Why is belief in gods so much more common in humans than non-belief?

[Terry Sampson]

I promise you a reply, though it will take me a bit to work through my thoughts on the matter...

You're too kind. No urgency, just my curiosity. I look forward to reading your response.

Regards

 

[Evangelicalhumanist]

Regardless, animism is a way of perceiving and living in the world by recognizing the interconnectedness of all that exists and the life in all things. If you don't believe in it, that's your business. But I'm not going to come up with pseudo-scientific ideas that are insulting to try to explain your disbelief.

Well, as to the interconnectedness of all things, for that I have physics.

On the other had, it is simply not true that there is "life in all things." Life is a word that has meaning, and that meaning cannot be applied to a rock, or any of the few remaining hairs on my hand.

"Living entities metabolize, grow, die, reproduce, respond, move, have complex organized functional structures, heritable variability, and have lineages which can evolve over generational time, producing new and emergent functional structures that provide increased adaptive fitness in changing environments. Life - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy."

 

[Saint Frankenstein]

Well, as to the interconnectedness of all things, for that I have physics.

On the other had, it is simply not true that there is "life in all things." Life is a word that has meaning, and that meaning cannot be applied to a rock, or any of the few remaining hairs on my hand.

"Living entities metabolize, grow, die, reproduce, respond, move, have complex organized functional structures, heritable variability, and have lineages which can evolve over generational time, producing new and emergent functional structures that provide increased adaptive fitness in changing environments. Life - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy."

I'm not here to argue over whether it's true or not in either of our views as I don't really care if you believe it or not. I'm concerned about actions, not beliefs.

 

[Heyo]

Didn't I hear that once - yep, a talk by Michael Shermer: (2:00 minute mark)

What's with the plagiarism on this site?

 

[Terry Sampson]

Its an idea, but it may not be the way things happened right? Also we're talking about mammals, and the first mammals are small and tend to make type I errors.

Apes actually started to develop into predators, and so their thinking must have changed, somehow. They must have retained the potential to think in more ways than one.

So what do you think, Brick? Is atheism "the default position" , "a choice", or "a genetic variation"?

An analogy just occurred to me. What if "religious" belief is like sexuality? Some folks take to it like fish in water, others can't bear the thought of it. Then there are the Bi's who enjoy belief and atheism equally and don't enjoy being deprived of the opportunity to belief or not believe.

 

[MikeDwight]

Well good OP Poster, everything will turn out great for you. Have a great ride, row row row your boat. Don't stab anyone with that knife thing there. no . noooo

 

[Evangelicalhumanist]

Its an idea, but it may not be the way things happened right? Also we're talking about mammals, and the first mammals are small and tend to make type I errors.

Apes actually started to develop into predators, and so their thinking must have changed, somehow. They must have retained the potential to think in more ways than one.

More on that later, or perhaps in another thread...I need to rethink Jacob Needleman's book "Why Can't We Be Good?" He makes an impressive case for our nature's having multiple aspects, sometimes at odds with each other.

 

[Evangelicalhumanist]

Well good OP Poster, everything will turn out great for you. Have a great ride, row row row your boat. Don't stab anyone with that knife thing there. no . noooo

Do you have a point you'd like to make?

 

[MikeDwight]

Do you have a point you'd like to make?

Your avatar looks like a mix of Breaking Bad on DVD and I don't know, but hey Jesus could have been greasing the social wheels just by existing. My point is, sometimes the skeptical internet gets so strong people don't see being nice. God Bless! Then I get on a Church forum with Nothing on it. God Bless!

 

[Vinayaka]

Personally, I'm not sure that the assumption in the thread's title is even true. Non-belief is on the rise, quite prevalent, and a lot of 'believers' are just faking it for other reasons besides actual belief.

 

[Evangelicalhumanist]

Didn't I hear that once - yep, a talk by Michael Shermer: (2:00 minute mark)

What's with the plagiarism on this site?

