LINK Why We Believe in Gods - Andy Thomson - American Atheists 09 - YouTube
A very concise and basic introduction into the science of religious belief.
From his book: "Why we believe in Gods", with a foreword by Richard Dawkins--
Some excerpts:
"Over the past two decades there has been a revolution in psychology and the cognitive neurosciences. Out of it
has come an evolutionary explanation of why human minds generate religious belief, why we generate specific
types of beliefs, and why our minds are prone to accept and spread them."
"...religion, while not an adaptation in itself, derives from the same mind-brain social adaptations that we use to
navigate the sea of people who surround us".
"Religious beliefs are basic human social survival concepts with slight alterations. That religion is a by-product of
adaptations that occurred for other reasons does not negate its incredible power."
"Religion utilizes and piggybacks onto everyday social-thought processes, adaptive psychological mechanisms
that evolved to help us negotiate our relationships with other people, to detect agency and intent, and to generate
a sense of safety."
4
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Hm ... well I would regard our relationships with other people as imperfect, and our agency detection and intent assessments are extremely flaky. So somehow I am not surprised to find religion as a "slight modification" to this. Although going from an assessment of real people to one of non-physical "people" is more than a slight modification in a sense.
mordant
Level 8
July 3, 2018
0
@Matias I have on rare occasions made some wry side comment to my deceased wife and my deceased son. However I know I am imagining that they are hearing it, or how they might respond to it. I wonder what percentage of the religious have that awareness that they are symbolically interacting with an idea and not an actual Being? It's an honest question; I don't pretend to know the answer. I am aware that I have had a lot more exposure to those who literally think there's an actual god that they have an actual relationship with. I know there are people who imagine this relationship and know they are imagining it. I know, logically, that there are people in between those extremes. What I don't know is how many theists (or even Christians) fall in what part of that spectrum.
As I've said elsewhere, though, supposedly on a worldwide basis 17% of Christians are evangelicals and since the very definition of evangelicals is the belief in a literal interventionist god that desires to interact on a personal level, we can say the about 5% of the world population believes that (if not more). And we can also say that this 5% has an outsize influence on geopolitics and society and culture. And in my view this influence is very negative.
Didnt watch the video but think about it. 2000 years ago people experienced floods, fires, famines, saw the sun and the moon looked the same size, experienced truly crazy people, good luck, bad luck and had no understanding of actually why those things are.
The easiest way to explain things you don't understand when there is no general knowledge is to attribute everything to a magic being. Earth, magic, plague, magic, my crazy uncle, magic. Unfortunately religion stuck, and to this day there are still people who attribute everything that happens to magic. Education is the key to freeing people from the myth of magic.
AlanRathburn
Level 5
July 3, 2018
1
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