• Quick note - the problem with Youtube videos not embedding on the forum appears to have been fixed, thanks to ZiprHead. If you do still see problems let me know.

Are humans hard-wired for faith?

So, is this another one of your threads in which you assert a conclusion in the form of a question, so as to disguise the fact that you're not really opening yourself up to doubt on the matter in the first place?

Fox News usually does the same thing with their headlines, such as, "The Dixie Chicks: Traitors?" I can do that too. "Thomas1016, disingenous thread starter?"
 
To answer the question.

I am not.

But I am not human. I am just a duck. :relieved:
 
it is an interesting question....although i'd expand it to irrationality - of which i'd regard "faith" as a subset....

we discussed this before

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=64312

which was centred around a lecture reported in the guardian by psychologist Bruce Hood
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/st...864748,00.html

to lazily repost from that thread....

My initial opinions are that the arguments that Bruce Hood makes with regards to even "rational" people holding irrational beliefs are pretty interesting- certainly when we start to examine such things as sentimental attachment to possessions. To extend further, in the UK [where there are no dangerous arachnids] fear of spiders is an irrational belief- despite the fact that it may well be bourne of a rational belief hard-wired many generations ago. One could postulate that a belief in god was equally a rational belief many generations ago - as the only way primitive man could make sense of the world around him, and as others have pointed out, there may even have been some evolutionary benefit conferred to individuals with a predisposition towards such a belief - ie. common bonding across a larger social group.....

However, it's also definitely true that many irrational beliefs can be overcome through exposure to rationality - so I'm not sure that the struggle is futile in itself, merely that there always might be some irrationality left however hard you try...
 
Cello Man said:
So, is this another one of your threads in which you assert a conclusion in the form of a question, so as to disguise the fact that you're not really opening yourself up to doubt on the matter in the first place?

Fox News usually does the same thing with their headlines, such as, "The Dixie Chicks: Traitors?" I can do that too. "Thomas1016, disingenous thread starter?"
Click to expand...

actually I used the headline as it was posted on the article. lol...kinda wierd to be criticized for posting a topic with a question mark. I was under the impression the purpose of this website was to promote free thinking in a "friendly and lively way". If you think I am trying to take a certian side in this matter then you are wrong I am still exploring and deciding what to believe in my spirituality. I have experienced things that would lead me towards believing in reincarnation. But as some people have pointed out to me and having read parts of some of thier suggested reading the memory can be tricked pretty convincingly.

One thing I have learned in life is ALWAYS be teachable no matter how old you are. I can relate to this article in that we may be hardwired to search for God becuase I am in that search myself I guess.
 
Last edited:
CNN has a horrible habit of writing really bad headlines--bad to the point of being completely false and not necessarily representative of the article.

I'm with triadboy, though. You can use the same brain scan results to support Dawkins' argument that faith evolved largely from the survival benefit of children obeying parental dictates.

I think it's that plus our social nature wherein we are hardwired to see faces, personalities and intentions whenever possible.
 
Thomas1016:

To me, the title of the thread seemed to smack of presupposition that humans are "meant" to believe in a higher power or that we were "designed" that way. I noticed in your "Did Dinosaurs and humans co-exist" thread, the link cited was a Creationist website. That issue has been thoroughly and scientifically resolved, and no one doing actual, serious science uses the Bible as their starting point. It struck me as silly that the topic should even come up on a science forum.

When I saw this thread, I drew an inference from the dinosaur thread that you might be pushing a Creationist agenda, but in the form of "just asking questions" so as to not have to backpedal if you get caught making demonstrably false assertions. If that is not your intent, I apologize for an emotional reaction to this issue.

By the way, I agree that always being teachable is a key to a good life, with the qualification that not all teachings are of equal merit, and many who say that they simply want to teach really want to brainwash. Being able to separate the facts from the nonsense has only helped me become more teachable. Science is not a dogma to be worshipped or forced upon younger generations. Science is a method, and it's the best one we've got.
 
Last edited:
JoeTheJuggler said:
I'm with triadboy, though. You can use the same brain scan results to support Dawkins' argument that faith evolved largely from the survival benefit of children obeying parental dictates.
Click to expand...

You find that argument convincing? That we can view irrationality merely as a relic of parental control? It does seem a bit weak to me.....

could you expand on it?


I think it's that plus our social nature wherein we are hardwired to see faces, personalities and intentions whenever possible.
Click to expand...

