Let the debating commence.
Well, I’d like to make this a debate, so, if you so agree accordingly, please give us a little summary on the matter. How do those philosophers/psychologists/theologians come up with their conclusions, and, for that matter, what exactly are their conclusions?
Persinger’s publications. If you expose someone to a series of magnetic waves, they experience “god”/religious ecstasy. There are some concerns with repeatability and some people seem to be more susceptible to it than others.
The wiki article on Neurotheology and The God Gene are solid reading on the subject.
Basically, we are genetically programmed to believe in the supernatural and that such belief is selectable for a variety of reasons.
These aren’t my points, which is why offering a summary isn’t really appropriate since I’m not qualified to argue them. I can merely present them, which is why I am pretty much limited to name-dropping. I think their ideas make a good deal of sense and they are compatible with my thinking so I certainly support them insofar as I understand them but to be frank, since their thoughts are in-line with my prejudices I haven’t looked too heavily into the area. I tend to take a Brechtian view towards gods (that is, their existence or non-existence is irrelevant and because of that I don’t believe in gods.) but having materialist leanings, the idea of a genetic/physiological cause for the belief in God is sensible.
Babies may be predisposed to accepting the idea of ‘gods’ or ‘higher powers’
but
babies/children believe almost anything one tells them, not only will they believe in gods, they will believe in santa clause or the boogyman or easter bunny
but what would give anyone the idea that a baby would believe in any specific ‘gods’ or ‘higher power.’
so just because babies are predisposed to accepting the idea of ‘gods’ does not mean they believe in ‘gods.’
and if babies do believe in ‘God,’ it probably isnt your God.
No, they don’t. People resort to belief as a source of comfort from the harsh realities of their condition.
I think that is an important distinction. A position I’ve argued before (which I can actively debate since it is based off my understanding of the names I dropped earlier) is that belief in god is a hiccup in normal human pattern-sensing but it is also hard to avoid. It isn’t quite like language and universal grammar since it is more free-form than that but I think of it as something along those lines.
I’d just like to point out that babies don’t believe in atheists, either. 
Ignore me.
I don´t think babies are capable of doubt or belief alike. They just experience the good-old raw perceptions, free of any epistemological scrutiny. Not having experienced God in any way, my answer has to be no.
The earliest religious beliefs in our evolution were not theistic. They were animistic. This has shown to be universal to all of the earliest discovered cultures on earth.
What is undeniably innate in us is reason, but saying that the first conclusions we came to through reason, i.e. animism, is also innate or that we’re disposed to believe it is incorrect. Supernaturalism is but one conclusion we have historically come to among many others, and I see no reason – other than it (supernaturalism) being (maybe) the first of these conclusions - why supernaturalism should be innate in us anymore than any other ideas we eventually get to through reason.
I’m not sure we can call animistic religions nontheistic, since they worship the spirits found in things.
Like I said, read some of the wiki articles I posted. I’m inclined to think that the work of neurologists and such trump that of philosophers on the subject, but I’ve always come down on the “evidence” side of things as opposed to the “naval gazing” when they come into conflict.
Theism is specifically the belief in one creator God. Theism can be and is in most cases animistic, though animism does by no means have to be, and in most cases is not theistic.
My point is that belief in a God or Gods, or animism which appears to be our first conclusion, are mere unscrutinized kneejerk conclusions of what is really innate in us, which is our ability to reason. Give reason three lines and it’ll make a triangle and call perfect. Give it four and it’ll make a square. Such is the history of science.
My conclusion is this. It is not theism, or polytheism, or animism, that is innate or disposed in us from birth. It is an ability to reason, reason itself which is innate, which when put to use under similar circumstances (same sort of input, same sort of processing) yields relatively the same conclusions, i.e. animism. Through more scrutiny animism evolves into polytheism. At this point, being that both animism and polytheism are etymological hypothesis, they are falsifiable, and soon are falsified leading to a crossroads. One leads to theism and unfalisifability, also a warm aura of protection (book closed), the other to science. I’m saying that the first of these conclusions, animism, should not be considered to be innate…at least not anymore than our second or third conclusions.
Theism is just the belief in one or more gods. They needn’t necessarily be creator gods or anything like that. Theos=god.
Again, your take on reason doesn’t deal with how people sense the otherness of things (“feeling a presence”) as well as religious ecstasy (speaking in tongues, visions, the spirit of Dionysus entering through one’s pores, ect.). That is largely what has been discussed in the various links I’ve provided.
I think you are using reason to account for too much. A lot of these beliefs aren’t reason based, but rather are taken from either a nonrational personal experience or simply from that have been passed on.
I would also argue that polytheism and animism are both testable hypotheses. They aren’t, they’ve just fallen out of vogue in the West. There are still plenty of both kicking around in fully modern countries.
Exactly. God-ism. That is why when referring to belief in many gods, the term poly-, meaning many gods, is put before -theism, meaning many-gods.
