[mike777]

Darwin's God

New York Times, March 4, 2007


In the world of evolutionary biology, the question is not whether God exists but why we believe in him. Is belief a helpful adaptation or an evolutionary accident?



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http://www.kurzweilai.net/news/frame.html?....html?id%3D6483

[pbleighton]

"In the world of evolutionary biology, the question is not whether God exists but why we believe in him. Is belief a helpful adaptation or an evolutionary accident?"

You left out "a phase in society's development"

Peter

[Al_U_Card]

Rather than have to contemplate, recognize and understand the intricasies of our inner workings, it is"helpful" for man to foist them off on "a" supernatural being. Once man has developed sufficient awareness, (should we manage to survive ourselves that long) the scales shall fall from his eyes.....

[mikeh]

pbleighton, on Mar 5 2007, 11:15 AM, said:

"In the world of evolutionary biology, the question is not whether God exists but why we believe in him. Is belief a helpful adaptation or an evolutionary accident?"

You left out "a phase in society's development" 

Peter

If the researchers are correct, it is not a phase in society's development. Individual religions may be the products of such phases, but the question the researchers are investigating is more fundamental: why do our brains predispose us to believe in the irrational?

I don't claim any special insight, but I have long felt that consciousness of death would make a susceptibility to religious faith a good adaptation.... it gives us a reason not to give up. But I suspect that this is a sophomoric opinion

If our brains do, as the evidence appears to suggest, contain an element of predisposition to irrational belief, it bodes poorly for the hopes of rationalists to form the majority in any society forseeable in the short term. For it is not society that shapes us, but we who shape society.. and we are the expression of our genes as much, if not more, than of anything else.

[Winstonm]

Quote

If our brains do, as the evidence appears to suggest, contain an element of predisposition to irrational belief, it bodes poorly for the hopes of rationalists to form the majority in any society forseeable in the short term.

What bodes poorly for our prospects is the irrational actions taken by some based on unsupported beliefs.

This may get into semantics, but it seems to me that it could be argued that for a belief to be irrational one would have to be deluded, so to say than our brains contain an element of predisposition to irrational belief is saying we are susceptible to self delusions. I think there is a subtle but distinct difference. Susceptability to a non-provable belief is the essence of hope; predisposition to delusion is a propensity for want.

What Al says is interesting - it is another way of saying that there is something better than us inside of us if we will only dig hard enough to find it, which is much like saying that man has within himself a higher power, even if that higher power is a part of himself. It could be argued that this is a description of man as god and god as man, even if not so stated. But as long as the g-word isn't used, it is not an irrational belief.

I think the researchers are absolutely correct, in that man does have a predisposition for hope, even if the basis of that hope is unknown and unquantifiable.

And maybe that is god.

[pbleighton]

"If the researchers are correct, it is not a phase in society's development"

Huge if. The study of correlations between physical facts and mental and emotional outlook is in its very early infancy.

OTOH, the continuing decline of religion in advanced industrialized countries is well documented. I saw figures a few years back that put weekly church attendance among under-40 citizens of many Western European countries at under 10%, and Japan at 3%. It's around 40% in the U.S. (the second highest after Ireland), to some extent artifically inflated by the much higher levels of attendance by first and second generation immigrants from Third World countries.

It's quite possible that religion will be around indefinitely, given the remarkable range of opinions held on any subject by people. However, given the trend in the West since the Enlightenment, I'd give very high odds in a (by definition uncollectable) bet that 500 years from now, most people will be either atheist, agnostic, or some type of Unitarian, non-denominational non-religion religion.

But who knows. Maybe the earth will be hit by a giant asteroid, and the survivors will have to find a reason why, and church attendance will surge, like troop levels in Iraq

Peter

[hrothgar]

pbleighton, on Mar 6 2007, 04:46 AM, said:

"If the researchers are correct, it is not a phase in society's development"

Huge if. The study of correlations between physical facts and mental and emotional outlook is in its very early infancy.

OTOH, the continuing decline of religion in advanced industrialized countries is well documented. I saw figures a few years back that put weekly church attendance among under-40 citizens of many Western European countries at under 10%, and Japan at 3%. It's around 40% in the U.S. (the second highest after Ireland), to some extent artifically inflated by the much higher levels of attendance by first and second generation immigrants from Third World countries.

It's quite possible that religion will be around indefinitely, given the remarkable range of opinions held on any subject by people. However, given the trend in the West since the Enlightenment, I'd give very high odds in a (by definition uncollectable) bet that 500 years from now, most people will be either atheist, agnostic, or some type of Unitarian, non-denominational non-religion religion.

But who knows. Maybe the earth will be hit by a giant asteroid, and the survivors will have to find a reason why, and church attendance will surge, like troop levels in Iraq

Peter

I saw an interesting study a week or so back that correlated welfare spending and religious affiliation. The article claimed the countries that implemented a comprehensive social safety net created a significant decline in the level of participation in organized religion,

The study primarily focused on Western democracies and focused on time series data for countries like Ireland and Spain. (As I've noted in the past, I think that the prominant role of the ROman Catolic Church as well as Greek Orthodoxity in opposing the Communism actually lead to an artificial surge in the popularity of these institutions)

[barmar]

I've been reading Daniel Dennett's Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon. He attempts a very objective explanation of the evolution and history of religion, as well as a rational overview of the benefits and problems resulting from religion and faith.

I highly recommend this to both religious people and atheists. It's much more fair and balanced than Richard Dawkins's The God Delusion; his "militant atheism" tends to offend religious people, making it difficult for them to follow and accept his arguments (who wants to participate in a debate with someone who seems to be calling them ignorant?).

[helene_t]

Dawkins' idea is that children have a natural propensity to uncritically believing what authorities (often their parents) tell them. This is because the authorities often posess valuable information (which food is safe to eat, how to present yourself to a stranger etc.) which have possitive survival value for children even before they are mature and experient enough to assess that information critically.

Once such a propensity has evolved, it can be exploited by "memes", parasitic cultural elements that pass themselves down generations just like viruses can make use of the host organisms propensity for copying DNA, computer viruses make use of the computers' propensity of copying and executing code etc.

Just like evolution favores parasites with characteristics that promote the parasites' survival (rather than the host's survival), cultural evolution favores memes that benefit their own survival, rather than the survival of the humans being exploited. Some Christian dogmas are good examples of this: the idea that faith is a virtue in itself, the idea that procelyting is a virtue, the excesive awards (72 virgins) and excesive punishments (hell).

There is much more to the evolution of religion than this crude idea, of course. Dawkins' ideas are good, but although simplicity of an idea is a virtue in itself, Dawkins' books sometimes leave me wondering if he really think those crude theories are sufficent. For example, his book "The selfish gene" left me with the expression that he believes that natural selection works only at the replicator level. But in his more recent book "The ancestors' tale" he gives an example of putitive population-level selection which he admits is plausible.

I recomend "The God Delusion" very much, for three reasons:
- It is an easy read
- It provides a lot of facts which are both ammusing to read about and also vital to everyone intersted in the topic
- It is refreshing and much-needed in its bold criticism of religion. Most academics are overly politie in their attitude towards religion, which sometimes leaves the public with the idea that scientists are generally agnosts or even religious. The urban legend that Einstein believed in God is a prime example.

I did miss some depth in the philosophical and psycological chapters, though. Dawkins is a good agitator and a good scientist, but when he aspries to write about philosophy and psychology he'd better join with experts in those fields. I would like to have seen Denett and Pinker as co-authors.

[pbleighton]

I haven't read Dawkins.

I read Bertrand Russell's "Why I Am Not A Christian" almost 40 years ago, and it seemed to me to be conclusive. I recommend it highly. Russell was one of the greatest mathematicians of all time, was one of the inventors of the modern Analytic school of philosophy, and won the Nobel Prize in literature. His Autobiography is awesome.

Peter

[hrothgar]

Ran across this today...

Too amusing not to pass on, even if I don't agree with the premise

http://www.youtube.c...h?v=QERyh9YYEis

[Gerben42]

Incredibly funny indeed

[Al_U_Card]

I guess it (enlightenment) just comes down to introspection and self-evaluation.

We trade non-existance (are we sure?) for existance.....so why here and now? Ahhhh, a stop along the way. Why? To get where we are going. Where's that? A place that we will get to once we have accomplished what we came for. (No matter how long it takes as we can't get there otherwise.)

But we are "conscious" of our presence here, so we must also be aware (in some way) of our purpose and the eventual goal. (If not yet, perhaps soon? Eventually, undoubtedly, as the universe only seems to function in logical patterns that we can come to understand by inspection.)

It is only (and always as infinities and eternities tend to never run out of "options") a matter of time.

[barmar]

Why do we have to have a "purpose" and "eventual goal"? We just exist, like everything else in nature. The thing that distinguishes us is that we have a brain capable of contemplating such notions, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the notions are true. It may seem obvious that everything has a purpose, but there was also a time when it seemed obvious that the Sun, Moon, and stars moved around the Earth.

The problem with trying to have a rational discussion of the "truth" of religion is that its very nature makes it neither provable nor disprovable. An omnipotent god can make any experiment turn out how he wants. For example, there have been double-blind tests to see if intercessory prayers help patients when they don't know they're being prayed for, and they've failed to prove any benefit; but a devoutly religious person could explain that God, for whatever reason, doesn't want his existence to be proved scientifically, he prefers blind faith, so he deliberately ignores the prayers of people participating in these experiments.

One has to wonder, though, why someone should worship a god with such motives. It reminds me of the Star Trek episode where they ran into the Greek god Apollo, who tried to capture the ship so they would hang around and worship him and he could hook up with the hot lieutenant. Sure he's powerful, but is he really deserving of lifelong devotion?

The more worthy a god is of devotion, the less he should need that devotion. Should we really pray to a god who is "jealous, and quick to anger"? Well, I guess if he really does exist, you'd better, or else. But I'll take the risk....

[helene_t]

It appears (Pinker: How the Mind works; Dawkins: The God Delusion) that children are born with an instinct of attributing purposes to natural phenomena (clouds are "for" raining, edgy rocks are "for" allowing animal to scratch their fur to clean it). I've never seen an evolutionary explanation for this putative "instinct". I can speculate is that it's related to sublimation. Which doesn't help me since I can't explain sublimation either.

Maybe it stimulates tool-making, domestication of plants and animals etc. If it's natural for a human to speculate what a natural object or phenomena is "for" it may stimulate exploration of what the object can be used for, or how one needs to adapt to the phenomena. Even if it's not clear to begin with what problem one is trying to solve.

And in some cases, the "purpose" instinct is correct. One of Dawkins' examples is that children have been demonstrated spontaneously to come up with the theory that torns are "for" protecting the rose, while they won't say that the purpose of barbes is to protect the barbed wire. Not sure how convincing that example is, but the link to Darwinian adaptation is clear.

[Al_U_Card]

I guess a lot of people "worship" Warren Buffett because he brings them lots of bounty (not the paper towel kind lol).

A lot of people "fear" Dick Cheney for the kind of terror that he can bring into their lives.

Barmar has the right idea about contemplating the uncontemplatable. All things exist as they do, period. Understanding our place and role in the greater scheme of things is just part of what we do.....

Awareness is a consequence of our make-up and our surroundings.

Self-awareness seems to be an innate quality of mankind.

Knowledge leads to understanding but without transformation into tangible benefit (elevation or purification or enlightenment or whatever you care to call it philosophically) then it is only self-absorption. The greater goal will become evident once it comes within our ever-widening field of vision.