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Author Topic:   Can Evolution explain this? (Re: The biological evolution of religious belief)
NosyNed
Member
Posts: 8996
From: Canada
Joined: 04-04-2003


Message 16 of 91 (160802)
11-17-2004 11:16 PM
Reply to: Message 15 by lfen
11-17-2004 11:14 PM


Loss of Sight
You are right. Many different species have evolved lack of sight in the cave environment. I think it is common enough that it could be taken as a demonstration that keeping eyes around isn't neutral. There is a cost to them that causes some selective pressure against them.
ABE
A little on the evolution of eyelessness.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/...ases/2004/10/041021080317.htm
and
http://www.sciencedaily.com/...ases/2000/07/000728082041.htm
This message has been edited by NosyNed, 11-17-2004 11:21 PM

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lfen
Member (Idle past 4677 days)
Posts: 2189
From: Oregon
Joined: 06-24-2004


Message 17 of 91 (160806)
11-17-2004 11:24 PM
Reply to: Message 8 by arachnophilia
11-17-2004 7:56 PM


Julian Jaynes etc
you should read "the origin of conciousness in the breakdown of the bichameral mind" by julian jaynes.
I loved that book. It was such a cross discpline tour de force full of insight but I have no idea how it could be falsified let alone proved. Still Jaynes thinking was brilliant and fascinating. If others were interested it would be great to see a thread devoted to it.
I recall understanding him to say that the gods were the way initial consciousness experienced thinking coming from the other brain hemisphere before a self image emerged that could be a reference for taking action in the world. He brilliantly explained the Illiad and prophecy.
lfen

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lfen
Member (Idle past 4677 days)
Posts: 2189
From: Oregon
Joined: 06-24-2004


Message 18 of 91 (160808)
11-17-2004 11:28 PM
Reply to: Message 11 by Ben!
11-17-2004 9:10 PM


Bump for Pink Sasquatch
Hey, Pink
Remember that thread you started some months back asking if there was something unique to Homo Sap?
Whadda ya think of this assertion?
No animals are religious (I'm serious! And no MANTIS jokes ), and (from what I've read AND INTERPRETED) higher cognition (< 100,000 yrs old) is much more recent than our social structure.
Does religion meet your criteria?
lfen

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lfen
Member (Idle past 4677 days)
Posts: 2189
From: Oregon
Joined: 06-24-2004


Message 19 of 91 (160813)
11-17-2004 11:34 PM
Reply to: Message 16 by NosyNed
11-17-2004 11:16 PM


Re: Loss of Sight
Yeah, that is what I thought but the details were all very hazy.
btw Have you ever taken a blind walk or spent time "blind"? It's amazing how the other senses become sensitive or begin to feed data.
I remember stopping and I reaching out to touch a wall and then figuring out I had sensed it was there because the quality of sounds had changed due to some reflection from the wall.
I'm guessing that if other senses get more processer space with the loss of eyes, senses that have survival value in total darkness then that is the advantageous mutation that is needed?
lfen

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arachnophilia
Member (Idle past 1344 days)
Posts: 9069
From: god's waiting room
Joined: 05-21-2004


Message 20 of 91 (160828)
11-18-2004 12:37 AM
Reply to: Message 11 by Ben!
11-17-2004 9:10 PM


My overwhelming belief is that it is derivative. No animals are religious (I'm serious! And no MANTIS jokes ), and (from what I've read AND INTERPRETED) higher cognition (< 100,000 yrs old) is much more recent than our social structure.
how do you know that no animals are religious? or that religion is related to higher cognition?
a favorite reply to my posts here is that "the plural of 'anecdote' is not 'data.'" while true, i'd like the share the following anecdote.
my family has always owned cats. at one point we had as many as five, but now we only have two. they're both male, brothers actually, and one looks exactly like purpledawn's avatar. we tend to raise our cats to be outdoors cats, and so these two learned to hunt. they're tiny cats, but they take down some pretty big pigeons and crows, as well as some gigantic rats.
we toss them out at night, because they get into stuff. but when they get the impression that we're ANGRY at them, because we were yelling at them when we threw them out, sometimes they'll bring us a dead animal. or sometimes they'd do it when we did something especially nice for them too. at first, they used to just leave it, wait for us to see it, poking at it proudly. like a gift, kind of. but since we started yelling at them when they did this, they'd start eating more and more of the animal before we got to it. now we just find feathers and various distasteful organs.
but the thought occurred to me one day: are they sacrificing animals to us? i mean, we provide them with more than enough food. it's not an action motivated by hunger. and they always leave it right in front of the one door we use in the house.
i've read the early bits of the bible, and the attitude of the people to god seems to be sort of like my cats: nonchalant, sometimes bothered, sometimes loving. but when something really good or bad happens, they kill an animal in a ceremonial fashion, and eat it.
is it possible that religion actually evolved out of something more animalistic and natural than higher thought? afterall, when more abstract thoughts of god entered the hebrew religion, the sacrifices quited down, and some later biblical writing indicates that they came to think god didn't even like sacrifices...