This i think is more important insofar as the anthropomorphic tendency amongst early homos would have confered evolutionary advantage with regards to an ability to empathise and thus predict animalistic behaviour...

nevertheless not all faith is anthropomorphic in nature, and so this still seems deficient....
 
andyandy said:
You find that argument convincing? That we can view irrationality merely as a relic of parental control? It does seem a bit weak to me.....

could you expand on it?
Click to expand...
Sure, since humans are not born with instincts for survival the way many other animals are it is in a childs best interest to accept that which a parent says as gospel. Evolution would favor children who obey their parents over those that don't. This needs to simply be projected to another authority figure. It is not absolute and there are many people who are anti-authoritarian who typically rebel at both parents and other such figures at an early age.
 
andyandy said:
You find that argument convincing? That we can view irrationality merely as a relic of parental control? It does seem a bit weak to me.....

could you expand on it?
Click to expand...

Take Santa Claus. Millions and millions of children believe the story of Santa - because everyone else seems too. Then when they turn 7 or 8 everyone laughs and it's forgotten. But the Jesus story persists and still held as true by the parents, so the children follow suit.

The Santa Claus story is like Jesus training class.
 
triadboy said:
Take Santa Claus. Millions and millions of children believe the story of Santa - because everyone else seems too. Then when they turn 7 or 8 everyone laughs and it's forgotten. But the Jesus story persists and still held as true by the parents, so the children follow suit.

The Santa Claus story is like Jesus training class.
Click to expand...

again this seems rather simplistic - there's obviously a cultural element to the succesful propagation of memes [to use dawkins' language] nevertheless this fails to address why certain irrational concepts are so much more conducive to belief than others. To dismiss religious belief as nothing more than a relic of parental control equivilent to a modern day story about Santa Claus is to miss the fundamental basis of all religious belief - ie the incomprehensibility of death to the conscious self. It is within this framework that religious belief would better be regarded - a delusion of immortality to make sense of this fundamental disconnect between our awareness of self and an imagined state where we no longer exist.
 
RandFan said:
Sure, since humans are not born with instincts for survival the way many other animals are it is in a childs best interest to accept that which a parent says as gospel.
Evolution would favor children who obey their parents over those that don't. This needs to simply be projected to another authority figure. It is not absolute and there are many people who are anti-authoritarian who typically rebel at both parents and other such figures at an early age.
Click to expand...

This is obviously a factor in the propagation of memes through the generations - however it fails to address evolutionary benefit as to the succesful propagation of some memes over others. If one can accept that the "god" meme is especially well suited to propagation, then one should be willing to analyse the specific reasons why.

Certainly as a conscious brains' delusion to make sense of death we can see a very powerful hook, but also it's not too hard to conjecture evolutionary benefit for close social bonds beyond an immediate family/tribal group that a powerful shared belief could foster - and such bonds would certainly have been an essential component in shifts from small tribe hunter gatherer lifestyle towards larger tribes and emergent civilisations.
 
andyandy said:
This is obviously a factor in the propagation of memes through the generations - however it fails to address evolutionary benefit as to the succesful propagation of some memes over others. If one can accept that the "god" meme is especially well suited to propagation, then one should be willing to analyse the specific reasons why.

Certainly as a conscious brains' delusion to make sense of death we can see a very powerful hook, but also it's not too hard to conjecture evolutionary benefit for close social bonds beyond an immediate family/tribal group that a powerful shared belief could foster - and such bonds would certainly have been an essential component in shifts from small tribe hunter gatherer lifestyle towards larger tribes and emergent civilisations.
Click to expand...
Dawkins make the case of the moth. Why are moths drawn to a flame and commit suicide. Surely this can't be an evolutionary benefit to the moth. If you understand that moths evolved to use the moon as navigation then you can model the behavior and understand why moths commit suicide because of an evolutionary trait that actually has to to do with navigation.

We didn't evolve to believe in god anymore than moths evolved to commit suicide in candle flames. Instead humans evolved to place trust in a parent figures. It is comforting and we trust them. It's easy to understand why we might then transfer those feeling to god.

It sounds reasonable to me but if you don't find it compelling then that's fine.
 
RandFan said:
Dawkins make the case of the moth. Why are moths drawn to a flame and commit suicide. Surely this can't be an evolutionary benefit to the moth. If you understand that moths evolved to use the moon as navigation then you can model the behavior and understand why moths commit suicide because of an evolutionary trait that actually has to to do with navigation.

We didn't evolve to believe in god anymore than moths evolved to commit suicide in candle flames. Instead humans evolved to place trust in a parent figures. It is comforting and we trust them. It's easy to understand why we might then transfer those feeling to god.

It sounds reasonable to me but if you don't find it compelling then that's fine.
Click to expand...


I certainly find it compelling that humans evolved to place trust in a parent figure, but i find this insufficient to explain irrationality as it exists, and certainly the hugely succesful propagation of some memes throughout human history....


as a side note, it's interesting that you give the example of the moths being drawn to the flame - this was a New Scientist letters question last week...there were some good responses....

