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We are all born with the idea of God

The Clown Man

Yes, 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.

)

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The Clown Man

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.

The Clown Man

Brian Shanahan wrote: »

But if you preclude Confuscianism and Taoism from being religion, then you refute your own point about the universality of religion. And from there the rest of your argument falls apart.

So you are saying that because the above are outside of some scale that people have conceived to classify religion, the overwhelming evidence of the tendency to worship is unreliable?

[Deleted User]

The Clown Man wrote: »

I think our curiosity has us try to explain lots of things. Everything really.

But why the need to explain something above us? You or I might not have the same feeling or the need to explain it but we are massively outnumbered.

I'm looking logically at the evidence around me. People tend towards deities on a global scale, and have done all throughout history. Although we lack a method to prove or disprove it yet, the evidence certainly suggests at least that there is some unknown force behind this.

It is there for a reason and the reason is what I'm interested in.

So why are you rejecting other possible reasons that aren't supernatural ?

You've already offered explanations yourself for why people tend to belief in deities without those deities actually existing, put don't seem to be considering them at all.

fitz0

Kidchameleon wrote: »

Getting back to the op fitz0, 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.

Well it's certainly possible that if some lifeform could become pure energy, capable of travelling the vacuum of space ands still be capable of observing anything that it could come all the way to earth to observe a single member of a species that bears no relation to it. Doesn't seem likely in the slightest though. Seems quite ridiculous to be honest. To posit that this being then guards said member of an alien species only heightens the ridiculousness of it.

I think it would be a stretch to then apply this far out idea to humanity. Like I said, all the evidence that I've seen points to us being confined to a meaty prison, with no evidence to support existence outside of it. Taking the purely hypothetical alien that's evolved or technologically changed into energy (a thoroughly science fantasy concept) that in no way has any basis in observable fact and so cannot be applied to us, real people.

Brian Shanahan

The Clown Man wrote: »

So you are saying that because the above are outside of some scale that people have conceived to classify religion, the overwhelming evidence of the tendency to worship is unreliable?

No what I am saying is that at one point you are saying that "religion, religious worship and god is universal, and all concepts of each are essentially the same", and turning around when I point out that religions are different, to say that "some religions are not really religions".

You can see how your second point defeats your first. If you acknowledge that religion is not a universal (nor near-universal if you want to quibble), then you have to acknowledge that your conlcusion that "if everybody is born religious there must be something in it" is not supported by sufficient evidence.

The Clown Man

King Mob wrote: »

So why are you rejecting other possible reasons that aren't supernatural ?

You've already offered explanations yourself for why people tend to belief in deities without those deities actually existing, put don't seem to be considering them at all.

No, I don't reject any notions at all. I'm saying that we cannot know and that based on the only evidence we can understand, it would seem logical that there is something making us believe we are secondary as a species.

And no deities exist for my mind. At least none that have been correctly identified. However, to assume that we are the highest, most evolved species in the universe and that we know enough to reason that there is no species above us, or even with us right now, is akin to saying that the world is flat before ever sailing out there.

[Deleted User]

The Clown Man wrote: »

No, I don't reject any notions at all. I'm saying that we cannot know and that based on the only evidence we can understand, it would seem logical that there is something making us believe we are secondary as a species.

And again you've already suggested some ideas for this thing that aren't supernatural.
1) Society tends towards religion as there is a vested interest it that.
2) It's evolutionarily advantageous for a group of people to be religious.

The Clown Man wrote: »

And no deities exist for my mind. At least none that have been correctly identified. However, to assume that we are the highest, most evolved species in the universe and that we know enough to reason that there is no species above us, or even with us right now, is akin to saying that the world is flat before ever sailing out there.

Who's arguing this?

The Clown Man

Brian Shanahan wrote: »

No what I am saying is that at one point you are saying that "religion, religious worship and god is universal, and all concepts of each are essentially the same", and turning around when I point out that religions are different, to say that "some religions are not really religions".

You can see how your second point defeats your first. If you acknowledge that religion is not a universal (nor near-universal if you want to quibble), then you have to acknowledge that your conlcusion that "if everybody is born religious there must be something in it" is not supported by sufficient evidence.

Nope, I said that there seems to be a predisposition in human nature that something else resides above us, and that this is not evident in everyone but evident enough to have religion at al become such a powerful mechanism for control.

People are not born religious, but are born with some sort of spiritual awareness. How religion caters for this awareness is up to that religion, after all it's only an exercise in exploiting this awareness usually for the purpose of control. And not everyone is going to be spiritual but the vast majority are, and there is no refuting that fact.

