What Causes Religious Belief?
Are we hard-wired for religion and belief in deities?
It would appear that humans alone of all the primates, far less all of the rest of the higher mammals, are hard-wired to, if not uncritically believe in a spirit or supernatural reality, at least have an intense and curiosity about the possibility of one. [Even the most rabid of atheists must have an interest in the possible existence of deities and the supernatural in order to bucket that existence.] The evidence for that is that nearly every culture from the Year Dot through to the present day holds such beliefs or interests. There’s no evidence that chimpanzees, gorillas, monkeys, and associated primates or other intelligent species like whales and dolphins and elephants, etc. have a similar belief or interest in anything theological. They don’t appear to have religious or spiritual experiences.
Why have humans and humans alone been singled out for this facet of ‘reality’? Further, there’s evidence that parts of the human brain can be stimulated to produce spiritual or religious feelings, for oneness with a personal God to a more nebulous oneness with the cosmos. Also, those with temporal lobe epilepsy can ‘suffer’ from hyper-religiosity.
Humans being singled out to have a spiritually inclined brain make little sense from a natural selection or biological evolutionary point of view. A religious frame of mind doesn't help find food and shelter and a mate and avoid predators, etc. It all makes little sense unless this facet of our mental being was programmed in from the word go by either a really real supernatural deity or deities or else by my postulated Supreme Programmer who created our Simulated (Virtual Reality) Universe.
IMHO the Supreme Programmer has programmed into us an awareness that there is a Supreme Programmer – kind of like an artist signing their paintings!
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Feel free to reply to any comment by clicking the "Reply" button.That was time i'll never get back ?. Children are indoctrinated before they are capable of cognitive thought ... the end.
SimonCyrene
Level 7
Dec 2, 2018
1
Question... When you were a baby did you already know everything or did you have to learn and ask questions?
Because every single human before had to do just the same. And when we didn’t have a set method of verbal communication we still had questions.
Eventually we developed languages which meant we could now develop titles and identifiers.
But since we really haven’t had any documentation of science before 500 years ago we still had things that we didn’t understand.
So the elders and leaders decided things such as the sun and moon, oceans, volcanoes and certain animals were beyond our understanding but were also great and powerful so they had to have something to do with our existence because we’ve learned that they definitely had the ability to create our death.
So therefore they must be god’s and they were to revered and eventually they were worshipped.
They became the reason for everything and they were the original tax system for the ruling class.
Ok now we’re talking about at 5,000-10,000 years ago that we have had the practice of idol and god worshipping. We worship celebrities within months of their achieving fame so now imagine thousands of years of doing that with our mythology’s.
We’re not hardwired to insanity find a deity to worship we’re conditioned and developed to believe that without it we’ll suffer and parish. 2 totally different things dude
48thRonin
Level 8
Dec 2, 2018
0
All religion is a crutch for people that can't stand on there own in life. Christains are gulliable, hypocrites that think scare you into belief of deity and do there bogus rituals. I would burn my baptism certiciate if I could find it, to show I don't need a crutch and accepted the reality of death.
freedom41
Level 9
Dec 2, 2018
0
It could just as easily come from psychosis and mental illness. A quite large percentage of the human population hears voices of things which aren’t there - that on its own is enough to spur thinking about a spirit world. The rest is all imagination and speculation.
Denker
Level 7
Dec 2, 2018
0
Religious belief stems from a fear of death and the apparent fragility of life. In a time before we understood anything about the world, the death of otherwise young healthy people would have seemed to defy any sort of logic or explanation. Especially because we continue to 'sense' them. We have a memory that lasts a long time. Certainly other primates, even dogs and cats (oh and definitely dolphins) do pine for love ones...they feel the loss but they lack the imagination to make any sort of sense of it. Couple this with apparent 'miracle' recoveries, when all else seemed doomed and it isn't a massive leap for us to insert an idea of some supernatural control. We are hard wired to fill in gaps. People can read entire sentences without vowels with no issue. We see an almost completed circle and automatically complete it. I can imagine as a cognitive shortcut there is some excellent advantages to this. So if it looked and felt magic our brains would fill in the gaps.
Amisja
Level 8
Dec 2, 2018
2
In very basic terms, I believe the problem of religious behavior stems from imagination.
We can conjure images in our minds about things we have never seen or feel things we have never experienced.
Fantasy and reality are mere chemicals in the brain, and are given equal response - reward or punishment. Everybody thinks happy thoughts as a mood stabilizer without realizing.
Basically, what happened in the past was someone hamstrung the minds of their children to have a particular hobbled fantasy, made them depend on the endorphins it produced and convinced them that emotions make things physically real.
Why has it caught on only with humans? 1. Because we are a needy, easily depressed and lazy bunch of primates. Narcissistic feel-good fantasies are just one thought away and will make all your problems seem manageable.
2. We have the brain big enough to sustain complex fantasies where other animals brains have not progressed beyond basic survival skills.
MLinoge
Level 7
Dec 2, 2018
1
@johnprytz If there had been fewer religious wars thinning the herd in the past, there would probably be more. As I was trying to add, at some point people started hobbling their children's imagination so they would never stray from the mosque/temple/church-approved visualization.
Despite that, there is countless divisions within the major religions today. The hardcore Muslims are still murdering their apostates, while Christianity has divided in who knows how many different branches.
Look how some evangelicals are interpreting Jesus today.
Which is not to say new religions are not manifesting. Mormons - depending on whether you'd call them Christians - are fairly new. So is Scientology.
It's harder for entirely new concept to flourish.
The main reason the monotheistic father-deity who grants wishes and has chosen YOU to bless above all others, remains so strong is because it fits easily with male, and some female, comprehension and expectations.
The old testament has a man speaking existence into being with his voice. It's easy enough for a mere child to digest, respond to and imprint on. Jesus superpowers are creating food, healing sickness and raising the dead. Basic, uncomplicated things primitive children would be awed by if they heard the story, more so given their experience of famine, sickness and death in their stone-age of healthcare.
There are dozens more like that.
Sometimes I wonder what the world looks like for people this detached from reality. The rest of the time I really don't want to know.
Trump actually fits with the old model. He is man whose entire power is in his voice, making impossible promises, overtly divisive and short-tempered; exactly what religious people have been conditioned to equate with dominance and leadership.
I think it comes from human imagination.
M4Amama
Level 6
Dec 2, 2018
2
Over the millennia, I would think there have been many versions of religion that we don’t even know about or not talked about much. Maybe some short-lived versions, etc.
I think it probably began as an explanation for events happening that humans couldn’t explain. Also, a way to worship gods that “controlled the growing seasons.
Religious behavior makes plenty of sense from a natural selection perspective. It promotes social cohesion which increases chances of survival and reproduction.
skado
Level 9
Dec 2, 2018
2
@johnprytz
You could be right. I don’t think the science is anywhere near settled. I’m just passing along what I read...
“There is general agreement among scientists that a propensity to engage in religious behavior evolved early in human history.”
“Richard Sosis and Candace Alcorta have reviewed several of the prominent theories for the adaptive value of religion. Many are "social solidarity theories", which view religion as having evolved to enhance cooperation and cohesion within groups.”
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