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Member (Idle past 3628 days) Posts: 1811 From: East Asia Joined: |
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Author | Topic: Evolutionary Origin of Religious Belief | |||||||||||||||||||||||
anastasia Member (Idle past 5984 days) Posts: 1857 From: Bucks County, PA Joined: |
Straggler writes: Maybe religion is a natural byproduct of intelligence mixed with ignorance. Maybe an intelligence that requires answers but that does not have the knowledge to fulfill those answers is liable to invent the most plausible explanation it can muster because it is more advantageous to status and esteem than just admitting ignorance. Inventing any plausible or non-plausable explanation for things has a byproduct in creating order amoung a society which subsequently defines itself by that order. This eventually differentiates between societies and forces the ideas of both into adapting and evolving, or annhilation and defeat. Religion has supernatural emelents, but over all it is an extension of the purpose or goals prescribed by a culture to its functions. All of the possible explanations are meritorious in some purely physical/survival scenerios, although of course when you look at the differences in modern world religions, and the over-all shift from viewing ourselves as clans, to a global community, the ways in which religions can be useful shifts a bit as well. Religion is viewed now as a left-over tendency and in opposition to what we want as an entire species. It is seen as a dividing line from an antique mind-set, despite that most religions teach the same humanitarian and pacifist ideals of secular society.
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Larni Member Posts: 4000 From: Liverpool Joined: |
ana writes: Inventing any plausible or non-plausable explanation for things has a byproduct in creating order amoung a society which subsequently defines itself by that order. This eventually differentiates between societies and forces the ideas of both into adapting and evolving, or annhilation and defeat. Religion has supernatural emelents, but over all it is an extension of the purpose or goals prescribed by a culture to its functions. My bolding. You were talking a load of old sense till you got to the supernatural bit. Adding the supernatural achieves exactly nothing to this debate.
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anastasia Member (Idle past 5984 days) Posts: 1857 From: Bucks County, PA Joined: |
Larni writes: Adding the supernatural achieves exactly nothing to this debate. But that was my point. I was glossing over the supernatural in favor of the practical.
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bluegenes Member (Idle past 2508 days) Posts: 3119 From: U.K. Joined: |
Larni writes: We need this irrationality just to get through the day. It comes with a price tag though: a predisposition to catching religion. Well put, but I'm not sure how much, if any, irrationality we need. Some people might think that they need it, but they might be being unnecessarily irrational in believing so. There are lots of interesting bits in the article Archer links to in the O.P. like:
Whatever the specifics, certain beliefs can be found in all religions. Those that prevail, according to the byproduct theorists, are those that fit most comfortably with our mental architecture. Psychologists have shown, for instance, that people attend to, and remember, things that are unfamiliar and strange, but not so strange as to be impossible to assimilate. Ideas about God or other supernatural agents tend to fit these criteria. They are what Pascal Boyer, an anthropologist and psychologist, called “minimally counterintuitive”: weird enough to get your attention and lodge in your memory but not so weird that you reject them altogether. A tree that talks is minimally counterintuitive, and you might believe it as a supernatural agent. A tree that talks and flies and time-travels is maximally counterintuitive, and you are more likely to reject it. This might explain why some religious people get annoyed if you compare belief in their God to belief in the Spaghetti Monster, the Invisible Pink Unicorn, and other such spoofs on religion. Such things don't fit the "minimally counterintuitive" qualification. Interestingly, it's arguable that the God of the young earth fundamentalists has become "maximally counterintuitive" for non-fundamentalist Christians due to an increase in scientific knowledge, so they have done away with literal interpretations of Genesis, and substituted a more "minimally counterintuitive" God for the old one.
