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Invisiblemozhual
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Registered: 09/26/09
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Re: How Would You Explain Religion? [Re: Asante]
    #11182526 - 10/04/09 07:08 PM (14 years, 3 months ago)

This is a rather old thread but perhaps I can shed some light on it for you. Almost all of the non-biased knowledge I have attained about this subject has come from D.C.Dennett's Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon.

Religion had a very important part in the coalescence of the first tribes and everything that followed. Religion offers one thing above all else to it's followers, a sense of control; a sense that what they do matters and will have effects in this world or the next. Control(or understanding, they are interchangeable in this context) is as important to human beings, and indeed most animals, as oxygen, food, and water(this is a very broad application of the idea of control but it is necessary).

Religion through its various mediums, spoken word, physical art, or the religious meme inside every religious person's head... can do a great deal of good, bad, surprising, and shocking things. It can inspire some of the greatest art(of any form) and some of the most atrocious massacres of human life ever to have occurred. So can anything else do what religion does? Yes, the pursuit of science can and has provided many atheists and agnostics with the same spiritual connectedness that most people just don't believe is possible. Can science do it better? Highly debatable but at the very worst a strong challenge to a scientific theory would not be met bloodshed of any kind, which is much better off then religion can claim to be.

Why could science and religion be interchangeable(as far as spiritual experiences go)? Whenever and wherever science lacked explanations and laws, religion was there to provide them. Religion held the place of science in our minds until the meme of science/discovery was strong enough to venture out into the minds of individuals on it's own. But religion was a strong meme, and it had to be. The first groups of human beings weren't nearly as well connected or good at debate as we are today. The original carriers didn't try to convince the would-be converts, they just passed along the information to those who had none. Religious memes had to be strong enough to, in that one single passage of information, firmly stick in the new converts mind where there was a void of control and understanding. And stick they did, so hard that when the science meme finally sprung up it didn't, and still hasn't, completely replaced religion in that regard.

So religion is like an appendix in that many many years ago it was instrumental in our survival as a species, but now it is at best just an alternative to scientific wonder and curiosity or simply a benign meme, but occasionally gets infected which can lead to death if unchecked/untreated. Lots and lots of death.



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"Nature is like a sculptor constantly improving upon her work, but to do so she chisels away at living flesh." H.K. Bloom

"Is God willing to prevent evil but not able? Then he is not omnipotent...
Is he able but not willing? Then he is malevolent...
Is he both able, and willing? Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him god." Epicurus c. 300 BCE

"When I brought up the fact that 'No drug is good or bad, they're all just A drug, what someone does with them determines the postive or negative outcome. Look at medicine, those are drugs' Reponse was that 'well medicine solves problems' well so does LSD." -Learningtofly


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InvisibleSilversoul
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Re: How Would You Explain Religion? [Re: mozhual]
    #11193033 - 10/06/09 11:21 AM (14 years, 3 months ago)

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/10/god-brai/
Quote:

Religious Experience Linked to Brain’s Social Regions

By Brandon Keim  October 2, 2009  | 12:56 pm  | Categories: Brains and Behavior

Brain scans of people who believe in God have found further evidence that religion involves neurological regions vital for social intelligence.

In other words, whether or not God or Gods exist, religious belief may have been quite useful in shaping the human mind’s evolution.

“The main point is that all these brain regions are important for other forms of social cognition and behavior,” said Jordan Grafman, a National Institutes of Health cognitive scientist.

In a study published Monday in Public Library of Science ONE, Grafman’s team used an MRI to measure the brains areas in 40 people of varying degrees of religious belief.

People who reported an intimate experience of God, engaged in religious behavior or feared God, tended to have larger-than-average brain regions devoted to empathy, symbolic communication and emotional regulation. The research wasn’t trying to measure some kind of small “God-spot,” but looked instead at broader patterns within the brains of self-reported religious people.

The results are full of caveats, from a small sample size to the focus on a western God. But they fit with Grafman’s earlier work on how religious sentiment triggers other neural networks involved in social cognition.

That research, published in March in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, suggested that the capacity for religious thought may have bootstrapped a primitive human brain into its current, socially sophisticated form.

Grafman suspects that the origins of divine belief reside in mechanisms that evolved in order to help primates understand family members and other animals. “We tried to use the same social mechanisms to explain unusual phenomena in the natural world,” he said.

The evolution of our brains continues, said Grafman. “The way we think now is not the way we thought 3,000 years ago,” he said. “The nature of how we believe might change as well.”




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Invisiblemozhual
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Re: How Would You Explain Religion? [Re: Silversoul]
    #11193816 - 10/06/09 01:30 PM (14 years, 3 months ago)

More and more supporting evidence all the time :grin:


--------------------
"Nature is like a sculptor constantly improving upon her work, but to do so she chisels away at living flesh." H.K. Bloom

"Is God willing to prevent evil but not able? Then he is not omnipotent...
Is he able but not willing? Then he is malevolent...
Is he both able, and willing? Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him god." Epicurus c. 300 BCE

"When I brought up the fact that 'No drug is good or bad, they're all just A drug, what someone does with them determines the postive or negative outcome. Look at medicine, those are drugs' Reponse was that 'well medicine solves problems' well so does LSD." -Learningtofly


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InvisibleSilversoul
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Re: How Would You Explain Religion? [Re: mozhual]
    #11194330 - 10/06/09 02:55 PM (14 years, 3 months ago)

Quote:

mozhual said:
More and more supporting evidence all the time :grin:



For what, exactly?