Richard Dawkins, in his recent book The God Delusion (Bantam Press, 2006), presents us with the problem of moths drawn to a candle flame. His solution is the old glib explanation that the moths are trying to use the flame to navigate, mistaking it for the moon. The idea is that a moth sets its course according to the position of the light, so it will have to keep turning towards it to maintain the same relative heading, and the path it will take will be a spiral leading inevitably into the flame.

This explanation does not tell us, however, why it is that in many species only males are thus attracted, and in a few, only females.

What is more, if moths need to navigate, they must be from a migrating species. Yet most of the time such moths are not migrating. Indeed most species do not migrate at all and thus have no need of navigation. Moreover, all groups of insects display the same behaviour: flies, wasps, hornets, mayflies and caddises are all drawn inexorably towards flames, although many of these insects are normally diurnal and mostly rarely or never migrate.

So are they navigating to find food or a mate? At night in summer, male moths use scent to decide their heading, not light. Total cloud cover makes no difference to their behaviour. They move into and across the wind, hunting for telltale pheromones which will lead them to a female or for the scent of flowers to enable them to feed. Females, for their part, stay still until after mating and then go looking for the scent of plants that their larvae can feed on in order to lay their eggs on them. They don't need the moon, stars or candles to do this.

I have spent thousands of hours sitting by light traps observing insect behaviour and I feel, for the most part, it is pure accident that they stumble upon the light. Many can be seen to fly straight past without deviating one iota. Others fly into the lighted area, land and stay still, as they would if it were daytime. Different species seem to have different sensitivities, the most sensitive ones alighting the furthest from the light. Still other moths circle the light, never bumping into it.

Those that do fly towards the light often do so in a wild and confused manner. They seem disorientated and confused by a bright light rather than attracted to it.

Terence Hollingworth, Toulouse, France
Click to expand...

I have seen this question asked many times and answered in as many ways, but I have yet to find an answer as attractive as that which I first read in Ian McEwan's novel Atonement (Jonathan Cape, 2001), which is set in the 1930s and 1940s, although I believe the theory originates from 1972 and Henry Hsiao, a biomedical engineer. Put simply, nocturnal moths fly towards dark places and with only simple light-sensing apparatus they perceive the area behind and beyond any point light source, such as a light bulb, as being the darkest around. Sadly, this idea does not seem to be shared by entomologists and has never been confirmed experimentally.

Rob Jordan, Cross, Somerset, UK
Click to expand...
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19325953.000-night-light-flight.html

in fact....i might start a thread in SMMT on this :)
 
Last edited:
I personal have that feeling, where you feel God exists. It is a feeling in my gut that God is there. I know there is no proof of God and I need to fight this feeling every day.

I even see pattern in random events that show God is talking, but if I look at it closely, it falls apart and see it is just random.

Once I started to see the patterns, it was easy to stop most of the religious thinking.
 
andyandy said:
I certainly find it compelling that humans evolved to place trust in a parent figure, but i find this insufficient to explain irrationality as it exists, and certainly the hugely succesful propagation of some memes throughout human history....
Click to expand...
Cool. I disagree. Let me be clear. I don't by any means believe that it is the only answer. Not even close. However I think it is a very important and significant part of the puzzle.

But we can disagree. :)


as a side note, it's interesting that you give the example of the moths being drawn to the flame - this was a New Scientist letters question last week...there were some good responses....



http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19325953.000-night-light-flight.html

in fact....i might start a thread in SMMT on this :)
Click to expand...
I think that would be great.
 
woodguard said:
I even see pattern in random events that show God is talking, but if I look at it closely, it falls apart and see it is just random.
Click to expand...
I know what you mean. That happened to me also. Of course it stopped after I quit the drugs.






















;)
 
The answer to the origin of religion lies in the self-knowledge that we are all going to die. Think of the powerful effect that has on our unconscious.
 
triadboy said:
The answer to the origin of religion lies in the self-knowledge that we are all going to die. Think of the powerful effect that has on our unconscious.
Click to expand...
No doubt significant. However an afterlife or the significance of death is not universal among cultures. That was not as prominent in the past as it is now.

It is very likely that many things played a part.

When humans gained self awereness they noticed that there was a cause and effect relationship in nature. Things appeared to be caused. Humans had the realization that they were capable of making things and assumed that their world was also made by another being like them. This was the first attempt at inteligent design though they did not think of that in that fashion. A god could explain their natural world and how it worked.

Then there is the fear aspect of life. Huddled in caves staving off predators god was a being that could be used to explain the mishaps of one's life and one that could be appealed to for help.

Then there is the human leader endowed with the ability to talk to god. This was a very powerful reinforcement for a god belief. If you have a shaman who can directly talk to god then you are in pretty good shape. You are important and there is something to be gained for the leader who speaks to god, primarily control over society.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom