scumble

Well, I may be a good candidate for the job here. I haven't actually been brought up going to church, I've had no religious instruction. My parents were honest about their own non-theism. They have never "laid down the law" - anything they've told me has come with explanation based on their own experience.
Recently I've been looking at Christianity more closely, and I have to say it's made me less likely to become Christian. I daresay it's because I'm used to talking about things extensively, questioning everything, probably a bit like children do. You know, the typical barrage of "why?" that tests the knowledge of most parents. When you stop asking "why?", you've pretty much given up.

Fiach - I'm not sure about that theory. Religious or no, if humans are presented with difficult challenges, they are likely to co-operate. This does assume they're in the same situation. If there is a threatening religious tribe, the non-religious tribe will have to unite or perish. You have to realise that non-theists like us live in a society where people don't really have to group together. People don't have to make the effort to cooperate. A lot of the things we argue about are fairly superficial. When faced with starvation or attack, humans will find ways to co-operate.
Religion could be a help or hindrance depending on the situation.

WJ

"When I call theological formulas secondary products, I mean that in a world in which no religious feeling had ever existed, I doubt whether any philosophic theology could ever have been framed. I doubt if dispassionate intellectual contemplation of the universe, apart from inner unhappiness and need of deliverance on the one hand and mystical emotion on the other, would ever have resulted in religious philosophies such as we now possess. Men would have begun with animistic explanations of natural fact, and criticised these away into scientific ones, as they actually have done."

"But even if religious philosophy had to have its first hint supplied by feeling, may it not have dealt in a superior way with the matter which feeling suggested? Feeling is private and dumb, and unable to give an account of itself. It allows that its results are mysteries and enigmas, declines to justify them rationally, and on occasion is willing that they should even pass for paradoxical and absurd. Philosophy takes just the opposite attitude. Her aspiration is to reclaim from mystery and paradox whatever territory she touches. To find an escape from obscure and wayward personal persuasion to truth objectively valid for all thinking men has ever been the intellect's most cherished ideal. To redeem religion from unwholesome privacy, and to give public status and universal right of way to its deliverances, has been reason's task. "

"I believe that philosophy will always have opportunity to labor at this task. * We are thinking beings, and we cannot exclude the intellect from participating in any of our functions. Even in soliloquizing with ourselves, we construe our feelings intellectually. Both our personal ideals and our religious and mystical experiences must be interpreted congruously with the kind of scenery which our thinking mind inhabits. The philosophic climate of our time inevitably forces its own clothing on us. Moreover, we must exchange our feelings with one another, and in doing so we have to speak, and to use general and abstract verbal formulas. Conceptions and constructions are thus a necessary part of our religion; and as moderator amid the clash of hypotheses, and mediator among the criticisms of one man's constructions by another, philosophy will always have much to do. It would be strange if I disputed this, when these very lectures which I am giving are (as you will see more clearly from now onwards) a laborious attempt to extract from the privacies of religious experience some general facts which can be defined in formulas upon which everybody may agree. "

"The intellectualism in religion which I wish to discredit pretends to be something altogether different from this. It assumes to construct religious objects out of the resources of logical reason alone, or of logical reason drawing rigorous inference from non-subjective facts. It calls its conclusions dogmatic theology, or philosophy of the absolute, as the case may be; it does not call them science of religions. It reaches them in an a priori way, and warrants their veracity."

"In all sad sincerity I think we must conclude that the attempt to demonstrate by purely intellectual processes the truth of the deliverances of direct religious experience is absolutely hopeless. It would be unfair to philosophy, however, to leave her under this negative sentence. Let me close, then, by briefly enumerating what she can do for religion. If she will abandon metaphysics and deduction for criticism and induction, and frankly transform herself from theology into science of religions, she can make herself enormously useful. "

"Philosophy lives in words, but truth and fact well up into our lives in ways that exceed verbal formulation. There is in the living act of perception always something that glimmers and twinkles and will not be caught, and for which reflection comes too late. No one knows this as well as the philosopher. "

babelfish

scumble, I think you missed a crucial point in Fiach's theory. I agree, when faced with difficult situations, human beings would tend to cooperate, because we are "social animals."

However, if you add a trait that would cause a group of humans to think that their way of thinking was superior to every other group's way of thinking, and not only was it superior, but it gave them permission to kill off any other groups that disagreed with them, you would have a powerful evolutionary pressure.

It's like asking "why is there so much war and conflict in the world today?" It's because people who were aggressive and enjoyed war tended to kill off the peace-loving, non-warlike groups. (Remind you of any book you may have read when you were young? )

By the way, Fiach, I really liked your post, welcome to the Secular Web, hope you stick around!

[ June 19, 2002: Message edited by: babelfish ]</p>

The Other Michael

Hi Seebs,

I'd guess that it might be at a much lower level if you reduced the early indoctrination.

Religion is a tenacious meme, and does appear to key into something present in many (but not all) peoples psyche.

But consider that it started at a time when it could well have been an honest attempt to figure out why things happen, and in the lack of any better knowledge system it took root and flourished.

But what if you took a group of people and exposed them from an early age to the scientific method and scientific facts (as we know them) and didn't give them that religious indoctrination?

I think from what you've written on the fora that you'd be likely to say that science currently does a better job of explaining the natural world than does ancient religious beliefs (and if I'm wrong I'm sure you'll correct me). And with that explanatory scientific knowledge there might be far less reason to come up with religious beliefs.

The only way to tell would be to start with a tabula rasa sample population and see if religion spontaneously erupts when that population has a good grounding on why things are happening in the natural world. If they, on their own, develop the idea that a thunderbolt-heaving sky god is a more appealing reason for meteorological conditions than meterology, then we might have a good indication that religion is an innate condition.

It also occurs to me that early religion was largely a precursor to science - an early attempt to explain the world and why things happen. Perhaps if religion were expunged and replaced with the scientific method there would be little or no need for religion to ever have developed.

cheers,
Michael

excreationist

Fiach:
The reason why atheism was rare in the Middle Ages was probably because it was much easier for them to believe that the world and life was created by a god then to believe no intelligence was involved. A naturalistic explanation for the species was only published in 1859! (Also, heretics were usually put to death which would limit the spread of heretical ideas.)

Maybe religious people tend to handle uncertainty worse than non-religious people. After all, religion involves repetitive rituals. It sets out a totally definite framework for the world where then god(s) are in control. Maybe the desire for certainty even if it means some gullibility is a key factor. When kids are brought up with religion, it can be traumatic for them to turn away from it, especially if their parents wouldn't approve or they themselves think it is sinful to have weak faith. I think faith is basically being unreasonably certain about something...

[ June 19, 2002: Message edited by: excreationist ]</p>

Jayhawker Soule

Just wondered if you folks had seen the following:
[ June 19, 2002: Message edited by: ReasonableDoubt ]</p>

Synaesthesia

I myself favor a memetic theory of religion. According to meme theory, those religions that make themselves a social necessity (thus those children who are not religious are marginalized) will tend to proliferate more.

Religion could well exist without childhood inculation. However, such religions will quickly be swamped by those that involve more aggresive evangalism. In other words, getting children to believe is an almost necessary consequence of religious memes.

Ierrellus

Whether "religion" is inculcated or not, there remains in individual humans the need of self-definition in the teeth of self-awareness of death. Personal identity longs for some absolute or unquestionable proof of the value of existence. If this cannot be afforded by science or philosophy, it will be found in belief of mystic reality.

Ierrellus

PAX

kennyminot

Or even a better question: would science exist if it had not been programmed at an early age?

Koyaanisqatsi

Yes, "it" would, since "it" is nothing more than a process of investigation and verification.