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What do you suppose gives rise to and supports belief in God? Obviously in this day and age such belief is deliberately cultivated in the children of those who already have and value it. But its seems belief in gods goes back as far back as we can track and nearly everywhere. Of course it comes in many varieties. But it seems lame to me to attribute god belief to a primitive attempt to explain the natural world. God belief goes back much further than any attempt to explain anything. So what is it about the way we are as people which prompts god belief? I've been thinking about this for a while and have some ideas, but what do you think?

MarkWD 7 Feb 29
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"it seems lame to me to attribute god belief to a primitive attempt to explain the natural world"
OK fine, lets hear a better idea.
"God belief goes back much further than any attempt to explain anything." That's a surprise to me, would you care to elaborate?

It possibly stems from a biological, mother/child bonding instinct, explained beautifully in John Wathey’s book: [amazon.com]

And it’s really more complex than even that. We are complex beasties. We were visual and metaphorical long before we were rational and literal. We expressed our instinctual impulses in non-rational (but not necessarily irrational) utterances and behaviors, not unlike the dreams we have while sleeping. Those instincts aren’t easily swept away by the new kid on the block - reason.

@skado Parental bonding certain does predate reason so could be an earlier candidate for the source of God belief. I haven't read the book but does it suggest that other creatures might have an equivalent? If it were entirely instinctual, a spandrel of the parental bonding process, then you'd expect to see something equivalent on some of the other species that raise their young. Or if this thing is not a quite a God belief without cultural inheritance then we have to narrow our search to species who have the ability to pass primitive ideas on to each other (e.g. sheep rolling across cattle grids) But perhaps if the shared internal experience is not enough for mimicry of actions to be sufficient to communicate the idea of God then maybe it's not quite what you'd call God until language is developed. And if that's a requirement for whatever we're calling this thing then does language predate reason. I don't think any of these things have particularly sharp dividing lines and what we're seeing is that the question of where belief in gods come from could potentially depend on definitions. So where in our evolutionary development would you place the emergence of these two phenomena: belief in God and attempting to explain things?

@skado that makes some sense to me. But the reason it brings to mind the parent/child relationship, I think, is the dependence our conscious minds have on the totality of the consciousness which our brains give rise to. In fact, I think functionally the purpose of god belief may well be to connect our conscious minds to that wider perspective. But of course that is highly speculative. Have you read any Ian McGilchrist?

@MarkWD
No I don’t think I have.

@skado as an introduction i rather like this illustrated/animated version of a talk he gave called the divided brain. I recommend it as an introduction of his ideas.

@MarkWD
Thanks very much, I’ll check it out. My internet service has been down or intermittent for days due to a network outage, so it may be a while before I can respond (I drove to a McDonalds in order to write this!) but I do appreciate the link.

@MattHardy
You ask good questions, and I don't know the answers. I don't recall if he mentioned other species, but it seems likely that the same precursor would exist in some other species that are dependent on parental care. But I think it's worth pointing out that the precursor (the bonding instinct) is not the god-belief itself; it may have been around for quite a while before humans exapted it as a god. I don't know (and I suspect no one does for sure) exactly when all that took place evolutionarily, but inasmuch as it's biology-based, I assume the roots at least, if not the god-belief itself, are much older than language or any kind of reasoning sophisticated enough to seek explanations.

I know Julian Jaynes is still controversial, but apparently Dennett thought his bicameral hypothesis was conjecture-worthy. If he got it right, we were conversing with gods before we were introspective. In any case, I strongly suspect using our modern, rational minds to guess how it all came about, that is to say, assuming the ancients used their minds the way we do, is a poor way to imagine the sequencing of that very complex part of our evolution. We didn't just make gods up, the way so many seem to think. It appears to me the "gods" evolved along with us in a complex biological/cultural relationship we have barely begun to understand.

1

That's a good question. I think of the slaves in the south being brutalized and used trying to survive it all. They needed something to believe in to keep going.