Pherekydes

The Clown Man wrote: »

People are not born religious, but are born with some sort of spiritual awareness.

People are born with some sort of spiritual awareness? They're not even born self aware.

Zombrex

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.

Kidchameleon

fitz0 wrote: »

Well it's certainly possible that if some lifeform could become pure energy, capable of travelling the vacuum of space ands still be capable of observing anything that it could come all the way to earth to observe a single member of a species that bears no relation to it. Doesn't seem likely in the slightest though. Seems quite ridiculous to be honest. To posit that this being then guards said member of an alien species only heightens the ridiculousness of it.

I think it would be a stretch to then apply this far out idea to humanity. Like I said, all the evidence that I've seen points to us being confined to a meaty prison, with no evidence to support existence outside of it. Taking the purely hypothetical alien that's evolved or technologically changed into energy (a thoroughly science fantasy concept) that in no way has any basis in observable fact and so cannot be applied to us, real people.

I agree, it does sound ridiculous. I'm glad you agree though that it is in theory, possible. Remember that throughout history, many many things that seemd rediculuous are now part of every day life. Tell a caveman that someday we could talk to our far away friends with a phone or that we could travel through the sky's in a mechanical bird and he would probably laugh at you.

Zombrex

Kidchameleon wrote: »

I agree, it does sound ridiculous. I'm glad you agree though that it is in theory, possible. Remember that throughout history, many many things that seemd rediculuous are now part of every day life. Tell a caveman that someday we could talk to our far away friends with a phone or that we could travel through the sky's in a mechanical bird and he would probably laugh at you.

Isn't everything, in theory, possible? Says little to nothing about whether it actually is possible, and even less if it actually happened.

Zillah

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:

Zillah wrote: »

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.

Zillah

Zombrex wrote: »

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.

This is very interesting, and ties in very well with evolution's habit of co-opting one system for another use entirely - but is it conjecture or do you have some sort of citation? This is a rather specific claim about brain functions.

Sarky

The ease of accessing information and the internet is the selective pressure here these days, so my money's on a brain that thinks entirely in terms of pictures of cats and breasts.

Zillah

Sarky wrote: »

The ease of accessing information and the internet is the selective pressure here these days, so my money's on a brain that thinks entirely in terms of pictures of cats and breasts.

And animated gifs!

More seriously though: People are more and more offloading their memory to technology. If the internet-age survives long enough we're going to see a shift towards the implicit assumption that recording a lot of information in the brain is no longer necessary, and will likely start to turn into a "reference" format, where we remember that a thing exists or happened but need to look up the specifics. We could hold many times more of these references in our brains than we can full memories.

Pure conjecture, obviously, but I can see even for myself how my thinking is influenced by having gmail have a permanent record of communications and google/wikipedia having the knowledge of the human race searchable in an instant.

Sarky

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?

Zombrex

Zillah wrote: »

This is very interesting, and ties in very well with evolution's habit of co-opting one system for another use entirely - but is it conjecture or do you have some sort of citation? This is a rather specific claim about brain functions.

Don't have the papers if that what you mean, I get most of my stuff from popular science works. New Scientist has had a number of articles about this stuff, as have Scientific American (which I think is much better than New Scientist)

Most of the work comes, afaik, from experiments where psychologists put people into states of feeling out of control or confused and then watch as they mentally try and regain a mental model of what is happening to them.

Zillah

Sarky wrote: »

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

Kidchameleon

Zombrex wrote: »

Isn't everything, in theory, possible? Says little to nothing about whether it actually is possible, and even less if it actually happened.

Agreed, so it would be a bit stupid to completely write something off with no evidence to the contrary.

Sarky

I'm not sure you realise how evidence works.

Zombrex

Kidchameleon wrote: »

Agreed, so it would be a bit stupid to completely write something off with no evidence to the contrary.

But again can't you say that for everything?

Which means one notion with no evidence has no more validity than any other notion, particularly not because it just happens to be the one you thought of.

nagirrac

All major world religions have far more in common at their core than is obvious on the surface. The varied descriptions of God are misleading, as if God cannot be comprehended by humans how could they possibly describe him? What all religions have in common is they are all based on altered states of consciousness, descriptions of the out of body journeys of shamen who told of their encounters. They are the ancient version of the types of experiences reported by modern day OOB practicioners like Robert Monroe.

There is strong evidence that all the ancient religions from India, central America, China, to Indo-European (including Greek, Judaism and Christianity) were inspired from the use of entheogens, in particular the divine mushroom (the fly agaric mushroom). While the first reaction is to laugh this off, it actually makes perfect sense. So, yes in short they were all high, very high at that. There are some great authors on the subject, Terence McKenna, R. Gordon Wasson, and John M. Allegro.