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arachnophilia
Member (Idle past 1344 days)
Posts: 9069
From: god's waiting room
Joined: 05-21-2004


Message 21 of 91 (160830)
11-18-2004 12:48 AM
Reply to: Message 17 by lfen
11-17-2004 11:24 PM


Re: Julian Jaynes etc
I loved that book. It was such a cross discpline tour de force full of insight but I have no idea how it could be falsified let alone proved.
herein lies the problem.
it's hypothetical, and can't really be shown to any degree of certainty. i do not think he's right per se, but probably on the right track.
If others were interested it would be great to see a thread devoted to it.
i would too, but i would likely sit out of it. i haven't had the opportunity to read the book myself (thought i've heard all about from my evangelical athiest mother). that and it makes me a little nervous, faith wise. just a little. i know i'm not crazy (in this regard anyways).
I recall understanding him to say that the gods were the way initial consciousness experienced thinking coming from the other brain hemisphere before a self image emerged that could be a reference for taking action in the world. He brilliantly explained the Illiad and prophecy.
i asked a psych prof about him once, and she explained that he was very much on the fringe of the discipline and that the data does not totally support his idea.
for instance, when we damage or sever a modern corpus collosum, we very rarely get incidents of patients with religious visions, etc. they just have problems naming things they reckognize and reckognizing things they can name, depending on which eye sees the image. there also no evidence than earlier forms of life would have such a separation in the brain.
the other problem is that jaynes is dealing with biologically modern human beings. he's talking about the equivalent of a very rapid evolutionary shift in brain development, and i just don't see it happening. societal changes, environmental changes, sure. but i don't think brain anatomy has been altered that much in the last 5000 years.
i could be wrong of course, and i won't by any means stake anything on these claims. as i said, not an area where i am well educated.
however, it seems to me that the best way to cause religious visions in the modern brain is temporal lobe damage.

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crashfrog
Member (Idle past 1467 days)
Posts: 19762
From: Silver Spring, MD
Joined: 03-20-2003


Message 22 of 91 (160831)
11-18-2004 12:54 AM
Reply to: Message 13 by Philip
11-17-2004 10:07 PM


In sum, if my puny neo-cortex really evolved; how could it be so metaphysically encumbered with things like singing hymns, making melodies, writing songs and poems, drawing paintings (like the one to the left), architecture, charity, FoxPro programming, etc.) ?
In what way are any of those things metaphysical?
You have a capacity for language, which is a kind of symbolic mental mapping. All the rest stems from that. I don't see anything in the least bit troublesome or metaphysical about your brain's ability to handle symbols, given that the majority of the brain seems to exist to do just that.

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lfen
Member (Idle past 4677 days)
Posts: 2189
From: Oregon
Joined: 06-24-2004


Message 23 of 91 (160834)
11-18-2004 1:16 AM
Reply to: Message 21 by arachnophilia
11-18-2004 12:48 AM


Re: Julian Jaynes etc
Jaynes looked at the experiences of contemporary schizophrenics hearing voices and saw in them a socially unsupported survival of bicameral brained homo sapiens. I don't know what the current state of neuroscience is on what areas of the brain or brain function are involved in schizophrenic auditory hallucinations.
The book was very speculative. It's been several decades since I read it. I recommend it simply to enjoy Jaynes brilliance. I don't know how much attention it received from experts, I suspect too little.
btw When I was a boy I had a pet cow spider I named Elsi, and a pet golden garden spider named Beauty. When Beauty's egg sac hatched I tried selling her babies door to door thinking the neighbor ladies with their gardens would want a big beautiful web with a golden garden spider sitting in the middle of it guarding their gardens from insect predators. Needless to say I was quite mistaken and quickly disillusioned by all the looks of fear, and loathing directed at Beauty's lovely little baby spiders. When I worked with pre school children we frequently read BE NICE TO SPIDERS. Hopefully more and more people understand the role of spiders in the ecology.
lfen

