Do Animals Believe In Supernatural Beings?

If you intend on continuing to post open ended vague and undefinable questions and expect an answer, then please stop participating.OR ... you can present a specific example and we can try to discuss whether it would be possible to determine anything based on that evidence.

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Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!

As (again) AdminMod put it this thread poses the question: "What evidence might look like and try to resolve one way or another what we can say we know about this topic."The point that you are persistently missing is that this is a thread about what potential evidence might look like. It is speculative in nature exactly because it doesn't make any evidential claims. It instead asks what sort of evidence could support such an inference.If you are simply incapable of getting beyond a "here's my evidence" followed by "oh no it isn't" Vs "oh yes it is" type discussion then please go away. I'll try one last time.If we observed a chimp colony which had constructed what appeared to be a "shrine" of some sort and to which they displayed significant reverence including such acts as leaving food after thunderstorms could we reasonably infer religious behaviours and associated sorts of beliefs on the basis of comparison with humans?I would say yes - This would be a reasonable inference.

See above post to jar. So do I. No disagreement there. I think we must limit any inferences made on the basis of comparison to human behaviour to those species that display self-awareness and sentience. Primarily apes. Maybe possibly elephants, dolphins and other creatures displaying "higher" cognitive functions.Speculating about the inner thoughts of ants (for example) is, I agree, pointless. Obviously it would be ideal. But I think demanding it as a be-all-and-end-all pre-requisite is too simplistic and too limiting.

I would say no, it would be an unreasonable assumption and totally unsupported.

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Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!

Heyyooo, Wouldn't your first instict be to think that they are simply copying what humans do? That is, at least, what the law of parsimony would dictate that we conclude, initially. Further research could lead to something else.But we know apes can mimic human behaviour, and do.So why would your initial inference be to think they somehow evolved supernatural beliefs? That would require a huge leap over an enormous gap of intelligence (about 7 million years worth.)I have to side with Jar from his first post in this thread that, unless a reasonable and effective means of communication is established between humans and other animals, we have very little to go by as far as understanding their beliefs.- Oni

Yup.
And it would be easy enough to test for:Are there any humans in the area doing what the chimps are doing?
If no, "could we reasonably infer religious behaviours and associated sorts of beliefs on the basis of comparison with humans?"

I don't even know where we are talking about.I just said my first instinct would be to think they copied us, not, hey look they are behaving religiously. I would think, stupid monkey trying to do human things, that's cute. Too big of a leap for me. I would, if I didn't see humans around, think one of the monkeys brought in that habit from wherever he/she saw it from a human.I would, in all cases, assume it was them copying human behaviour.- Oni

There are still too many totally unknown and undefined terms in the example.

quote:

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If we observed a chimp colony which had constructed what appeared to be a "shrine" of some sort and to which they displayed significant reverence including such acts as leaving food after thunderstorms could we reasonably infer religious behaviours and associated sorts of beliefs on the basis of comparison with humans?

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How do we define a Shrine?How do we determine "reverence".What other explanations could be found for chimps storing food?What happens after a rainstorm in the area?

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Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!

Oh, you are playing stupid games.I'll leave you to it.

No, not at all. Does everything I write sound cynical? It was an irrelevant point, your question. If you found no humans in the area, so what? You figure some monkey brought it from another area where there were humans. I would still assume human. Why make such a giant leap to think monkeys evolved religious belief?- Oni

But do they have high enough cognitive function to have religious beliefs?I'm not convinced that any of those do.From Message 167: I don't really think it is.We don't know enough about the way they think to warrant that comparison with humans. I suppose we could "categorize" that behavior as religious. But what, really, would that tell us about what they are believing? Anything reasonable?

How would it be much different than the shrines Bower Birds make and maintain?

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Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!

I can see those as being strictly instinctual and a product of sexual selection.More complex behaviors that were harder to explain with simply instinct, and that seemed to require some higher cognitive function I would more easily categorize as religious behavior. Especially if they seemed "pointless" in an evolutionary aspect.

I can agree that we might look at actions and say that they seem pointless from an evolutionary aspect, but the jump from that to "must be religious" seems to be stretching it.Instead of the made up example Straggler presented (and it is always easy to make up a scenario to support most any belief) maybe we could look at an actual repeatedly reported example; elephants holding and carrying the bones of a dead elephant they come across.It is certainly an unusual behavior. Reports claim that the behavior is more common among elephants that would have been contemporary (might have known) the elephant whose bones are being fondled, and not by younger members of the herd that might not have known the dead one.It is a strange set of behaviors.I can see that from the evidence someone might infer that the elephants remembered who the bones belonged to. But even that is a stretch.I can see that they might recognize that it was once an elephant. But again, that too is a stretch.It could be that they are just curious what the bones are. It could be that they recognize the tusks as belonging to "elephant" and wonder what all the other stuff is?The only real facts we have is that the behaviors do happen.What the critters are actually thinking at the time is unknown and any inference going beyond that to some belief system is just plain fantasy.

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Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!

Yeah, I wouldn't say they must be, but if someone wanted to categorize them as such, I wouldn't have a problem with the behaviors as being descried as religious. Including your elephant bone fondling (lulz).I was reminded of this: