Slashdot Mirror
Model Says Religiosity Gene Will Dominate Society
Hugh Pickens writes writes "PhysOrg reports on a study by Robert Rowthorn, emeritus professor at Cambridge University, that predicts that the genetic components that predispose a person toward religion are currently "hitchhiking" on the back of the religious cultural practice of high fertility rates and that provided the fertility of religious people remains on average higher than that of secular people, the genes that predispose people towards religion will spread. For example, in the past 20 years, the Amish population in the US has doubled, increasing from 123,000 in 1991 to 249,000 in 2010. The huge growth stems almost entirely from the religious culture's high fertility rate, which is about 6 children per woman, on average. Rowthorn says that while fertility is determined by culture, an individual's predisposition toward religion is likely to be influenced by genetics, in addition to their upbringing. In the model, Rowthorn uses a "religiosity gene" to represent the various genetic factors that combine to genetically predispose a person toward religion, whether remaining religious from youth or converting to religion from a secular upbringing. Rowthorn's model predicts that the religious fraction of the population will eventually stabilize at less than 100%, and there will remain a possibly large percentage of secular individuals. But nearly all of the secular population will still carry the religious allele, since high defection rates will spread the religious allele to secular society when defectors have children with a secular partner."
For Christ's sake! this can't be true. . .
A nice way of saying that the stupid people are breeding too much
Religiosity gene. Wow, really? Gee, what's next, the gay gene?
Must be one complex and accurate model to figure it will stabilize at less than 100%.
Well, that's evolution for you. If all else is equal but there's a genetic factor that predisposes some people to reproduce more than others, then that phenotype will eventually dominate.
Clearly, we should terminate those inferior people before they contaminate us.
Hitler was right in his war!
At least now we can prove it, since we've isolated the gene.
We're getting closer and closer to Idiocracy.
I've seen kids from very religious households go in all different directions with respect to religions. It seems very unlikely that there's anything like a genetic "predisposition" to religion.
Now what will happen is that more people will grow up in religious households than not; but that I see as a good thing, as it will decrease the overall fear of religion from people who don't have much direct experience with it. People do stupid things out of fear and fear of religion and those that practice it is no different. In reality although I'm not religious myself, most friends and families I have known that have been very religious have been fine people and I have no desire to see anyones ability to practice the religion they choose impacted.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Might prove useful:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regression_toward_the_mean#History
Anyway, it seems that such a trend is eventually self correcting; we will have a religious war in which all those extra children will exterminate each other.
Wanna sign up for the next Crusade, anyone?
Yes I said it, this should have never made the front page:
Religious people nowadays have more children on average than their secular counterparts. This paper uses a simple model to explore the evolutionary implications of this difference. It assumes that fertility is determined entirely by culture, whereas subjective predisposition towards religion is influenced by genetic endowment. People who carry a certain ‘religiosity’ gene are more likely than average to become or remain religious. The paper considers the effect of religious defections and exogamy on the religious and genetic composition of society. Defections reduce the ultimate share of the population with religious allegiance and slow down the spread of the religiosity gene. However, provided the fertility differential persists, and people with a religious allegiance mate mainly with people like themselves, the religiosity gene will eventually predominate despite a high rate of defection. This is an example of ‘cultural hitch-hiking’, whereby a gene spreads because it is able to hitch a ride with a high-fitness cultural practice. The theoretical arguments are supported by numerical simulations.
link to abstract
I am all for keeping an open mind but after reading that last sentence, I suspect the paper is quite ridiculous and may actually be a funny read.
We should start a new Slashdot and return control to the geeks. It actually wouldn't be that hard to get some users to
Well that was a perfectly depressing way to ruin a Saturday night. I'm going to go read about something fun, like the Egyptian riots. :-/
Thomas Galvin
AKA i'm going to deliberately ignore a "nature vs nurture" debate that has raged on for centuries, and go with "nature" in an offhand comment that states a specific behaviour determined by nature is.. likely.
Oh and this is the lynchpin of my entire preposition. I'm a professor.
My favorite reply is: meh, how many leaders does the world need anyway? Then the existentially scared person will assume you are referring to their subset as "leaders" and will wander away)
"Rowthorn says that while fertility is determined by culture, an individual's predisposition toward religion is likely to be influenced by genetics"
If I had to choose one or the other, I would probably go with the desire to reproduce as more "genetic" rather than a set of abstract belliefs that must be taught. But then again, I don't teach at Cambridge
Whats behind religiosity is probably something more broad and fundamental, like following leaders, belonging to groups, easy to be suggestionable and things like that. But religions are more culture than genes, they belong to the meme terrotory, and is of the bad ones. In any case, the movie Idiocracy explain it better, and probably the base explanation and causes are the same.
Sadly a lot of science looks like junk nowadays.
So yes there are more and more religious people, maybe, but thats because science is more and more shit (vanity "scientific" studies and bored university students projects that are nothing new or interesting).
honestly these guys are full of shit. I come out of a family with a long tradition of strict religion but me and both my siblings are non religious. Sure this is only anecdotal evidence but the article also doesn't have the data 100% on its side. Their entire study is based on this sentence:
"an individual’s predisposition toward religion is likely to be influenced by genetics"
This is just another way to spread the fear against muslims and other religious groups. I just wish this fear wouldn't encounter such fertile ground here in europe. Stop the fearmongering ffs.
Religiosity is mainly just a predisposition to value things like group solidarity
and the stability that comes from enforced conformity and hierarchical authority.
Someone who values these things (or fears the lack of them) more than they
value some kind of quest for truth or rationality or objectivity, is predisposed
to religion.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
What a ******* load of bunk !
The gene VMAT2 is likely what they are talking about. VMAT2 is a physiological arrangement that produces the sensations associated, by some, with mystic experiences, including the presence of God or others.
Carl Zimmer claimed that, given the low explanatory power of VMAT2, it would have been more accurate for Hamer to call his book A Gene That Accounts for Less Than One Percent of the Variance Found in Scores on Psychological Questionnaires Designed to Measure a Factor Called Self-Transcendence, Which Can Signify Everything from Belonging to the Green Party to Believing in ESP.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_gene
It's worth noting that one of the other research pioneers of this so called God Gene, Dean H. Hamer pretty much disproves the whole God Gene theory in his own book by the same title.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=faith-boosting-genes
It isn't a religiosity gene, it's more like a gullibility gene or a genetically caused weakness of the mind. I have found that those who devoutly believe in fairy stores and invisible people can be easily convinced of the most absurd things as long as you talk to them in that level, convincing tone that Obi-won pulled off so well in Star Wars.
Also, some people can be hypnotized, others can't. Difference: strength of mind.
The GEEK shall inherit the earth...
idiocracy, anyone? i think the idea of a religious gene as valid, though definitely contentious.
WÌÌfÍ--ÍSÌÒÍ...Í...ÌHÌÍfÍÍÍ--ÍÍÍ
A celibate clergy is an especially good idea, because it tends to suppress any hereditary propensity toward fanaticism.
How would you distinguish a "Religiosity gene" from a gullible gene, or a gene for looking for an easy way for dealing with stress or negative emotions, or a gene for simply fitting in with family and friends without actually believing.... People believe or follow religions for various reasons, to reduce them all to a gene is ridiculous. Even one type of 'follower' being reduced to a gene, even reduced to a predisposition is fucking unlikely, for very simple reasons.
If you ignore ACs because they are anonymous - you're an idiot.
Atheism has grown in the past couple decades more so than any other point in history.
Perhaps the atheism gene is more prolific than anyone ever expected.
^^vv<><>BA
There is NO SUCH THING as a gene that dictates your behavior, preferences, or predisposition!
What's your favorite explanation for instinct?
(Assuming you believe such a thing exists.)
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
As the availability of scientific texts increases, we'll see a decline in religious affiliation.
Obligatory XKCD: http://xkcd.com/111/
Emeritus professors really have nothing else to do ?
I'm sure not every professor emeritus is whackadoodle, but the ones you hear about sure tend in that direction.
Can't they you know hunt down university girls and propose to "help improve their grades"
Then write a paper about how the Dirty Old Man gene is self-sustaining?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Where are the Presbyterians when you need them? I was taught that it was a sin to "do it," even if you were married. As to the Amish:
Amish Chick: "It's Friday evening, do you want to drink beer and watch television?"
Amish Guy: "Hell, no. We're Amish. We don't drink beer and we don't watch television. How about you showing me the new quilt that you sewed for the bedroom? God said nothing in the Bible about fucking like bunnies. Ooooh, you make me feel so macho! Bark for me, baby, 'woof, woof, woof'"
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Religion persists only because people have an use for it. But that's steadily disappearing.
One of the main things about it is that it's an explanation for the unexplainable. For instance, before we knew what lightning and the Sun were, those were "explained" by religion. Now we know what they are, and that part of religion became obsolete.
Currently some of the main things people seem to cling to is healing, morality and the afterlife. Healing will go away eventually, as medicine gets to the point where we can heal pretty much anything. Morality will take some effort, but the Catholic church seems to be making a very good demonstration of how their priests aren't especially moral. For the afterlife, we'll probably be able to live eternally if we want to eventually.
Over time, things like that should result in it fading until it becomes inexistent or barely so, as it has less and less relevance to people's lives. The effect is already seen in Europe, where in many countries a large percentage is not religious, and antiquated religious policies are being beaten back. For instance Spain introduced gay marriage in 2005 and is progressive in other respects like allowing transsexuals to serve in the army.
"In the model, Rowthorn uses a 'religiosity gene' to represent the various genetic factors that combine to genetically predispose a person toward religion..."
But nowhere is there any further mention of what those genes may be or any evidence for them, or even past research on the subject. (The past research mentioned is only about fertility among religious people... not about any genetic predisposition.)
There is no evidence I am aware of that such a thing actually exists.
Frankly, I am dubious. This seems to be a very big assumption. Huge, in fact. Huge and very questionable.
Population growth in western nations is also declining faster than at any other point in history.
Apparently that atheism gene isn't quite prolific enough.
American Third Position
Finally, a real choice!
There is NO SUCH THING as a gene that dictates your behavior, preferences, or predisposition!
Hold on, if this is true then how do you explain instinctive behaviour? I'm no biologist, but my understanding is that genes can dictate behaviour (e.g. baby turtles move towards ocean) and preferences (e.g. birds of paradise).
There was a good talk on religious demographics at fora, and how fundamentalist families have much higher fertility rates within most all cultures.
http://fora.tv/2010/09/05/Eric_Kaufmann_Shall_the_Religious_Inherit_the_Earth
I don't understand the hostile reaction to the idea that propensity to religion has a genetic component. I wonder what the gene is for that.
Like the 'gay is a choice' promoters would have us believe, perhaps we can "Save' the misled religious folk, and show them the path to true non-stupidity.
What a load of hogwash.
My karma is not a Chameleon.
...when you can be so easily swayed by such scant evidence?
Blar.
But in the real world, religion is on the decline.
ha ha, all this time you Americans have been running around worrying about some bearded dudes in the Middle East, panicking about Muslims, al-Quaeda, Bin Laden and all that crowd... and all the time you've been looking at the WRONG BEARDS!
Fancy that, turns out those chilled out Amishes have pulled one on you, it's the dudes with the buggies and the barns you got to watch out for, and they've all got US passports to boot.
Just goes to show, doesn't it. It's the quiet ones who do carpentry you got to watch out for ;-)
honestly these guys are full of shit. I come out of a family with a long tradition of strict religion but me and both my siblings are non religious. Sure this is only anecdotal evidence but the article also doesn't have the data 100% on its side. Their entire study is based on this sentence: "an individual’s predisposition toward religion is likely to be influenced by Parenting"
Let me fix that for you.
- Dan.
~ People that think they are better than anyone else for any reason are the cause of all the strife in the world.
A gene for religiosity? Come one! That's ridiculous.
What we are seeing is simply cultural evolution. A philosophy that says "have lots of kids and instill in them this belief system on the pain of eternal punishment" is simply (unfortunately) quite likely to propagate itself.
I've always suspected that a species will evolve intelligence and then devolve into lawyers and politicians. This isn't too far off. I wonder if this accounts for external factors such as deadly plagues which secular people will vaccinate against while religious people will pray against.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Putting aside that There Is No Religious Gene so the premise is bunk, the study is starting from the present and extrapolating forwards. If there was a genetic basis for religion, then the huge worldwide rise of secularism over the past 20 generations suggests that it has been massively selected for, and I can see no reason for that long running trend to suddenly change.
1- This model predicts that there will be plenty of Amish people by 2150. But being them rather refractory to the present ever increasing consumption culture if their numbers become significant it will result in the collapse of such model which is which allows them to multiply so fast so their numbers will not follow the model. It looks like a self limiting process.
2.- Given the fact that our civilization is going to collapse one way or another, as all its predecessors did, the taking over of the world by the Amish is hardly the worst alternative I can envision.
3.- Is all this thread just a joke?
Etc. etc. etc.... There is NO SUCH THING as a gene that dictates your behavior, preferences, or predisposition! When will people actually care about this? All of those things are either semi-random or are determined by the person's general intelligence/experiences (IIRC).
Ever heard of the fox taming project that has been running in Russia since 1950's or so? Guessed not.
- These characters were randomly selected.
Atheism has grown in the past couple decades more so than any other point in history.
A short-term effect possibly caused by education, the Flynn Effect, and more freedom of thought and expression.
Genetics and evolution are far slower, but much more powerful. Let's see education grow you wings or the ability to digest cellulose!
People with that gene are less skeptical in general.
Again not matching with my experience which finds the religious kids I knew just as skeptical as anyone; and usually stronger willed than non-religious kids I knew (probably from having a more structured childhood).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
It's beyond we mere mortals to stop this trend. Only Science can save us now. Praise be to Science! (Incoming *whoosh* in 3... 2...)
Damnit, beaten by 10 mins. That's what I get for researching a comment!
I bet you're the kind who takes the time to RTAF before posting, too.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Atheism is not a religion, it is a lack of one. The 'a' in atheism means 'off' or 'away', so literally 'away-religion' or 'off-religion'. I'd like to believe that there are more people who lack religion, but what I observe tells me that there are more people every day that believe that the magic man in the sky controls everything, which is really sad given that to date there is still zero evidence of a supreme being. I have no proof that God does not exist, but I also have seen no proof that he (she? it?) does exist. I'm a betting man, and my money is squarely and firmly on doesn't, but it's still based on probabilities. I could be wrong. (but probably not)
I still cannot find the droids I am looking for...
This emeritus professor is leaning pretty heavily toward nature in the nature vs. nurture debate. What effect will social conditioning have on the expression of such a gene, if it does in fact exist?
Atheism is not a religion, it is a lack of one.
I never said atheism is a religion, or did you just feel the need to explain that to us?
^^vv<><>BA
They've managed to prove the lead hypothesis that was presented in the very beginning of the Mike Judge movie, Idiocracy, that "the stupid breed at an alarming rate" compared to smart people. From my viewpoint, some of the smartest people I know are atheists.
There is NO SUCH THING as a gene that dictates your behavior, preferences, or predisposition!
What's your favorite explanation for instinct?
(Assuming you believe such a thing exists.)
That's not what I meant, and they aren't the same thing. Yes, instinct exists. I meant the other kind of behaviors, like, social/mental.
"Our country is not nearly so overrun with the bigoted as it is overrun with the broadminded." -Archbishop Fulton Sheen
Parenting greatly influences the choice of religion, but not the strength of belief. Studies of adopted children show that there is a very strong tendency to become more like the biological parents during early adulthood. A child of atheists raised in a young-earth household is likely to become less of a believer once out of that environment, while a child of young-earthers raised by atheists is likely to convert to some religion.
If some there is an observation, then the most interesting question is: can we explaing this observation by the simplest model. There are two simple (extreme) models inheritance of religious views/bias to adhere to religion:
a) genetics does not play a role in the formation of religious closed groups
b) it does.
a or b can be falsified by comparing the predictions of statistical models with the reality, given that statistical data of high quality is available, and upon using a meta-analysis (sometimes an art, most times a hard science) to exclude/reduce study bias, unwanted correlations. It is a proper methology to first do the simulations of the simple assumptions and then ask a specific question to the statistics, otherwise you may end catching something significant just by chance (it is dangerous to look for anything).
So while the slashdot headline was an exageration (as usual) and i can not judge the articles validity in 10 minutes (not my field, and even then it would take longer), i find that the things which are done there give an interesting view on how to possibly falsify one of the two hypothesis.
In the abstract and the conclusion i have the feeling the author puts a little bit to much of his worldview without referencing the claims somewhere, but he states clearly what he assumes and what he calculated.
Yep, it is a load of bunk. I grew up shying away from religion and studying my science courses. In my mid twenties I would have argued against the existence of God. I was so cold and logical that I would have made Spock look emotional.
After raising two children, losing my wife ten years ago, and looking forward to my 58th birthday next month, I do believe in a higher power. Nothing else makes sense. I learned that science is very good at explaining how, but falls on its face when it comes to why. Do you know why you exist?
Did the gene wait years before activating?
Or did I just take years to learn what life is all about?
Oh, I can easily imagine how we are indeed largely predisposed to various forms of spirituality, et al (*) - but of course with individual differences determined by our DNA being irrelevant to nonexistent (hence no point in talking about god gene)
... and generalizing it a bit too far) - this and further steps of our spirituality almost certainly proved adaptive, it's all that matters in the end. And, even if determined by DNA - had many, many thousands of years (plus population bottlenecks) to be evenly intermixed in genomes of practically all humans.
(*) Starting possibly from a kind of oversensitive alertness (false positives, essentially - acting on them to a certain degree probably also aided in survival) coupled with heightened sense of self (hence recognizing it in other individuals
One that hath name thou can not otter
So, why would a person want to pass on his DNA?
This is a brain feature. We've already discovered numerous cases where such features are inheritable. Most have been the subject of Slashdot articles.
For example: faithfullness, IQ, violence...
This isn't any different. Any behavioral trait that increases descendents in the Nth generation will become more common. In modern human society, most strongly selected traits will be mental. A few will be disease-related or diet-related, so you can live on a McDonald's diet while screwing all day long. Mostly it's the brain that matters, because brain features are most capable of defeating birth control.
There is NO SUCH THING as a gene that dictates your behavior, preferences, or predisposition!
Hold on, if this is true then how do you explain
instinctive behaviour? I'm no biologist, but my understanding is that genes can dictate behaviour (e.g. baby turtles move towards ocean) and preferences (e.g. birds of paradise).
Sorry for not clarifying; I meant some/most social, human behaviors, not instinct. My bad.
"Our country is not nearly so overrun with the bigoted as it is overrun with the broadminded." -Archbishop Fulton Sheen
Just to clarify, by "behavior" I meant social behavior. Like, you can't be born with a tendency to drink alcohol or a tendency to socially blow up in peoples' faces. That's what I meant; not instinctive behavior. My bad for not clarifying.
"Our country is not nearly so overrun with the bigoted as it is overrun with the broadminded." -Archbishop Fulton Sheen
I'm actually not completely hostile to the hypothesis - I'm fairly convinced that lots of behavior that we think is largely subject to free will is, in fact, heritable. Even those with a scientific bent tend to gloss over the real implications of evolution - evolution never stops. The selection pressures just change. One reason that modern Western society seems to take better in some places than others has a lot to do with the selective pressures that came from urbanization - over amazingly brief periods of time, the selective pressures of evolution have equipped urbanized cultures with a set of skills and value structures that support modern life, but those alleles are scarce among groups that never urbanized. They thus have trouble adapting to Western civilization - their evolution hasn't selected for those traits. Give them a few generations and those traits will start to appear - either through the higher expression of local alleles that are conducive to urbanization or from the importation of those alleles from visitors or immigrants. Pick up a copy of Nick Wade's Before the Dawn.
That said, I'm very skeptical of this new "the religious will outbreed us" meme. It's fairly uncontroversial that religious folk outbreed secular types, especially in modern Western societies. But these self-same societies were, in the not too distant past, for more religious than they are now. I'm not just talking pre-Enlightenment times (when the religious/secular ratio was probably near a peak), but even since. American culture is prone to Great Awakenings, when the religious nature of America reaches local peaks. Soon thereafter, however, a wave of secularism occurs - emerging from the huge cohort of children of those highly religious types had during the previous Awakening.
So, it seems to me there are multiple factors involved here, both cultural and genetic. My suspicion is that alleles that predispose toward religious impulses have synergistic reactions with those that predispose toward secularism - that the mix of alleles is too complex to push us too far in any one direction.
But who knows - evolution never stops. If religion (or secularism) is selected strongly enough, only our great grandchildren will know for sure.
Some people produce lots of kids. They will pass on the traits, both physical and mental, which cause this. Soon enough, everybody in the population will refuse to use birth control (or just fail at it, in the idiocracy scenario) and our population growth will go exponential until we start dying from overpopulation.
The natural state of all living creatures is to live in squalor. You are very lucky to live in the current anomaly.
"The Marching Morons" was a science fiction story I read a looong time ago, written by C. M. Kornbluth, whose most famous stories were probably "The Space Merchants" and "The Black Bag". The story didn't talk about religion, but about the more intelligent part of the population having fewer children, and speculated on the consequences. I guess that makes it sound like I'm equating intelligence with lacking in religiousness, which I don't think is quite true. But I do think decisions made for religious reasons are more apt to be wrong than plain old straightforward thinking type decisions. I also don't equate morality with religion. For example, slavery in America was defended on religious grounds and also attacked and criticized on religious grounds. But I think the anti-slavery forces had the moral high ground. They also used persuasive economic arguments that had nothing to do with religion.
In theory, theory and practice are the same; in practice they're different. (Yogi Berra & A. Einstein)
Atheism is not a religion, it is a lack of one. The 'a' in atheism means 'off' or 'away', so literally 'away-religion' or 'off-religion'. I'd like to believe that there are more people who lack religion, but what I observe tells me that there are more people every day that believe that the magic man in the sky controls everything, which is really sad given that to date there is still zero evidence of a supreme being. I have no proof that God does not exist, but I also have seen no proof that he (she? it?) does exist. I'm a betting man, and my money is squarely and firmly on doesn't, but it's still based on probabilities. I could be wrong. (but probably not)
It depends on how it's practiced. For some it is truly Atheism, but there are others who practice Atheism. You know, the people who act like missionaries and attempt to covert others.
You seem to be a member of the first camp. There is no scientific evidence for the existence of a supreme being. There is also no evidence against it. So, you can choose to believe or choose not to believe and I see both choices as equally valid. I have no problem with either point of view, but I find the atheist missionaries just as annoying as the Jehova's witnesses.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Yep, it is a load of bunk. I grew up shying away from religion and studying my science courses. In my mid twenties I would have argued against the existence of God. I was so cold and logical that I would have made Spock look emotional.
After raising two children, losing my wife ten years ago, and looking forward to my 58th birthday next month, I do believe in a higher power.
I've found that many religious people (Christians, at least) will often lie about their past in an effort to produce a better testimony. It's really weird. It's like the 'lower' they were before 'finding Jesus' the better their status among their peers.
Nothing else makes sense.
Assuming that you're story is true, in what why does an invisible wish-granting sky-wizard make ANY sense? If that's too cynical for you, could you at least explain what version of the God belief you hold and how, after a lifetime of scientific study, you came to this conclusion?
