Much of human life in all corners of the Earth, over vast periods of time, has believed in the supernatural. Whether it be spiritual ancestors, weather gods, suns gods, messiahs. Whether it be primitive Africans, native Americans, sacrificing Aztecs, Christians.
Yeah, the human (and, to an extent, animal) brain can do that.
ogon writes:
Is religion then judged to be part of mans evolution?
Yes. Supernatural beliefs are just a product of the way our brain works. We do not have a brain that obeys 'Ockham's Razor'. When you walk down the hallway at night and see a humanoid shadow, your brain instantly interprets that as an intruder (or, if you were a child or superstitious, a monster). When you hear the wind whistling through the caverns, you think someone is talking.
This behaviour is common to most animals, and of course evolved that way. Think about it - which animal has the best survival chance a) An animal that attributes everything slightly unusual to a predator creature b) A animal that only acts when it has proof of a predator's existence.
Of course, it is better to jump at shadows just in case than to ignore the shadow and be killed. This is one reason why there are elves, pixies, leprechauns, poltergeists, banshees etc.
I could also go into the neurobiology of the near death experience, but I won't yet. Suffice it to say that the light at the end of the tunnel and feeling of warmth are not supernatural, but neurological.
ogon writes:
If mankind evolved in ways that guaranteed his survival, hunting, gathering, reproducing, what role did the belief in the supernatural and subsequently religion play in this evolution?
Well, belief in the supernatural could play a part in healing. Shamanic rituals worked mostly on hypnosis and the placebo effect, and so if you aren't gullible, you would probably die if sick or injured.
Religion, being organised, has a benefit for an agricultural city state too. When you expand beyond your little village into a city, you have more people than humans are used to. This could, and still does, cause tension among the various groups. But, those city states that had a common religion among their people would feel a bond of kinship, and thus those states would thrive. However, this kinship does also come with the side-effect of xenophobia and religious violence.
ogon writes:
Is it only now with the establishment of science that religion is seen as a tail no longer needed or used? Or am I way off course?
Well, we no longer use the supernatural explanation for things. But that wasn't the 'purpose' of religion anyway. We could also do without the violent tendencies.
We also have medical science, so don't require gullibility to be cured by placebo.
That's not to say they will die out - there are still creationists who believe that the world was created recently, and scientologists - case in point.
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Okay, its a type of conditioning. And I guess this could be used in religion beliefs. For instance isn't it a type of conditioning where you are led to believe that if you do good deeds you will go to a nice place when you die, and if you do bad deeds you will go to a bad place. I also guess this kind of conditioning is reinforced through childhood, be good get a sweet, be good and santa will come, but be bad, no sweets, no santa.
This could lead to all sorts of superstitions and religious practices in the past.A primitave group could be experiencing severe drought and one guy just happens to throw a stone at a tree, at that precise moment there is a clap of thunder and the rains come. That tree becomes the bringer of rain and all manner of rituals and beliefs develop around the tree.
Could the natural fear of what is out there in the dark at night, predators e.t.c. have developed into a fear of what is out there after we die? Natural fears then leading to superstitions then leading to religions claiming to know what is outside the cave!
Another thing to consider in formalized religion is cult indoctrination techniques. Remember once the initial formulation of the religion has passed the dogma\tradition\ceremonial aspects of the religion are about crowd control by those who want to remain leaders.
quote:A destructive cult uses countless techniques to get its members to stay, commit themselves and take part in what may be harmful activities. The sum of these techniques constitutes what some people call "mind control." It's also known as "thought reform," "brainwashing" and "coercive persuasion," and it involves the systematic breakdown of a person's sense of self.
quote:A cult is: an organisation which systematically uses brainwashing or mind control processes to change the way its individual members think, in order to subvert their free will and restrict their independent judgement . The aim is to undermine members' own self reliance, so that they gradually come to place more trust in the insights of the group leadership than in their own judgement. A cult is not necessarily harmful in this definition.
Note that these same techniques are used during soldier indoctrination (called boot camp), even in the US forces (explains a lot about the attitudes of soldiers to command leadership). The GOP party? DNC?
