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We are all born with the idea of God
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18-03-2013 4:06am#1Yes, this is a slightly long read and yes, I got the title from some quote from one of the Civilization games. I've probably misquoted it anyway but hey.
My better half said something today that shocked me a little. She said that she believed she had a guardian angel. Now this is from a very non-religious girl (and she'd have to be because of the disdain I have for religion in general) but it did get me thinking.
Firstly, I don't have any feeling that someone is watching over me or is there to protect me. I don't feel anything in fact. I don't know if there is a God or guardian angels not. I'm not willing to count it out but I'm also not willing to accept it as it's normally put forward through the very human medium of religion.
Religion for me is simply a business, whether the participants or even the promoters actually know it or not. There is a need for people who look beyond themselves for comfort in life and that need is fulfilled by various religious institutions which, predictably enough, often do very well for themselves and their hierarchy as a result. Successfully providing supply for a given demand has worked as a money maker or power provider since civilisation was conceived. It's human nature at it's most basic - provide for yourself. And that's not to say that some very, very good people don't get into religion with the very best of intentions and/or serve a community superbly throughout their religious designation.
However, that's only half of the answer for me.
My real issue lies with the fact that there really are so many people believing there is something beyond themselves to look to.
Fact is that every civilisation has inevitably veered towards a deity or deities as core to their civil functions at some point and to varying degrees thereafter. But all had a very consistent approach - something else is watching over me and controls the stuff I don't.
It's an odd notion to me but it's so consistent over time that it cannot be simply written off.
OK, it could be a flaw in human psychology but it's too widespread to be a flaw. Any flaw in the biological construct of the human being is usually limited to a minority, e.g. downes syndrome to physical defects to schizophrenia to anxiety/depression to glucose intolerance. This is a logical product of evolution. If anything is flawed in evolutionary terms, the flaw is gradually but inevitably lost in the process of natural selection. But in fact, in this case the minority in the world are those that ignore the "spiritual" path, like me, and do not innately feel like there is a greater knowledge and understanding out there. So, by that logic, does that mean that since I am in the minority which does not feel "God", I am flawed?
I'm starting to think so.
You could say that the process of natural selection takes longer than the time we've had civilisation exist on the planet and that is certainly arguable. But the rapid human evolution we have seen in the last 3000 years has done nothing to quash this "God" demand in humans. It's still going very strong. We've gone from simple engineering to molecular manipulation in the blink of a geological eye.
So now I'm thinking that the logical explanation to the God phenomenon is that there simply has to be something else, some other force, driving this human desire, something that is obvious probably in hindsight, something that we cannot yet comprehend, something we cannot yet quantify.
I mean, so far, evolution has managed an awful lot. It has managed to almost universally decode "stuff" to the point where an advanced life-form can interpret everything around us based on physics; waves of sub-atomic particles (sight), utterly miniscule disturbances in matter (hearing), molecular composition (taste and smell) and chemical reactions (touch) are how we decipher the world and it is very, very precise and nothing to do with chance.
So how could evolution get God so consistently wrong?
We think of ourselves as advanced because we are comparing ourselves to the other lifeforms on our planet which clearly are not as advanced as us. Same as we did when we thought the world was flat and that lightning was God's fury. But are we advanced enough yet to be able to quantify God? I'm not sure.
All I know is that to presume that we know enough to discount God as this stage is assuming we already know it all; like we did when we thought the earth was endless, the sun moved around us for our benefit and mobile phones were for ponces.
I am now starting to think that it is simply illogical to think that we are alone and that a higher and more advanced life-form is not present and somehow unknown to us. Actually, I'm jumping a little here but I think that the above should be a valid point for theorising. It's only a fraction of my thinking but I would like to hear rebuttal on this first.
So, am I just a lunatic trapped in a lunatics mind or does the above not make sense to anyone who favours logic and reason over flight and fancy? (Which is why I posted here rather than any of the Religious fora!)
TLDR: Read the fking thing before posting. TYVM.
(That and my other half has too much involuntary, indirect influence over me.) 1
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And what kind of sick twisted being would force a person to watch their family in their times of pain and need, but not allow them to help, or even communicate with them.
It would take a lot of imagination to think up of a worse hell.
Exactly. Wait, maybe God is the Devil.