Do you know why you exist?
If you want the meaning of life, try this one on for size: The purpose of life is to strive to improve the lives of those around you, and if possible, those who will come after you. In short, to make life better for everyone.
To that end, science has done more in the last century to improve the human condition than religion has for the past 3000 years.
Did the gene wait years before activating?
Or did I just take years to learn what life is all about?
It's possible that your fear of death or dealing with the loss of your wife has lead you to accept a comfortable delusion rather than face reality. It's really sad. I feel bad for you.
Required reading for internet skeptics
If she's pretty enough, there are plenty of guys here that will believe anything else she wants to tell us!
Not necessarily.
You don't have to believe in an imaginary friend in the sky who hates teh gheys and the eating of shellfish and of beef on fridays to be religious about something. I've seen people with religious zeal over everything from their diet (See, for example, vegans and the low-carb people.) to their particular environmental cause to their hobby or sport (triathletes) to their politics to their choice of computer operating system. Even some atheists are so fanatical about being anti-religion that they could well be describes as being religious about it.
So just because people don't fall into the same church as their parents that doesn't mean they're not religious and not genetically predisposed towards it.
Imagine all the people...
There is no scientific evidence for the existence of a supreme being. There is also no evidence against it. So, you can choose to believe or choose not to believe and I see both choices as equally valid. I have no problem with either point of view, but I find the atheist missionaries just as annoying as the Jehova's witnesses.
Exactly. Indeed, the question of the existence of a supernatural being that we cannot detect is something completely outside the realm of science. Science only deals with questions where you can formulate a theory and test it. There's no way to test if a god exists. What are you going to do, make two groups of people, and have one pray for something? What makes anyone think a god would act the same towards that group as toward anyone else (who isn't part of a research study), or maybe even screw with the study by doing something for the control group and not the praying ones?
The problem of religious people interfering in science, when their religious dogma interferes with scientific results (such as the age of the earth, the existence of evolution, etc.), is a very big one. However, there's also a (much smaller) problem with religious atheists who assert vigorously that no god can exist because there's no evidence for it. Not only is that not scientific (you can't prove a negative), that's the same dumb argument some people have against extraterrestrial intelligence, as if we could somehow prove ETs don't exist among the billions of galaxies out there, all with millions or billions of stars, even though we've never even left our own little planet except for a few brief trips to our nearby moon, and only in the past few years have even proven that planets exist around other stars.
The worst way of doing proper science.
On an other note, all civilisations that have fallen till now where in some way religious. Why wouldn't we give no religions at all a shot at the longest civilisation to ever live.
honestly these guys are full of shit. I come out of a family with a long tradition of strict religion but me and both my siblings are non religious.
I counter your anecdote with mine. I have an uncle of a rather hardcore evangelical variant who had 12 kids. At least three of them bred true, in turn those three kids alone had at least 22 of their own. With those numbers, you can have a lot of defection from the religion and still have it grow at ridiculous rate compared to the general population.
Even if that category of trait isn't genetically inheritable (and I sure won't claim that, given how strange genetic traits can be), it still is passed culturally.
I come out of a family with a long tradition of strict religion but me and both my siblings are non religious.
Maybe there was a genetic mutation and now your family is evolving! Mind you, if you now find that you don't have a large family then your genes will be less likely to survive than those branches of your family that are still heavily religious and breed like rabbits. Darwin's survival of the fittest will be proven again!
But seriously, your problem here is that a predisposition towards religion does not mean that you will be compelled to become religious. There is not a strict one-to-one correlation that says that if you are religious that you will have this gene, and that if you have this gene then you will be religious. Additionally, you ignored the quote from the article that said: "But while fertility is determined by culture, an individualâ(TM)s predisposition toward religion is likely to be influenced by genetics, in addition to their upbringing."
This is just another way to spread the fear against muslims and other religious groups.
What fear is being spread here? Someone has been looking at how particular genetic traits spread and came up with a fairly obvious scenario (once you think about it). Did anyone talk about how to stop this worrying trend? Or that this is a bad thing at all? No. Science is all about looking at something and saying "Oh, that is interesting". It is not out to judge you.
Maybe this particular gene doesn't make you religious after all. Perhaps it manifests a paranoia that you are being persecuted. If that is the case, then I am afraid to say that you have still got it.
i9 thought that i had seen the premise to "idiocracy" before! thanks for the knock on the ol noggin! yes, i realize the plot lines are different... but the underlying main stream remain true!
You don't have to believe in an imaginary friend in the sky who hates teh gheys and the eating of shellfish and of beef on fridays to be religious about something. I've seen people with religious zeal over everything from their diet (See, for example, vegans and the low-carb people.) to their particular environmental cause to their hobby or sport (triathletes) to their politics to their choice of computer operating system. Even some atheists are so fanatical about being anti-religion that they could well be describes as being religious about it.
I think you're describing "zeal," rather than "religion," per se. While a religious person can be zealous, it's not the only aspect of being religious. A person can be zealous without being religious. Religion implies other features like mysticism, which is mostly or wholly absent in the other "groups" you've suggested.
I realize that one of the definitions of "religious" is "zealous". However, it doesn't seem that any of TFAs are using that definition of "religious". In fact, the 3rd article specifically characterizes religion as: "belief in the supernatural, obedience to authority or susceptibility to ceremony and ritual . . . "
I am not a crackpot.
Like many people, I once thought that religion was a way for scared people to deal with their own mortality. Then I lost a brother to cancer, and realized that in fact it's a way for sad people to deal with their loved ones' mortality.
I understand people turning to religion, and I just hope that my life is never shit enough that I end up being one of them. But then I'm still young.
Insanity: voting in the same two parties over and over again and expecting different results
Yeah. This seems completely worthless.
THE RELIGION GENE. Because, you know, children with very religious parents never turned out secular.
IF there's even remotely a "religious gene" then it would have to be a SLIGHT genetic predisposition to favoring religion. But it seems to me that they started out with "some people have a gene that gives them a slight predisposition" and are now drawing conclusions as if they had said "some people have a gene that makes them religious". No. Absolutely nonsense.
GCS/MU/P d- s:- a-- C++++$ UL++ P+ L++ E+ W++ N o K- w--- O M+ V- PS+++ PE Y+ PGP t+ 5- X R++ tv+ b++ DI++ D++ G+ e++ h-
Amen brother. After discovering the truth about low-carb, and realizing that I had come to a revelation that the USDA and it's damn food pyramid and the vegans wanted to keep me from, I suddenly, as an atheist, realized what it meant to feel like an evangelical christian. I had the "Good Book" (Good Calories, Bad Calories by Gary Taubes), I wanted to save people, and I feel the impulse to spread the "Good Word" to nearly *anyone* I come into contact with. I can only imagine that I'm as annoying as the evangelicals who occasionally try to argue with me about theology, but I now know how they *feel*. It's an empathy that I hope has made me more patient with the God zealots, even if it probably annoys the shit out of anyone who hasn't experienced that kind of spiritual revelation.
Now of course .. most of these religions have been going strong for centuries. So I guess we must already be at that equilibrium model he so spoketh.
This is interesting to me, because if there is such a thing as a "God Gene", I'm pretty sure I have it. Either that, or I'm low-level schizoaffective. Consider this, and consider it seriously: when those people on television and radio wring their hands and participate in sob-story spirituality programs about how "God Speaks To Them", you should probably take that statement more or less at face value, if I'm correct. When people talk about "the prescence of the Holy Spirit in the soul", I understand perfectly well what they mean.
This does not in any way mean that I follow a religion, even if I am compelled to "pray". When I concentrate and pray, it's as if a blinding light blots out my conciousness, and all negative emotions are washed away. This I percieve as closeness to "God", and that particular sensation I cannot explain properly. Ego-dissolution I guess might be part of it. As for "energy beings", I sometimes have conversations with people in my head about things. This, however, seems to be something most people just do.
Note that this does not mean that I ever let this interfere with reality, or that am a "believer" in any sense. I am a very staunch supporter of a competely secular civil society, and I do not respect religion as an excuse for any sort of malignant behaviour. I write this only because I think religious people and staunch atheists might be talking past each other, and the bitter bile people spit at each other might be avoidable if they just where able to understand each other.
Of particular note: I can read forums dedicated to spirituality and "magick" and actually follow the conversations, since I understand what they are talking about ("Energy manipulation", etc.) and the methods discussed ("Aura cleansing, astral hygiene") seems to correspond to my experiences and coping mechanisms I assume you could call them. As for outright psychosis, schizophrenic or otherwhise, I had episodes when I was young where I... was caught between the world "I percieved" and the real world (The best description would probably be "sleeping awake", like the P.O.D song) that where quite disturbing. I also experience "magical thinking", where I am gripped by worries and anxieties that I could influence things I obviously can't. I do have OCD, which might interact with this "problem" in some manner. On the other hand, I use and consider these "energy perceptions" a bit like one would "artistic eye" or "good color sense" in daily life, because aesthetically the "energy sense" of something seems to correspond to a roundabout back-of-the-head intuition about something, which usually proves to be correct. Like your instincts trying to tell you something. If you haven't experienced this, you presumably can't imagine what I'm talking about; it's not just "visual hallucinations". It's deeper and more complicated/subtle sensations involved.
If anyone reading this has had similiar experiences, but being a person of intellect grapples with dealing with it, look at it like this: if this is *that* common, and people aren't falling down into raving psychosis to the right and left, you probably won't either.
Emotions! In your brain!
So, you can choose to believe or choose not to believe and I see both choices as equally valid.
You can "see" it any way you like, but logic, reason, and reality do not work that way.
That statement is awfully close to the bullshit people throw around about "atheism is a religon durr durr durr", which in itself is just a sad attempt by people to try and gain legitimacy by forcing a non-existent association between their view and another's. The same thing as creationists trying to assert that creationism is "just as valid a *theory* as evolution".
Religion can be collecting Betty Boop knick knacks, stroking a rabbits foot at the races, watching football.
An atheists religion is attention whoring on the subject of faith. Proselytizing in front of camera and congregation alike during events like school board meetings, city council meetings, court, various legislative functions and other fetes previously reserved for gay marriage, Jesse Jackson, Westboro Baptist church, Democrats and other Jerry Springer fodder.
What an atheist lacks is faith.
What studies lack are meaning.
What I lack is a beer.
Everybody needs something to believe in.
I believe I'll have a beer.
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
After raising two children, losing my wife ten years ago, and looking forward to my 58th birthday next month, I do believe in a higher power. Nothing else makes sense.
That doesn't necessarily have to be related to this gene. It is quite common for people to turn to religion as they get older. When you are in your twenties, you still feel immortal. You can happily disprove the existence of God because it seems so academic. Once you start approaching the age that gets very similar to the average lifespan of a male (currently 67.2 years) then the afterlife seems a lot more important. For you, it probably became important and immediate when you lost your wife. A great loss forces you to re-evaluate your beliefs. It is a great comfort to know that your loved one still exists somewhere and is happy. Science will never provide that comfort.
I learned that science is very good at explaining how, but falls on its face when it comes to why.
That is absolutely correct. Science doesn't ever come close to explaining the existential questions. But when "how" and "why" are the same question it does a better job than religion. For example, "Why did my crops fail?" is better answered by science than by sacrificing animals (or humans) to some god.
The problem you get with saying that a higher power made us when asking "why do we exist" is that you can't ever answer the question "why does the higher power exist". At some point, something has to exist without a reason. It could be a god, or it could be the universe, with its physical laws that resulted in human beings.
http://blip.tv/file/2204956
___
If you think big enough, you'll never have to do it.
Parent alleges that mysticism is an implied feature of religion; the definition parent cites does not require it at all. (We have not proven that a supernatural, if it exists, requires anything mystic.)
