Is religion inevitable for any conscious evolving species?

[Roboramma]

But... so what?

So you're mischaracterizing, and thus misunderstanding, one of the people you're trying to have a conversation with. I think that's counterproductive to the goals of actual conversation.

You might note that Zig's proposal isn't to define religion in general in this way, only to do so with respect to extraterrestrials. Whether or not that proposal clarifies more than it confuses, isn't obvious to me, but I do think that if you want to discuss that, it's worthwhile to do so on its own terms and understand exactly what he's saying.

 

[HansMustermann]

So you're mischaracterizing, and thus misunderstanding, one of the people you're trying to have a conversation with. I think that's counterproductive to the goals of actual conversation.

You might note that Zig's proposal isn't to define religion in general in this way, only to do so with respect to extraterrestrials. Whether or not that proposal clarifies more than it confuses, isn't obvious to me, but I do think that if you want to discuss that, it's worthwhile to do so on its own terms and understand exactly what he's saying.

I did put out a question as to what have I misunderstood there. I can't do more than that to clarify what exactly he meant. It's not in my power to force him to clarify or anything.

 

[dann]

As long as a species can stumble upon hallucinogenics or any other mechanism for experiencing unbounded joy, or a strong sense of flouriishing - then Yes that species has an opportunity to develop religion(s). Otherwise - No.

The development of religion in no way depends on hallucinogenics. The only thing about religion that depends on "hallucinogenics or any other mechanism for experiencing unbounded joy, or a strong sense of flourishing" is Marx's analogy opium of the people.
I assume that opium as a means of escapism in the mid-19th century was too expensive or otherwise inaccessible for ordinary people who had to work for a living (unlike guys like Coleridge and de Quincey), so if you weren't rich (or a doctor), you had to resort to the (more or less) free escapism of religion, which wouldn't affect negatively your ability to work the next day.

 

[HansMustermann]

It was... a bit more complex than that. His idea wasn't about recreational use, but quite explicitly that religion is a reaction to real suffering and unhappiness. It makes the really crappy real world (and it really was crappy for factory workers, and about to get even crappier over time from there, more than Marx had ever seen) more bearable. It gives you an illusory happiness so you can ignore the real suffering.

He wants to remove it so people can look for a real solution to the problem.

In effect, as an analogy, it's less akin recreational drug use and more akin to... dunno, the medical opiate problem that the USA had recently. If you can just take Oxycodone by the handful for, say, your wrist pain, you'll just keep doing that instead of getting some surgery or changing how you use that keyboard or just finding another job where you don't ruin your wrist.

Mind you, I'm not a marxist, so I'm not saying he was entirely right in anything. Just... that's what he actually meant by it. And not even just taking a guess at what he meant. He wrote a whole page himself about what he means by it.

 

[dann]

Interesting Wikipedia article in this context: Religious behavior in animals

Apes, elephants, dolphins, orcas and crows seem to exhibit mourning, compassion and maybe even a kind of wishful thinking, but nothing that comes close to religion. On the other hand, I don't know how they would do that. Do dolphins imagine that some part of them ends up somewhere else when they die? Do they know that they will all die?

 

[dann]

It was... a bit more complex than that. (...) He wrote a whole page himself about what he means by it.

I am aware of that.

 

[Explorer]

Precisely and I think Richard Dawkins called it god of the gaps.

The phrase "God of the Gaps" was mentioned by C.A. Coulson in his book "Science and Christian Belief" first published in 1955. He makes no reference to the source of the phrase, or whether or not he made it up himself, but obviously, it pre-dates anything Dawkins has said.

 

[The Great Zaganza]

I am willing to believe that you came up with this idea because you were too lazy to think things through. However, a student who doesn't do his homework because it is too hard or he is too lazy doesn't usually turn to religion or come up with deities that will do the work for him.

You don't seem to see the religious aspects of Procrastination.
School children are famous for praying for a snow day or a school fire just so they don't have to admit to the teachers that they did nothing.