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Ben!
Member (Idle past 1398 days)
Posts: 1161
From: Hayward, CA
Joined: 10-14-2004


Message 24 of 91 (160849)
11-18-2004 2:12 AM
Reply to: Message 20 by arachnophilia
11-18-2004 12:37 AM


AP,
The plural of anecdote is not data!!
well, like I said in an earlier post, this aspect of evolution (the one where we wildly speculate about something) is so unscientific, anecdotal information is as good as any.
Personally, I, like many others, think of religion stemming from a need to explain. This view of religion is certainly based on higher-level cognition.
But that doesn't necessarily explain its roots; maybe that's simply how it is used now. Still, in order to attribute religion to your cats, I think you have to give them some mental apparatus (such as intentional states [that they want to do something] and a theory of mind [that doing this thing will make you happy]) that I'm not really prepared to do.
Of course, what you've said is possible. And it's also possible that it is just perception due to our tendency to 'personalize' pretty much anything--from cats to robots to clouds. We seem to naturally attribute intentional states to anything.
If we really wanted to discuss it, I think we'd have to get an agreement of what is religion.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 20 by arachnophilia, posted 11-18-2004 12:37 AM arachnophilia has replied

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Ben!
Member (Idle past 1398 days)
Posts: 1161
From: Hayward, CA
Joined: 10-14-2004


Message 25 of 91 (160852)
11-18-2004 2:28 AM
Reply to: Message 13 by Philip
11-17-2004 10:07 PM


Re: Metaphysics/Spirituality
Well... by definition, random mutation cannot ever produce metaphysical phenomena, in the dictionary form of the world. And on the other hand, the metaphysical cannot interact with the physical. Otherwise it WOULD be physical. That is the problem of dualism.
The simple question is, can you see what APPEARS to be metaphysical as simply an extension of what you'd be willing to call physical. Like CrashFrog, I think pretty much every bridge can be built, easily. The only one that I fail on is the problem of "qualia" (not that we have subjective experence, but why it takes on the qualities that it does).
I think there still is an interesting question in what you're asking
In sum, if my puny neo-cortex really evolved; how could it be so metaphysically encumbered with things like singing hymns, making melodies, writing songs and poems, drawing paintings (like the one to the left), architecture, charity, FoxPro programming, etc.) ?
Ignoring the subjective accounting that these are 'metaphysical'... I think there's a point here that crash missed. Even if you view ALL of these things as symbol manipulations (and I would argue against that for untrained artists), there are MANY types of symbol manipulations that we DO NOT DO. In other words, it is still interesting to ask WHY we do THESE things, and not others.
The fact that we have brains that are able to process things symbolically isn't logically CAUSAL for us to play music. In fact, I can name at least one other symbolic processing device that does NOT do any of the things that you mentioned. And that's the personal computer.
But like I said, I have no personal motivation to look farther than the human brain. I would suggest reading some books about cognition before making that leap; we really know quite a bit more than you're probably aware of, and it might change your mind about the necessity of appealing to something beyond the brain.
Ben

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PaulK
Member
Posts: 17822
Joined: 01-10-2003
Member Rating: 2.2


Message 26 of 91 (160873)
11-18-2004 3:52 AM
Reply to: Message 1 by SalineSage05
11-17-2004 5:21 PM


