[Realitycheck]

iNow said:

Andy Thomson, a practicing psychiatrist, uses his knowledge of the human mind and countless neuropsychological research studies to make the case of how religion and belief in god are by-products of our evolved neural architecture. Below is his talk titled 'Why We Believe in Gods' which he presented at the American Atheist 2009 convention in Atlanta, Georgia.


Press play. Use full screen.

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Let us know what you think.

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If you understand the psychology of [why we crave] the Big Mac meal, you understand the psychology of religion. We evolved adaptations for things that were crucial and rare... the sugars of ripe fruit... fat of lean game meat... for salt... those were crucial adaptations in our past. And now the modern world creates a novel form of it that comes from those adaptations, but hijacks them with super-normal stimuli... not ripe fruit, but a coca-cola... not lean game meat, but fat hamburger and french fries soaked in meat juice... and it creates these super-normal stimuli, but they're based on ancient adaptations.

Let me take you on a bit of a tour of a few of these cognitive mechanisms.

The first is Decoupled Cognition... <more at the video>

He argues how our complex social interactions with unseen others (think visualization and mental rehearsal) are just one step away from communicating with a dead ancestor and one step further to communicating to a god or gods. He also illuminates our susceptibility to optical and other illusions, and how these same "gap filling" tendencies in the brain lend a giant opening for supernatural figures. It's called intuitive reasoning, and it underlines the essence of religious ideas, which are minimally counterintuitive worlds.

Haha. Didn't you know? A far cry from 'pink unicorn farts', aye? It's an experience, a 'God experience'. :)

[Severian]

So, let me get this right. The OP is saying that God engineered instinctive beliefs of HIMSELF directly into our neuro-cortex? Cool :cool:

;)

[A Tripolation]

Cool thread, iNow.

I think I read about most of this in Dawkins' "The God Delusion". Is this meant to disprove a God? If so, it fails quite miserably.
I understand the concept of "religion is a by-product of something else", but to me, that only seems applicable to the people that actually think that the entire world was covered by water.

I don't see how it applies to me at all...perhaps you can offer some insight, iNow?

[iNow]

Severian said:

So, let me get this right. The OP is saying that God engineered instinctive beliefs of HIMSELF directly into our neuro-cortex? Cool :cool:

;)

Ah... The magical powers of the wink smilie. :D

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A Tripolation said:

I think I read about most of this in Dawkins' "The God Delusion". Is this meant to disprove a God?

No, not at all. The basic idea is this. Our brains and behaviors have evolved over very long time periods. The behaviors and mechanisms which evolved did so to solve very specific needs, and to solve very specific challenges to our survival.

So, from that, the idea is that the behaviors and neural architectures which evolved have led to "other" things like belief in deities and the commonality of religious practice. It's not about proving or disproving god, but about offering a coherent explanation for why belief and religious practice is so common in all human cultures.

Did that clarify? Please... ask any questions you may have. I won't always know the answer, but I will certainly try to steer you in the proper direction whenever possible. Cheers. :-)

[A Tripolation]

I see.
Well, seeing as how I didn't understand any of the nueroscience he was speaking of, I don't suppose I'll be able to ask any good questions.
Would you mind summing up what he was trying to say? (Other than we evolved a certain way, and this led to a general belief in a deity)

[iNow]

Sure. As best I can tell, when it comes to belief in a deity, there are two major components in our minds we've evolved.

First, we have the ability to mentally rehearse social interactions. Our brains have evolved to be able to think about what another individual might do, even though that individual is around and we cannot see them. We have the ability to "practice conversations" with others in our head, even though they are not really there talking to us. We can "mentally rehearse social interactions with unseen others."

Second, we tend to see everything as having a cause. We "over-read" causality. We see a tree, we know it was caused by a seed. We see ashes, we know it was caused by a fire. We see a child, we know it was caused by a parent, etc... For this reason, we automatically assume that something caused the world. Also, we are born thinking everything has a reason. Ask kids what a sharp rock is for, and they will answer that it's there to "let the wolf scratch it's back." The rock is not there for the wolf to scratch it's back, but we innately assume that this is its function, so that is why it's there. Lots of interesting studies with kids show this effect.

So, take them together and you have a preconceived notion that things are all caused and have a reason, and then couple that with the fact that we can imagine people are present when they are not, and... voila... now god is a common belief.