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Needing a more powerful extension of your parents

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I see religions as groups of artistic expressions inspired by deep awareness of the awesome beauty and mystery of reality. Belief had little to do with early religion. Stirring poetry, fanciful stories, paintings, dramatic rituals, dances, magic—those were the creations of successful tribes. Those tribes were not trying to be religious—they didn’t have the concept. It is moderns who have classified certain creations as “religious”, but it is an artificial classification.

It is western culture that paints the world in terms of rationality, of proof, belief, but when dealing with the stark and startling immediacy of reality, rationality is irrelevant. Some people use the god word to express reverence and awe. I say let them be.

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I've wondered about this for years as well. Man has an imagination and they frequently allow it to run wild so in ages past when earlier generations of mankind saw lightning, and heard thunder, and had to deal with hurricanes, earthquakes, and floods, their imaginations concluded that an angry superbeing in the sky was behind it all. That made sense to an irrational and unsophisticated mind.

They can be excused for their superstitions because this pre-dates the rise of science and reason. The real question is why does it still persist today?

Because it’s a choice. The religious decide to believe. They know on some level that there’s no logic; some openly say so: ‘I have faith’. Others need it for comfort, the illusion that after death, life basically goes on, in another place.
For church officials, imho, for most of them, they want to control. Opiate of the masses.

@CarolinaGirl60 Yeah, I expect the primary reason is the same as in ages past -- fear. Fear of death, fear of tragedy, fear of illness -- I'm sure all evangelicals are asking Gawd to protect them from coronavirus. Fear, irrationality, and superstition are the perfect storm for creating gods.

@Sgt_Spanky And let’s add selfishness and/or begging. I’ve heard some crazy-ass prayers from patients, at church, online, and from family.
A few examples:
-Prayed her husband would shoot a deer on his hunting trip.
-Prayed for a favored team to win a game.
-Prayed the dangly bits of a cheating spouse would fall off.
-Last but not least: prayed her bowels would move.
True story.

Well that raises another question: what's in it for us today to go on believing in gods? It is very hard to separate bare god belief from the in-group, social dynamics of institutional religion. Possibly those raised in a religion come to expect/need that sort of organizational social structure, and I suspect most who are drawn to religion without having been raised in one might be as much attracted by social fringe benefits as by the apprehension of a silent god. But I still wonder if whatever it is which made it appealing in the past doesn't still have some pull.

@MarkWD I think believeing or at least proclaming a belief in gods today is a requirement to participate in the community that religion provides, enjoy the group acceptance from the other believers and, most important, feel the reassurance that you've conquered death and are the favorite pet of your eternal and omnipotent master.

For whatever reason, a lot of pppl find all that appealing. It's much too cultish and irrational or my way of thinking.

1

Children raised in ignorance will be ignorant unless and until they learn to think for themselves

1

Which god would that be then? There’s only one god and she lives at 86 High street Bromley.

1

There’s a biological component, which makes it very persistent.

[amazon.com]

skado Level 9 Mar 1, 2020

I have never understood the concept of "spiritual longing". When I tried to understand what the word "spiritual" means, I had to give up because all the definitions and descriptions that I encountered were ultimately all forms of woo.

@anglophone
Take another look. There are many dictionary definitions of the word spirit that have nothing to do with woo. Example: team spirit. No woo. Holiday spirit. In the spirit of full disclosure. A spirited debate. and so on. Spiritual can be read as attitudinal. No woo required. Historically it has referred to anything invisible, like motivations or impulses. We can get superstitious about it or not, but we all have moods, intuitions, inclinations, etc. Biologist, John Wathey’s research on the mother/child bonding mechanisms that feed religious behavior in adult life is a fascinating read, and solidly in the non-woo camp. Check it out. It’s all science.

@skado Your point is well made. I had unconsciously limited my usage of spiritual to the theistic sense - silly me!

1

I would say it is and was trying to make sense of life here on this planet. Once we became evolved to the point we began having rational thoughts, we wondered how we got here, then insanity sets in..rationality disappears
Lol
... How many other animals can think like we do, i doubt that they have a need for rational thoughts, is it more like a human sickness??
Ok time for bed, Herbie...say goodnight.