All of Eschatology is, at the core, an excuse not to do things because the world is about to end anyway.

 

[dann]

You don't seem to see the religious aspects of Procrastination.
School children are famous for praying for a snow day or a school fire just so they don't have to admit to the teachers that they did nothing.

All of Eschatology is, at the core, an excuse not to do things because the world is about to end anyway.

I am sure that is what children taken hostage and fearing for their lives are concerned about just like everybody else throughout human history fearing droughts, floods, volcanoes and genocide: How can I come up with an excuse not to do things?
I have linked to studies and cases throughout this thread, many of them from this collection of links:

I (more than) suspect that the alleged "innate tendency towards magical thinking" is not innate at all, but one that appears only when people are placed in unpleasant (or even life-threatening) situations beyond their control, and they therefore look for solutions to their predicament beyond reality. This is the reason why there aren't many atheists in foxholes. And the solution to the problem of religion is obvious: Do away with foxholes and living conditions that resemble foxholes.
See my references to cases and (mainly) recent scientific studies above:
Opium of the people
Poverty and witchcraft
The children in Beslan (The Harry-Potter religion)
The need for fortunetellers (not innate!)
James Randi and the need to believe (I´ve never heard him claim that the need is in any way innate!)
Competitive sports & religion, lack of control & superstion
Access to proper healthcare as a precondition for discarding witchcraft
People's tendency to deny the explanations of medical doctors when palliative treatment is all they have In view of Zuckerman's studies it would be interesting to know if there are major differences between the USA and Scandinavia in this respect.

You have nothing but your fixed idea.

 

[HansMustermann]

Well, I think the point was that it's not ONLY in situations that are that desperate.

 

[The Great Zaganza]

I am sure that is what children taken hostage and fearing for their lives are concerned about just like everybody else throughout human history fearing droughts, floods, volcanoes and genocide: How can I come up with an excuse not to do things?
I have linked to studies and cases throughout this thread, many of them from this collection of links:



You have nothing but your fixed idea.

I still don't think that we are in any disagreement at all.

Depending on your personal psychological makeup, doing something that you consider really unpleasant is almost identical to doing something that fells like it is beyond your control.
For a clinical depressed person, for example, it is literally possible to do certain things that would be simple for a highly functioning one.

similarly the trick of the 12-steps that you need a "higher power" to succeed, when all you need is advice and a support group that doesn't facilitate your addiction.

 

[dann]

Well, I think the point was that it's not ONLY in situations that are that desperate.

That desperate?! No, everyday, ordinary despair is more than enough, obviously.
When researchers do studies of this, they don't usually take people hostage at gun point to see what happens to people's willingness to believe in weird things.

However, the more desperate the situation is, the more likely people will be look for a way out beyond reality. It may be hyperbole when preachers claim that there are no atheists in foxholes, but the tendency is not a lie: When you can think of no real solution to your problem, you are more likely to believe in one beyond the real world. When doctors tell people that there is nothing more they can do for dying patients than give them palliative care, patients as well as relatives are more likely to be in denial of the message.

That is not usually the reaction when a doctor tells a patient that he can't really do anything against the common cold. You suck it up and feel miserable for a couple of days, or if you are a Karen, he may give you a prescription for a placebo to make you leave.

 

[dann]

Religion, superstition and conspiracy theories seem to have this in common:
How Insecurity and Disinformation Create Conspiracy Theorists (Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. 45, #5, Sep/Oct 2021)
I don't know if that also goes for evolving conscious aliens ...

 

[HansMustermann]

@dann
True story, when my doctor told me she can't give me antibiotics for a flu, I told her, "Then can I get a placebo, please? Preferably something colourful." I still don't know what the pills I got were for (if anything,) 'cause I figured it would ruin the placebo effect if I looked up what they do.