More seriousIy, I write to agree with the grandparent. I consider all the low-carb people to be "religious." I've been told that all the white foods in our lives: white bread, rice, potatoes, etc put us at severe risk for diabetes, and cutting them out entirely is the only way to live healthy. This came to me from persons of Asian descent, who seemed blissfully ignorant of the historical reality of their ancestors' diets (hint: lots of white rice). Does a traditionally Japanese or Chinese diet make you a diabetic? Heck no; look deeper, religious food diet persons. Perhaps the diabetics eat too much in general, or too much processed food, or right before bedtime, or before swimming, or a dozen other reasons. White foods are not evil, but these low-carb anti-white-food persons are religious: zealous, susceptible to ceremony and ritual, blindly obeying an authority. Maybe some low-carb anti-white-food persons are not religious in their zeal and approach; maybe some have valid personal dietary reasons and/or it's an easily-followed proxy for the ideal health advice they had more difficulty following. But the ones I've met have no data, no confirming experiences, just a grave command uttered by someone in a white(!) robe. Whether doctor or priest, kindly or malevolent, that person's advice was a sham and they are fools who follow it.
Now if you'll excuse me, I have a bowl of vanilla ice cream to eat.
honestly these guys are full of shit. I come out of a family with a long tradition of strict religion but me and both my siblings are non religious. Sure this is only anecdotal evidence but the article also doesn't have the data 100% on its side. Their entire study is based on this sentence:
"an individual’s predisposition toward religion is likely to be influenced by genetics"
Maybe you should go ahead and look at the wikipedia page about Mendelian inheritance.
if we apply the same logic - we should be able to find a gene that predisposes people to atheism too - no?
(fyi - i'm not for the christians or the atheists, i want out of that whole dichotomy, give me option C)
Something like 80-85% of the world is religious - how much more dominant can you get?
sic transit gloria mundi
... the smart people will take a page from L. Ron Hubbard's play book and position themselves to take advantage of the masses.
Have gnu, will travel.
"All models are wrong, some models are useful (my experimental design professor)", but this is not one of them.
This is pure, unadulterated BS. Religiosity Gene? This is not really science, it is speculation and bigotry (religion only makes sense if you have a genetically inherited mental disorder).
The number of Amish is growing because of the social obligation to have as many children as God gives you. It's the same reason that Catholics have a reputation for large families. The "non-religious" have no similar social pressure to avoid contraception, and plenty of other pressures (economic, stress, selfishness, etc.) to keep their families small. There is no need to invent a Gene for which there is no other evidence than the authors desire to explain a culture he does not understand using the wrong tools (biology, instead of sociology).
Bureaucracy expands to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.-Oscar Wilde
I'd like to see something quantitative with high confident levels proving that homosexuality becomes more likely as any event occurs.
I'll say there's a more dangerous problem, in that in small towns that many "family clan members" can threaten to be a 1-family posse that can totally own local politics and matters.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
There is to a point evidence against the existence of a Supreme Being, in that trying to find it plays havoc with Occam's Razor. "An undetectable supreme being that can't say hello? Really?!"
I've heard the Ant analogy, etc. Right, we can't exactly talk to ants, but you can get them to notice a huge chunk of melting chocolate you thunk down.
And remember, unlike ants, we're *starting* with *our* brainpower... and the supreme guy can't do anything at all that creates a noticeable event? Not even morse code?
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
So, there's no such thing as genes that control particular behaviors that you define, but there are genes that control other behaviors.
I'm pretty sure the only way to settle this is empirically.
All true. But religious fanatics also have a long history of going to war with and exterminating other religious fanatics. So just because their population is booming now, doesn't mean it won't bust later on.
Also, these idiots can't keep up that kind of birth rate much longer - the money is gone to support that kind of population expansion. This recession has already seen birth rates in the US plunge.
>In other words, homosexuality is a birth defect
Your conclusion doesn't follow the facts. If homosexuality is indeed more likely as mothers produce male offspring sequentially, that implies it's some kind of survival adaptation, one that evolved. It could confer a survival advantage for the genes by providing non-breeding siblings whose presence can help ensure the survival of their siblings' offspring.
We see examples of this kind of reproductive strategy elsewhere in other social animals. Bees and ants are two powerful examples - colonies comprised almost entirely of siblings, with only a handful (or even just one) breeding female, plus a crop of fertile offspring produced seasonally.
I've never understood why people think there has to be a "why" they exist.
Maybe the supreme being has created noticeable events; churches are always talking about miracles, people have gotten better from illnesses miraculously, etc. Are these just flukes, or the work of a god? It's impossible to know, because these aren't testable phenomena; you can't set up an experiment to replicate these "miracles".
Also, maybe the supreme doesn't want to say "hello". Why? Who knows? If there's a god out there (whether a single supreme being of unlimited power and knowledge, or a more limited one or ones more like the "Q" of Star Trek), it'd be pretty hard for us to understand them just as it's hard for rats to understand humans. Perhaps he/they have a Prime Directive, and believe in non-interference. Maybe our whole existence is just a big scientific experiment for it/them.
As for melting chocolate, maybe it/they exist in different dimensions outside our perception. There's already theories in physics that there are more dimensions than we can perceive, perhaps 11.
Now, if you want to debate the existence of a "personal god", the kind that many religions believe in which is actively involved in human affairs, then your arguments might have some weight.
Common sense? Walking too close to the edge of a cliff is obviously not what anyone wants to do if they wish to continue to live?
"Tongue tied and twisted, just an Earth bound misfit
I hear this comment all the time about how group X is going to dominate society because they're breeding faster:
My complaint is that humans, and to a lesser extent other mammals, have a very different definition of reproductive success that involves having few offspring and intensively investing resources in them.
Warning: This sig is not thread safe. For more information see Slashdot's sig policy.
It's the same gene. It is located immediately next to the Santa Claus gene and the Tooth Fairy gene.
http://www.rootstrikers.org/
:P
Secular Quiver Movement
Depends. Were you going for a +5 Funny, or +5 Insightful/Informative?
I still cannot find the droids I am looking for...
Ahh. An atheist missionary.
OK. I'll give you the same response that I give to every other missionary, tailored to your particular ism.
Disprove the existence of God. It's OK. I'll wait.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
There is to a point evidence against the existence of a Supreme Being,
Not scientific evidence. Whether or not a supreme being exists is outside of the realm of science.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
But religious fanatics also have a long history of going to war with and exterminating other religious fanatics.
I hadn't noticed this, myself. They seem more likely to kill weak innocents of other religions rather than go head to head with the hardcore of another side. Didn't happen for the most part during the Crusades or the other purges and whatnot of the Christian era, except possibly for the 30 Years war (though religion seems more a pretext for that war than anything serious). Similarly, Muslim fights for the most part weren't against fellow fanatics. The biggest possible exception was the Mughal vs. Sikh and Hindu fights.
For the most part, any religious fanatics were paired against pros who either knew what they were doing, and kicked ass (eg, the Mongols or Saracen), or weak foes who really weren't keen on fighting.
I think I saw that movie. I gather the scientist interviewed for the article is more concerned about this on a national or global scale.
Any chance I get to tell people I know Jesus is LORD, God is love, I do. Be good and loving to all even those who aren't good and loving to you.
PS: If there are any hot Christian women browsing Slashdot right now, I'd like to meet you sexy statistical anomaly you.
God spoke to me.
As someone who studied genetics... All I can say is that I will believe it when I run the supposed religiosity gene sequence through a Bioinformatics supercomputing system for a few years....
Disprove the existence of God. It's OK. I'll wait.
Well, I'm not the person you asked. But I'll give it a go.
1) If there is a God, he is perfectly loving.
2) If a perfectly loving God exists, reasonable non-belief in the existence of God does not occur.
3) Reasonable non-belief in the existence of God does occur.
4) No perfectly loving God exists.
5) There is no God. (Schellenberg 1993: 83)
... and that's when the C.H.U.D.'s came at me.
Runaway religion gave us the Inquisition and Islamic fundamentalists blowing people up and chopping off their heads.
Runaway science gave us Dr. Mengele and the Tuskegee experiments.
Too much of anything is a bad thing.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
The meme of the need to procreate is far and away the most successful of all.
If the idea of the need to procreate in the face of what can seem to be less than ideal situations does not grow legs, that meme dies within a generation or three. Lesser memes (that is to say those which manifest in the mind of the individual less as instinct and more as concepts) will rise up to compete for mindshare and find the best way to keep themselves spreading. A meme can only survive as long as it has an audience. It is very difficult for them to survive the process of being archived and then resurrected.
Ask Isis about it.
It behooves a meme to encourage people to come together and continue to stoke the fires of attention.
"We shall grapple with the ineffable, and see if we may not eff it after all." - Douglas Adams
I cannot believe that anyone is calling this real science. This belongs in the same category as Phrenology. It is an excuse to practice racism and anti-relgious bigotry.
See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_eugenics
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
... that there is a genetic component to homosexual preferences, then almost certainly there is a genetic component to many other sexual preferences?
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Disprove the existence of God. It's OK. I'll wait.
First you must define "God."
Whether or not a supreme being exists is outside of the realm of science.
He exists outside of the realm of science, and He really, really wants you to vote Republican.
Robert K. Graham, founder of the Nobel Sperm Bank, devoted his later life to promoting this simple idea:
"The more intelligent you are, the more children you should have."
A simple idea with complex implications, many of which are not politically correct.
...omphaloskepsis often...
Caveat: you may actually be programmed to feel like you're in control.
What does "control" mean, anyway? That you can decide among the courses of action that occur to you? What about the ones that don't occur to you? You can't choose those.
There are experiments in which a decision to make a movement can be detected before the subject is aware they have decided to make a movement. There is a delay of about half a second. That would seem to indicate that it is not in fact your conscious mind (the one "in control") that makes the choice.
"Slow down, Cowboy! It has been 3 years, 7 months and 26 days since you last successfully posted a comment."
True. But what would people say if someone went around writing books about how they didn't collect stamps, and everyone who did was crazy. Then they'd start enumerating which of the stamps other people had were the silliest ones to collect, and explain away any things that resembled stamps in their house.
Not collecting stamps might not be a hobby, but bashing another's hobby can certainly turn into one.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
I understand people turning to religion, and I just hope that my life is never shit enough that I end up being one of them. But then I'm still young.
It's really easy to be bold towards reality when you're young, with fresh idealism and naivety on how you can impact the world.
Then, when people get older, many of them become more religious. Funny, isn't it?
That's the problem of most self-declared atheists (which often behave more like anti-theism proselytists): they expect people to drop their religious beliefs which bring them comfort, face the harsh reality and nothing is given to them as a replacement, not even a philosophy.
Often I hear from the militant atheists that one should base his/her beliefs on vague notions of Humanism. That's certainly very comfortable for mid-high class people living a reasonably comfortable life, specially people from US/Canada who are so awfully detached from the realities of the World.
Humanism is quite nice in theory, but the fact is that reality sucks and most people (no matter what they claim) don't give a jack shit for other people. The only things we can count on is individualism and hypocrisy.
Unless something new appears, there won't be a Star Trek-like life and philosophy in the future.
And that's what militant atheists do not understand.
But, hey, it's easier to simply push your views and mock religious people while fooling oneself you're providing a great service to mankind.
Well, honestly you failed on step #2. We could argue about it, but it would really just you arguing that a God you don't believe exists must display a certain property in a certain way, in order for you to prove that he doesn't exist. It gets circular, and really just ends up with you defining a God you don't want to exist, and I certainly wouldn't want to exist ( believer that I am). its stupid and a waste of time, as all proofs and disproofs of God are. Lets just grab a beer and watch football, Okay?
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
Religion is a belief in supernatural entities that control the reality.