This also plays to the same instinctual/evolved social group behavior patterns, so many people are easy subjects for such indoctrinations.
Have you considered than religion may just be the natural outcome of human experience which lacks a direct physical explanation?
Let's take something simple like ghosts. Disembodied spiritual beings are today and have been in the past seen by all cultures. Now even though atheists and fundamental christians share the belief that ghosts don't exist, that doesn't make it so. Also people see them, so they must be explained.
There are of course other things people expierence. Let's take a look at this site:
It's a short synopsis concerning reincarnation and gives a nice overview of the research done at the University of Virginia concerning young children who begin talking about having lived before. Many had died violent deaths and many have birthmarks or deformities relating to the death injuries of the previous personalities. Both my sons mentioned having lived before when they were small, but not with the passion or emotion seen in these cases. No big deal for me, I remember having lived before, but did get to my wife a bit who is a Roman Catholic.
If children do this today they did it in the past. It needs to be explained and incorporated into "what exactly is going on here?" which is one of the questions which religion should be dealing with.
More info can be found at the University of Virginia Division of Perceptual Studies here:
Could go on but have lots of work to get done at present.
In closing let me say I feel religions today are very poor at explaining "What exactly you are." and "What the hell exactly are you doing here". They pontificate about God, a subject they appear to know absolutely nothing about.
In this regard I'm with RAZD. You are much better off exploring on your own. Face it, would you use texts from 2 or 3000 years ago to find out about biology, chemistry, geology, physics, sociology or any other subject? Why do it when exploring the spiritual? Those people knew a hell of a lot less than you do. God doesn't speak to anyone today and he didn't in the past.
Disembodied spiritual beings are today and have been in the past seen by all cultures.
Disembodied spiritual beings have never been seen at any time by anyone; indeed, it would be impossible, because a immaterial being would not be able to reflect, absorb, or obstruct visible light. Thus they would be unable to be seen by the human eye.
Also people see them, so they must be explained.
People say they've seen them. That's a completely different phenomenon - why people claim to have seen ghosts - with completely reasonable, material explanations that have absolutely nothing to do with the impossible act of seeing impossible beings.
If children do this today they did it in the past.
If it's possible, then nearly everybody should be remembering past lives. But the vast majority of people do not, which suggests that "past life memories" are really nothing more than confabulations. In nearly every known case, it's possible to prove that the subject would have contemporary knowedge of the culture and circumstances of the life they claim to be remembering, so there's really nothing to support the contention of past life memories. It's a tissue of supposition that falls apart at the slightest skeptical inquiry.
Anyone who was alive during the "Satanic ritual abuse/recovered memories" scandals should be highly skeptical of fantastic accounts of past lives lived. Indeed, the human imagination is a very powerful tool. Every human being has the ability to remember things that never happened - could never happen - at will.
We would expect birthmarks etc. to match to real wounds simply by coincidence, particularly if the past life account is sufficiently generic to match a large number of people. And the sheer number of people at any one time who all claim to have lived the same past life - Napoleon, Ceasar, Cleopatra - suggests very strongly that the whole enterprise is subject to a very large amount of wishful thinking.
Yes many people have claimed to have seen ghosts over the centuries. Although they appear at all levels of society to all manner of people it strikes me strange that a photo of a ghost has never appeared fronting newspapers or has appeared as a main story on the T.V. news. I know there are many so called photos in books and on websites but after seeing quite a few of them non have been totally convincing. After listening to guys on the CvE forum and doing a bit of reading, I have to agree that most are tricks of the eye. The eye gets clues from what it sees and tries as fast as it can to get a match from the brain. Hence optical illusions can trick the eye into thinking it is seeing something it really isn't seeing at all. It's like coming to a verdict without looking at all the evidence. Therefore shadows become looming figures. Reincarnation is a tricky one. Its typically religious isn't it. As for children talking about living before, well? I have taught hundreds of children of all ages and I can tell you I have heard the most amazing things come out of their mouths, via their imaginations. I've seen them talking to imaginary friends, I've heard them talking about strange creatures, their toys talk to them! Is it any wonder with some of the stories we tell them, with the things they are exposed to on T.V. The imagination? brilliant. Over time I have studied theology, sociology, psychology, philosophy, all with a view to developing my spirituality but nothing has had such an impact on me as studying evolution only recently. It has certainly been an eye opener. All these subjects and everything you see and hear shapes the person you become. I have to admit, I thought I had things nailed down till I came across evolution. Whether it is a good thing or not I'm not sure yet. ogon
Actually, I read a lot of it. But I also read rebuttals. You know, both sides. What do you have to say to the objection that many of the U of Va's subjects are from cultures where reincarnation is not only part of the local belief system, but making a credible claim of being a reborn member of another family carries financial benefits that family is obligated to pay? That would make it highly likely that a very large number of these children have been coached with the intent of financial gain by the parents.
