Apparently me neither! It never stuck.

I'm not sure what the evidence is that we are less violent and superstitious, but I do agree that religions evolve, and can evolve more rapidly than can our biology. Therein lies their usefulness in combating evolutionary mismatch. The question now remains whether they will be able to evolve fast enough to keep ahead of our runaway technological evolution.

@skado While your last question is perhaps the most important one, the first point regarding violence is supported by the research of Steven Pinker, et al. And even if you don’t agree with Pinker’s conclusions, one has to admit that with each generation we have less stomach for violence than in previous ages. Public executions used to be a family affair, pack a picnic lunch and hop in the buggy with the kids and go into town to witness it. And speaking of executions, capital punishment has been declining for decades, with fewer countries continuing to practice it.

When it comes to superstitions, I should’ve qualified it with the word religious. There are many superstitions and beliefs that are not entirely based on religion, such as astrology, witchcraft, ghosts, anti-albinism, etc. that seem to have strengthened if anything. Sadly, we continue to live in a largely non-scientific world!

@p-nullifidian
I haven't read the Pinker material myself, but have read reviews, both pro and con. My guess is that the cultural changes we have seen are all dependent on continuing civilizational stability. Genetically, I suspect we are as violent and superstitious as ever. Even under today's conditions, religious affiliation continues to rise worldwide as a percentage of the population, as atheism decreases.

That's not how evolution works. We are not all clones of a single ancestor. Evolution favors diversity. There are different schools of thought among scientists regarding exactly how religion is built into our species, but most agree it has evolutionary underpinnings. There are lots of traits that are built in to our species, but not into every individual.

@skado "Hard wired" religious is an unproven concept at best, and therefore does not fit into evolution.

@Alienbeing
There is nothing, regarding living creatures, that does not fit into evolution. And I haven’t said anything about “hard wired”.

@skado "Built In", "Hard Wired".... What is the difference?

@Alienbeing
When people say hard wired I think of traits that are guaranteed to happen, like breathing. Breathing, eating, sleeping, are hard wired -everybody does it. But there are general tendencies and capacities that are definitely built into our genetic inheritance, like our capacity for language, which typically manifest but are not guaranteed to. Feral children don’t speak any human language until and unless they are rescued from the wild and taught, but after a certain age, that becomes difficult.

The generally accepted rule of thumb is that if a behavior is found in all human populations and in all periods of history and in all cultures, it is most likely a product of evolution, regardless of whether every individual carries it. Religion meets those qualifications. Our capacity for language, music, art, and complex culture is built in, but not everyone becomes a musician.

@skado Your outlook is unique.

@Alienbeing
Thanks, but none of this comes from me. It's pretty standard fare in scientific circles.

@skado I don't agree it is "standard".

@Alienbeing
What do you base that belief on? Do you know of scientists in related fields who think otherwise? I’ve been begging people on this site for five years now to show me the evidence. While I post study after study and scholarly articles to support my view, they just have opinions.

Please help me learn the truth. Please, please, please, just give me a name, a source, anything I can go read for myself. I’ll do the work. Just give me the slightest hint where I can go to see the evidence. Please.

@skado Your question is backwards. You said "standard", and "standard appears to be based on one article.

I am sure I read as much as you do. I don't see standard, I see opinions all over the place.

@Alienbeing
Unless you have been reading 6 to 8 hours a day for the last six years, about this specific subject, you don’t read as much as I do.

By “standard fare” I don’t mean the only idea out there, but it certainly isn’t unique to me. It is without question one of the standards of scientific thought.

If you scroll through my posts you’ll find reference after reference to leading thinkers, philosophers, scientists, scholars, and published studies on this subject.

I’m wide open to reading about an opposing school of thought within serious scholarship (rando internet opinion doesn’t qualify) but I’ve been unable to find it.

And though many on this site are quick to tell me it exists, when I ask them to share it… they dodge, weave, dissemble, huff, puff, and bluff. But so far… no one has delivered the goods.

@skado Save your letter, I'm not impressed. Your outlook is unique whether you recognize it or not.

@Alienbeing
I guess that makes me just like everybody else. Still… no goods.

@skado Your request for "goods" is stupid. You want me to prove a negative. Go away.

@Alienbeing
No, I’m not asking for proof. I’m asking you to share some of the evidence upon which you base your belief that there is a serious contingent of scientists, working in related fields, who operate under the same assumption you do. That’s not a negative. The evidence could be a single scientific paper that supports your view.

Even inconclusive evidence. An article in a scholarly journal. Some indication that there are actual scientists in the 21st century who make the same assumptions you do about the origins of religion in our species.