There are also lines of thought about why religious practice is so common, but much of this has already been covered in the thread and I'm really not sure what you'd like me to elaborate upon, so will just stop here.

[JillSwift]

iNow said:

irst, we have the ability to mentally rehearse social interactions. Our brains have evolved to be able to think about what another individual might do, even though that individual is around and we cannot see them.

Just as an aside, and as a detail to the OP:

Rebbecca Saxe, a social neurophysiologist (meaning she studies the brain's structure as it relates to social behavior) has had great success in exploring this particular aspect of our social instincts. She did a TED talk on her findings this past July.

Well worth watching, and it will (albeit indirectly) illuminate some of what's been discussed thus far.

[iNow]

JillSwift said:

Rebbecca Saxe, a social neurophysiologist (meaning she studies the brain's structure as it relates to social behavior) has had great success in exploring this particular aspect of our social instincts. She did a TED talk on her findings this past July.

Well worth watching, and it will (albeit indirectly) illuminate some of what's been discussed thus far.

Right on, Jill. What an awesome contribution. Thank you, so much. I really quite enjoyed the discussion about the cheese sandwiches with the pirates, and how the kids understanding of the situation changes as they get older. Additionally, I found it fascinating how... as they got older... they were better able to attribute moral feelings to the unseen others. Quite cool.

It was also cute at the end how she said that the folks at the Pentagon was calling, but she wasn't taking the call... and then, a bit later to another question that "it's not called the hard problem of consciousness for nothing." Good stuff. Thanks again for sharing this. :-)

[A Tripolation]

iNow said:

Second, we tend to see everything as having a cause. We "over-read" causality.

I was under the impression that causality was a universal effect. That everything occured because of something else caused it?

And I did assume everything was created, be it by a seed or a nebula or a deity...am I in the wrong to think this?

[iNow]

Discussed in post #8.


Also, just to discuss your question more directly, I feel with a high degree of confidence that you're about to make the argument that everything has a cause, and then tell me that god does not. Your logic is broken. However, again, this thread is not about the existence of god, but about the existence of our beliefs in god. Important difference which has allowed us to remain focused on the science and not the bickering.

[tar]

iNow,

"Your logic is broken. However, again, this thread is not about the existence of god, but about the existence of our beliefs in god."

Important here to consider, is what one person's concept of God is, as compared to another person's visualization of the thought of God that that person is entertaining.

You sensed, by the thoughts posted, what image of God, the poster might be entertaining. And where the poster's reasoning was faulty.

You could not have had this understanding, without having already have conceptualized and tested against reality, some image of a creator type entity. (a test which I am projecting, failed in your mind in much the same way as it failed in mine.)

The point I am trying to get to, is that the attributes assigned by one mind to an entity that created everything we know, may not be the same attributes assigned in another mind.

And often, if not always, when such an entity is considered, it is considered in a figurative fashion. What I mean is that whatever attributes are assigned, are being assigned in your imagination. Any literal, related claims can easily be checked against reality, by peer review, by observation, by science, by logic and reason.

So we each are in possession of an ability, to imagine, what another human is imagining. We can realistically deal with entities that two of us, imagine in the same way. We can both imagine the same pink unicorn, and as long as we each attribute the same characteristics to it, it is real to both of us. Let's imagine that it is eating grass in our backyard. Well wait, if I look out my window and were to see it, and you look out your window and were to see it, then, since we live in different places, it couldn't be the same pink unicorn, there would have to be two, or perhaps the one has the ability to be two places at once. Let's look out the window...no unicorn of any sort...maybe there is just the one we are both imagining, but its eating grass in Indiana. Let’s check with the Indiana state police, we will put out an APB...no unicorn, hum, maybe it’s in some remote field in Canada and nobody is close enough to see it, or it lives on Planet Zork. We still both have the exact same image, of the exact same Pink Unicorn, eating grass in a field somewhere. We just don't know where the field is. Maybe it is just an image we both have in our imaginations.

There are very large number of concepts that humans have, that are imaginary concepts, that don't "really" exist anywhere, except by consensus, and mutual acknowledgement.