I hope that doesn't qualify as being a Karen

That said, I'll have to take your word that there's something or another that's relevant in that amsciepub link. I can't actually see WTH that amsciepub article was about, because I just get redirected to other spam sites, including one that tried to start a malware download. I'd say it's not exactly confidence inspiring, but since I can't see the actual article and you haven't told me anything more than that it's "another interesting study", there's nothing to have confidence in. All the info I have so far is that you found it interesting. Well, I'll just believe that, then

Oh, and the livescience link in the same post just returns a 404 page. So again, no idea WTH it actually says.

It's uncannily almost as if someone just copied the links from Google without even trying to load them, much less read all that... Nah, that wouldn't happen on JREF...

 

[dann]

I did read the articles when I linked to them, and the links were all good - in 2013. The relevant articles were the two about lack on control and superstition. The second one still works.

Links about the lack-of-control study:

Control and security are vital parts of our psychological well-being and it goes without saying that losing them can feel depressing or scary. As such, people have strategies for trying to regains a sense of control even if it's a tenuous one.
Lacking control drives false conclusions, conspiracy theories and superstitions (NatGeo, Dec. 27, 2008)

The need for structure or understanding leads people to trick themselves into seeing and making connections that do not exist, said Jennifer Whitson of the University of Texas at Austin.
“When we lack control we are going to see and seek out patterns, sometimes even false patterns, to regain our sense of control,” said Whitson, whose research appears in the journal Science.
Baseball players are a prime example.
“Everybody knows the classic superstitious baseball player with their lucky T-shirt and the particular thing they have to do before they step up to the plate,” Whitson said in an audio interview on the Science website.
Lack of control seen fueling superstitions (Reuters, Oct. 2, 2008)

The results were clear: participants who didn’t have an opportunity to regain feelings of control were more likely to perceive visual images that didn’t exist and to perceive conspiracies in innocent situations, while participants who regained feelings of control by focusing on important personal values were no different from people who never lost their feelings of self-control in the first place.
Loss of Control Leads People to Seek Order Through Superstition, Ritual (University of Texas, Austin, Oct. 2, 2008)

Abstract
We present six experiments that tested whether lacking control increases illusory pattern perception, which we define as the identification of a coherent and meaningful interrelationship among a set of random or unrelated stimuli. Participants who lacked control were more likely to perceive a variety of illusory patterns, including seeing images in noise, forming illusory correlations in stock market information, perceiving conspiracies, and developing superstitions. Additionally, we demonstrated that increased pattern perception has a motivational basis by measuring the need for structure directly and showing that the causal link between lack of control and illusory pattern perception is reduced by affirming the self. Although these many disparate forms of pattern perception are typically discussed as separate phenomena, the current results suggest that there is a common motive underlying them.
Lacking control increases illusory pattern perception (Columbia Business School, Whitson, J., and Adam Galinsky. "Lacking control increases illusory pattern perception." Science 322, no. 5898 (2008): 115-117)

 

[HansMustermann]

Right. Point being that linking to a post with broken links in 2021 doesn't really do all that much, even if the links were good in 2013.

Anyway, I'm not sure why you're so quick to dismiss stuff like children praying because they didn't do their homework. (Cf. message #51.) If there's a moment in time when you have the least control over your life, it's when you're a kid. It's especially easy to get into a situation where you'll never finish the homework you got for the summer vacation in time, and there's literally nothing you can do about it. You can't call in sick to give yourself another day or anything. (Well, not unless you're going to fake mom's signature or anything.)

Even if technically it was your own procrastination that got you there, it's very easy to slip past the point where it's in your power to do anything about it any more.

And with some parents it's easy to be facing very harsh penalties too. There still are people who beat the snot out of their kids, for example. If you're in a far eastern country, yeah, even over what grade you got for that homework.

Hell, even in the west we had that book from the self proclaimed "chinese tiger mom" who was not only admitting, but being proud that she didn't let her daughter sleep or even pee until she played some piano piece to mom's satisfaction. I.e., torture by any other name. She literally was proud that she tortured her daughter, just so she can brag to other moms about how good her daughter is, at something as purely pointless for future prospects as playing the piano.