I'll bet you can't even remember being born or before you were 3 1/2 or 4 years old.
As a matter of fact, I can clearly remember the birth of my sister in great detail - seeing my mom in the hospital bed, my newborn sister in the natal ward - which happened when I was 2.
But, go ahead and make whatever nonsense assumptions it takes to make you feel better about your personal brand of woo. Go ahead and make whatever personal attacks it takes to dismiss the skeptics out of hand.
I don't know where people get this idea that I'm making all these personal attacks. Look, if you have stupid ideas, I'm going to call them stupid and show you why that's true.
I don't call you stupid. God knows even bright people have the occasional idiot idea. We can't all be geniuses all the time.
I almost never make personal attacks. In moments of weakness, or in response to extensive provocation - for some reason, people almost immediately resort to personal attacks when they're arguing with me - I've been known to name-call. And I get suspended for it nearly every time. (You'd think I'd learn.) But the idea that I'm somehow some kind of insult factory, smearing all around me with a triade of personal abuse, is just false. Tirades of personal abuse are what get directed at me, with no provocation except I don't just roll over and swallow bullshit claims. Apparently that's enough for people.
I don't know where people get this idea that I'm making all these personal attacks.
I was thinking more of the dismissal of evidence out of hand. I have trouble with this. Even though the experiences cannot be replicated on demand does not mean that they do not occur, nor does it mean that there is no connection, no matter how poorly understood the experience is (even by the observer). There are valid conclusions that are not provable nor falsifiable, and those conclusions cannot be dismissed out of hand as not being correct:
Delusion works both ways:
We could rid the world of all religions and faiths and these experiences would still occur.
I was thinking more of the dismissal of evidence out of hand.
I'm not dismissing his evidence. People do say they've seen ghosts.
The idea that "ghosts are real" is not a good explanation for why people claim to see ghosts. There are a hundred better explanations, most of them situational, but most also generalizable to "people have wild imaginations."
Disembodied spiritual beings have never been seen at any time by anyone.
They have actually seen them. I will stress that delusions are not normally purposefully imagined experiences, but real experiences. These people do actually see these things.
But, and this is very important, that does not imply nor require that ghosts are real.
crashfrog writes:
Thus they would be unable to be seen by the human eye.
The eye is not responsible for vision - your visual cortex (mostly) is. The eye is responsible for light detection, which is translated into impulses which form the primary input into the visual cortex. You can see things that your eyes didn't actually detect (as an example, have you ever suffered a knock to your head and seen 'stars'? That's because you received an extra impulse to your visual cortex - it hit the occipital bone at the back of your head.)
The basic principle, instead of imagination as you say in your above post, I would posit is that the human brain is not a very good reality detector. And, to relate back to the topic of this thread, it is that way for two reasons. Firstly, sometimes trying to detect reality properly would be less advantageous than making assumptions and inferring from insufficient stimuli. Secondly, there isn't much of a selection pressure to make our brains better at detecting reality.
Edited by Doddy, : clarification
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There is also the possibility that god/s ARE knowable, but only to certain tribes, who were preselected.
There is the chance that god/s ARE knowable, but only to those who have passed the tests, or found the key, or whatever.
There is the option that god/s ARE knowable, but what we know changes with time, thus giving the appearance that we are not in any accord with our beliefs.
There is the chance that we don't recognize what we know.
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