Don't change the definition and mix a legitimate practice of being a stubborn asshole with a dangerous social problem.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
I'm not sure if you're arguing with me or not, but the tone of your post seems to imply it. But I pretty much agree with everything you've said. I was pointing out that I understand why people become religious. Yes, I see it as a weakness, but I'm not stupid enough to state that I'll never be in such a similar position myself.
I don't ridicule religious people. I pity them, and hope that I never become one of them.
Insanity: voting in the same two parties over and over again and expecting different results
If the defection rate is high - is the religious gene really there?
And if it exists - is it rather a set of genes that exists making people horny, complacent and imaginative? First is good for reproduction, second is good for tight living and third is good for science as well.
Religion is something someone invented - usually a long time ago, but sometimes just decades ago.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
This article had every single logical fallacy in the book.
Tying the genes factors that contribute to a likely-hood of being religious may have have qualities in common with a stable family life... Like, i dunno, "trust". There's basically a lot of assumptions made throughout the entire article. Any of which given a proper error analysis would cause the conclusion to fall apart.
Also, the assumption that future "religious gene" carriers will be in an organized religion. There's a lot of things that people become "religious" towards. Kings, talk show hosts, drugs, sports teams, presidents, pseudoscience, etc. Just look at Obama supporters. It's so obvious that you can parody it without much stretching of the imagination. Example.
As opposed to... I dunno... the child's upbringing? Because apparently the father and mother have nothing to do with it?
Doesn't it seem like there are too many people these days blaming gene X or Y on something that really has no correlation to that gene. Correlation does not imply causation, right?
And then there's the question of how long until someone uses this finding as an excuse to pass laws restricting who can and cannot procreate or how many children you can have? After all, science says you'll outnumber us because you're religious, and that's bad for the environment [so they say].
I don't think they care as much about money as the non-religious. They think God will provide for them, somehow.
Read carefully before criticizing.
First, I'll agree with you that the phrase (from the news article, but not necessarily from the scientist) "the genetic components that predispose a person toward religion" should be "if there are genetic components that predispose a person toward religion..."
Second, the word is "predispose". You twisted this around into "dictates your behavior, preferences, or predisposition". Being "predisposed" to something is different than "dictating" your behavior. Besides, if you had read the article, you'd see this: "Genes are not destiny. Many people who are genetically predisposed towards religion may in fact lead secular lives because of the cultural influences they have been exposed to.... Having the religiosity allele does not make a person religious, but it makes a person more likely to have characteristics that make them religiously inclined; the converse is also true. ”
"Not to forget that this article also assumes that there is absolutely nothing positive to be gained from religion". Really? I must've misssed that part. Of course, there are plenty of Slashdotters who think the trend towards religion is a bad one. I can certainly see some problems with it in some cases. For example, if we assume children get their religious views from their parents (even if we assume there is no genetic tendency towards religion), then the high fertility rates of highly conservative Jews in Israel will only exacerbate the problems between Israel and the Palestinians, since the most religious Jews are the least willing to compromise.
1. If God exists, God could prove his existance easily (Write a message on the moon, personally appear to every individual one earth at once, etc)
2. No such proof has been provided, as evidenced by the great diversity of religious beliefs.
3. Therefore, either:
a. God doesn't exist.
or
b. God exists, but wants to keep his existance secret.
4. If a, God doesn't exist. I win.
If b, God does exist, but not the God of Christianity nor any other major religion that believes in an interventionist God,
Have you considered the possibility that there is no 'why?' You exist, things happen, and there is no great purpose to it?
In science, you don't trust people at their word and you don't participate in Ad Hominems.. You check their math, you raise questions and criticisms.
Population growth in western nations is also declining faster than at any other point in history.
Apparently that atheism gene isn't quite prolific enough.
I forgot, China is a Western Nation.
Either way we are fucked. Even if it's not genetic at all (and I tend to believe that it's not). But we are still screwed because even if it's just a "learnt" behavior" it still means that the majority of the children is and will be raised in families with some shade of religious view. So the outcome is the very same: 6 religious children (in average) producing another 6 religious children (in average) while the secular people pretty much die out due to low fertility rates.
Additionally society will add some pressure on those that have a tendency towards secular thoughts because more and more people will start to preach nonsense like creationism and you only need to look into countries like Iran, Pakistan, Israel and pretty much any other country led and controlled by religious people to see what happens to society when religion is dominating and controlling a country.
A strong argument against the existence of "real god", the strongest in my view, is the plausibility of the psychological and sociological role that "invented god-concept" (a Jungian archetype, a useful and persistent meme) would play in human society.
From birth, humans see powerful intelligent agency, more wise and powerful than they themselves, all around them,
in the form of their parents and other older humans. Why would we not make an analogy and posit the same sort of agency as an explanation
of the powerful and unexplainable forces of nature, as an explanation of otherwise inexplicable turns of fortune. Surely someone made the
great unseen "mother/father to us all" angry. Surely we must act righteously to gain favor from this ultimate arbiter of our fate.
And surely if we behave well, we will be accepted into this great ancestor's company when we die, for otherwise, the most feared and incomprehensible fate awaits us. Nothing. Our personal non-existence is unimaginable and unimaginably painful to contemplate. We must replace that most terrible worry with a soothing story, such as our parent would tell us to calm our fear of the night.
The more intelligent, ruthless, and cynical among us can take advantage of these churning fears and abstract hopes, and use these stories, this meme, as an amplifier of their personal power, as a ladder to the top of the societal hierarchy. They can claim to have a closer relationship with and knowledge of the deity. They can claim to have heard and interpreted its will and thus claim to be entitled to enforce its will.
It's too useful an idea not to invent.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
This is pure bullshit. This crap about religiosity being genetic is pushing some atheistic barrow where it shouldn't be. Debating the existence of God belongs in a philosophical discussion not just assuming that one opinion is correct. Religion bashing is pretty popular among stupid geeks who are just sheep when it comes to anything beyond reductionist dogma.
Is religion carried by a gene or a meme ? If it is a meme then there is more hope for us all that the problems caused by religious belief will gradually die away through better education.
However: people will act in a way that is most beneficial to themselves with the result that many will defer to or feign religious belief as a way of avoiding problems. Non believers tend not to go around discriminating against believers, but some[**] religious people do act against those who are not religious or who follow a different set of beliefs than they do. Examples are Teachers [who] Back Away From Evolution In Class and religious wars.
[**]: read this carefully, I said ''some'' not ''all''
Specifically, a memetic / genetic complex.
Until there is any significant proof of genetic predisposition to susceptibility, the memetic part is by far the larger and more significant part of that.
Certain memes go along with religion though - the "be fruitful and multiply" meme being written into the religious text is no coincidence. Religions evolves just like any other self-replicating entity. Like other life forms dependent on a host, it may confer benefits to enhance the survival of that host or induce odd behavior to induce it's host to proliferate or to spread itself (like toxoplasmosis).
I view the evangelic strains of religion to be more virulent, and they probably do take root in minds with an unprepared "immune system" more easily. To steal directly from Neal Stephenson and Snow Crash - the decline of the staid, formal religions, like Catholicism or the Church of England, is probably reducing the group immunity of the populace to the virulent evangelical religion - what would you prefer, someone who goes to Mass and understands that their religious texts sometimes speak figuratively, or someone who goes PTA meetings and demands that the education of your children is hobbled because it contradicts their holy book?
Religion *is* a political ideology. That people tend to see listening to an orator on sunday and listening to one on the TV every day as different things, is not surprising but still incorrect.
Especially in times before radio and TV, how would any political idea spread, if not in the form of religion? And why does religion reflect the attitudes of the social class that was the biggest supporter of that religion so much, if it was just Divine inspiration and not a form of political ideology?
I mean, look at Islam: everything in it reflects the attitude of nomadic traders living in a very inhospitable climate. And look at the protestant version of religion: comes up at the same time as the cities start to grow in importance, with the new bourgeois desiring equal representation in relation to their new worldly power and having an urgent need for free people to work in their workshops (and not being banned from hiring anyone because everyone's a serf). What a surprise that it stresses the value of the new upcoming "burgers" as opposed to those ruling the world at the time. No surprise that it took a few revolutions and a lot of heads to change the system - it *was* a revolution, a political one. Just look at Cromwells New Model Army.
And the Catholic faith just happens (by Divine will ofcourse) to stress the importance of peons listening to feudal lords, everyone in their place. What a surprise, that the changeover in early Christianity from "kick the rich out of the temple!" to "well, listen to the good King because he knows best and that is the will of the Lord" comes around the time that Kings start to convert into Christians.
I'm not even going into Confucianism here. That is such a blatant justification for the way the world was ordered under the emperor. And don't say it's not a religion - about a gazillion Chinese will disagree with you.
And religion wasn't just a "minor component" of this, and of the Crusades: without priests giving absolution, without priests calling for volunteers, without the Church pressing rulers into adventures into strange lands, there would have been no crusades at all. If you think Luther and Calvijn were just political, I'm pretty sure a lot of protestants will disagree. But if you say they were a-political, that's just silly.
And I'm not even going into the succession wars, the three popes, the fact that the Church at one time controlled more than half the areable land in Europe, or the things Machiavelli wrote about religion (and that book was banned by the church with reason - it's both very well written, a great read even now, and an absolute brilliant expose of the way in which rulers should use religion to control their subjects. Hot stuff for the 16th century)
Religion has been the main political ideology for thousands of years! Only recently do we get new ideologies, because the facilities have started to exist with the start of mass bookprints. Luther and Calvijn didn't just open the door for their OWN ideology with that, they opened the door for OTHER ideologies as well. The ones we call "political". But all that means is that they don't claim to derive from Divine inspiration. Apart from that, I see no difference.
Therefore, by the (faulty) logic you're using, you're just a cow with a keyboard - osu-neko (2604)
??? Egg white and milk whey are both white and no low-carb fanatic was ever against it. I guess you met some seriously uneducated low-carb fanatics.
Low-carb frenzy is at least scientifically falsifiable. "Religion" thrives on being non-falsifiable. Hence the comparison is extremely invalid
Bingo Dictionary - Pragmatist, n. A myopic idealist.
Do you know why you exist?
This question can be framed in English language due to a defect in English language. Otherwise, it is not a valid question.
"Why" is a linguistic construct fit to annotate actions, but not events. If some agency deliberately performs some action, it can be asked "why" he/she/it performed the action. Answer to the "why" is "the positive expectation of the agency by performing the action". So far, the ability of deliberately performing actions has only been detected in humans, and in animals in a certain sense.
It should be obvious now that "why" cannot be applied to events. By the very act of asking "why" for an event, you have falsely assumed it to be an action. This compels you to search for an agency that performed the action. That leads you, mistakenly, to God.
Bingo Dictionary - Pragmatist, n. A myopic idealist.
I don't this has much to do with genetics , but more to do with the religious teachings on the own.
For example , many religions forbid the use of contraception , because it's 'against the will of god' . So very religious people will automatically have more childeren that way.
Also, religious people will raise their children with that religion .Religions are made in such a way that people are 'brainwashed' to believe , from very young age.
But how is this news ? : religions have been doing this for ages , as it is the easiest way to increase your group of followers.
Slipping shoelaces ?
Congratulations, you have demonstrated that atheism can be a hobby!
Sweet! That's exactly what I was trying to do! I win the internet!
Unfortunately the statement you were supposed to disprove is that atheism is not a religion. Hobbies were mentioned as a point for comparison, otherwise irrelevant to any arguments.
Didn't get that memo? Did you send that to Bob, Shooter Of Bul in accounting by mistake? That lazy guy never forwards me the topic of the post I'm supposed to write when it's accidentally sent to him. The Jerk!
