be skeptical about that, but after years of arguing with him while visiting various churches I found that he is absolutely right. Look at churches without hell, like Mormons: they have a very strong community, which in itself is rewarding enough for people to be a part of. Look also at churches (even Catholic ones) in places where Christians are persecuted. You will find that no one preaches Hell there. Hell just does not sell alongside the Hell on Earth; but the loving community in this life and the communion with God in the afterlife do.
[If you are wondering about my own beliefs, I am a heretic.]
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.
I would challenge that many of the similarities you describe didn't, in fact, develop independently. It can at least partially be explained by cultural exchange. For example, our (Western, Christian) image of God as the old white-haired powerful guy and our idea of hell owe a lot to the Greeks. The belief and worship of saints in Christianity can be attributed to polytheistic beliefs that existed before Christianity and were adapted. There are a lot of examples of this. There has always been a high amount of cultural exchange between different societies, even millennia ago. When you compare cultures that had little if any contact with the Eurasia/Africa landmass you see more dramatic differences in beliefs. I do believe you are correct that the different beliefs serve the same needs, however.
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.
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.
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.
The most devout believers I know regularly question their faith and give it a test, and my local vicar (Anglican), minister (Methodist) and rabbi (Jewish, evidently) say that blind faith is useless because you don't know what you're believing in unless you've proven it to yourself.
Rationality and religion aren't mutually exclusive - take creation for example. The evidence points towards some form of Big Bang, but there's nothing to explain how a universe worth of matter suddenly popped into being, although physicists have been trying. Lets call this unknown thing 'God'. Now, lets take a piece of scripture such as Genesis. Six days of creation... The six 'days' are very close to the actual order of events, and if you had to explain the creation of the galaxy and all things in it to pre-Roman humans would you really be happy trying to explain the concept of astromechanics, biochemistry and evolution? Nah, much easier to explain it in terms of days. People understand those.
Evolution next - perhaps simply throwing together a load of matter and nudging it gently (See chaos theory - what we perceive as chaotic may actually be slightly more directed than it appears) is the easiest way to build life. Also note that nowhere in theBbible does it explicitly state that mankind is the only thing in existence, it only says God created man. It never says "And the LORD thought this was enough, so signed off for the day and didn't do any more life".
You may as well believe - if religion is right then you get a place in the afterlife. If not, by your own argument, what have you lost?
Yes, I'm being devil's advocate here. But don't assume that you're always right because the evidence points that way. After all, we *knew* the earth was flat until we took a better look at it, and we *knew* illness was caused by bad smells until somebody thought to perfect the microscope. Have a read of "Science of Discworld II" by Terry Pratchett if you can find a copy - it takes a good look at why mankind surrounds itself with stories and gods (Amongst other things).
How many people can read hex if only you and dead people can read hex?
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!
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]
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.)
Just about all religions state that if you don't believe in their Deity you won't get to their version of Heaven (consignation to a Hell or Purgatory is optional) independently of you being a righteous person that lived a good life and never hurt a fly (i reckon Mother Teresa has a 90% change of ending in some kind of hell or other).
So, just out of curiosity, me being a non-believer (agnostic, please do not confuse with anti-religion: atheist) and thus undecided, please tell me which Deity is the right one to belief in. If applicable, don't forget to include the specific profets i'm supposed to believe in (for example Islamism, Judaism and Cristianism are all born from the same original religion but differ in their profets) and which is the right version of the sacred book(s) i should read and the correct language to read them in.
Also please let me know what kind of Deity condemns good and fair people to eternal damnation simply because they happen to not believe in that Deity (with a weak argument as "it's your fault for not believing in me"), and why should i follow such a selfish and unfair Deity.
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.
There is a good argument that can be used to test if someone is agnostic, atheist or just confused. Answer the below questions:
1. Are you agnostic or atheistic about your believes in God?
2a. If you answered atheist to question 1: You are an atheist. Good for you.