Zombrex, your post describing how the brain works and how this relates to religion is accurate from a left brain perspective. The features you describe are what have led us to where we are from an evolutionary standpoint, the ability to survive in what would have been a very dangerous environment for most of human history. However, to understand religion we have to look at the right side of the brain, the creative side, and this is where the use of entheogens comes in. Indeed, DMT, the most active of all in terms of producing mystical experiences, occurs naturally in the brain in very low amounts.

There are valid reasons for believing that all advances in human civilization as we know it (not the biological evolutionary advances that helped us survive) came from ingesting hallucinogenics. We certainly would be much poorer in terms of art and music without their influence.

Waking-Dreams

nagirrac wrote: »

...your post describing how the brain works and how this relates to religion is accurate from a left brain perspective. The features you describe are what have led us to where we are from an evolutionary standpoint, the ability to survive in what would have been a very dangerous environment for most of human history. However, to understand religion we have to look at the right side of the brain, the creative side, and this is where the use of entheogens comes in. Indeed, DMT, the most active of all in terms of producing mystical experiences, occurs naturally in the brain in very low amounts.

Just to point out: the whole left brain/right brain thing, the way a lot of people misunderstand it, is one of those myths that won't go away.

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/am-i-my-genes/201301/myths-about-our-right-and-left-brains

nagirrac

Waking-Dreams wrote: »

Just to point out: the whole left brain/right brain thing, the way a lot of people misunderstand it, is one of those myths that won't go away.[/QUOTE]

I agree that left-right brain theory can be misinterpreted and exagerated, but it is the easiest way to make the point I am making. There is no question there are functional asymmetries in the brain (Roger Sperry's work), but recent research would suggest functions are not as localized as were once thought. Indeed there is quite a bit of research that shows functions that were lost through injury or disease can be regained through development in other locations.

nagirrac

This is a modern update on the original Sperry research work in the field of left-right brain theory.

http://cwx.prenhall.com/bookbind/pubbooks/morris4/medialib/readings/split.html

Knasher

The Clown Man wrote: »

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.

To take the example you already used, guardian angels, I'd imagine any consistency is more a product that the idea addresses a common desire, rather than having some deeper spiritual meaning. Human beings have a habit of personifying things, we do it to animals, inanimate objects, weather, random chance, and so on. I'm sure everyone at some point has been in a situation where circumstances could have been slightly different and ended your life, it is very human to personify that into guardian angels rather than admit it was simply chance that your life didn't end. Personifying it allows people to relate to it and in some small way and feel some small measure of control over it, guardian angels might be swayed by prayer or virtuous living or sacrifice, where chance cannot.

That need for control is the common thread in most spiritual beliefs, whether it was paying to Poseidon for safe passage across a sea or sacrificing to Xiuhtecuhtli for a good harvest, or praying to Yahweh that your favorite sports team wins whatever competition they are in. It is simply people personifying some part of their life which is beyond their control. I'd imagine this is also why countries which have a high standard of living tend towards being irreligious, as your security in life goes up, the need for old gods to give you the illusion of security diminishes.

The irony of the whole situation is that the price for this illusion of control is to abdicate control over parts of your life.

Undergod

The Clown Man wrote: »

It's an odd notion to me but it's so consistent over time that it cannot be simply written off.

Sure it can.

The Clown Man wrote: »

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?

Well the first population of creatures to have a beneficial mutation will be in the minority too, right?
And "flaw" is a very loaded term.
No animal is perfect - scorpions have a flaw that often they don't know how to eat. Flaws aren't necessarily in the minority, and the minority is not necessarily flawed.
The tendency towards religiosity is very useful in lots of ways, but it doesn't make it true. Selections pressures on humans reward holding accurate beliefs, they rewarded not getting eaten by tigers or freezing to death. There are tons of mental errors and biases we suffer.

The Clown Man wrote: »

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.

But as you point out, 3000 years is the blink of an eye. It isn't a lot of time to exert strong pressure on us. There doesn't have to be anything else; the fact many people think it has no bearing on whether it is true.

The Clown Man wrote: »

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.

We can't decode remotely near "everything" around us. We have no magnetic sense (well some people might apparently; most of us don't). We see a tiny fraction of the EM spectrum. We only smell and taste certain chemicals. We can't sense nuclear radiation or ionized particles.

I don't understand what you mean by "nothing to do with chance."

The Clown Man wrote: »

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.

