Is Religion a Natural Phenomenon?

Hardly. Primitive man simply looked around, wondered what made everything and him, and then he looked to the sky and thought, Big Brother did it.

 

The problem I see with the whole bicameral mind theory is that the kind of complex brain evolution that would make such changes possible just doesn't happen that quickly.

 

One of the notable things about religion is its pervasiveness. The great majority of the world's people are believers, and in the past the percentage of was even higher. From an evolutionary perspective, that requires explanation, since religion involves a price in terms of some investment of time, resources, effort, and personal sacrifice. Evolutionists would expect that there must be some benefit from the phenomenon in terms of human survival and reproduction, or it would have been extinguished long ago. The notion of a "God gene" is unlikely, but it seems more likely that other traits which humans inherited incline them to religion. What are these? When we answer that question, we might be able to tell how difficult it would be to give religion up. I've suggested that religion is multi-functional, meeting multiple needs for individuals, societies, and leadership. Each one of those would have to be identified and addressed before we can really know what would be involved in trying safely to modify or get rid of the phenomenon.

 

Is this the goal then? If it were true that the propensity for religious thought gives the species some evolutionary advantage, then why try to engineer it out of the species?

 

I believe it's called the "God told me to kill our evil neighbors and we did it" Gene...

We are the survivors/winners of countless religious minded/supported/contrived wars against others who didn't get to survive and multiply.

 

Religion simply has no evolutionary advantage. Religion is basically useless, even as the comfort idea it is mainly used as.

 

This is over-simplification motivated by having an axe to grind. There is much more to religion than this one piece of it that villifies it.

It's hard to argue with a person who states conclusions as facts without any supporting argument.

If religion had no evolutionary advantage, it would not have become so ubiquitous throughout the species.

 

That is like stating that eating Big Macs every day is a byproduct of an evolutionary advantage because everyone else eats them.

 

It's not over simplification, it's THAT simple!

If you can convince your village that another village is "evil", attack and kill their bloodline and take their resources so your kind can further multiply... you don't see how that's an evolutionary advantage?

It is a statistical fact that people who vote based on religious beliefs are are also more likely to support warfare.
~90% Republicans supported the Iraq war while Democrats were split ~50/50.

http://scienceblogs.com/gnxp/2009/04/30/religious-people-support-tortu/

 

One other problem I see with Jaynes theory is it is safe. It can't be proven or dis-proven given there are no fossilized brains available for study that exhibit this split brain.

Although intriguing, it hold's no solid scientific validity given what we do know.


Here is something for you all to consider regarding whether religion is natural or man-made;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y02UlkYjSi0"]THE GOD HELMET (Koren Helmet) Michael Persinger - YouTube

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_helmet

http://www.rexresearch.com/persinger/persinger.htm

So is it solely a function of the nervous system
or
is it stimulating an area that is receptive to some form/type of energy that we haven't come to discover or fully comprehend yet but the human nervous system can intercept?

Think about it, the main function of the CNS is information sensing/gathering, interpreting and relaying that information to our cognizant mind.

 

Well, Big Mac-eating is not ubiquitous. However the fact that Big Macs appeal to a lot of people is a result of evolutionary processes. It shows that for some significant period of time, our ancestors were able to survive by eating a combination of meat and grains and other plant products.

The difficulty in examining the role of evolution in human thinking and culture is that we have evolved a capacity for self-examination, and the vastness and flexibility of this capacity gives us the illusion that we're free and unfettered. But it ain't so. Thoughts are not reality. They give us a huge capacity for determining reality, but the way we think is the result of evolutionary selection. The vessel of our thoughts is shaped in certain ways because those shapes gave the species a greater capacity for survival. Therefore in looking at the way we are in our thoughts and culture, we always need to be asking, what is it about these patterns that increased our evolutionary advantage as a species?

You're still ignoring a lot in order to advance your argument.

I get the impression that you don't know much about religion. If you did, you wouldn't be arguing that the only reason it exists is to give people an excuse for warfare.

Your statistical "fact" ignores the fact that not all people who have religious beliefs vote based on their beliefs. Your statistical studies need to be expanded to account for other factors.

 

Noxious, I do recall studies having been done that shows believers in a higher power do so due to a part of their brain known as the God Spot.


http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/belief-and-the-brains-god-spot-1641022.html

The God Spot does seem to serve an evolutionary survival purpose according to the article. My only concern is that the article does not seem to go into depth to explain how believing in God allows for a greater chance of survival as opposed to not believing in God. Therefore, I believe the God Spot, much like the appendix, has no real evolutionary advantage.