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anastasia Member (Idle past 5984 days) Posts: 1857 From: Bucks County, PA Joined: |
bluegenes writes: Interestingly, it's arguable that the God of the young earth fundamentalists has become "maximally counterintuitive" for non-fundamentalist Christians due to an increase in scientific knowledge, so they have done away with literal interpretations of Genesis, and substituted a more "minimally counterintuitive" God for the old one. Interesting stuff, yes, but I am not sure that it fits with fundamentalism. Biblical literalism is counter-sensitive, rather than counter-intuitive. In a certain sense, it is not illogical to have a belief in the Bible which is absolute and inerrant, and then to hold to that belief. But inerrantists are holding only to their own interpretation as gold, not the Bible. Or, their interpretation of the word inerrant, to be exact. The 'God' in both scenerios remains the same minimal-intuitve God, but what creative powers we ascribe to that God have changed. What is sensory is different from what is intuitive...or known by 'feeling'. Edited by anastasia, : No reason given. Edited by anastasia, : spelling
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bluegenes Member (Idle past 2508 days) Posts: 3119 From: U.K. Joined: |
anastasia writes: The 'God' in both scenerios remains the same minimal-intuitve God, but what creative powers we ascribe to that God have changed. I didn't know that any Christians believed in a God who has "creative powers" that are in any way limited. Live and learn. I thought He could do whatever he wanted to do. Minimally and maximally intuitive are Pascal Boyer's terms, and obviously fairly loose. What I meant was that with increased scientific knowledge, the God of genesis creation becomes more like the tree that can talk, fly and travel. Maximally counterintuitive in the way that Boyer is using the term. If your beliefs are in a God who created this universe as scientists perceive it and who decided to communicate with our species by having a succession of prophets all from the same Middle-Eastern tribe (highly impractical) and have a son by a woman from the same tribe, that could be described as just minimally counterintuitive.
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anastasia Member (Idle past 5984 days) Posts: 1857 From: Bucks County, PA Joined: |
bluegenes writes: I didn't know that any Christians believed in a God who has "creative powers" that are in any way limited. Live and learn. I thought He could do whatever he wanted to do. I think that even if I am not precise in wording, although I do try, that you will understand that I mean the creative processes which we imagine of God have changed from one of instantaneous creation of life as we see it, to one of evolved life.
Minimally and maximally intuitive are Pascal Boyer's terms, and obviously fairly loose. What I meant was that with increased scientific knowledge, the God of genesis creation becomes more like the tree that can talk, fly and travel. Maximally counterintuitive in the way that Boyer is using the term. If your beliefs are in a God who created this universe as scientists perceive it and who decided to communicate with our species by having a succession of prophets all from the same Middle-Eastern tribe (highly impractical) and have a son by a woman from the same tribe, that could be described as just minimally counterintuitive. I undestand, but I think that you are using 'intuitive' to cover what is statistically probable, logical, or visible, and these things are not in the realms of what is considered intuitive. Maybe I can get back to you with a definition.
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bluegenes Member (Idle past 2508 days) Posts: 3119 From: U.K. Joined: |
anastasia writes: I think that even if I am not precise in wording, although I do try, that you will understand that I mean the creative processes which we imagine of God have changed from one of instantaneous creation of life as we see it, to one of evolved life. I did guess pretty much what you meant, although it wasn't what you said, so my apologies for nitpicking!
ana writes: I undestand, but I think that you are using 'intuitive' to cover what is statistically probable, logical, or visible, and these things are not in the realms of what is considered intuitive. Maybe I can get back to you with a definition. Here's something to go on.
Wiki writes: Intuition is an immediate form of knowledge in which the knower is directly acquainted with the object of knowledge. Intuition differs from all forms of mediated knowledge, which generally involve conceptualizing the object of knowledge by means of rational/analytical thought processes (and, hence, placing a mediating idea or concept between the knower and the known). Some philosophers consider human experience of raw empirical data (sometimes called "qualia") to be intuitive. For example, when a person sees a patch of yellow, that person is directly acquainted with the yellowness of the object, even if he or she has no name or concept for yellowness. Intuition differs from opinion since intuition is a way of experiencing objects, while opinion is based on that experience. Intuition also differs from instinct, which does not necessarily have the experiential element at all. A person who has an intuitive basis for an opinion probably cannot immediately fully explain why he or she holds that view. However, a person may later rationalize an intuition by developing a chain of logic to demonstrate more structurally why the intuition is valid. In popular understanding, intuition is one source of common sense and it may also help in induction to gain empirical knowledge. So I think that all Gods are counterintuitive, just going by the first sentence of the above. Perhaps you're confusing intuition with instinct? Edited by bluegenes, : Bit about instinct. Edited by bluegenes, : No reason given.