But in any case, sometimes procrastinate and pray can be the only way to have ANY control over your time in some families. 'Cause you won't actually have much time unless you choose to put something else off.

 

[Hlafordlaes]

Woo involves mental constructs that are divorced from physical reality yet make claims about it, either having no corroborating evidence, or directly at odds with it (i.e., a pure play in conceptual space). Superstition is a class of woo that involves extending cause and effect outside physical reality, usually making assertions that there are real consequences in physical reality for imaginary events, agents or entities. Religion is a set of superstitious practices recognized as a pervasive set of cultural behaviors related to a set of canonical beliefs, ranging from loosely conventional to socially enforced.

Of all that, I believe woo is inevitable for any species having a conceptual space, superstition for any capable of reason (cause and effect), religion for any concerned with rule-based behavior among apex predators.

 

[theprestige]

I think Religion/Gods are part of the hacker instinct in all humans: we are always looking for shortcuts to avoid doing the actual work.
So why build an irrigation system when you can just bride a deity to bring rain for the low low price of an animal or virgin sacrifice.

as long as doing things is hard, people will delude themselves into wishing someone supernatural will do it for them.

Except that all the civilizations of antiquity were both religious and industrious. They had fertility prayers and they had irrigation systems.

And hacking isn't about short cutting around the actual work. It's about doing the work faster easier and better.

Your analysis is stupid. It's an insult to hackers. It's an insult to religion. It's an insult to humans ancient and modern. Is this how you see yourself? Lazy, ignorant, and superstitious? No? Then why do you think of everyone else this way? Have you ever considered the possibility that you're surrounded by human beings like yourself, not mysterious and irrational boogeymen?

 

[theprestige]

Where, in modern religious tolerance, do people pretend that it's a real pantheon and all gods are real?

You've never seen a "coexist" bumper sticker.

 

[theprestige]

seems to me that you are making my point for me:

when things seem too hard to do (because they are or because you are lazy), you turn to religion in the hope that someone else will do things for you.

I don't think you have any idea why people turn to religion.

 

[sphenisc]

You've never seen a "coexist" bumper sticker.

Not that I'm aware of.

 

[theprestige]

Not that I'm aware of.

Then it's no surprise you've missed all the other more subtle clues of western tolerance of all religions.

 

[TheGoldcountry]

Then it's no surprise you've missed all the other more subtle clues of western tolerance of all religions.

The fact that people "tolerate" other religions pretty much implies that they don't put it on the same level as their own.

"You don't have it quite right, there, but that's OK, you're trying your best."

 

[sphenisc]

Then it's no surprise you've missed all the other more subtle clues of western tolerance of all religions.

On the contrary, I had notice a paucity of witch trials recently...just wasn't sure if it was due to tolerance or COVID.

 

[HansMustermann]

The fact that people "tolerate" other religions pretty much implies that they don't put it on the same level as their own.

"You don't have it quite right, there, but that's OK, you're trying your best."

Pretty much, but what I was saying is that basically that's what most of ancient polytheism was like. We have prayers from Mesopotamia to every single god in their pantheon -- which, btw, means over a hundred gods -- that even feel a need to reassure their own god that, basically, 'yes, I know you're the real one, the others are fakes'. (Not exact liturgical formula, mind you, but the general gist of it.) Just, well, if other people follow the wrong god or even the wrong version of yours (for assimilated gods) it's their problem not yours.

Not the least because it didn't only mean you can live together with your neighbour who's from Ur and worships Sin, and the other neighbour who's from Uruk and worships Inanna and so on. It was even essential to internal AND international relations, since to have ANY kind of treaty with any other city-state, whether on equal terms or as vassals or whatnot, you had to at least pay lip service that yeah, the god that the other city state's king claims to represent on Earth is also a perfectly good god.

And actually, even more than you'd think. Since each king claimed to be the representative of a god and enacting the will of that god, treaties and councils and whatnot were discussed in terms of being treaties between those respective gods. It wasn't just a treaty bewteen king Wossname of Ur and king Whatshisface of Uruk. It was a treaty between the gods Sin and Inanna. So, you know, you really couldn't have a treaty at all if you said "nope, that other one isn't a real god"

(But again, this only applies to gods. Animism is a whole other topic.)

 

[Thor 2]

You've never seen a "coexist" bumper sticker.

Never did see one of those myself. I bet it's not the fundie Christians or Muslims or whatever displaying them on their bumpers.

Mind you, listening to Vision radio some years back I did hear some talk along those lines. "Faith is good no mater what faith" was some what weakly suggested. Didn't seem to strike a cord with many.

 

[dann]

Right. Point being that linking to a post with broken links in 2021 doesn't really do all that much, even if the links were good in 2013.

So more bickering about a post where some links no longer worked instead of comments to the new links I provided you with.
You're welcome ...

Anyway, I'm not sure why you're so quick to dismiss stuff like children praying because they didn't do their homework. (Cf. message #51.) If there's a moment in time when you have the least control over your life, it's when you're a kid. It's especially easy to get into a situation where you'll never finish the homework you got for the summer vacation in time, and there's literally nothing you can do about it. You can't call in sick to give yourself another day or anything. (Well, not unless you're going to fake mom's signature or anything.)

Even you yourself can come up with the actual solutions to the problem that the vast majority of children come up with, like "to fake mom's signature". You can continue from there: 'the dog ate my homework', 'the laptop ate my homework' etc.

The excuse 'God didn't help me with my homework no matter how much I prayed' is so rare that I doubt that it ever happened. As a high-school teacher, I have heard numerous variations of 'computer ate my homework' or, when handing in papers became an online thing, faked botched attempts to send the homework, which, when elegantly carried out, turn into 'teacher's computer couldn't open my attached document'.

It is possible that some students pray to God that their teachers are too inept to discover their scams, but the main reason why that is probably not the case is the one you begin with: This whole thing from the beginning isn't out of their control. The students are not the helpless victims of fate, nature or society, and there are there are other ways to solve the problem in this world even if it takes having to stay up all night to write the damn paper.

That a lot of praying, other rituals and wearing of lucky pieces of clothing before exams is another thing, which I have mentioned in previous posts.

 

[dann]

Never did see one of those myself. I bet it's not the fundie Christians or Muslims or whatever displaying them on their bumpers.

I notice that an awful lot of Westerners are not particularly tolerant of Islam, and they themselves don't even have to be particularly religious.

Mind you, listening to Vision radio some years back I did hear some talk along those lines. "Faith is good no mater what faith" was some what weakly suggested. Didn't seem to strike a cord with many.

Based on what I have observed, I think that polytheists tend to be more tolerant of other religions than monotheists. Cuban Santeros are usually open to all other religions and superstitions. Kind of like, 'Oh, you have another one to add to the ones I already know about? Tell me about it/them!'
Some of them have pitied me when they heard I didn't have any.

 

[HansMustermann]

Even you yourself can come up with the actual solutions to the problem that the vast majority of children come up with, like "to fake mom's signature". You can continue from there: 'the dog ate my homework', 'the laptop ate my homework' etc.

The excuse 'God didn't help me with my homework no matter how much I prayed' is so rare that I doubt that it ever happened.

We were talking about prayer, not about excuses.

I mean, what do you expect, really? That they actually tell you "I didn't study, I didn't do the homework, but I prayed that God would do it for me"? (Or more realistically, "that you'd forget to check the homework"?) That doesn't exactly work in one's favour, does it?

Excuses aren't even at the same stage. Excuses are at the stage where it didn't work, it's time for damage control. You're trying to say something that puts you in a better light, not worse.