You are correct...I do remember that from some years ago. However, I was just reading another book called "Thinking Fast and Slow" by Daniel Kahneman, and I suppose I was reminded. I coughed it up on my own, but having a memory that stores what it hears with some fidelity, I plead guilty as charged...though without malice intention. I do try hard to provide credit when I'm aware that I'm citing something else, so thank you for pointing that out.

 

[Terry Sampson]

Personally, I'm not sure that the assumption in the thread's title is even true. Non-belief is on the rise, quite prevalent, and a lot of 'believers' are just faking it for other reasons besides actual belief.

Regarding the latter: Do you think they could be the Trans-religious belief version of the Trans-gender folk: atheists trapped in believer bodies and believers trapped in atheist bodies waiting for the day when they can afford the surgery to get their bodies and associated lifestyles fixed?

 

[Vinayaka]

Regarding the latter: Do you think they could be the Trans-religious belief version of the Trans-gender folk: atheists trapped in believer bodies and believers trapped in atheist bodies waiting for the day when they can afford the surgery to get their bodies and associated lifestyles fixed?

LOL, perhaps. Many people I know don't actually think about it much, and when you ask, you get shrugs. My MIL was a good example of this. She was the exemplar in her church, the treasurer for 15 years, but in private she admitted to not believing a word of it. Many Hindus I hang with are cultural Hindus only, and would be hard pressed to know much philosophy at all. I could well have a skewed view though.

 

[loverofhumanity]

Imagine that you are a small hominid on the plains of Africa some 3 ½ million years ago, let’s say an Australopithecine. Now, suppose one day, while you're foraging in the open near to the trees, that you hear a rustle in the grass close to you. Suddenly you need to know, “is it just the wind, or is it a dangerous predator?”

Let’s suppose that you make a snap decision that it is a dangerous predator, and you quickly scamper to the nearest tree for safety. If it was just the wind, then you’ve made what’s called a Type I error in cognition, or a “false positive.” You thought the rustle was connected to something, and it wasn’t. You were wrong, but this type of error is relatively harmless, in that mostly, you’ll go a bit hungry at worst, for want of something to eat because you’re afraid to come out of your tree and forage.

But what if you think that the rustle was just wind, and it’s really a dangerous predator, and you stick around – you’re lunch. Now you’ve made a Type II error in cognition, a false negative, and you’ve just taken yourself out of the gene pool before you’ve reproduced. Why can’t we just stick around long enough to collect enough data to get the answer right? Well, the answer is that predators don’t hang around waiting for prey to collect more data – that’s why the stalk.

We are the descendants of, we evolved from, those who most consistently made Type I errors, and went on to reproduce, rather than Type II errors and got eaten.

But here’s where it goes wrong: although that snap decision based on a False Positive is relatively safe, it is also not based on reality. It makes an association between A and B (that A is somehow connected to B) that is not true. That’s the basis of superstition, and magical thinking. And that’s what we’ve evolved to do. And it’s the basis of the sort of thinking that leads to animism, superstition, and belief in gods. Because the difference between the wind and a predator is "intention," which is something that we unconsciously attach to the object of our false positive.

And that's why more humans believe in gods, spirits, ghosts and a host of other not demonstrably true things than do not. And that's why I think that people who opt for true rational thinking can escape that trap.

I agree with you most of the way except that every atom scientifically shouts out there is a Designer and Creator and if it were not so there would be no order or structure in life just a random mess. Yet we see in entities such as the human body, intelligence so complex and intricately evolved that it is impossible to be a result of randomness.

If I built a house and then left it over the centuries unattended, the weather and elements over thousands of years would reduce it to rubble eventually. But if I placed. Ricks, mortar, the frame and materials for a house on the ground and waited for the same thousands of years a home would not appear by itself because the one essential lacking element is that to build this home a builder is required and without that builder the home coukd never build itself.

 

[Evangelicalhumanist]

I'm not here to argue over whether it's true or not in either of our views as I don't really care if you believe it or not. I'm concerned about actions, not beliefs.

Well then, we're not so far apart after all. I, too, care about actions, although I accept without question that our beliefs inform our actions - hopefully mitigated by our reason.