1

Survival adaptation means humans look for a causative agent behind everything, even seemingly random events. A rustle in the grass may be the wind, or it may be a leopard, so it's "safer" to assume a leopard.

On a cosmic scale, the evolutionarily "safer" assumption seemed to be that there were causative agents behind the storms and the lightning, the floods, the tides, the movements of the herds and the growing of the crops. If one propitiated those agents, then one could exert some control or at least predict the events of life.

As we learned more about the actual causes behind all those things, it became clear that they needed no "agents" or gods to cause them; they're caused by natural processes, which we can study and to some extent predict and correct for. That hasn't stopped many people from believing that a god controls everything anyway, down to whether or not they win the lottery.

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Fear of death is probably the big one. That and general despair.

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Humans are cursed/blessed with higher intelligence & therefore humans have creative ingenuity to attribute the unknown to the mystical.

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"What do you suppose gives rise to and supports belief in God?"

My two cents.
Something went terribly wrong at some point in our evolution. Like most mammals with higher brain functions, humans have ability to visualize experiences in their imagination. That is not terrible in and off itself. But.... the visualized experiences can fool the body, which in turn fools the brain and a vicious loop is born.
Ever see a dogs' paws twitch when it sleeps? It's not actually running, but its dreaming brain is fooling its perception, which makes it send signals to the legs.
A simple test for this is to close your eyes and picture a lemon. it's form, it's weight, it's smell. Imagine peeling it. Biting into it. Keep focusing on that image and you'll feel yourself drooling. By concentrating, you have consciously fooled your body into generating a physical response to a fruit that doesn't exist (in the room).

What does this have to do with gods?
let me put it this way; I used to be terrified of the dark as a child. I knew there was something in m room. I knew it was going to eat me, eventually. I knew it. I could feel it.
Of course, that never happened. After a while I grew suspicious. I set traps, put flour on the floor to see if there were any tracks on the floor left by this monster I "knew" existed through my "sixth sense".
No traces were found. Even so the fear would not go away, but I slowly began to understand; my brain was fooling itself. it sensed danger (probably a remnant from our days in the jungle with nocturnal predators) my heart-rate went up and suddenly random creaks and muffled nosies was given agency. Hostile agency which, of course, was centered around me.
I think we all start out with a god complex. Everything that happens around us, is alway about us, to some degree. A condition some adults grow out of eventually.

I believe people who pray feel something when they pray, just like my five year old self FELT something. They imagine peace and love whereas i imagined a monster. And because it feels real, the body believes it's real, immature minds start to believe feeling=real. But it's just an imaginary lemon.

I promise you. if you spend an hour or two every day talking to the ghost of someone you lost, pretending, NEEDING that person to be there: One day you will feel his/her presence as clearly as if a live person was in the room.
I'm not surprised Muslims have to pray five times per day. With reinforcement like that, their fantasies probably feel more real than reality itself,

Religions are just a way to "mainstream" imagination. To capture it, and of course, capitalize on it. "Picture the floating man with a golden halo and his love showering down on you, bla bla, etc".
They are literally telling you what to imagine an charging you a fee for the crippling of your potential.

0

There are thousands of religions around the earth. None can provide anything factual to support ANY religion. I do believe the first religions rose from the lack of understanding of the natural world.

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Superstition. And superstition comes from all the things we see but cannot explain. Our ignorance produces "magic". And that magic becomes personified in our imagination and turns into gods.

beliefs "evolved" in this petri dish of superstition. But then there also had to arise certain people who sought power and knew they could use these beliefs to get it. Ancient politics turned beliefs into religions as people claimed to be in contact with the gods. Were they all liars? Perhaps some simply thought that what they saw and couldn't explain was a god and then, in a state of delusion, believed their thoughts were being influenced by an outside force; losing their ability to differentiate between their conscience and what they believed was divine guidance. Perhaps.

