missus_gumby

I feel the reason so many people are "reaching/searching for god" is because of their indoctrination as children. How many people would be in the same situation if they were not told about their local religion until they were, say, 18 years old? Not many at all I would imagine.

Biff the unclean

I think she hit it right on the head.
All the people I know, my own kids included, who were raised in Atheist households aren't lookig for God. There is no need, no gap, they feel that they must fill.
It's a "non-subject."

jasonpiao

Heathen Dawn No, this isn't what I was trying to say. The naturalistic view to me says that things happen because we make them happen. Now, I am not talking about the weather, or natural catastrophes. I am talking about the development of the human race. We must take responsibility for our own destiny, and our own past. I don't live my day to day life thinking: Que sera sera. I also don't think that nothing I do matters.
I don't think this view of atheism represents many. Being a naturalist doesn't erase the burden of thinking from mankind. It gives mankind the power to think for themselves. Something the holders of religious power no doubt fear.

Icebrc

While I think there is some weight to the "indoctrinization" argument, it doesn't cover all.

People had to "reach" at a some point which would lead to the indocrinization.

Thus some people do search on their own regardless of teachings.

Biff the unclean

The point most people reach where indoctrination begins is called "the cradle".
It's the fortunate rare child that is spared this brain washing--and in them we find no "need."
We all start out as Atheists.

[ November 05, 2002: Message edited by: Biff the unclean ]</p>

Fiach

Ice, those two explanations summarise the issue well. I might add my own hypothesis of Darwinian selection as a factor in religion.

The hypothesis that theism and/or religion were a Darwinian survival trait or survival advantage has much merit. I am an Atheist. But I know that worldwide I am only 20% of the world's population and only 5% over there in America. That must mean something. In centuries past, such as the Middle Ages, Atheism was extremely rare as far as we know. Religion pervaded society.

I have postulated before, that religion is brain based. It occurs only in those humans whose brains are hard wired to process religious concepts unquestioningly. Atheists by contrast have circuits that reject religious concepts and magical thinking. We are incapable of believing in gods or invisible pink unicorns because of our brain structure as well as early programming perhaps. We now know that our brain structure is 95% determined by genetic codes in the Human Genome, while about 5% may be experience or programming altered synaptic connections. Therefore, a nucleotide code ultimately determines whether you or I will be likely believers or resistant sceptics.

Why would greater than 80% of all humans have such a gene? As a Neo-Darwinian molecular geneticist and neuroscientist, the answer seems obvious. The "religion gene" must have given the ancestors of modern humans a survival advantage. Early humans who possessed the genes survived while most of those who didn't possess it perished or failed to pass on the "sceptical gene". What advantages did the gene confer?

First we must look at religion and religious behaviour. Religion today provides a worldview, but it is also a restrictive and exclusive worldview. It sets those with the same view apart from others. This gives the group an identity, and makes others who differ, unwelcome if not dangerous. We have seen that religion is associated with suspicion of others, and quite often homicidal violence against "wrong believers". Each group creates its gods. The group members fear and hate those who reject their gods and vice versa. Religion is associated with hyper sexuality (even hyper homosexuality) that usually results in higher birthrates.

OK, so we have some early humans who have their own protective gods. They are militant and aggressive toward unbeliever tribes. They have strong group identity. The identity is as much kinship as religious. Even tribe members who are kin are banished or killed for heresy and unbelief. Religion is almost always a mind control system as well. That imposes discipline. Underlings follow orders from the shaman or the god appointed chieftain.

So, a religious tribe has identity, discipline, aggressiveness, prolific reproduction, paranoid fear and hatred toward those who are different in belief, a tendency to violence, and may be easily propelled toward attacking an unbeliever tribe by a shaman or a chieftain who also covets the extra land and female slaves taken in a war.

Suppose the tribe nearby is unreligious or weakly religious. Those people would be like modern atheists. They would be argumentative, resistant to orders (i.e. undisciplined), uninterested in risking their lives for hypothetical gods. They sadly would be under-prolific with fewer children and eventually fewer warriors.

So in a war between the two tribes, who would triumph? Obviously the disciplined, more aggressive, mutually supportive, paranoid, violence prone, warriors who believe the gods protect them would win. The result would be that the genes of the religious tribe would be passed down. The sceptical tribe's sceptic gene would be exterminated or nearly so.