Supposing for a second that KC's scenario is true. Does that mean that everyone who has a hard life is so unloved by their dead family that nobody is watching out for them? Seems kind of harsh.0 -
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Your premises are unfortunately flawed.
First all of those people all have different beliefs in entirely different gods and mythologies. A person who believes in a god like Zeus cannot be talking about the same entity that a modern christian believes.
If there is only one true being or something, we would get less and less of these entirely different versions of god and be getting closer to the truth.
The opposite is true.
The point is that humans have always created manifestations of the same thing; a higher consciousness. It's extremely consistent, to the point that it cannot be chance.Second you say that civilisation tends towards religion, but then provide a simpler explanation for this in the same post.
No, my explanation for religion is as a solution to a human need. It's the cause of the human need that I'm not sure of at all.Third you assume that religious belief is a flaw, but then also detail a way it could be evolutionarily advantageous. It can function as a core of a civil system.
Again, religion functions as an advantage to society, but the fact that it is such a powerful tool in bringing people together is my issue. The fact that it appeals to almost every human being is astounding to me.
Let's put religion aside as a human solution to a human problem and let's focus on the problem itself.Actually yours I believe is the flawed argument. All religions have a common source, based on the ability of humans to reflect on themselves i.e. the self awareness of their own being. Once humans have the thought "who am I, why am I here, and what is here anyway", they automatically start looking for answers. It is the pondering of what we are and why we are here that leads humans eventually to the conclusion that something caused this thing they observe including themselves. All religions are an effort to describe what this cause is, and all are likely futile because if there is an intelligence that caused our universe there is no way we could understand it, it would be physics beyond our wildest imagination.
The second factor I think is that humans have spent most of their time immersed in nature for almost all their existance. Humans were hunter gatherers and then farmers for tens of thousands of years, and industrialization, living in cities, etc, is very recent. Observation of nature was a big factor in the development of religion, especially the cycles of nature. If you spend enough time in nature it is spellbinding how literally every day this time of year a new species of plant starts to bud anew for the season. What is the trigger for them to start budding?
I agree. But I'm not yet sure that rationalising nature is the root of the cause.
I think it's safe to say that very little in our universe is random, if anything at all. Everything follows a set of rules, everything is relative and balanced. If something happens it happens for a reason, whether we can explain or understand the reason is irrelevant. We are very, very simple life-forms after all and so the argument that because we cannot explain it, it doesn't exist, is a nonsense.
Humans do try to reason and rationalise everything around them. I can't explain dark matter but I know it has a reason to exist. I'm sure someone can explain it, probably not many. However, in my personal ignorance, taking the leap to assume that the reason it exists is because someone or something else put it there is just so far fetched it seems almost random. Yet it is so consistent that it can only be logically assumed that there is a reason.
What we can do is look at the evidence known to us, and, looking at the almost universal human need for spiritual satisfaction, is that not evidence enough to at least consider that there might be something else to this need that we simply cannot explain at this point in our evolution.
Maybe down the line we might. We are clearly evolving very quickly even over the past few generations and advancing as a species exponentially. Maybe when we reach a point where we are no longer unique and basic biological individuals and more functioning members of a higher collective consciousness we might have a better chance of understanding.
In fact, who is to say that a species out there has not already advanced to a higher collective consciousness and that they not only know all the rules but know how to bend, break or even recreate them. Maybe they are no longer limited to biological constructs and the idea of a living or dying moot. We do seem to be trending that way ourselves after all. Maybe omnipresence is actually achievable eventually, maybe something like kinetic energy can be decoded and controlled forming a massive, predictable network capable of sustaining consciousness.
That's pretty far-fetched but it could conceivably be a rational explanation. My point is that how can we know for sure? Not being able to prove something should not be a determining factor, only being able to disprove it should. Otherwise we are just fooling ourselves. And how can we disprove God?
I need to type less. Apologies for the text walls! 0 -
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Kidchameleon wrote: »Getting back to the op kingmob, do you think that one of the lifeforms the YOU acknowledge may exist could perhaps, unbound by the physical limits of our universe, could come to earth an observe our lives? And in some way be not disimilar to a guardian angel?
Oh and by the way if you youself agree that their may be non physical life out there, it wouldnt be that much of a stretch to think that human conscience could exist beyond the physical.
I think that it's maybe possible that a higher consciousness could consist of multiple lower entities, maybe akin to a multi-celled organism or even a trade union! (The latter has a higher individual complexity but could be termed a symbiotic single consciousness to a very, very tiny degree, and even then the level of individual complexity is debatable!)