I take your point, but until there's some reason to believe this or some evidence on which we can begin theorising, what's the point? You might as well say "evolution fairies" or "Cthulhu" as "God" for all the meaning it holds.
We have no data on a higher life-form so we can't theorise on it, and any attempt would currently be meaningless speculation.

The Clown Man wrote: »

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?

Not for me, I'm afraid.

nozzferrahhtoo

The Clown Man wrote: »

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.

I think it would be disingenuous of us to think we had just "written it off" too. We have not. There are many many reasons to explain why we are "born" with these feelings there is a "god".

For example take the simple comparison between two life forms.

One life form assumes that every thing it sees or hears is benign and without intent until it is obvious they are wrong. They hear a creeping in the bushes and think nothing of it. Most of the time they are right... but sometimes that creeping is a predator and their false assumptions lead to their death.

Another life form assumes that every thing has an intention behind it however. A rustle leads to the mind asking "Who is that... what do they want... what is their intention towards me???". Their whole survival is predicated on them assuming there is some intent behind everything.

Which species would survive better? Species 1 when wrong... dies. Species 2 when wrong... looks a little silly.

We are evolved and have survived by seeing intent and design and a mind behind everything and anything. It is literally no surprise at all therefore that we look at the world around us and find ourselves "born with the idea of God". Of course we are. We are "Born with the idea of design and intent" behind everything we see, hear or find.

This is not a "flaw in human psychology" so much as it is a mis-firing of a strength in human make up.

So are we "flawed" for not thinking there is a god? No of course not. No more than we are "flawed" for taking anti biotics for over coming an infection. In both cases.... which is the point of the analogy.... we are over coming the simple tools evolution has long relied on and excelling them. Realising that there is no reason to rely on just those tools... but that our capability for thought elevates us above them.

We are not slaves any more to the point evolution has brought us to. Be that the infections that our biological chemistry leave us open to.... or the memetic infections that our mental evolution has left us prone to.

The Clown Man wrote: »

So how could evolution get God so consistently wrong?

How... you could just as reasonably ask.... has evolution got the common cold so consistently wrong? We have evolved and evolved and evolved and yet we still get infected many times over our life time.

Evolution has no foresight and in doing what is "best" for us it leaves us prone to all kinds of failures. Mentally and physically.

nagirrac

Undergod wrote: »

We have no data on a higher life-form so we can't theorise on it, and any attempt would currently be meaningless speculation.

We have no objective data on a higher life form, but we have subjective data, which is an important distinction. I am not suggesting that we believe what is claimed in terms of eye witness data by religious believers, for example the miracles performed by Jesus Christ. We simply can't time travel back to validate or invalidate them, so you either believe them based on faith or you reject them based on how unlikely they are give our objective experience of the world. What I am suggesting is that we should take seriously the experiences of mystical experiences.

There are two approaches to knowledge and wisdom, the analytical scientific approach and the mindful mystical approach. Atheists generally discount the latter as having any value. I would argue strongly with this. For example, if I were faced with a difficult moral dilemna, I would not employ science to try and resolve it, I would rely in deep meditative reflection and my life experience tells me this generally has a positive moral outcome. There have been countless mystics in history that have made enormous contributions to how we evolved in terms of our knowledge and civilization. The methods employed vary, from mind altering drugs to meditation to chanting, dancing, etc.

The data is subjective but mystics accessing altered states of reality have lead to huge breakthroughs in all areas of human endevour in history (including science). Without drug induced mystical experiences the Beatles would have never moved much beyond their early 3 minute pop songs, we wouldn't have the wonderful novels of Philip Dick, Steve Jobs said one of the most important things he ever did in his life in terms of inspiration was taking LSD. There is strong evidence that all world religions originally stemmed from people taking mind altering substances like soma, mescaline and DMT.

I am not advocating indulging in these substances, but the reality described by those who have is nothing like the reality we normally experience, and this same state can be accessed more safely through meditation. What we normally think of as consciousness is nothing like these experiences, they involve complete dissolution of the sense of self, out of body experiences, a reality that is completely holistic and yes, encounters with higher life forms, both benevolent and malevolent. What is interesting from a scientific point of view is that entering these altered states has led to significant scientific breakthroughs. The Nobel Prize winning Biochemist Kary Mullis who invented PCR made the somewhat shocking claim that he would never have achieved what he did without the use of LSD.

So to suggest that only objective reality matters and mystical altered states of mind are not valuable to the human condition or valuable to expanding our knowledge is false. We can discount some of the subjective claims of mystics such as encounters with higher beings, but we cannot discount the significant creative power unleashed by people in these states.