If they don’t think it has evolutionary roots, they likely have an alternative hypothesis. I’d like to learn about that hypothesis.

No proof required. Just the tiniest indication that such a school of thought exists.

This, by the way, is my post. If anyone is going away it won’t be me. Your options are open.

@skado You don't have to believe me, but please get lost, you are truly annoying and boring.

@Alienbeing
What’s boring is people who make claims they can’t back up and then resort to ad homs and insults because that’s all they have to contribute. I’ll be staying found, thanks.

@skado I made NO claim. I said my experience did not agree with yours. You then wanted me to prove my experience didn't agree with yours.

Do you always act like a total jerk?

@Alienbeing
If what you intended to convey was that your experience was different from mine, I apologize. I was not able to discern that from the words you used previously. Have a nice day.

@skado That was all I was saying.

As luck would have it, I did happen to take those few seconds earlier in life. And that head start has given me the time to figure out that the subject of religion requires more than a few seconds to understand. Our best revelations these days come, not from super spooks, but from the slow and complex progress of science. And a broad awareness of the related sciences today tells us that what we call religion today is evolutionarily built in to a much higher percentage of our population than anything resembling agnosticism is.

But I don't expect anyone to take my word for it. For those who might be curious beyond a mere yea, nay, or maybe vote on the existence of a literal god-person, I would recommend biologist, John Wathey's The Illusion of God's Presence, for a cursory understanding of the underlying biology of religious belief. But fair notice - it will take more than a few seconds to read.

@skado "Coming back from the dead?" How many seconds did that thought take? Jeezuz-dude waving his magic wand over the stale bagel and the outdated can of sardines- the feeding the "multitude", the five thousand! "Walking on water!" The Bible is a book of groaners!

@Diogenes
Do you regard fiction as having no possible value?

@skado Fiction posing as fact has no value. If you think you can walk on water, I advise you to get some 'plugs'- you are liable to get water up your nose. Oh ya, only Jeezuz-dude could do the walking-bit.

@Diogenes
Does fiction have the capacity to “pose”?
Or is that dependent on the reader’s interpretation?

Yes, that’s the basic idea that biologist John Wathey lays out in his excellent book, The Illusion of God’s Presence.

Noam Chomsky is a very intelligent anarchist of the socialist type.

Who cares if he is socialist, communist or whatever, the issue is whether religion is built in or not? I couldn't care less about someone's political leanings as it might or might not regard issues like this. What is your problem, are you snarking with your comment, or do you really care that much about Chomsky's background? You don't appear to be a conservative..

He says it's probably part of human nature. But being part of human nature doesn't mean it will manifest equally in every individual. What it does mean is that it will be a part of the human landscape for the foreseeable future.

@skado I am sadly obliged to agree.

Yes I agree, but the bits of human nature, which are hard wired for religion are not very specific, some humans may be hard wired to be gullible, and some to over respect authority, we may also be hard wired towards a fear of snakes, and to favour a positive error bias etc.. But none of them lead to any specific religious ideas, if they did we would find more than a few ideas which were common to all religions, which we clearly don't, except perhaps a few trivial ones like a deep awe for snakes.

Therefore while the hard wiring may be fixed, but the softwear that we play on it is almost completely flexible, and can be adapted to any, even modern, needs. Many of us are after all, hard wired for overeating, yet it is still possible to regulate diet, and control food consumption, ( Hard but possible.) and the needs that we have for the, so called gifts, of religion are far less strongly hard wired, than our need for food. We do not have to take the first bad effects that spin off our genetic hard wiring, and assume that we are stuck with them, there are many modern religions, such as sport, environmentalism, humanism and internationalism, which can fill all the needs. And the real evidence for that comes from the thriving and happy secular nations where traditional religion is almost gone, and that, happy and thiving, seem to exactly relate to the degree to which it disappears, Skados view is a purely USA based perspective, a view of a world distorted by American lenses.

@Fernapple I certainly agree that this hard wiring, as it's called, should make us feel that nothing can be done. There may always be people born predisposed to religion, and frankly if they want to stay at home and worship whatever nonsense spins their brains then go ahead, be my guest. Our approach should be against formalised religion, stupid theology, the social influence of religion, and its efforts to tell people how to live and grift off on the gullibility of people. The fact that I feel sadly that some people are born hard wired towards religion doesn't change my view that religion, especially organised religion, should be challenged and exposed for its fraud and criminality. The goal is to promote positive secular values.

@David1955 Could not agree more.