It is possible that some students pray to God that their teachers are too inept to discover their scams

Bingo. Or that the teacher doesn't check the homework. Or they don't get called to the blackboard to solve something when they didn't study. Or, hell, even that it continues to snow and the school gets cancelled. Etc.

but the main reason why that is probably not the case is the one you begin with: This whole thing from the beginning isn't out of their control.

Yes, well, nobody said anything about it being a problem from the beginning. But if everyone was determined to use all the time they had from the beginning to make sure it doesn't end up impossible to finish in time, we wouldn't have the verb "to procrastinate" in the dictionary

The students are not the helpless victims of fate, nature or society, and there are there are other ways to solve the problem in this world even if it takes having to stay up all night to write the damn paper.

I still say you grossly overestimate how high the bar must be to give up and turn to the almighty instead. And it gets even lower if one is depressed, i.e., their natural brain balance is such that they expect a negative outcome for just about everything they think they could do.

I mean, honestly, we actually have people calling to atheist podcasts and such, with stories like that God helped them find their keys, or one woman literally called to say how she pretty much had a divine intervention at the gas pump. None of that is some great distress, or what most people would consider being some helpless victim.

Look, I'm not disagreeing with your basic premise that lacking control is what creates that. All I'm saying is that you seem to think everyone fights hard to stay in control when they can. For a LOT of people, no, you don't have to be a helpless victim of society, you just need to be lazy or depressed or whatever to just turn to the almighty anyway.

 

[HansMustermann]

I mean, while hostage kids in the ex-USSR make a dramatic case at one end, let me illustrate something pretty close to the other extreme end.

Mom's story about how she discovered religion after previously being an atheist, is pretty much this: she had just given birth, was handed the baby (me), and had no idea WTH to do with it. So she promptly turned to God.

NOW, I will admit that a baby isn't something completely under your control (SIDS is a thing after all), so I'd even sorta understand it happening sooner or later. But we're talking about right in the hospital in a western country, not in a tent up the mountain in East Bumscrewistan. If you don't know how to stick a tit in the baby's face (which apparently honest to her God was the first thing she had no idea about,) you're in literally the best place to ask someone. There are doctors, there are nurses, there are other moms. (Hell, if we're talking "from the beginning", one can flippin' read a book in advance.) You're at literally the one point in space-time where getting that information is the most under your control. Well, nope. She first asked God. THEN eventually asked a nurse, 'cause God turned out to not be forthcoming with the information

Example #2 comes from watching a World Of Warships gameplay clip from an (I think) Russian streamer. Now I'm not particularly good at Russian, but thankfully someone had subtitled it, and I can at least understand enough to know that yeah, God was being mentioned a lot.

So anyway, she's playing a battleship, and a whole wall of torpedoes comes to view from the side. I mean, literally, like 15 torpedoes. Presumably the Shimakaze-class destroyer on the enemy team had puked out every torpedo it had in a tube. So said streamer literally starts asking God for help. Then when the torpedoes run out of fuel right before touching her ship, she's like, "See? I asked God for help and he saved me."

Like. What. The. Hell.

It's literally the farthest away from being in any actual danger of any kind. It's a video game. Even if your character or vehicle were hit by an ICBM nuke, it still wouldn't affect you. It has less consequences than even getting a bad grade in school, or anything. It has less consequences than sleeping on the wrong side, as my shoulder is reminding me at the moment. There literally are no consequences. And I don't even mean just RL consequences, but even longer term consequences in the game are nil. You exit the round, and your ship is as good as new.

But nope, let's bother God for THAT anyway

 

[The Great Zaganza]

I distinctly remember praying to God to let me find some desperately needed stuff like keys.
Those were some of my most fervent prayers.

 

[HansMustermann]

Makes me wish I were religious 2 years ago, when I had to literally call and ask to do home office 'cause I can't find my keys and I'm locked in my own house. Honest to FSM, it really happened