But as far as guardian angels are concerned, I think it's a serious long shot!
It's probably another failed attempt to explain what we cannot explain, but it is not inconceivable that some interest is being paid to us by something more evolved than us.
A human might own an ant farm, but I doubt the human is overly concerned with communicating with or becoming involved with the ants at their intellectual level, more interested maybe in observing. That and the human is very much limited itself and cannot alter itself sufficiently to participate at the same level as the ants.
All speculation of course but that is the point. All we can do is speculate, never fully know.
At least not yet.0 -
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The Clown Man wrote: »TLDR: Read the fking thing before posting. TYVM.
I will see your TLDR and raise you the current explanation for why humans developed religions.
Ok, so humans as I'm sure you know evolved to be largely social animals. We group together in things like tribes and families and other types of units.
It is not surprising therefore that social interaction takes up a large percentage of our brain power, we have evolved brains that are good (relatively speaking) at processing and modelling social interaction. This ranges from the basic I can tell you are a person by how you look, to the more subtle such as believing you are angry with my because of the current configuration of your face muscles.
In order to be able to do this relatively efficiently and quickly the human brain has developed a number of assumptions, sort of mental short cuts. A classified example of this is pattern matching in face recognition. Another is assuming that something moving is an animal. We do all these things because even though we may make mistakes it is still correct enough of the time, and more importantly correct at the crucial time, that it is more efficient that attempting to model the entire world in accurate terms. To put it another way, even if you run away from the grass because its movements are interpreted by your brain as those of a predator but it turns out it is just the win, you don't lose all that much bar some mild embarrassment. If on the other than it actually was a predator and you instead start mentally modelling all the interactions of the grass and working out what the pattern in the grass was the lion would have eaten you long before your brain got to "Oh, its a lion, run away"
It is likely that this trait is found in a lot of animals (which is why you can get your cat to play with a ball of string simply by moving it a particular way), but in humans this is taken a step further by evolution by applying these short cuts in an interesting way to our social interactions.
Unlike a lot of animals (and new born babies, this skill seems to develop after birth) we have developed similar mental short cuts in order to think about and consider the actions of other humans who are not currently in front of us. So when you have a fight with your girlfriend and she storms out of the room, you can continue to think about her, continue to consider and model how you think she is feeling, what you think she is doing, where she has gone etc after she is no long in front of you stimulating your visual cortex. This may seem obvious, you were thinking about her when she was there are you simply continued to think about her after she left, but it is a mental trait that humans had to develop and one we suspect few if any other animals possess (at least our levels).
Part of the way you do this is by forming a mental model of your girlfriend's mind that is separate to her physical body. When she is in front of you you are visually processing all her movements and spacial position of her body, what she is physically doing and wearing and how she is moving etc. To continue with this physical model of your girlfriend after she has gone would be an incredible waste of energy. You might care if she is still upset, but you don't really need to know at what position her left leg is. Incorporating all of that into your mental model of "my girlfriend" would involve a lot of irrelevant mental processing. So your mind doesn't, it thinks of your girlfriend when she is not there as an abstract mind. Sure you rationally know she has a body, but these are mental short cuts, not actual detailed models, in the same way you know the face on Mars isn't really a face but you still "see" a face.
So how does this get to religion? To sum up humans have this big brain that is largely devoted to social interactions, and we have developed all these short cuts that work pretty well in allowing us to focus on the important bits of human interaction and survival but do less well at accurately modeling reality (unless your girlfriend actually is a floating mind). So what happens when we turn our attention to the none human aspects of the world around us?
Well if we had super mega awesome brains that we unlimited in size and had unlimited energy we may have developed brains that were also very good at modeling natural interactions between non-intelligent non-alive systems such as rain particles or rivers or forest fires. But despite how awesome our brains are they aren't that awesome. We instead co-opt the skill set of our brains developed largely for human social interaction and apply those to the natural world around us.
And this works ok. Just ok. Not super well. We a damn bursts and water is flowing down hill you can sort of work out that the water will follow this path, go around that hill and then slam into your house. You do that though by sort of thinking of the water as an animal coming to attack you. You assign it a mind with motivation and purpose. You do that because evolutionary this is easier than having a whole set of brain devoted to working out interactions with humans who have minds, motivations and purpose and a whole other set of brain for fluid dynamics.
So while you are racing back to your mud house to try and save your precious collection of Sabre Tooth Tiger skins, you are also, instinctively, trying to figure out why does the water want to destroy your house (I bolded that because really it is what religion ultimately is)? This is natural because if you were racing back to your house because Grok the local warlord was on his way to destroy your house you would be thinking the same thing, why does he want to destroy my house and what can I do to reason with him to prevent him doing it. You think the same thing about the water because you are using the same brain that largely can only think in the context of Grok the Warlord, and not in the context of millions of particles of H2O interacting based on the rules of fluid dynamics. And from an evolutionary point of view this is good enough, because even if you mistakenly believe the water has agency and purpose and motivation, you are still racing home to save your house.
So the first stage to religion is that humans developed a notion that in nature there exists minds, human like minds, that motivate and cause natural actions to take place. Initially it was the thing itself, the water had a mind, the earthquake was angry etc. But even this is too much mental energy, so humans abstracted this out to give nature as the physical extension of these minds.
And these minds that we instinctively assign to nature are where gods come from.0 -
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I'm gonna quote myself from a post last year where I summarise my position on why we have a tendency to believe in God:I think it is a confluence of a number of features that people have touched on:
- Over-active agency seeking: Evolutionarily speaking it is a much safer bet to assume agency where there is none rather than vice versa. Assuming a tiger is in the bushes when there is none: You look silly. Assuming a tiger is not in the bushes when there is one: Eaten. Extrapolate these features to the big picture and the brain intuits the presence of someone behind it all.
- Social bonding and the preservation of culture: The tribe with a religion - rituals, songs, dances, shared myths and principles, social structure - has a big advantage over the one that doesn't.
- Authority-oriented thinking: We intuitively analyse social status amongst ourselves, whether that is to boss people around or being happy being led, or switching around depending on circumstances, we tend to assume someone is at the top...but your Dad or the priest isn't quite as high as one can go, is it?
- Existential angst: One side-effect of self-awareness and abstract thinking is the realisation of mortality and purposeless. We don't like this and our bias towards positive thinking leads to assuming that we're not mortal and that we have a purpose.
- Memetics: Thoughts and ideas fight with each other for prominence and survival in society. Some are better at it than others, and the ones that learn to stick around tend to stick around for a very long time, and have a number of ingenious adaptive and defensive features that keep them going.
- Pareidolia: The brain seeks out patterns, and can be over-active doing it. This relates a lot to agency seeking. Better to assume the presence of a non-existent feature, plan or pattern than to miss one that does exist.
That's it in a nutshell. It's a big gooey, irrational, hypocritical mess of all of those things. Most people tend to focus on one or two of them, but I think they all play a role. I suppose morality is a factor too, but the way religion handles morality I would say that it is simply a feature of their approach to authority.
So basically here is where I disagree with you: There are better reasons for our disposition towards belief in God than those beliefs being true. We skeptics are, phenotypically speaking, a minority. That doesn't mean we're on the way out. It could mean that we're on the way in. We have less and less need for superstition these days - what type of brain will thrive in our increasingly dehumanised, ultra-large, ultra-fast civilisation of the coming centuries only God knows.
Heh.0 -
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When such information is so quickly accessible, will the difference between the brain as a store of knowledge and the brain as a store of references for knowledge really be all that significant? I'm a microbiologist, and I know a few things about bacteria, but I can look up almost everything there is to know on, say, quantum physics with a few button pushes. I'm not an expert on quantum physics, but say in the future when you can access the information faster than the hours it would take to read it all, will the concept of expertise still exist?
There's still a big difference in having information and knowing how to apply it, of course. Maybe that'll be the bottleneck that cripples my above pseudo-prediction?
I've often wondered if the notion of expertise will vanish eventually. If every human being is granted instant and intuitive access to the sum total of human knowledge, will it just be normal for them that every single person is a medical doctor, an architect, an engineer and a lawyer all at the same time? I'd imagine the forces that come into play would be the (likely modified!) brain's ability to index and integrate this knowledge rather than its ability to acquire it. Obviously this is already a factor in third level education: A student's ability to make an argument and demonstrate broad, theory-level understanding is more important than memorisation. I think we'll go more in that direction, massively so.
What a great derail 0 -
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