The only thing I can figure is that they are attempting to equate certain moral decisions with survival. Morality existed in mankind long before he thought of religion and man today continues to make morally correct decisions without the aid of a higher power to state, "Follow My laws." One absolutely does not need a higher power to know to be good. Those that state they would do atrocious things if God was proven to not exist are merely messed up in the head.

 

This guy rules. If for nothing else for his beard, but mostly his ideas.

 

I think religion is absolutely crucial in the evolution of a species.

Here is how it goes. Humans were nifty, they had 'better' brains. They could build structures. But most of all, they could think 'beyond' this world. They didn't know what or why. But they knew of the question. Then they were obsessed with it. People like Jesus came about, Siddhartha.. And they said all of these things. It made people comfortable to know that death, as an inevitability, was nothing to be scared of. The religion gave them comfort. I used to HATE religion, but now I see it as necessary. Just like giving a naive person psychedelics. They freak out, if people didn't have religion back then, or even now, they would have not been very mentally stable. Brick layers, priests, presidents, scientists, hobos.. They are all needed to make a culture. Then some people weren't so naive. They tried to prove this unknownness. And science has been doing it ever since. And look at all the stuff we have now.

I'm not critiquing religious people, believe what you will. Like I said, you were and are needed to make this culture work, so you are just as important and 'right' as everyone. What is right and wrong anyways? Right?. But personally, I think that these traditional religions will become outdated within the next 200 years. If we are still around. With the way this universe is.. I don't think that any religion, in a literal sense, is anywhere close to right. There is no good or bad. No such thing. We just make these things. Thus no heaven or hell. The most 'bad' thing you can do is take life. And who cares? We all die anyways. It doesn't matter how. Death isn't bad anyways. Whatever happens, whether it be some awesome afterlife, or just rotting in the ground. Why would we care, know, or care to know? 'One must not fear death because fear is in existence and in death one does not exist.'.

Sorry, of course I don't know these things for certain. No one does. You don't know your things for certain either. And if you do, good for you your definitely in a much more stable mindset than myself.

 

Did I say that was the ONLY reason religion exist? No I certainly did not. Religion is a very complex mental and social condition. Environment certainly plays a role in how much religious mindedness gets developed. Clearly some people are more susceptible than others. There's a reason we're not all Westboro Baptist Minded.

In religious warfare as with any other warfare not all of the attacked and occupied are killed off. There's a lot of fornication and assimilation going on among the groups. While religious mindedness may have grown to be a dominant trait it is not absolute, or critical, or even consistent to any degree. Religious tendencies fluctuate greatly from one person to the next, but even more so from one family to the next.

Although much of the complex religious tendencies do accommodate their war aggressions; the denial and delusion of righteousness, the fantasy of a divine connection and approval, dismissal of their own sins, their socially affirming group dynamics, childhood brainwashing... All these things can work together to produce a delusionally righteous murderous horde. Religious zombies who truly believe they are doing good but are in fact their own definition of pure evil.

 

Since I'm a believer, it's not my goal to get rid of it. I'm just seeking to explore its origins and get a better understanding of the possibility and consequences of not having it.

 

So primitive man was a philosopher and a believer in a Sky God? interesting theory. But the available evidence suggests Sky Gods came late in the game, among particular kinds of nomads and semi-nomads. The images we have from prehistoric times are of voluptuous women. And most scholars who've studied the subject think it's much more complicated than that.

 

If that were the case, how do you explain its near universal acceptance and persistence? Or was Darwin wrong?

 

Granted, I was using some license in the timeline, but that is how it basically happened even later in man's evolved mind.

Even the article that mentions the God Spot states that there is yet proof of a biological reason for man's need to believe in a higher power. Besides, just because the majority believe something is good or real does not make it so. There is proof of that in the United States where the majority believe there is nothing wrong with the current form of government.

 

So Democrats are heathens? Your perceptions are time-bound, and the statistics you cite are about party divisions, not religious beliefs. If you've taken a statistics course, you might have heard about the "ecological fallacy" which you've just illustrated--drawing conclusions about sub-groups on the basis of larger populations. The Republican base includes particular kinds of religious folks, especially Bible Belt Christians; it also includes some atheists. Quakers and Jehovah's witnesses aren't particularly warlike, Catholics are now officially pacifist, and mainline Protestant Churches are often split on these matters. A Methodist bible study group that I once belonged to split into two bible study groups because of the war you mention.