I am sure, you think of your expression as clever, but in reality it's either a poor attempt of deception, or lack of reasonong ability -- either qualifies you to get the fuck out of any intellectual discussion.
Well, the *fuck* out huh? Well, if not participating in every conversation you consider to be intellectual entitles me to copulation with a female. We need to get you into Mensa, Stat! Well, maybe a copy of Websters first. But, then man, its intellectual conversations for you twice a day, sometimes three on the weekends.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
What a stupid thing to say! When one says "consider the author," what he should mean is, "His ideology may have stood in the way of good science (e.g., scientists trying to accommodate their own religion)." This is a valid suggestion, and worthy of investigation. In this case, it seems it is your own ideology which prevents you from contributing anything of value.
Nah. If it is going to be formalized, it will look something more like:
1. A -> B
2. B -> ~C
3. C
4. ~B
5. ~A
And that's how the argument should be understood.
... and that's when the C.H.U.D.'s came at me.
If you think this is a bad development, just do your job and outbreed them.
Well, honestly you failed on step #2. We could argue about it, but it would really just you arguing that a God you don't believe exists must display a certain property in a certain way, in order for you to prove that he doesn't exist. It gets circular, and really just ends up with you defining a God you don't want to exist, and I certainly wouldn't want to exist ( believer that I am). its stupid and a waste of time, as all proofs and disproofs of God are.
Well, sure. This argument only "works" if you understand "God" to be a perfect or unsurpassable being. If you don't think God is such a thing, then it probably doesn't apply to whatever that thing is. But that's very different than the enterprise of natural theology/atheology being a waste of time.
... and that's when the C.H.U.D.'s came at me.
Even it increases the probability by 5% that builds up over a few generations. It sort of works like compound interest.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I did not engage in ad hominem attack. If I called him a jerk or typical ivory tower liberal, that would be an unfair attack. The fact that Rowthorn has published for a radical communist magazine (black dwarf) and is an atheist is a relevant issue because these points of view relate directly to the study's subject matter.
Flame all you want, but Rowthorn's radical views are the 'unscientific' element to this discussion, and the study only makes sense if one assumes that God does not exist and that a single gene is responsible for mass delusion.
"Religion" is simply an acceptance of 'X' based on inadaquate, incomplete evidence. It's synonymous with 'faith' or 'belief'. That heuristic ends up sorting both brane physicists and Druid priestesses into the same subset. In fact, all functional humans end up in that subset. (What, you don't believe in ANYTHING?) No one has all the facts, and all human knowledge, every human mind, requires essential leaps of faith to make sense of this unfathomable universe. Where we leap is where our religion is found, and we typically congregate with those who leap in the same internal places. Scientists may have more data when they leap, and seem more rational about where they leap, but they still have religion.
Religion remains a fascinating discussion and an unwinnable argument. I so believe.
Me? I'm a possibilian.
Depends. Are we talking about a situation in which people who only collect triangular stamps and those who believe a 4:3 rectangle is the one true shape regularly massacre each other?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Even though you used more words, that is exactly what I said. Bait on, I have the day off.
Ahh. An atheist missionary.
OK. I'll give you the same response that I give to every other missionary, tailored to your particular ism.
Show me how you prove the existence of God , and i'll use your method :-)
Really, the GP is not a missionary : he just made a fair statement that while with religion , you can choose to believe or not believe , science just deals with the facts ( it doesn't matter whether your believe in it or not ).
Offcourse , there is a certain 'belief' involved in science , do to our own limitations : we see as a fact that which we can currently prove as a fact .
That may not necessarily be true though , as we might not yet have the full understanding yet.
However , the main difference is that in science, if evidence is found that contradicts our current view on thing , we correct our view on it.
In religion , if evidence is found that contradicts the religious teaching , it will simply be discarded as heretical.
Slipping shoelaces ?
Hmmm. so it seems, that atheism is a genetic disorder and the nature will take care of it one way or the other. Amazing how God has it's mysterious ways.
JAM
This whole article is a crock. First of all, no genes for "religiousosity" have been identified, so no one has any idea where or how such genes are "hitchhiking" on the human genome. Second, if there is any such thing as an inhomogeneously distributed predisposition towards religion based on genetic factors, that predisposition is almost certainly extraordinarily multifactorial, not just a gene, but dozens, hundreds of genes, spread out over many chromosomes. The population genetics of transmission in this case are vastly more complicated than any simplistic model could reveal.
To be more explicit, the study is arguing that:
* There are two distinct strains of humanity, one that is genetically religious, one that is not.
* Certain religions promote larger families (not all religions do, note well).
* People that are genetically religious are statistically more likely to belong to the religions that promote larger families.
* Larger families guarantee a higher survival to reproduction rate (note well that this assumption is not generally true in nature, where survival rates for smaller families and less populous cultures are generally higher than those for larger ones with dilution of resources and more competition).
* No mechanism exists where non-religious people secularists can compete in reproduction rate, say by having multiple partners, engaging in infidelity and adultery, and so on (most of which are frowned on by the very religions that encourage high reproduction rates).
* Reproduction rate is ultimately the only thing that matters in population genetics. (So much for the long term survival of the homosexuality genes, eh?)
* Religiousosity genes in religions that encourage high reproduction rates will therefore always have a positive derivative in the enormously complex set of coupled differential equations that describe the gene distribution of the population, and must therefore eventually take over the population and become universal.
This is complete, utter, bullshit. It is bad science. It is terrible mathematics. Have these bozos never heard of complex systems and chaotic differential systems? Even if all of the assumptions above were true -- where clearly, most of them are pretty dubious -- the argument is naive in the extreme in a system so complex that there are doubtless many strange attractors on a constantly shifting landscape. Things it ignores:
* Memetics. Oh, wait, religions are memetic constructs, they are social superorganisms, not genetically encoded theistic beliefs. The key step in preparing a new generation of theists is the brainwashing of the children by bringing them up in the delusion. Perhaps there are genes that predispose one to being brainwashed, perhaps not, but as secular society continues to control information transmission to the very young there is a much, much faster mechansim than genetics acting to actively reduce the relative numbers of theists worldwide by simply educating young people so that they can see that the base doctrines and myths underlying the primary theisms are false.
* Non-religious, non-genetic factors that suppress or enhance survival rates. The Amish are a perfect example. They live within and are protected by a secular society. Plop them down in the Middle East and suddenly they would be a heavily persecuted minority. Plop them down in billion-person strong mostly-secular China and they'd have no capability of isolating their children for the key brainwashing step; the children would be taught from the earliest of ages that their parents religious beliefs were stupid myths. Alter American culture so that religions such as this no longer had tax advantages and insist that Amish children learn about astronomy and evolution and the fact that Amish mythology is mythology and you'd increase the defection rate to secular society.
* The fact that the number of secular non-religious people worldwide appears to be growing at
Even when the experts all agree, they may well be mistaken. --- Bertrand Russell.
It's about time those religious nutjobs start killing each other by the millsions again, like in the past centuries. But we must take care that we are left out of the massacre. Maybe we should lead them into it and watch the show?
No, I do understand God to be a prefect, unsurpassed being. I disagree that implies that unbelief cannot reasonably occur. But, warning you again, you're temptation is to continue this by arguing why I'm wrong by further defining the God you don't believe in, again being careful such that it meets your end conditions of his"provable" lack of existence.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
How is this different from what happened in the movie idiocracy? Couldn't that explain his "findings"? Leaping from "religoius people breed a lot!" to "religion-gene is gonna dominate all" is a huge leap of faith, pun intended.
Also, almost ANY social behavior could be said to have a genetic "component". How could you enjoy music if you weren't genetically predisposed to have ears? And music-lovers breed more because of drunkenness at concerts, leading to future generations with GIANT ears, relying solely on sonic bat-like senses for navigating their surroundings! They will then have an all-out war with the other faith-enhanced human factio , who has developed bioluminence on their scalps (religious people would be attracted to that) and a tendency to blindly believe in lots of strange things. The bat-faction would then win, because their king told the theology-faction that he was the president of the world, and because of their genetic inclination towards believing stuff, they believed him and surrendered.
Aah, i love theorizing on the potential of evolution :)
Yes, which why they shouldn't be completely dismissed, and some may be real.
Trolls, for instance. I saw a movie about this recently, called "Beowulf and Grendel". Grendel was, of course, called a "troll" by the humans, but in reality he was a leftover Neanderthal man. And as with everything that starts as an oral history, the events about both of them were greatly exaggerated. We do know from fossils that Neanderthals were real, and genetics show that they interbred with modern humans (red hair may in fact be a Neanderthal trait), we're just not entirely sure when they died out (or were completely assimilated by breeding), so they may in fact be the source of the "troll" myth.
Same goes for dragons. It's a little strange that nearly every ancient culture around the world has a dragon myth, even though there was little or no contact between them. There's no way to say for sure if some species of dinosaur survived the K-T extinction and was still alive until a few thousand years ago, unless some physical evidence is found. Fossils don't tell the whole story, because most dead organisms don't leave fossils, they just biodegrade. Fossils only rarely happen, by being caught in volcanic eruptions, tar pits, or other exceptional circumstances. And of course, with the tendency of humans to exaggerate things when retelling oral histories, a big lizard or dinosaur somehow becomes fire-breathing and living on piles of treasure.
I had better get my thermally reflective undergarments on, because this will surely result in volcanic temperature flames being leveled at me-- but here it goes anyway.
When it comes to conflating 'Atheism' with 'religion', I would argue that there *IS* a portion of the atheist demographic that even under fairly strict definitions could be described as religious. (Yes, I mean 'blind faith' type.)
Example: The atheist that denounces not only a specific god, but the very concept of a god, even though the concept of either the existence or non-existence of god is unprovable either way. (In fact, the argument over whether or not a god exists is the quintessential example in that particular kind of logical fallacy.) That is to say, it takes just as much blind faith without real proof or evidence (Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, after all) to assert in stark candor that no god exists, as it does to assert that one certainly must, since both positions are equally non-provable.
As such, both sides of that argument require a conviction of blind faith in order to substantiate the claims they make; Religion QED.
Now, to put a soaker hose on some people's innate reactions to my pointing this out, I feel it important to mention that I am NOT either one of those two extremes. Instead, here is my personal view on the matter of the existence/non-existence of any kind of god:
Long version:
Due to the implied special nature of god, there is no test that can be performed to determine if this being exists, or to disprove the hypothetical existence of this particular entity. Currently collected evidence hints that such a being either does not exist or very very rarely interacts with our form of existence, making the question rather moot except in some rather obscure and as-yet undocumented circumstance. Recent theories on the higher-order nature of existence (Such as multidimensional M-theories and their associated cadre of siblings like super gravity which suggest parallel universes and other unusual things) suggest that there may well be higher dimensions than those we can easily evaluate with our senses and with the tools we can create, making it at least slightly plausible that an "all powerful" (at least within our own subset of reality) being could exist, perhaps in a parallel universe, or in a higher dimensional construct of some sort. (Information theory and certain laws of thermodynamics, as well as the very nature of our 4D spacetime would prohibit the existence of any kind of infinite energy being in our neck of the multiverse, as such a being would instantly collapse our spacetime into the biggest black hole ever simply by being here. This is because an infinite energy bounded by any finite volume would result in an infinite density, which is the very definition of a singularity. Any manifestation of infinite energy density in our universe would result in energy density above the schwartzchild radial limit, and would induce rapid collapse. ) Again, current evidence would point out that if such a being did indeed exist, that this being does not, or very rarely interacts with us, and when or if it does do so, it would not be directly (because doing so would destroy us, as per above), making direct observation of this entity very unlikely if not impossible.
The short short version: I am a true agnostic.