There is a fundamental problem with your argument. And that is the unspoken assumption that beliefs directly evolve. A belief is not a basic capability like vision.
We can deal with he ideas of "sensing" and "longing for" a God seperately if it is relevant - for this post I will focus on belief.
What you really need to look at is the mechanisms of belief-formation which contribute to the belief and then see if THOSE have an evolutionary advantage. And you have to look at the full use of those mechanisms, not just their contribution to a single belief.
In fact it is quite easy to see how the general idea of Gods might have got started. Even today humans have an tendency to anthopomise natural forces (such as the weather) or complex machines. Even knowing it to be wrong we still attribute volition to inanimate objects if their behaviour is sufficiently unpredictable and especially if it appears capricious. We tend to anthropomprphise animals, too - even animals which completely lack even basic intelligence. Even with the "higher" animals it is likely that aspects of their mind are sufficiently alien that thinking in human terms is badly wrong.
And there is a good reason for this - it is a BIG advantage to be able to deal with other people in this way. A social animal must be able to successfully interact with others of its kind. Yet young children do have problems with this idea and some people sadly suffer mental handicaps which make them unable to get to grips with it.
So we have to learn to recognise "people" and to accept that they are thinking beings like ourselves. And in evolutionary terms all we need is a net benefit - the cost of false positives must be outweighed by the gain from true positives. Since this way of thinking - that so often leads to error - is still found even in modern humans who not only should but do know better we have good reason to believe that this is the case. The problems caused be error are far outweighed by the advantages.
So humans naturally tend to "see" intelligences which are not there - hopefully you can see that form there it is just a short step to a basic animism. From then on religion can complicate and develop through cultural transmission. And it is quite clear that modern beliefs in a God or Gods generally are produced by cultural transmission rather than any other means. And of course the capability to pass on what has been learned is another evolutionary advantage even if some of what is passed down is completely false.

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Dr Jack
Member
Posts: 3514
From: Immigrant in the land of Deutsch
Joined: 07-14-2003
Member Rating: 8.7


Message 27 of 91 (160899)
11-18-2004 4:58 AM
Reply to: Message 7 by jar
11-17-2004 7:55 PM


Re: Some of your assumptions may be wrong.
That moves over into the filtering part of the TOE. A vision like function whether sight or heat or electromagnetic sense might well give one critter an advantage when run through the filter, but I still say the probability of something occurring initially is independent of the potential use.
Eyes might well develop even in a world without light.
I strongly disagree. Unless you're talking about the presence of light sensitive cells - the calling of which "eyes" is stretching a point - an eye requires iterative development and that development would not occur without a selective advantage. The same is true of all other complex systems.

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JasonChin 
Inactive Member


Message 28 of 91 (160903)
11-18-2004 5:09 AM
Reply to: Message 3 by jar
11-17-2004 7:16 PM


Re: Some of your assumptions may be wrong.
Hypothetically speaking in an evolutionary world that contained absoloutely no light then the creatures there would have not developed eyes. Correct?
Not at all.
The changes that happen are totally random. They are not directed or moving towards some goal or solution. They chance of eyes developing in a world with no light is exactly the same as in a world with light.
I assuume you know this is BS, Jar........there would be no benefit of having eyes for creatures who could never use them, and therefore they would have no effect on natural selection.
Not to mention that even a small photosensitive spot, let alone a whole eye, is irreducibly complex anyway........so the odds of it evolving in the first place are pretty shitty, ESPECIALLY when it wouldn't present any selection benefit.
{Shut off overlong signature - Adminnemooseus}
This message has been edited by Adminnemooseus, 11-18-2004 10:02 AM

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contracycle
Inactive Member


Message 29 of 91 (160927)
11-18-2004 6:51 AM


Arachnophilia, here is a sort of counter to the idea that your cats are sacrificing to you. Dogs do this too, and dogs are pack animals - admittedly, cats less so. So it may be that they are wired to bring some of the prey back to the pack, or back to the pack leader.
But I think this is an angle worth exploring. I was watching some footage of wolves in Canada that included a discussion of submission signals, in which one wolf rolls over and exposes its throat to the pack leader. This defuses tension within the pack and makes it more stable.
Furthermore, this has to be in some sense chemical, I would expect. I doubt wolves have a consciousness that rationalises the social contract, as it were, and formulates strategies for the good pack society. But a "submission reflex" may make evolutionary sense.
What if there were a submission reflex in humans? It is common for authority structures to demand that subordinates adopt certain postures, or not make eye contact with superiors. I sometimes wonder if "bow your heads in prayer" is not actually something rather like rolling over and showing your throat, and if obliging people to adopt the position can trigger a positive feedback loop that releases "submission chemicals" or similar.

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Dr Jack
Member
Posts: 3514
From: Immigrant in the land of Deutsch
Joined: 07-14-2003
Member Rating: 8.7


Message 30 of 91 (160928)
11-18-2004 6:54 AM
Reply to: Message 29 by contracycle
11-18-2004 6:51 AM


The probable explanation for cats returning food to you is that they are trying to teach you to hunt. The behaviour of a cat bringing you live or dead prey is very similar to the behaviour of a mother cat bringing her kittens practice prey.

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