2b. If you answered agnostic to question 1: Are you agnostic or atheistic about your believes in Santa Claus, The Flying Spaghetti Monster, The Invisible Pink Unicorn and Fairies?
3a. If you answered agnostic to question 2b: You are an agnostic. You believe anything is possible even though there is no proof either way.
3b. If you answered atheist to question 2b: Why are you questioning your unbelief in God, but not your unbelief in Fairies? Both have just as little proof of their existence. Think about it carefully before doing the test a second time. If you arrived at this point for the second time it must be because you have a special reasoning concerning God. Call yourself an agnostic if you want, but be aware that atheists will think that you just like sitting on the fence post unless you give a very good argument for your reasoning.
It's true I tell you, feller at work's next door neighbour read it in the paper.
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!!
thx for the Dawkins quote. That'll be my new sig.
Anyway this discussion about god does lead us nowhere.
One day we all see (or not) if it exists.
I'm just a little bit afraid of religion - not because of the gods but because of what the humans use 'em for.
I was raised with the stories of Jesus Christ - and it doesn't matter if those stories where made up or even if there's a god or not - they just show a good example of living in peace with each other. Why can't christianity be about that?
"we are all atheists about most of the gods that societies have ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further."
The big question is: what if? There could be a God, there could be seven, there could be millions, one for each grain of sand. Regardless of your personal beliefs, there is no way to know for sure.
I don't see that what you say is relevant to the post you replied to, indeed, it backs it up - that we don't know for sure is all the more reason why we shouldn't be putting so much faith and power into religion.
Religion is not "what if", and the OP did not suggest that philosophy on "what if" was wrong - the problem is that religion is "This is true and anything else is wrong".
Note, the post was attacking religion, and not saying that there doesn't exist a god. And the claim was that religion breeds ignorance - whether or not a particular religious claim might coincidentally be true or not is beside the point; the claim is that people are led to believe things "because some book said so", and disregard processes such as evidence and reason.
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).
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?
Which is exactly why religion has been used to oppress the poor over the course of history. Give the worker grunts something to believe in and work towards and they put up much less of a fight when they realize they're doing hard work for a crust of bread (be them legitimate workers or slaves). I think it's more inline to say that religion serves as a point of self-validation when you see what you don't have and, bitterly enough, a way of justifying and repressing ill sentimates towards others have more than you do. This is a very simplistic breakdown, and I'm certainly not hinting at the fact that this is why people accept religion into their life or that there is no God(s) (I'm openly agnostic). But, when you see a phenomena such as religion across the entire world, even in cultures that have been isolated from other cultures for long periods of time, you have to start making logical breakdowns.
I think it's sad that theologians try to skirt around science so hard, when a discovery such as this (if the theory is correct), something deep rooted in the human genome, is as much a win for science trying to understand human nature as it would be for a theologians. After all, if you created life on a planet and wanted to stay out of its way to see how it developed, wouldn't you want to at least give what you've created a clue that you're out there? Maybe it was a mistake, look at the bloody history of religion throughout the world, but could you honestly say that you may not have made the same mistake if you created life?
Wise men say, "Forgiveness is divine, but never pay full price for late pizza."
An interesting anagram of "BANACH TARSKI" is "BANACH TARSKI BANACH TARSKI"
History as it is, I wouldn't call giving humans religious leanings a mistake -- atheist cultures have, thus far, been just as bloody as theistic ones. We just happen to be in a generation where the "global threat to peace" is religious, as opposed to the last, when it was political. And banning Christianity or the like today wouldn't help any more than banning capitalism would have before. It's the ideologues what are the problem, not their ideas.
That said -- I agree that theologians are silly to disregard findings like this. The findings have no bearing as to whether any given religion is true -- the idea that the religion grew out of an evolutionary mechanism is no more intrinsically valid than the idea that the evolutionary response was selected for by the object (deity) of the religion.