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Invisiblemozhual
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Re: How Would You Explain Religion? [Re: Silversoul]
    #11194356 - 10/06/09 02:59 PM (14 years, 3 months ago)

That religion is a by product of evolution. That it predates science and had a distinct purpose in the evolution of the human brain. From this point it is much easier to view religion in a non biased way from both sides.


--------------------
"Nature is like a sculptor constantly improving upon her work, but to do so she chisels away at living flesh." H.K. Bloom

"Is God willing to prevent evil but not able? Then he is not omnipotent...
Is he able but not willing? Then he is malevolent...
Is he both able, and willing? Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him god." Epicurus c. 300 BCE

"When I brought up the fact that 'No drug is good or bad, they're all just A drug, what someone does with them determines the postive or negative outcome. Look at medicine, those are drugs' Reponse was that 'well medicine solves problems' well so does LSD." -Learningtofly


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InvisibleSilversoul
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Re: How Would You Explain Religion? [Re: mozhual]
    #11194382 - 10/06/09 03:04 PM (14 years, 3 months ago)

Quote:

mozhual said:
That religion is a by product of evolution. That it predates science and had a distinct purpose in the evolution of the human brain. From this point it is much easier to view religion in a non biased way from both sides.



Ok, I can accept that.  I was afraid you might be taking the line of reasoning that says that if there is some neurological or biological correlation to religion and faith that that therefore disproves religion.


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Invisiblemozhual
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Re: How Would You Explain Religion? [Re: Silversoul]
    #11194507 - 10/06/09 03:22 PM (14 years, 3 months ago)

From a ID stand point, this would probably be considered glaring evidence in their favor. And "militant" atheists would feel the same towards it proving invalidation of religious experiences as spiritual(which is slightly more logical, but also much more dependant on the definition of spiritual). Even though really all it supports is what I mentioned above, nothing less nothing more.


--------------------
"Nature is like a sculptor constantly improving upon her work, but to do so she chisels away at living flesh." H.K. Bloom

"Is God willing to prevent evil but not able? Then he is not omnipotent...
Is he able but not willing? Then he is malevolent...
Is he both able, and willing? Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him god." Epicurus c. 300 BCE

"When I brought up the fact that 'No drug is good or bad, they're all just A drug, what someone does with them determines the postive or negative outcome. Look at medicine, those are drugs' Reponse was that 'well medicine solves problems' well so does LSD." -Learningtofly


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OfflineMadtowntripper
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Registered: 03/06/03
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Re: How Would You Explain Religion? [Re: mozhual]
    #11194876 - 10/06/09 04:10 PM (14 years, 3 months ago)

Kind of funny that after not thinking about it for like two years I had just brought up this thread to a Shroomerite in conversation the other day.

Craziness.


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After one comes, through contact with it's administrators, no longer to cherish greatly the law as a remedy in abuses, then the bottle becomes a sovereign means of direct action.  If you cannot throw it at least you can always drink out of it.  - Ernest Hemingway

If it is life that you feel you are missing I can tell you where to find it.  In the law courts, in business, in government.  There is nothing occurring in the streets. Nothing but a dumbshow composed of the helpless and the impotent.    -Cormac MacCarthy

He who learns must suffer. And even in our sleep pain that cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, and in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of God.  - Aeschylus


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Offlinecooptroop123
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Registered: 08/16/09
Posts: 22
Last seen: 9 years, 3 months
Re: How Would You Explain Religion? [Re: WhiskeyClone]
    #11197477 - 10/06/09 10:42 PM (14 years, 3 months ago)

as a means of controlling a people


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Invisiblemozhual
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Re: How Would You Explain Religion? [Re: cooptroop123]
    #11198579 - 10/07/09 03:28 AM (14 years, 3 months ago)

Controlling people... or allowing people the illusion of control? It is a quid pro quo relationship. People part of the superorganism get to feel bigger then them selves, they get a faux sense of understanding and control of the universe(and don't you dare underestimate the value of these feelings). But for that they completely suspend congnitive reasoning and become sheeple.


--------------------
"Nature is like a sculptor constantly improving upon her work, but to do so she chisels away at living flesh." H.K. Bloom

"Is God willing to prevent evil but not able? Then he is not omnipotent...
Is he able but not willing? Then he is malevolent...
Is he both able, and willing? Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him god." Epicurus c. 300 BCE

"When I brought up the fact that 'No drug is good or bad, they're all just A drug, what someone does with them determines the postive or negative outcome. Look at medicine, those are drugs' Reponse was that 'well medicine solves problems' well so does LSD." -Learningtofly


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Offlinecooptroop123
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Registered: 08/16/09
Posts: 22
Last seen: 9 years, 3 months
Re: How Would You Explain Religion? *DELETED* [Re: mozhual]
    #11288795 - 10/20/09 10:51 PM (14 years, 3 months ago)

Post deleted by cooptroop123

Reason for deletion: .



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OfflineXXXguntherXXX
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Re: How Would You Explain Religion? [Re: cooptroop123]
    #11342153 - 10/28/09 10:03 PM (14 years, 3 months ago)

I see religion as a way for more primitive cultures to explain the things they could not. I think that is why they were started.

Although I am not religious in any way, I do not hate or make fun of people who are religious.

I knew someone that was seemingly helplessly depressed, and religion seemed to help a whole lot. If religion can make someone happy, why criticize them?


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InvisibleGlenners
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Registered: 05/20/08
Posts: 1,933
Re: How Would You Explain Religion? [Re: Madtowntripper]
    #11346947 - 10/29/09 05:49 PM (14 years, 3 months ago)

Just because someone is smart doesn't mean they can't turn off their critical thinking in some areas. I think it'd pretty dumb. But over 90 percent of all scientists are agnostic/atheist which makes sense, they're the smart ones.


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