@ZealotX: "Ancient politics turned beliefs into religions as people claimed to be in contact with the gods. Were they all liars? Perhaps some simply thought that what they saw and couldn't explain was a god and then, in a state of delusion, believed their thoughts were being influenced by an outside force.."

That could be. I appreciate you considering the origins of god belief separately from the founding of institutional religion, both have their origin story and too often people sweep right past the appeal of that surprising belief in gods and immediately begin attacking the institution of religion. No doubt such institutions are fraught with corruption and collusion as are all attempts by people to unify as a group.

@MarkWD
Well I also appreciate that you see that difference as well. I think the subject of gods is complicated because I also believe that gods and goddesses were also used in a more ancient precursor to what we call science. Using gods, people could describe the relationship between different natural "forces" / powers; which is the fundamental definition of "god", and use their relationships with each other to think about and teach the relationships between the forces of nature. I think it was simply a different approach that blended art and science, where as we, in a very left-brain approach, shun anything creative in the pursuit of knowledge. We come up with long, boring, sometimes ridiculous names for things because there's a scientific approach to it (to some extent) and we have industry terms in the 3,4,5 syllable range when in reality you can name something anything you want. And you can make it more interesting. Covid vs Corona. You simply don't have to take gods literally or believe they actually exist. And I don't believe every culture did that. I think we see this in Egypt but likely in other places too where gods weren't necessarily regarded as real entities. But this is an assumption we often make in hindsight.

0

Fear, a lack of understanding about what’s known and an inability to accept things as they are: partially mystical. (Meaning not known yet, unknowable as yet).
Oh and then that whole being in a family/ social group/ not being an outcast - but that’s not really a belief in god, it’s a staying factor once indoctrinated 😉

0

I think it was created as a response to people's anxiety regarding the randomness of their lives, that people needed to find some way to try to bring that randomness under control. Creating gods who presumably have the ability to respond to human need, and who may answer another big issue, "Why are we here?" would, presumably, assuage the anxiety.

0

Perhaps a god thingie wants to allow god belief but isn't interested in using it's all powerfulness to force everyone to believe in god thingies.

If there was at least or only one God thingie and that god thingie was not as some people believe then those that are wrong about god thingies might be disappointed that their belief about a god thingie was incorrect. So, maybe because there are different types of God thingies purported and only one God thingie of omnipresent, omnipotent, and omniscient could logically exist at one time, then the one god thingie may not want to reveal it's TRUE self. If it did reveal it's TRUE self a lot of people might get butt hurt because the God thing didn't especially cater to their ideas of a God thingie.

Word Level 8 Mar 1, 2020
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There's an episode of through the wormhole that touches on this. Check it out. Some people are predispositioned to it I think.

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Indoctrination at an early age.

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If you cannot explain it and it also perplexes you in some way, then god did it. Apply the same in some way for your personal situation as it unfolds daily and god does it. People do this because they search for answers and have to have answers.

In my personal daily experiences everything works out for me. This is because my mind is working in the background wanting things to work out and I am actively doing this. A person does this without being aware of it but some use it as a claim (and proof) of a god. Common sense says it is hard to imagine a god who allows you to prosper from any endeavor including a yard sale. Oh, yes! God is watching out for me.

Does any of this happen to other people? Yes, but in different ways because they are themselves while you are you. Therefore our journeys get personalized and we all have different wonders to tell.

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I think I will call you Sherlock.

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Customs passed down through the ages

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"God belief goes back much further than any attempt to explain anything." - Not true.

0

Religion is used to control the public . Would you like to be rich ? Tell everyone that God wants everyone to donate ten% of their income to Him .You collect it , you spend it . If you can convenience more than ten people to contribute 10% of their income , (tax free ) than your income is going to be the average of those ten people . Crowd larger than ten , and your income is better than the average . You could become a Prince of the church , and live in your very own mansion or castle . Become Pope and you can own a whole city , with priceless works of art , gold treasures , and gem stones . Or you could become Joel Olson .

I really wish I could harness my bi powers to send hurricanes to the grifters and mega church snake-oil douche bags like Osteen!

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