So what actions are you concerned with, in the context of this thread?

 

[Evangelicalhumanist]

I agree with you most of the way except that every atom scientifically shouts out there is a Designer and Creator and if it were not so there would be no order or structure in life just a random mess. Yet we see in entities such as the human body, intelligence so complex and intricately evolved that it is impossible to be a result of randomness.

Consider the implications of what you state. Think about the implied complexity of what you call "a Designer and Creator." That complexity must, by you own conception of it, be utterly immense, unfathomable. And yet you insist that there's no problem that it's "just there." No "random mess" because there was nothing to cause that structural complexity, because you don't think it's needed.

Can you explain that? Just that?

 

[Kenny]

Imagine that you are a small hominid on the plains of Africa some 3 ½ million years ago, let’s say an Australopithecine. Now, suppose one day, while you're foraging in the open near to the trees, that you hear a rustle in the grass close to you. Suddenly you need to know, “is it just the wind, or is it a dangerous predator?”

Let’s suppose that you make a snap decision that it is a dangerous predator, and you quickly scamper to the nearest tree for safety. If it was just the wind, then you’ve made what’s called a Type I error in cognition, or a “false positive.” You thought the rustle was connected to something, and it wasn’t. You were wrong, but this type of error is relatively harmless, in that mostly, you’ll go a bit hungry at worst, for want of something to eat because you’re afraid to come out of your tree and forage.

But what if you think that the rustle was just wind, and it’s really a dangerous predator, and you stick around – you’re lunch. Now you’ve made a Type II error in cognition, a false negative, and you’ve just taken yourself out of the gene pool before you’ve reproduced. Why can’t we just stick around long enough to collect enough data to get the answer right? Well, the answer is that predators don’t hang around waiting for prey to collect more data – that’s why the stalk.

We are the descendants of, we evolved from, those who most consistently made Type I errors, and went on to reproduce, rather than Type II errors and got eaten.

But here’s where it goes wrong: although that snap decision based on a False Positive is relatively safe, it is also not based on reality. It makes an association between A and B (that A is somehow connected to B) that is not true. That’s the basis of superstition, and magical thinking. And that’s what we’ve evolved to do. And it’s the basis of the sort of thinking that leads to animism, superstition, and belief in gods. Because the difference between the wind and a predator is "intention," which is something that we unconsciously attach to the object of our false positive.

And that's why more humans believe in gods, spirits, ghosts and a host of other not demonstrably true things than do not. And that's why I think that people who opt for true rational thinking can escape that trap.

A beautiful fictional story. And then a deduction as if it were true based on a fictional story.

Well done!

 

[Evangelicalhumanist]

You're too kind. No urgency, just my curiosity. I look forward to reading your response.

Regards

These are reminders only to myself...I will be addressing Jews and Muslims and learning, mob mentality (i.e. lynch mobs in the US), the Inquisition, missionaries. I will counter with Quakers (the Society of Friends), Humanism and the idea of "liberty." And I will absolutely have to consider human intention, and it's impacts. (You are watching an argument build in progress.)

 

[Evangelicalhumanist]

A beautiful fictional story. And then a deduction as if it were true based on a fictional story.

Well done!

And your refutation(s)? Can you bring your expertise in human cognition to bear on the question, and explain why you think it works some other way?

 

[Brickjectivity]

So what do you think, Brick? Is atheism "the default position" , "a choice", or "a genetic variation"?

An analogy just occurred to me. What if "religious" belief is like sexuality? Some folks take to it like fish in water, others can't bear the thought of it. Then there are the Bi's who enjoy belief and atheism equally and don't enjoy being deprived of the opportunity to belief or not believe.

There is no default position I think other than potential to believe all kinds of things.

You ask if I think religious belief is like sexuality? Beliefs change all the time, and I get the impression that sexuality is more social than a belief is. Belief is very personal, and the Uncertainty Principle applies. You can know what you believe or how fast your belief is changing but cannot know both at the same time.