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There is something inside of humans that has for centuries made religion very popular More like millenia. When your little neo-human tribe could be coerced as
by crusso 11y ago
There is something inside of humans that has for centuries made religion very popular
More like millenia. When your little neo-human tribe could be coerced as a group into attacking the nearby human tribe to take their women and eliminate them as competitors for resources, the chances that your genes would survive went up. Religion and general leader following were great tools for group coordinated action. Any mutations in the brain that benefited those group coordinated actions tended to survive and spread.
Religious propensity was a survival trait.
- humanrebar 11y agoThat's an interesting theory with absolutely no evidence to support it.
- crusso 11y agoCountless hours of simulation tell me that in a world of limited resource induced competition, coordinated action is of paramount importance. Any trait (gene) that improves coordinated action is of benefit. Of course, my hours of simulation are playing chess, Risk, Warcraft, and numerous other games -- but there's a reason those concepts are so often the core of games: they parallel real life and our desire to win at life. Even modern psychology is fairly light on things that are proven. Insisting on proof to discuss psychological origins that we can't really test on real proto-humans before we even discuss it is just an attempt to shut down unpleasant ideas, like the idea that most religious beliefs are myths.
- Lawtonfogle 11y agoBut that is not a reason to dismiss it. It is still not inherently incapable of being tested, but it may still be quite some time before science is at a point where hypotheses from evolutionary psychology/sociology can be tested in the same way that hypotheses in evolutionary biology can. Imagine how little there was to support Darwin originally and how much technology that now is used to find the evidence that supports evolution did not exist back in his time.
- humanrebar 11y ago> But that is not a reason to dismiss it. As long as you recognize that absence of evidence cuts both ways. Assuming physiological predisposition towards religion and strong leaders, it's also possible that the disposition developed because God actually exists. What came first, religion or God? Can you prove that scientifically? I'm not sure you can.
- Lawtonfogle 11y agoIt doesn't cut both ways because any common definition of God is inherently not testable, and thus excluded for science and notions such as evidence. It is a matter of faith which is largely a separate area of thought. In short, regardless of what any individual believes, to science itself, God does not exist (unless He ever made Himself testable in some form).
- humanrebar 11y ago> to science itself, God does not exist If you suppose the absence of supernatural factors, of course you cannot conclusively prove the supernatural. Any why does science assume there are not supernatural factors? Well, there are valid reasons, but to a theist that's merely a model of reality for the purpose of discovery and pedagogy. But to take the premise as the conclusion is a logical fallacy. And on top of that, the underlying premise (assume only the physical and measurable exist) is a metaphysical premise and outside the purview of science.
- Lawtonfogle 11y agoIt is a direct consequence of only concerning itself with what can be tested. If it didn't, then it would no longer be science.