The border between Canada and the US exists for humans, and there are actual fences some places, but most places on the border can be crossed by fish and/or birds, which have eyes and ears, and they would see nothing there.
Even a human with no political map, and GPS, could cross with no way to sense that they actually did.

I envision a "common consciousness", the sum total of all the thoughts we have shared and brought into reality through technology, literature, science, religion, philosophy, buildings, roads, ships, works of art, laws, morals, cultures and nations. All the things we have established, and maintained, real to any one of us, totaled together to be imagined as one common mind.

But it doesn't exist. There is no "common mind" that sits in a room in Chicago, and thinks. It is just a concept. But it is a concept that another human could easily, realistically imagine.

Regards, TAR

[A Tripolation]

iNow said:

Discussed in post #8.


Also, just to discuss your question more directly, I feel with a high degree of confidence that you're about to make the argument that everything has a cause, and then tell me that god does not. Your logic is broken. However, again, this thread is not about the existence of god, but about the existence of our beliefs in god. Important difference which has allowed us to remain focused on the science and not the bickering.

No...I understand that God cannot be used as a termination point, or the single cause of everything, because then that leads to the "well who created him". I'm surprised you would think I would use such fallacious logic, iNow :eyebrow:

Hmmm...well it doesn't seem to me that the explanations posed by the speaker could hold for EVERY SINGLE human being. His reasons are not the reasons I consciously believe in a God.

[JillSwift]

A Tripolation said:

Hmmm...well it doesn't seem to me that the explanations posed by the speaker could hold for EVERY SINGLE human being. His reasons are not the reasons I consciously believe in a God.

This is an odd argument. Assuming you meant it as an argument.

Psychology and psychiatry depend on trending and greater-that-majority commonalities to come to conclusions, as the sort of direct experimentation that would allow isolation of the variables is clearly unethical. Because of this, there is always going to be room for statistical outliers.

These outliers are not sufficient to invalidate the conclusions directed by the evidence.

Additionally, you will find that asking any theist "Do you believe in god because of your complex evolved system of social and survival behaviors?" will most likely be answered with an honest "no", because they themselves are the results of those same evolved complex social and survival behaviors, and we recognize ourselves as a whole, not the sum of our parts. So, the way one personally feels about the source for their belief in a god isn't much to go by as so far as actually discovering the source.

[iNow]

A Tripolation said:

No...I understand that God cannot be used as a termination point, or the single cause of everything, because then that leads to the "well who created him". I'm surprised you would think I would use such fallacious logic, iNow

I apologize. I've just heard from believers that same tripe about "god exists outside of time and space" rubbish far too many times, and I've become a bit hypervigilant to such arguments, to the point of sometimes landing on false positives.

A Tripolation said:

Hmmm...well it doesn't seem to me that the explanations posed by the speaker could hold for EVERY SINGLE human being. His reasons are not the reasons I consciously believe in a God.

Wanna bet?
In order for your argument to be true, you would have to demonstrate that you did not follow the same evolutionary path as every other human did (as if you were put here from another planet, completely separated from the tree of life).

While your conscious mind doesn't necessarily recognize that your predisposition toward belief in god and proclivity to religious practice is the result of millenia of selection finding solutions to specific problems of survival, that does not negate the fact that millenia of selection has most certainly led to/helped shape your (and all humans) predisposition toward belief.


Please note also that this thread is about more than just the video in the OP. While that was the catalyst for my creating it, there has been a lot of additional information which has been submitted since the OP... information which gives a much clearer and bigger picture about the topic. Be sure to explore that, too, if you are, in fact, curious to learn more about the human mind and human beliefs. :-)

[iNow]

tar said:

iNOW,

I shall seek an evolution thread to carry on my thought.

Thanks, TAR. I do appreciate that enormously. I'll be sure to contribute to that thread if I think I'll be able to shed any light on the topic or address any specific questions or misconceptions.

[A Tripolation]

Hmmm, ok. Evolution and its related concepts are kinda hard for me to grasp.

Back to the thread. Just because I'm "predispositioned" to a belief, that doesn't explain why I happen to believe that way does it? I'm genetically predispositioned to be an alcoholic, but I've never drank an alcoholic beverage in my entire life (because I choose not to). So what's the point of the video? We may be predispositioned that way, but such an indifferent thing as evolution certainly can't explain away human belief, imho. We are complex things...that apparently arose from non-complex things. :D

Sorry if this thread isn't about this post either.