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Larni Member Posts: 4000 From: Liverpool Joined: |
bluegenes writes: but I'm not sure how much, if any, irrationality we need. Larni writes: Most people are irrationaly optimistic and it has been shown that depressed people are better predictors of probability (in terms of predicting likely out comes) than the non depressed individual. This means that th edepressed individual gets it right more than the non depressed individual. Depressed people display a marked lack of hope and posotivity towards the future. They predict negative outcomes and stop striving to attain goals. The thiing is the predictions they make (more negative than norms) are more accurate reflections of reality. Being able to block this effect with any of irrationality (e.g. belief in gods and spirits et al) is good for the organism as it protects against psychological disorders such as depression (the number one killer in the western world!). I like the idea of a continuum of counter intuitiveness. The more we learn about the natural world the more counter intuitive religion becomes. Xianty in the UK has (in my experience) devolved into a quiet little belief that most people are content to leave undisturbed because drawing attention to it illuminates how counter intuitive it actually is.
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Larni Member Posts: 4000 From: Liverpool Joined: |
ana writes: But that was my point. I was glossing over the supernatural in favor of the practical. Yeah, *scuffs feet, looks at floor chastened* s'pose.
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bluegenes Member (Idle past 2508 days) Posts: 3119 From: U.K. Joined: |
Larni writes: This means that th edepressed individual gets it right more than the non depressed individual. Depressed people display a marked lack of hope and posotivity towards the future. They predict negative outcomes and stop striving to attain goals. The thiing is the predictions they make (more negative than norms) are more accurate reflections of reality. Being able to block this effect with any of irrationality (e.g. belief in gods and spirits et al) is good for the organism as it protects against psychological disorders such as depression (the number one killer in the western world!). Yes, I understand what you're saying, but there's an obvious catch to it. Religion isn't going to work for the people that you think would benefit from it. Those people whose thought processes lead them to conclusions or predictions that are "accurate reflections of reality". So, in serious cases, you would have to treat them with other opiates, anyway. You're then left with religion comforting people whose thought processes do not lead them to predictions that are accurate reflections of reality (almost by definition, I'd say!), and these are the ones who are least likely to suffer from depression anyway, according to the research that you're basing this on (which I'm perfectly prepared to believe as bright and sensitive people being more prone to depression and other forms of mental illness fits my experience). Does this fit with the evolutionary history of our species? If what you're saying is right, it's almost like saying that we've evolved to become the most intelligent ape while at the same time evolving a special and unique kind of stupidity (religiosity) in order to be able cope emotionally with existence at our level of sentience. I'm not really against the adaptive side of the argument as described by the article in the O.P., and I think your points about religion helping us to cope with grief are good ones, but I'm sure there are some contradictions in there somewhere. I also think that religion is at least partly, if not largely or entirely, "byproduct".
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bluegenes Member (Idle past 2508 days) Posts: 3119 From: U.K. Joined: |
Sorry, double post, technical problems.
Edited by bluegenes, : Double post.
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anastasia Member (Idle past 5984 days) Posts: 1857 From: Bucks County, PA Joined: |
Larni writes: Yeah, *scuffs feet, looks at floor chastened* s'pose. Ah, Larni, you know me...I will always think there is more to it...but I can be objective enough at times to view religion as an extension of, or a packaged form, of those lovely moral codes. That part is easy to understand when it comes to evolutionary purpose. The part which is not so easy is really the supernatural element. I mean, what usefulness would a 'god' concept be? A big bad shepherd driving the sheep into line, maybe? Actually, tho, if I am not mistaken, the whole idea of 'supernatural' is a bit later in the game, isn't it? The earliest religious forms were much more practical or 'grounded'?
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Larni Member Posts: 4000 From: Liverpool Joined: |
ana writes: The earliest religious forms were much more practical or 'grounded'? Not really, they still use behaviour or thought to effect the natural world in a non causal way.
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Woodsy Member (Idle past 3405 days) Posts: 301 From: Burlington, Canada Joined: |
I think the most interesting aspect of the idea that religious tendencies might be (by)products of our mental makeup, developed through our evolutionary history, is what it means for the truth claims of religion.
If good evidence is found for this idea, what evidence can religion then bring to bear to show that religious ideas have any factual basis? Religious ideas may indeed be comforting and so forth, but that is no evidence that they are true.
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