I think when speaking of God we are necessarily speaking of a creator, not of a created. If not, the term God, would be merely a term denoting relative strength.
Sense datums are just that, sense datums. The means with which we come to interpret and intertwine them with other ideas, and then either believe or disbelieve them, is what I call reason.
The people who you are speaking surely sense something, but it’s through reason that the sense datums are made coherent…thing-in-itself…phenomenology…You get where this is going.
I call reason that which is used to make sense data into ideas which then usually cohere with other ideas.
Reason is innate in all of us. This is something I think you will not disagree with me (as I describe it above).
When we come out of our mothers womb, we do not come out with already held beliefs about nature. We come out with a mental talent that takes sense data and transforms it into an idea which then if it coheres with some fundamental idea of what is, typically that of I and the other) is then believed to be true or not.
The most primitive ideas our reason formed have traditionally been animistic, then from that, with more input given to reason, animsm evolved into polytheism and then theism. I am saying that this idea of animism is but a typical conclusion to what is actually innate, i.e. reason. I’m saying we come out of our mother’s womb neither with a belief in God, nor with a disposition to believe in God, at least not predominately more disposed to believe in anything else depending on what is fed to reason (which is what is innate)
Not at all. Classical Greeks spoke of “theism”. The term you are thinking of is “monotheism” which exists in contrast to “polytheism” but both are equally “theisms”, as are things like “pantheism” and “panentheism”.
Yeah, I see where you are going with this, but do you see where I am going with this? I used universal grammar as a metaphor for how I think theism works.
Your progression is far too linear and only applies to Western traditions.
Aside from that, your “reason” is very close to what I’m describing as innate theism. I’m not sure where we are disagreeing.
Well, I read the Wiki of Neurotheology. It was very intriguing indeed. For me, the problem lies with the fact that as with any scientific study/studies that have barely been touched upon, it is subject to a great deal of criticism. For instance, in that same Wiki, it explained that the researchers who came up with this conclusion were not entirely empirical or objective in their methodology (which is common amongst the first trials of any scientific experimentation). Apparently they failed to orchestrate a double blind study. This may have predisposed the trial subjects to self-induced paranormal experiences.
Besides that, the fact that correlation does not imply causality is another deficiency of their argument. They drew fairly blatant speculations from irresolute evidence without any consideration of confounded factors that could have been involved.
In all, these case-studies are just simply not enough; there needs to be more research on it. It’s just a matter of the still ongoing nature vs. nurture debate. But as soon as they solve the human genome, hypotheses such as these will be either proven or unproven.
As for whether or not infants are propense towards God, especially in philosophical sense, I’m just at odds with the whole suggestion. It isn’t a very elegant proposition. I personally think that pretty much everything within our minds that is dependent upon genetics, irrespective of psychological development, is, as a rule Darwinian thumb so to speak, a manifestation of evolution. What use does God have for evolution?
We are genetically hardwired for evolution’s sake, yet that is but primer for how we eventually become psychologically hardwired. Once our traits no longer become provisional upon our genes, so too are we no longer provisional upon the whims of evolution. We, as a species have managed to satisfy evolution’s hungry appetite to such an extent, that we’ve moved beyond it to produce what we now know is reason.
Erlir, as I interpret his writings, considers the ‘movement-beyond-evolution’ so to speak, as being reason. Granted, reason, initially allowed us to become evolutionarily successful, but it soon grew well beyond the Schopenhauerian ‘will to live’. One of the first manifestations of this ‘reasoning-beyond-evolution’ is, of course, our creation of the supernatural. And, being that it was technically our aboriginal application of reason, it was also a very naive and child-like creation. Either way, I see no correlation between evolution and God; there are, as I said above, confounded factors involved (i.e. reason).
I agree with Erlir; animism to polytheism, polytheism to theism, and, I would add, theism to deism, with bouts of atheism and polemic-thought in-between.
Does this really address the point of the thread? Tortoise argues (and I agree) that a neonate has not developed the neural network at the time of birth and shortly thereafter to be able to form beliefs. For the most part, newborns operate off brainstem activity.
If a two-day old’s brain is exposed to a series of magnetic waves, they almost certainly will not experience “god”/religious ecstasy because the part of the brain in which this sort of experience might take place is not “up and running” at that time.
If you believe that a newborn can form a belief in the existence of gods then you should probably believe that your dog can, as well.
Yeah, but what Xunzian is trying to say (I think) is that God is genetic. Thus sooner or later, the child’s brain will, at least partially, develop according to genetic code where this “Ghost in a Shell” allegedly resides.
I for one think it’s complete nonsense and whole-heartedly agree with you. God simply has no evolutionary benefit; it is but a figment of our overactive imaginations.
I guess then all the babies that die in child birth go directly to hell.
Yeah, they’re pretty much screwed.