The best that modern science can do in terms of the issue of "God" is to place constraints on how this "God" could manifest itself in regard to our spacetime environment, since our tools and understanding are perfectly bounded by these constraints. It cannot disprove or prove the existence of this entity.
So, without any objective means of validating the conjecture either way, ANY answer other than "Unanswerable" requires a leap of perfect faith, which is the foundational principle of religion. Thus, Atheism is a twisted form of religious faith. (The faith that there is no god.)
If the genes contributing to religiosity are identified, it will be very interesting to see if they are over represented in the US where a fair sized part of the founding population came here for religious reasons.
A more recent genetic sorting out might be seen in the descendants of Mormons who may be over represented in certain new religions, i.e., cults.
End MGM. Get prospective parents of boys to Google: Men do complain
Well, the Dutch neurobiologist Dick Swaab was practically ostracized for his work on brain differences between homo- and hetero-men. Apparently, homos have a bigger one.
I mean suprachiasmatic nucleus, of course.
See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prenatal_hormones_and_sexual_orientation
To be, or not to be: isn't that quite logical, Slashdot Beta?
I'm not sure at all what to make of your "warnings". Do you not think it important to understand the meanings of the words we use, or to aim for precision in that understanding? If your understanding of "unsurpassable" (note: not simply "unsurpassed") or "perfectly loving" differs from mine, that's fine. But to suggest that there's some harm in being exacting when talking about these issues seems a little odd.
... and that's when the C.H.U.D.'s came at me.
"Cramming for their finals" is what my dad says when he sees them all shuffling into church.
Odd word, "why". It has two meanings - one being akin to "by what mechanism" (when you ask why the car broke down) and the other more like "for what purpose" (why did he punch you in the nose).
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
No, Seriously.
This explains Tom Cruise....
Be careful. Asking "why" (or more correctly "how" in some cases) is a fundamental question behind much of science, too.
The sad part about articles like this is that they often result in discussions of predominantly atheists (though /. isn't nearly as bad as Reddit) accusing anyone who adheres to any religion in particular (although it's chiefly aimed at Christians, Jews, and sometimes Muslims--they're the ones who believe in a deity and are thus the easiest to poke fun at) as a fool, holding archaic beliefs in a brave new world. While those accusations may be true for most--or, I would argue, the "noisy minority"--a great deal of the US, for example, may be religious but of a more secular flavor of religion.
The problem centers on the relatively few who espouse such outrageous beliefs as the Earth being some 6000 years old. Most secular types, myself included, are at least bright enough to know that the figure was derived initially by Jewish scholars who were likely much more curious about how long ago Adam and Eve popped up--then taken by the Catholics to estimate the date of the creation.
Of course, others still--and I place myself into this group--are religious, and we feel that religion and science both have their place. Religion describes what science cannot (philosophy 101 explains this as the "metaphysical barrier"--i.e. whether there is something that cannot be measure empirically, like a soul, heaven, or whatever afterlife exists in a particular religion); science explains what can be empirically measured and makes reasonable estimates accordingly. Personally, I am religious; I also believe that scientific theories best explain how we got here (think Big Bang, evolution, etc.).
Although, what may surprise you is that neither our existing scientific endeavors nor religion explain why we are here. I'd challenge you to answer that question with either current scientific knowledge, the Bible, or the Torah. I'll even wait.
Slight aside: My response is, like yours--and everyone else's--biased. My religious views are much more secular than most others of my faith, and so the lens through which I see the world is most assuredly tinted. I feel that contraception should be actively encouraged, I dare to claim that the Earth is 4-5 billion years old, and I espouse numerous other views that some of those who share my same faith would scoff at.
So, if my social views are somewhat liberal and my world views use science to explain everything, why then would I consider myself religious?
It gives me inner strength and a peace of mind to feel that there is indeed a higher power. It is fundamentally my choice and my choice alone. The freedom to choose is an important one, and it's one that individuals on both sides of the fence wish desperately to squelch. If you truly believe that we each have a right to choose our own path, don't be one of them.
He who has no
So maybe by 2400 society will be back to how it was in 1400 ? The New Middle Ages ?
That may not necessarily be true though , as we might not yet have the full understanding yet.
However , the main difference is that in science, if evidence is found that contradicts our current view on thing , we correct our view on it.
In religion , if evidence is found that contradicts the religious teaching , it will simply be discarded as heretical.
That's how it's supposed to work in science, but science has become as much about belief and orthodoxy as any religion.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
if there was a religous gene winning against an atheism genome set due to hight number of offspring, we would not have any atheists today. We do hence there is not. q.e.d.
No, I mean there is no point. The argument is pointless. You do not believe what I do. It will end up being a circular argument. I've had it many times before. Its a stupid, pointless argument.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
Well, that's fine with me, I suppose. I just think it is curious that you keep repeating how "pointless" and "circular" this argument is, yet you don't actually bother to point out how it is so. As it doesn't seem like you're interested in an actual exchange, I'm done now.
... and that's when the C.H.U.D.'s came at me.
I giggle some how net.think mistakenly uses the word "religion" when they mean "Christianity".
Nice write-up on why this is junk science - Research on Authoritarianism and Religion.
[Insert pithy quote here]
The age of enlightenment set off in Europe after all the religious fanatics have fled to the Americas... makes you think.
Well, ok. I promise this is my last post. I understand its not very fair to you to just wave my hands and tell you how stupid this argument is, if you've never had it. Its the theological equivalent of talking to a intro to physics student about the absolute speed of light. They always propose hypothetical situations, which you already know they are going to be wrong without them asking. I just thought I'd head you off at the pas and give you some time to reflect on the flaw before getting into a heated debate. But given the way our discussion has already gone, you don't seem to be picking it up, or understanding 80 % of my posts. If you don't understand Calculus, its tough to teach ODE, no? So consider this the physics for poets digest.
Grasp the concepts, ignore the details ( which, if you're an atheist can be ignored as devils are not to be found there either;)
Me: #2 fails because I believe an All knowing, All loving God can have reasonable people who do not believe in him. A principle in many denominations of Christianity is that of God granting us free will. If we have free will, we can choose or not choose to believe in God. Additionally, he has given us testimonials form other credible sources, but prefers to let other humans do the Evangelization. It does not logically follow that an all Loving Creator God must directly communicate with his creation.
You: An All loving God would want everyone to know he exists, so they could love him too!
Me: No. An All Loving God wouldn't necessarily want to be so direct. Only in your definition ( which is necessary for you to believe in order for you to prove that he does not exist). This is what I'm saying #2 depends upon your conclusion, instead of your conclusion being based on the reasoning.
You: No, I can't imagine an All Loving god that doesn't directly communicate with each and every one. That would be stupid [ my note: you think its stupid because you don't believe in it].
And it would just go on like that. Stupid right? You just keep on trying to define How God would work, in order to prove that he does not exist. All you are really defining, is the God that Cannot exist in order to prove that he does not exist.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
Well, ok. I promise this is my last post. I understand its not very fair to you to just wave my hands and tell you how stupid this argument is, if you've never had it. Its the theological equivalent of talking to a intro to physics student about the absolute speed of light. They always propose hypothetical situations, which you already know they are going to be wrong without them asking. I just thought I'd head you off at the pas and give you some time to reflect on the flaw before getting into a heated debate. But given the way our discussion has already gone, you don't seem to be picking it up, or understanding 80 % of my posts. If you don't understand Calculus, its tough to teach ODE, no? So consider this the physics for poets digest.
I'll ignore the condescension, since you actually follow it up by talking about the argument itself.
Me: #2 fails because I believe an All knowing, All loving God can have reasonable people who do not believe in him. A principle in many denominations of Christianity is that of God granting us free will. If we have free will, we can choose or not choose to believe in God.
We can choose our beliefs? Even with a libertarian view of free will, it isn't simply a given that we are capable of choosing our beliefs. You need some kind of doxastic voluntarism to be true, for this to be an objection to the argument. Do you have any evidence that this is the case?
Additionally, he has given us testimonials form other credible sources, but prefers to let other humans do the Evangelization. It does not logically follow that an all Loving Creator God must directly communicate with his creation.
Nothing in the argument entails that a perfectly loving God must directly communicate with his creation. This is nothing more than a red herring.
You: An All loving God would want everyone to know he exists, so they could love him too!
Not quite. A perfectly loving God would want everyone to believe that he exists, because such a belief is required for a mutually explicit, meaningful love relationship to exist between God and his creations. I don't know what else "perfectly loving" could mean, other than the desire to participate in such a relationship with everyone who was willing.
[more red herrings and straw men]
Not much else to respond to here.
... and that's when the C.H.U.D.'s came at me.
Unlike the GGP, you seem to have thought about your views a bit. See my reply (http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1972610&cid=35048388/ ) to the GGP to a similar question as yours. In essence, it says that the question "why we are here?" is wrong.
Bingo Dictionary - Pragmatist, n. A myopic idealist.
I've seen kids from very religious households go in all different directions with respect to religions. It seems very unlikely that there's anything like a genetic "predisposition" to religion.
Suppose that out of every ten religious-gene children, seven become religious themselves (let's say, in five different religions); out of ten atheist-gene children, only six become religious. Then, this version of reality is consistent with your experince *and* with the headline+summary (I don't RTFA, the comments have more signal per time).
That's one issue: when you do any observation of complex systems, such as humans or groups of humans, you don't just look at a single data point. You look at two different points, and try to link the difference in outputs (kid religiousity) to the difference in inputs (parent religiousity).
Another issue: humans are complicated systems. Groups of humans even more so. Therefore, if you look at only one point of each type, you might get fooled by an arbitrary difference that's due to some unrelated factor. That's why you make a lot of observations, hoping that the unrelated variations distribute themselves evenly, such that the "sum of error vectors" is zero (or exponentially small) in both groups of subjects.
So even if your anecdote ran counter to the theory, you would need an overweight of similar anecdotes versus the ones confirming the theory, and the anecdotes would have to be chosen randomly in order for the assumption "the error vector sum is small" to make sense.
(At least as far as I understand science and statistics. If I'm wrong, please tell me: help me inform rather than misinform people in the future.)
Now that you speak of reproduction rates, here's a thing that's bugging me:
For example, in the past 20 years, the Amish population in the US has doubled, increasing from 123,000 in 1991 to 249,000 in 2010.
What does that mean? Doubling sounds like a lot, but consider this:
It's about a 3.5% yearly growth. Your bank balance can probably do that with a reasonably diversified portfolio, at least if you can afford parking your money for a few years.
Throughout the same past 20 years (1990-2010), the US economy has grown from 8 to 13 times X dollars (http://www.supportingevidence.com/Government/US_GDP_over_time.html), or put another way by 50% and then some. The US population in general has grown by roughly 25% (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_States).
So yeah, it's fast, but's it's 3.5% vs. 2% and 1% if you put it in those terms. (@editors) Let's have some context, yes?
There are tons of factors defining how we'll behave on a primordial level if left unchecked. Women will flock to men who provide well even if it means being one of ten of his mates. Men will beat tigers over the heads with clubs in a jungle etc...
Genetics which provide a leaning towards needing to be a member of a group of people no matter how ridiculous their belief system is is a primordial survival trait as well. Let's face it, weaker people survive when they gather into groups. They're willing to say or do just about anything so long as it will allow them to survive. There will also always be "leaders" in this group. People who are believers and wanted to lead to support other believers, or opportunists which see the clear benefit of leading large groups of easily mailable followers.
The point being that even if the gene had 100% proliferation into society, it should make very little difference. If anything, it can work against religion (as in believing in imaginary "higher beings") just as easily as for it. I would imagine (though I have no substantiating evidence or research to support) that the same gene which makes someone more susceptible to spending 3-5 full years of their lives sitting on uncomfortable benches praying to some imaginary thing that the world will be better etc... while the other people are out actually trying to make it better is the exact same gene which creates music groupies. People who want to be part of something "bigger than themselves" but instead of idolizing and praying to some mysterious magical thing, they instead idolize and practically pray to "super stars" which seem bigger than life. And they gain their "status" as being a "true fan" since they give up large portions of their lives to follow the band on the road and be their "true fans".
This same behavior, if acted upon properly could instead be used to make society as a whole the "great being" or make education the "greater group" etc... but, so long as we don't actively exploit the weakness in this way of thinking to attempt to help these people, they are more likely to choose religion or a rock band as their "larger than life, higher existence". This is the benefit of trying to make rock stars out of scientists and engineers. "Immortalize" the smart people and others can choose to learn more and become part of the "greater meaning". Sure, they'll still be idiot religious groupies, but they might spend their time trying to actually fix problems as opposed to being stubborn pains in the asses who pray for a better world and then get in the way of anyone who try make it for them.
So, here's my argument with your point.
1) It's an economics professor formulating a theory regarding the spread of a gene. Ok, he's got a model, but it's highly doubtful he understands the constants and the variables well enough to allow the model to have any merit.
2) He is clearly biased in the direction that from what I can read, his model is designed to attempt to prove "We'll all be religious one day, shouldn't we just skip all the waiting and get to it now".
3) His "facts" regarding reproduction rates based on the popular science sources he sites are poorly interpreted to begin with.
4) The model makes the assumption the "religiosity" gene plays a strictly dominant role and has a damn near 100% success rate of being carried from one generation to the next.
5) He doesn't take environment into consideration nearly enough. He models based on the idea that all people will live strictly by their primordial instincts. It's entirely possible the gene in question is present in tons of non-religious people as well. From what I can tell, the gene is kind of like a thing which says "A kid born with this gene and left in the wild to raise him/herself is more likely to pray to volley balls named Wilson that wash up on the shore than kids who aren't." It doesn't seem to actually have that great of an impact on people in their later lives. Just that it seems they are more likely to come from other p
You gave no indication in your original comment that you even read the article, much less care about good science. If that's not the impression you wanted to give -- let's be certain, I'm not the only one that got this impression -- then be clearer next time.
"Also, maybe the supreme doesn't want to say "hello"."
Oops. You stumbled into what I call the division by zero effect of classical religion. YHVH/Allah 'loves' you! Of course He'd want to say hello? Right? Or do we have 2500 years of emotional sunk cost we can't bear to dispense with?
I chuckle a little at an anti-social supreme being that likes to play nasty games and obfuscates his presence. It makes for funny literature, but it would be downright creepy.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Again that runs into the problems. He exists in a completely untraceable realm ... where prayers get through but science can't?!
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
...even Dawkins posited that it may be that there is an evolutionary value to religion, in the sense that a society that BELIEVES that there is 'an invisible watchdog' that's going to punish for 'cheating' has a stronger bias toward not cheating.
And since really any society is based on a set of assumptions and the fewer free-riders/cheaters there are, the better the system works, discouraging cheating by whatever means is a non-negligible advantage.
Today, in the West, where we're seeing an atomization of communities, it could even be that we're situating ourselves to a place where this tendency could actually turn out to be once again useful.
-Styopa
Well that's pretty damn selfish. Some of us honestly don't give a fuck about your god or your lord and have better things to do with our time than listen to you and your ideas about the universe. But that's not going to stop you from trying to talk to us anyways is it? Nope, you have to make brownie points with your imaginary sky fairy so we have to suffer your intolerable intrusiveness into our lives. And with each chance to tell people about god, Jesus, and all that mumbo jumbo you waste a little mroe of our time, and impede a little bit more into our lives and our privacy.
It never ceases to amaze me how fucking selfish religious people are, as if they and their beliefs are the center of the whole frackin' universe.
Motorcycles, Robots, Space Gossip and More!
I've read about these experiments, too. I find them interesting, but certainly not the doomsday knell against free will. Two points 1) Initiating a movement to pick an object was required whichever object I chose; equating the mental processes that kick-off my motor functions with a decision as to which object I choose seems a bit of a leap 2) Just b/c some portion of my decision is influenced by subconscious factors doesn't mean I couldn't pause and make a fully conscious decision if I chose. In fact, the very evidence that I put more thought into some decisions than others indicates that I am choosing to do so (otherwise, all decisions would be made at the same subconscious level).
...sometimes, in order to hurt someone very badly, you have to tell that person terrible lies. - PA
When it comes to conflating 'Atheism' with 'religion', I would argue that there *IS* a portion of the atheist demographic that even under fairly strict definitions could be described as religious. (Yes, I mean 'blind faith' type.)
1. Blind faith, zealotry and stubbornness, are not religion, they merely are common attributes of religious traditions and religious people -- but just as well can be completely unrelated.
The rest of your comment is therefore irrelevant. Nevertheless.
2. Atheism is a lack of belief. You can't "not believe" "blindly", as this is the most reasonable approach to everything that has no evidence, including all forms of religion. There is no point considering a possibility of ANYTHING outside things that can be observed, because then you would have to operate with the assumption that EVERYTHING is possible -- what is not in any way applicable to any decision you can make, and still would be even if some of those things were true. There is no valid argument for it, it's bullshit because then you have to admit that, for example, I may be the God, and that doesn't even scratch the surface of idiocy that would have to follow if your supposed "agnosticism" is applied consistently (just in case that you DO admit that I may be the God, I command you do die in a fire).
This brings us to the true meaning of "agnosticism" -- it's "I will just pretend that religious people might be right, because I am afraid of antagonizing religious authority figures". It belongs at the same intellectual junkyard as religions, pseudoscience, racism and some political movements.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
So you have a problem with the atheists that try to educate people because you feel they are on a mission. I myself only have a problem with people that are on a mission to convince atheists that they should just stfu. Not because you are expressing your opinion; That would be perfectly fine. I have a problem with people like you because you are the exact thing you complain about.
1) you are incorrect. "Atheism" literally means "No god", or 'against god'. Not "Against religion". To fit your argument with this CORRECT (look it up in the dictionary if you feel I am wrong) definition of atheism, it would read "you can't 'not believe in a god' blindly", which is patently false. You certainly can. FAIL. It is quite possible for a person to be literally faced with an all-powerful god, right in front of them, and still chose disbelief. People did this in the early 1900s with germs, upgrading it to a divinity is is a trivial mental exercise.
2) "Agnosticism" literally means "Without knowledge". It means that I profess a lack of knowledge about any god, which is perfectly consistent with my statement above. Further, it implies that it is impossible "To know" a god, which is further consistent with what I said above. It has absolutely nothing to do with religious apologism, as you claim. Double fail.
3) Making up definitions to suit your world view is pretentious and conceited; It proclaims your decision for purposeful ignorance in the face of correction. It is a classic example of a "Moving the goal post" type logical fallacy, much like a "no true scottsman". You purposefully moved the goalpost (regarding what "Atheism" actually means) so that the argument would seem invalid.Triple fail.
You are correct in at least part of your rather barbed retort though; I cannot prove that you are not god, however, conversely, you cannot prove that you ARE. That does NOT make me have to bow down and worship you though. It just means I shouldnt fault somebody for falling for such a ploy and actually doing it. People have worshiped humans as if they were gods for centuries. I am not one of those people, so your commandment for me to die in a fire will fall on deaf ears. So sorry.
In short, your argument sounds like the siren of a waaaambulance. Try again, this time dont make shit up, K?
No more so now than it ever was. Still, it seems to advance in spite of the intransigence of certain theories' adherents. Why is that, do you think?
"Slow down, Cowboy! It has been 3 years, 7 months and 26 days since you last successfully posted a comment."
1) you are incorrect. "Atheism" [merriam-webster.com] literally means "No god", or 'against god'. Not "Against religion".
What the fuck are you talking about?! I have just said that atheism is lack of belief in god. Religion is a belief in god. "Against" has nothing to do with it, atheism denies existence of god and therefore validity of religions. Atheist may choose to actively attack religions seeing them as dangerous (as I do), or consider them to be harmless curiosities (what would be perfectly reasonable if religions did not try to spread themselves).
2) "Agnosticism" [merriam-webster.com] literally means "Without knowledge"
And it's still an invalid way of reasoning, because it amounts to "anything may be true". Unless you can honestly act in a way that you assume such possibilities (that include me being a God, among other things), you can't claim to being consistently agnostic. Since no one can do this, the idea is stupid. Being "selective agnostic" is exactly the same as being a believer in a religion, just a very crappy believer.
3) Making up definitions to suit your world view is pretentious and conceited;
Me and every non-religious person everywhere.
You are correct in at least part of your rather barbed retort though; I cannot prove that you are not god, however, conversely, you cannot prove that you ARE. That does NOT make me have to bow down and worship you though.
If you don't expect me to be a god because I say so, you should also expect every religion to be wrong, too. Me being a god, and every god from every religion are on exactly the same foundation here -- no evidence whatsoever.
It just means I shouldnt fault somebody for falling for such a ploy and actually doing it. People have worshiped humans as if they were gods for centuries. I am not one of those people, so your commandment for me to die in a fire will fall on deaf ears. So sorry.
It should be utterly irrelevant to your own belief or lack of such, how you treat or blame other people. Your own beliefs and claims about them are under scrutiny, not your opinion about someone else.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Well... It's taken me this long to realize that I've made a proper idiot out of myself -- TWICE! -- and that I've been thoroughly pwned. This teaches me not to read the comments from the response window, and also to read the other comments in the thread! Thanks, bxwatso.
1) Incorrect AGAIN. Atheism is "The belief that there is no god." *NOT* "The lack of belief in a god." While the latter naturally follows the former, (why would you believe in something that you feel does not exist?) the two are NOT interchangable, and have specific meanings. The atheist most certainly DOES have a belief: The belief that god (In any form) does not exist. It is a true belief, because there is no direct proof to support the position. It is made entirely on faith, and as is often mentioned, the incorrect assertion that a lack of evidence is evidence of absence.
2) No, it is NOT an invalid line of reasoning. A perfectly tangible analog would be "What is the spin of this particle hovering over my hand? Is it UP, or DOWN?" The answer, is that it is BOTH, until you measure. This has been scientifically proven many times. Such a circumstance is called "superposition." One of the curious side effects of bringing quantum phenomena into cosmological theory is that it becomes possible that our universe as we percieve it is merely a single quantum instance and that its full probability tree is fully represented in higher dimensions. (meaning that everything that can happen, does happen, and will happen, even if not in this quantum instance.) Your argument against this is a non-sequitor; it does not follow.
Now, you could argue that there is "Little" evidence for this (You cannot say "none", because of the well documented phenomenon of superposition, as mentioned.) , and that it is probably misguided to assert such a thing, which I would gladly accept--- Occams razor and all that. This does not negate the possibility that it is true though, nor does it negate the fact that it cannot be proven either way. Thus, the ONLY valid answer to such a question is "Possible, but unlikely." Not "Isnt true."
The two are NOT equivilent.
Any strawmen about fairies, pixies, the abominable snowman, or any other improbable entity equally does not dispell this argument, such being a combination of an appeal to ridicule>, and a strawman.
Further, your assertion that "It is the natural and rational course to conflate lack of evidence with evidence of absence." is ALSO a logical fallacy, in and of itself. Specifically, an "appeal to ignorance" fallacy. Note how wikipedia mentions that the only way out of this kind of fallacy is the method that agnostics like myself employ: Not enough data to answer-- EG, "Unknown."
As for the last bit, about how you assert I could not possibly be consistent in my beliefs-- that is your assertion about your opinion; not an assertion of truth. Know the difference, and dont conflate the two.
That's a very interesting take on the question. I don't necessarily agree with the conclusion, but it is certainly informative. Thank you. :)
He who has no