This post has been edited by A Tripolation: 22 September 2009 - 03:24 AM

[iNow]

A Tripolation said:

Just because I'm "predispositioned" to a belief, that doesn't explain why I happen to believe that way does it?

Well, it's never as simple as just one thing. Your beliefs are a combination of a) your genetic predispositions and b) your upbringing. While your genetics helped you to have a mind which is inclined toward belief, and a mind which is inclined toward accepting the teachings of your parents, it is those teachings which helped to shape the "way" you believe.

By example, you believe the way you do, and you follow the particular religion you do simply because of chance... The chance that you were born here in the United States in your particular hometown. You just happened to be born in that area, and your beliefs were passed to you by your family/community.

Well, if you happened to instead be born across on the other side of the planet, you'd be just as likely to have a different "way" of believing. You'd probably be a Hindu or maybe a Muslim. Your genetics predisposing you toward belief and accepting the teachings of your parents would be the same, but the "way" you believed would be taught, and those teachings are different and depend almost entirely on where you are born.

A Tripolation said:

I'm genetically predispositioned to be an alcoholic, but I've never dranl an alcoholic beverage in my entire life (because I choose not to).

Right, and we can all make different choices, despite our genetic predispositions. In much the same way as you suggest above, I was ALSO born with a predisposition toward belief, and toward thinking there was some deity, but through my other evolved traits (like a desire for knowledge/curiosity, critical thinking and analytical abilities, etc) I have overcome those predispositions, and I am an atheist. I choose to reject the idea of a deity.

However, I think you may be missing the bigger picture with this concept of "evolution shaping us and our tendencies." Through the millions and millions of years through which our ancestors existed, those adaptations which were successful in their environments got passed on, and those which were not successful were removed from the gene pool. After many successive generations, the more beneficial adaptations tend to become more common.

Everything we do is partially shaped by the successful adaptations of our ancestors. Evolution can help to explain why we are attracted to a certain body type (curvy, shapely, ratio of 0.7 in the waist to hips, for example). It can explain why we crave hamburgers and why fatty sugary foods taste so wonderful... These traits solved a problem of survival when the environment was a certain way.

Now... Extend that idea to the concept of god. Our predisposition toward belief is an "emergent" property. It comes from many different systems which evolved to solve different problems, but when taken together, those same systems lead to other things... like the proclivity to believe.

Either way, pretty much everything we do, think, or feel can be shown to be rooted in something we've evolved. Yes, we can overcome it, and yes, our teachings help shape it, but when you look merely at the trend, it's pretty interesting to see how common it is across all humans... precisely because we've all traveled along to the present along the same branch on the tree of life.

A Tripolation said:

such an indifferent thing as evolution certainly can't explain away human belief, imho.

Oh, but it can... And it does. Some of the items shared in this thread show exactly that. :-)

A Tripolation said:

We are complex things...that apparently arose from non-complex things.

It's amazing what profound changes can happen incrementally over vast swaths of time. We humans, with our petty little 60-80 year life spans have no idea how long thousands of years really is. We have no idea how long millions of years really is. We have no conception of how long billions of years really takes.

A lot can be done through teensy tiny steps over such vast eons. In essence, your argument is that a 60 gallon bucket can never be filled by a faucet dripping a single drop per day, but you know... if you wait long enough... that bucket will begin to overflow and water will drip across the edges. Evolution is sort of the same. Every tiny little change happens, and after enough generations, the "non-complex" things are (all of a sudden) amazingly complex. It's rather profound, somewhat beautiful, and amazingly simple.

This post has been edited by iNow: 22 September 2009 - 03:42 AM

[tar]

iNow,

So back to the hijacking.

Had a thought, that hijacking was an odd term for an adaptation.

Seems that part of what a living organism does is adapt to the situation. That would include the environment, and the tools brought to the party, in the form of the organism itself. Now some of those problem solving tools, may have been developed for earlier reasons (successful adaptions), but we are talking about a complex organism here that continually built the next set of features and characteristics off of earlier successes. If your eyes developed because you could look for food, doesn't mean you can't use them to spot a mate, or see approaching danger, or read smoke signals, ...or a computer screen. Are we hijacking our eyes, and our optical cortex, when we read a post?

And just a little question on "an area of the brain lighting up." If an area lights up when thoughts of a moral, decision making nature, are had, and this is framed circuitously as an area of the brain that religion has hijacked, or vice-a-versa, doesn't that say more about the link between religion and morality, then what hijacked the others neurocortextural adaptation?

Regards, TAR

[iNow]

Interesting thoughts, TAR, but I see it somewhat differently. Let's look at it this way.

Let's say you're preparing a meal for guests. You prepare an amazing appetizer... Everyone loves it, big success. You create an entree that people write home about... Super delicious. Then, your dessert... People are in ecstasy. You also have cocktails, and the party is a huge win.

Each dish... on it's own was solid. They were all very safe and very tasty by themselves. However, something strange happened... something you never planned for. When these dishes are combined together, they result in a chemical which is a poison. They are fine and safe when eaten independently, but when they are brought together in the way you have at your party, they poisoned everyone and people get sick. None of your dishes had problems, it was just the way they came together that caused the issue.

Similar thoughts here on this topic. We've adapted to solve specific problems. By themselves, these adaptations were really powerful and useful... However, when brought together, they result in a predisposition of belief and religious practice. Now, it is not my intention to suggest in this thread that belief is poisonous, I'm just using it as an example. We didn't select for the "poison" ... we didn't select for the belief itself... we selected for OTHER traits which were beneficial, but when brought together have resulted in an "emergent property."

That "emergent property" is our tendency toward belief.


I'm pretty poor with analogies, but I hope this helps to get the basic point across. The idea is not that we've evolved neorcortical mechanisms for religion and belief. The idea is that the way the mechanisms which DID evolve have simply come together in this interesting way which emerges as a tendency toward belief and religious practice.

Cheers.

[forufes]

my point was very simple..

truth be told, at first i did feel a bit guilty for derailing this thread to evolution instead on neuromechanisms of belief, but going back to my point, i found them strongly interlocking..

the summery of the thread is to say that belief in a diety is a result of neurological functions humans develop. iNow, the OP starter, says he doesn't care if a deity really exists or not, for the thread is simply about how the belief works...

and so, i gave him his atmosphere, and played by his rules, and gave my note about the belief mechanism in my first post #35.

and so i repeat:
saying that the belief in a deity was made up by the human mind, that it's a natural part of the human mind to hold such belief, might have the idea(and i'm not pointing any fingers here, definitely to no atheists), that such belief is false, even though it was stated clearly that this thread has nothing to do with the validity of the statement "a deity exists". but by saying it's normal for a brain to "make it up", with my psychotic nature, i thought someone was trying to pull the mat from under holders of such belief, it's really simple really IMO, which is what drove me mad when you were all acting as if nothing has happened, and that it's me who's rude, well i might have been so, but i was so very clearly and straight forwardly, i didn't slither around and play mazes, and again i'm not pointing fingers at nobody:D.

but if someone really had that in mind while creating such thread, it seems he didn't consider what i asked about; practicality..

so the belief in a deity is the result of some nueromechanisms in our brains...

so what?:cool:

some might think that holders of such beliefs would squirm in their seats worrying that their brain has been playing games on them for all this years, while those who liberated themselves from such delusions might raise their heads and puff their chests, feeling in control of even their brains' tricks..

but if our brain was playing on us by making up or introducing such belief, didn't it do it for a reason?:eyebrow:

which brings evolution to the equation. the neuromechanisms being a product of our brain's evolution, doesn't mean that we are evolving by holding such belief?

(cries):HECK NO! we're DEvolving by holding such belief..you dumwit..

Ohh, but if our brain has been caught introducing bad things to us now, then couldn't it and other aspects of evolution or change or whatever also have introduced such bad mutations which got embedded into us unnoticed before?

doesn't that bring the theory of evolution down on it's head?

if evolution works by keeping good AND bad mutations, instead of good only, can it be reliable as an explanation to our ever so simple origin for us such ever so complex beings?

or do evolutionists need to add a couple more eons to the age of the world for the new busted evolution to fit the profile?

as a mutation, how is the belief in a deity classified?

it's just what i said in post #35..

and i apologize for any perceived rudeness.

This post has been edited by forufes: 23 September 2009 - 12:15 PM