The Freudian concept of religion as an infant’s reaction to parents is outdated. IMHO, what we believe is what we experience. The God concept possibly comes from our experience of being constructed as organisms by complex proteins (nucleic acids). DNA/RNA program structure and potential for survival based on epigenetic interactions between environmental supply and endogenous need. All mythologies, including religion, are products of necessity. They are how-so stories that evolve with the evolution of knowledge. Since these nucleic acids form viable organisms, they are first causes. Since they program potential for survival, they are guardians and protectors of their creations.
I think you mean “Just so stories”, but I could be wrong. 
Are you talking about where religion came from ‘originally’, back in primordial days, or where it comes from in each of us now? For the latter, I always figured it came from the same place as any other belief - teaching and such. I never thought of theism as something that springs up within my mysteriously without outside guidance.
Let me see if I can paraphrase: we are genetically hardwired to invent religions.
Is this right?
Won’t work, for the same reason that genetic hardwiriing for other complex mental behaviors won’t work, I fear.
gib
Probably not, but maybe genes have an indirect effect on our propensity to create religion. Personally, I think religion comes from three basic (and I’d say “hardwired”) human traits:
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imagination
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need to understand
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the masses inclination to explain things in sociopolitical terms ← this last one is the wild card 'cause it’s the least “hardwired” of the three.
Oh, I think genes have an indirect effect on our propensity to do pretty much everything we do, to the extent that saying they affect our creation and practice of religion is just...obvious. :slight_smile: How could it be any other way?
As far as your three sources, yeah, that sounds about right, with the caveat that science, philosophy, and every other field of inquiry comes from them too.
Let’s say that 50% of humans are hard-wired to believe in God and 50% are hard-wired not to. That would explain why half the world believed and half didn’t. But it would have no bearing whatsoever on the question whether or not God exists.
felix dakat
Right. And what would happen when a hard-wired theist presented a supremely good argument to a hard-wired atheist? And what about all those people who change their minds?
I see your point, Felix and Uccisore, but I don’t think this is entirely irrelevant to the debate. If the existence of religious belief itself could only be explained by the existence of God, that would be pretty damning for any philosophy that eschewed a doctrine of god. A complete philosophy must explain phenomena, and the more the better. Here, a scientific world view, which generally abstains from god, is being used to explain the belief in god that undeniably exists.
It doesn’t disprove god, of course, but it is a necessary part of a broader theory that seeks to explain the world without invoking god.
Yes it is but there are modern psychological explanations that have a lot of evidence/seem to hit the dot.
- Scott Atran
this explains the origins of religion
Carleas
Do these same world views need a special mechanism to explain why other allegedly false beliefs exist? It seems to me that in most cases, a false belief is understood to just be the result of an error in reasoning, and that's that- there's no need to look for a "bad math gene" or a "holocaust revisionist gene". We just understand people are wrong sometimes. So why does religion need a 'special explanation'? I submit because science and religion are both ideological, the idea has come about that they're opposed, and this is a way of science striking at the competition. Not objective, in other words.
But anyways, even that aside, the explanation doesn't work because it's comparing two completely different levels of abstraction. We mean something very particular when we say "genetic hardwiring". When we say "religion", we pretty much mean whatever the hell we want. So if the postulate is "people are genetically hardwired to have religious beliefs", then I get to ask these questions:
Is evolution a religion? Factual or not, there are certainly people that get spiritually-analogous sentiments when they contemplate their place in the history of natural selection. What about Socialism, or joke religions like pastafarianism?
Is the concept of theism a religion? That is, could a person who wasn't so hardwired come to agree that theism is true on the basis of evidence and argument just as they come to believe some other thing? If theism, why not the ressurection of Christ or the finding of Joseph Smith's tablets? Seems to me we must have plenty of people who believe religious sorts of things without the religion gene, if you grant religious arguments any degree of persuasiveness whatever, which I think you have to.
So, we have people with the "religion gene" who believe completely sensible things like evolution, and people without the religion gene to end up convinced of the truth of Islam, and every other combination. If I do or don't have this gene, I may or may not end up an adherant to some faith. What exactly, then, is this postulated genetic factor [i]explaining[/i]?
It seems to me that the evidence and arguments that exist for the truth of various religions, even if they aren’t sufficient to convince one that they are true, ought to be sufficient to explain the existence of those who do think so.
Theres no ‘religious gene’ to speak of, we can talk about religion being genetic because its heritable like intelligences or personality traits, about 50% so.
That being said theres ways to explain religion by envoking evolutionary explanations, without saying religion is an adptation or whatever.
This is beyond absurd. Science is about continously attempting to ‘disprove’ set up hypothesis, where evidence, reason, probability and so forth are of a priority. Religious belief, are often-times based on appeals to emotion or irationality, leaving evidence to the side.
Religion/Science is opposed, to suggest otherwise is a shallow self-serving tactic probably meant to deflect justified criticism. The reason religion requires a special explanation is because; people have faith but not in random ways (people don’t worship mickey mouse consistantly) its cross-cultural, no obvious benefit to it,e tc.
Yes, but science is done by people, and people are about winning points for their team.
Uh-huh. Nevermind that the two statements I’ve quoted from you here contradict each other (if science is pure methodology, it can’t ‘oppose’ anything). You want to choose your assertions a little more carefully, or at least make an attempt to back them up.
Hi Everybody,
Whilst I find this to be very interesting, it does show that the research can only show contemporary conditions and it would be interesting to know where the research was carried out. Whether urban areas or rural it would make a difference, just as would the education levels and levels of employment.
By whom or what the endowment has come to be is at this stage irrelevant. It is enough to know that human minds are endowed with such cognitive faculties.
It has been known for some time that intuitive knowledge is elementary but it is surprising that these are said to be concerned with the action of forces on bodies and motion. Rather, it is must be an intuitive sense of body presence and motion and a feeling for ones position in in a room or open space. I think that the biological domain is probably more a intuitive sense of life or living matter in its various forms, which enables us to copy nature. I also can’t buy into psychology being described as something concerned with “interactive agents and goal-directed behaviourâ€, rather it is probably an awareness of behavioural patterns and strategies to satisfy needs. I think too that this intuitive knowledge is primarily ego-centric and part of the survival ability of mankind.
This assumption may even be true of modern people, caught up in a mystical world of images and sounds put together to entertain, which essentially means they are intended to trick the senses into believing the storyline presented. Not too long ago, and still present among people who read and write in their leisure-time, the imagination was not forced but inspired by modest stimuli. The more enticing the stimuli, the more forceful the seduction, all the more can “counterfactual worlds†become real in the mind of the seduced. This is in fact the method of idolatry and adoration, which is traditionally the opposite to awareness and faith – albeit that the two have become mixed in contemporary religion.
The relinquishment of artefacts and stimuli and instead the cultivation of awareness, alertness and concentration is another form of religious ritual which fine-tune the domains of intuitive knowledge, reaching the elementary “Isness†(or “just so�) of each moment. This is known as contemplative prayer which, when practised thoroughly, helps us reach the “emptiness†into which what we call “God†(amongst other names and descriptions )can expand.
Shalom
Proper science done by rational agents then.
I already justified it just fine. Science is about using reason and evidence to form conclusions (methodolgy to ensure objectivity, limiting confounding factors etc), constantly tries to disprove those set up hypothesis and etc.
Thats not common practice for religion.
Science tries to eliminate ‘faith’ we don’t take evolution on faith we don’t take antibiotics on faith etc. Religion positively enforces faith, even, many times, ignoring evidence to do so.
Cross culturally, different levels of education, hunter-gatherer groups, etc.
Folk-psychology has massive evidence for it… its not dissapearing because you decide to wave your hand.
An ideal. OK.
That’s because religion isn’t a methodology. It’s a subject matter that can be approached in many different ways. That’s what I’m saying. Science can’t oppose religion anymore than science can oppose mountain climbing.
Yes, faith is a different method than science, and one is not effective in understanding the typical subjects of the other. So?
There are some really good opinions here. Sorry if I appeared to be a hit & run poster; life gets in the way of our best plans (John Lennon).
Now, where I’m coming from. There are no religious genes. Genes work in concert to propose solutions to the adaptational internal need/external supply situation. Epigenesis is the domain of our assessments of such reactions. Has anyone here read “Wise Blood”–Eudora Welty, a novel based on how socialization of fundamentalistic religious beliefs become phenocopy and are tranferred across generations? PBS had a special about certain birds who had learned to remove the lids from milk cartons left on doorsteps. In the area specified, these birds disappeared for years. When they returned, they knew how to remove the lids from milk cartons. Was Lamark dismissed scientifically without understanding of his considerations of epigenesis?
IMHO, all that humans are able to think are metaphors of human experience. Mind in the brain is a processing of experiential realities, a retention of what recurs on most used neural routes. This is not a limitation of what can be known; it is a process in which knower and known are not separated into philosophical abstractions.
My reason for choosing how so over just so–science is interested in how so, which to me is sufficient explanation of why so.
if my knowing is embodied, why should my God concept not be?