The gene that programs for religious belief essentially programs a set of behaviours not just belief in gods. The gene's effect in programming the limbic lobe of the brain produced all of the behaviours that we see today in religion: intolerance, hate, discipline, submission to leaders, willingness to risk life and limb for tribe's god (promising Heaven or Valhalla), gullibility (which makes them pawns of their chief and shaman), and hyper sexuality.

In patients with Temporal Lobe Epilepsy, Marcel Mesulam has noted traits of hyper sexuality, violence, seeing/hearing god or gods, and hyper religiosity. The two behaviours are very closely linked anatomically in the limbic/temporal circuits, perhaps the same circuits. Observations of religious charismatic experiences have shown autonomic phenomena similar to sexual orgasm, (pelvic thrusting movements, penile erections in males, submissive sexual postures and flushing in women Pentecostal ecstatic states.)

It is apparent that this gene and its resultant brain hard wiring produced people with the above behavioural tendencies. Anyone who has attended a meeting of the British Humanist Association or a meeting of Evolutionary Psychologists is immediately impressed by the fact that they are all arguing with each other, can' t agree on a common statement of policy, and are as difficult to organise as herding cats. Applying such behaviour to early humans would show that they are at a great disadvantage in a conflict with a hyper religious group or tribe.

Therefore, humans with the religion gene passed it on along with its constellation of behaviours. It was a survival advantage because it facilitated the development of disciplined groups of aggressive, violent, paranoid, relatively fearless of death, gullible followers of leaders, which was a successful formula.

Those with the more recessive sceptical genetic codes have only prospered in modern times with Enlightenment influenced constitutions. Yet, even then they remain a minority in all but a handful of West European and East Asian countries. And perhaps the smaller minority of sceptical gene carriers have been allowed to survive in very religious countries like the USA is because we are useful to the society in providing nearly all of their scientists, physicians, psychologists, and inventers. In those professions the sceptical gene provides an adaptive advantage that religious gene carriers lack.

Slainte mhaith,

Fiach

Biff the unclean

We make up 11% of the population in the United States, thank you very much. More Atheists live here than there are Jews in the world.

joedad

Fiach,

Obviously, the key is to scientifically quantify what you say.

There is an interesting article in the most recent issue of Science News concerning the size of the hippocampus. (need to be a subscriber to read full article)

<a href="http://216.167.111.80/20021102/note13.asp" target="_blank">Brain trait fosters stress disorder</a>

I'm not asserting that make-believing in gods is necessarily a "psychiatric" problem, because it's quite common for humans to fantasize. But a study similar to the one done above, but instead relating hippocampal size to strong/weak god make-belief/behavior, might be interesting.

joe

[ November 06, 2002: Message edited by: joedad ]</p>

Fiach

Thanks Joe, the hippocampus is a complex structure of the underside and medial aspect of the Temporal lobe. It has incredibly complex connections and has a role in such things as memory, affect, dreams, hallucinations, auditory and visual processing of memory, and religion.

The process occuring in religion is not necessarily due to hippocampal atrophy exept in those temporal lobe epileptics with religious experiences due to seizure discharges. But the SPECT studies have shown that mystical experiences of Chrisian and other types are mediated by the hippocampus and its connections with a prefrontal centre (that inhibits certain parietal lobules centres), the posterior superior temporal gyrus (for auditory experiences), the posterior inferior temporal gyrus (for visual experiences), and inferior parietal lobules (which localise us in space and us within our bodies.) The latter is inhibited in mystical experiences and that leads to the famous "out-of body" experiences, and feeling "one with the cosmos or with God." The other centres are not inhibited but stimulated. That can produce religious images pulled from association memory areas (visual of Jesus, Brahma, or JHWH, Mary and auditory for hearing the voice of God, Jesus, Brahma, Allah, Mary.)

In the case of religious experience the atrophy is not the major mechanism unless it has led to "hyperconnectivity" and hyperstimulation of the limbic pathways. Most religious people studied had no anatomical anomalies of the temporal lobes by MRI. But those structure named above lit up on injection of an isotope during the experiences induced by prayer or meditation.

We all have the pathways but in some people the pathways are more easily stimulated while in others (sceptics and atheists) they are resistant to a large extent. But we atheists can still have the equivalent of a mystical experience in the intensive awe we get looking through a telescope or Hubble Pictures of a supernova that actually occurred 10 billion years ago.

Fiach

ELECTROGOD

Why race across an open field just to get mowed down by machine gun fire and mortars?

Because someone else told you to...and if you don't you will be shot.