The Power of Prayer

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@Davis

RE:

 You simply haven’t been taking our responses seriously…

Yes I have.

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@Robert

Evolution is wrong all the time Belle.

Evolution is wrong about what? So creatures are extinct…what does that have to do with anything?

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@Robert

We have too many teeth, we have a tailbone and no tail and we tend to believe in the boogyman, Doesn’t mean shit. Most of the things we thought about are wrong. The earth is flat, time is time. There is a god.

That statement really does not hold up under scrutiny.

We have a tailbone because we used to be tadpoles. We still look like that when we are just a few weeks in utero. We have too many teeth because we once needed them….those things have a PURPOSE.

So why would the findings in psychology and neuroscience be irrelevant? On the contrary. I think they are very significant.

• This reply was modified 8 years, 6 months ago by ..

[Davis]

Belle Rose wrote:

.those things have a PURPOSE.

Some of those things HAD a purpose. Now some of them are a nuisance, a waste of body resources, open to possible breakage or infection and in some cases (appendix) quite deadly. That’s not to mention redundant pain ailments which utterly cripple people for no reason. If we evolved intelligently, then those vestigal organs and body ailments should have dissappeared. I mean, for some of them, there’s been more than enough opportunity to shed them over millions of years. But they are still there, despite the countless ways they lead to pointless suffering and death. They use up bodily resources and remain a threat to us yet they have hung on (cause they don’t do quite enough damage fall out of the gene pool).

Also, there are always little things that are a bi-product of evolution. Something that emerges or hangs on despite it being either a nuisance or a liability. That or we are at a complete loss why we even have them (sinuses), have not needed for millions of years (male nipples), as well as emergent bodily problems which is mostly pointless (severe PMS ailments, anal fissures), syndromes (autism, sclerosis, glandary problems), systems that are unable to fight off habitual threats (malaria, infections, STDs, common colds) and finally very badly evolved features that are not intelligent in the least (the eyeball and human bone joints). And we haven’t even gotten into childbirth or headaches. What is remarkable is that human beings managed to emerge at all considering how badly we have evolved and how utterly unintelligent and outright nasty human evolution has been. If anything…emergent human intelligence through an intellectual process counter to religion and world views is what has enabled us to overcome so much pointless suffering and terrible consequences of stupid evolution.

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@Davis I’m not sure why you’re trying to pass judgement on these things as “good or bad. MY point is that we have evolved to believe in Gods. Why? Can you answer why?

[jakelafort]

It may be slightly misleading to say we have evolved to believe in gods.

Our evolution has made man susceptible to belief. But belief is more widespread or encompassing than gods. There are other superstitious beliefs, cultural myths and idiosyncratic beliefs.

This state of affairs making us susceptible to belief is likely a result of our being ultra-social. It is cooperation that enables us to function, to be powerful and to persist.  But cooperation is fostered and enhanced when the group embraces common assumptions.  We all know how much pressure there is to conform. That pressure is augmented by tribalism.  Political and religious groups put great pressure on individuals to conform.

It is also true that humans are extremely vulnerable as infants.  Parents, siblings and the greater culture imprints itself onto the individual. The brain of a toddler is a canvass and the greater cultures beliefs are imprinted. If infants were not evolved to observe and emulate then the social order would be at risk. Things apparently change when beliefs are inculcated or indoctrinated after the age of reason.

[Simon Paynton]

I think there’s not much question that we’ve evolved the psychological space, or inclination, for some of the things that “God” does, for example:

1. objective morality
2. having our behaviour monitored for moral goodness, by something “out there”
3. wanting to reproduce, survive, and thrive
4. sense of agency from within the anonymous physical world, that can involve us.

If we can show that these have explainable origins, apart from “God”, then that still does not prove that God does not exist.

Here is a picture of a woodcut from the Middle Ages:

It shows, the “eye in the sky”.

1.  the origin of the human feeling that morality should be, and is, objective, could well come from the early days of human evolution when people lived within homogeneous groups, where everyone had the same culture and morality, and had had the same one, from as far back as anyone could remember.  In other words, your culture and morality were all your group had ever known, and what’s more, they work perfectly for you, so other groups must be doing it wrong.

So, within an ancient culturally homogeneous group, the “objectivity” of morality means it is handed down from on high, each of us is born into it, and it comes from everywhere.

2.  this is all about reputation: the need for each of us to monitor others, in order to find out what they are like to deal with / work with; and for everyone else’s need to do the same to us.  This is a basic, step 1 corollory of the enforced need to cooperate to survive: monitoring how cooperative others are, and others monitoring us for the same reason.

3.  this is a result of evolution that is shared by every living thing, and represents a fierce pressure, with “reproduction” winning much of the time, in nature.

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@jakelafort

My point is not only that we have evolved to believe in Gods but that it is actually beneficial for our mental health. (See the course I linked above prior)….

Why? Why did we evolve like that if God doesn’t exist? Evolution is a process. How would we evolve to believe there were “brains” behind it all if there isn’t?

[jakelafort]

Belle, we also evolved to believe in gremlins, leprechauns, witches, tooth fairies, bigfoot, ghosts, and the list goes on and on.  Then again Hitler and Mussolini, emperors thought to be divine and various cult leaders are believed to be authentic and the masses alter their behavior in accordance with their beliefs. My point is that we did not evolve to believe in gods. Our biology makes us vulnerable to baseless belief.  And i should also point that some of us are not believers in spite of the most lethal indoctrination.

Furthermore it is important to acknowledge the resistance to belief which is also a biological  reality.  There are those among us who are by nature skeptical and reject the aesthetic man-made superstitions and instead have a requirement that reason guide their lives.

It is a mistake to impute purpose and design to belief.

[.]

@jakelafort

You have resisted to answer my question about mental health

[jakelafort]

Belle, i am not resisting. It can be good for mental health. So can a lot of practices like meditation and community. Feeling like we belong and that people care about us is important.

But it is not relevant to the question of god’s existence..

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@jakelafort

But it is not relevant to the question of god’s existence..

Are you kidding? It’s TOTALLY relevant!

[Strega]

@bellerose the point is that belief in a deity has nothing to do with the objective existence of that deity.  For example, belief in ghosts does not mean ghosts exist, other than to the believer.

[Simon Paynton]

Why do atheists get along just fine without feeling any need to believe in God?

[.]

@Strega right I know that but (sigh) I think you are still missing my point…

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