ligesh

That's all I said. Currently the statistics seems to be in my favor. And my theory is consistent across all the cultures, and can even explain the varied religious phenomena of Christianity and other religions as observed throughout the world.

I am not saying God will make a person do evil. (That's some old argument). I am saying that God will give a person the COURAGE to do whatever he wants. Whether it be crime, or suicide bombing, or warfare or whatever. God is the supernatural agent that will subvert the natural laws in favor of the person who is believing in Him. That's the sole definition of God, and by this it becomes clear that God is adaptive, and thus finally we have the evolutionary reason for belief in God, which till now had all the scientists stymied, basically because we all assume that God will make a person more moral, and thus less selfish and thus we assume that belief in God is maladaptive, when in reality it is not.

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:: Ligesh :: http://ligesh.com

ligesh

Yes! that's it. It is an innate capacity, and that's why belief in God is 'adaptive', and that's why belief in God evolves. In fact, we can see, atheists cannot hold such conceits because for them God is a neutral entity, nad not a personal one.


The atrocities commited in the OT will give them parallel to their own actions. For instance, they would always think that THEY are the Islraelites, and the rest of the world is the midianites. A person who harms a kid can find comfort in the fact that God sent bears to maul little children who made fun of the prophet. I mean, generally OT can give you direct comfort by allowing you to draw parallels between your own dastardly deeds and the similar deeds that are JUSTIFIED as being directly ordained by God.

That's why Christiainity is successful, while Buddhism is not.

And that is also why the Christian fathers did not remove the OT, even though OT is directly contradictory to NT.


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:: Ligesh :: http://ligesh.com

ligesh

This is my new hypothesis of the Solipsist mind. A mind has no idea that others are real people. It is only aware of itself. Thus religious strictures exhorting morality has absolutely no effect on a believer, because for him, ONLY he exists. The rest are just 'black boxes', whom the God created for him to exploit.

For a Jihadi YOU exist for the sole purpose of getting raped/killed by him so that HE can achieve glory in the eyes of his God. To him, you are just a virtual entity who has no other purpose.

Of course, this will not prevent a man from behaving perfectly normally in a society because: Social behaviour DOES NOT need intelligence. It is all controlled by pre-built modules. (Fundamental EP principle). So even though he is not aware of others, a person can function perfectly in a society.


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:: Ligesh :: http://ligesh.com

nygreenguy

i dont know, ive met a lot of autistic people who cant function at all on a daily basis.

newtype_alpha

Yeah, okay, great. Now prove to us that they ARE related and therefore CAN be explained using a single theory. You cannot unify phenomenon within a theory without identifying in what meaningful way they are unified. This is not a matter of pointing out similarities in concepts, but of identifying how one phenomenon affects the other or how both of them are affected by a third, previously unidentified factor. If that factor is found, the theory need not neccesarily even be unified; one more explicit example of this is in astrophysics and evolutinoary biology, two completely different theories with two completely different subjects that have one thing in common: both involve things that evolve over time.

ligesh

Autism is actually an extreme form, and in fact, it proves that the people detection modules are totally detached from say math processing modules, and thus a person can be a genius and yet fail to function socially. What autistic people lack is the ability to interact with outsiders, which is again yet another module, but this module will not tell him that others are also EXACTLY like himself.

IF that was so, a Jihadi can never ever entertain the idea that an all-loving God wants destruction of innocent people. So belief in God is a different kind of autism, which I call solipsist nature.

newtype_alpha

Because, on the whole, an internalized moral code is more effective than an externalized moral command. Christian morals are useless if the believer doesn't internalize them and make them his own, but Christianity makes it extremely easy NOT to do this; most people would rather have the appearance of moral uprightness than the actual condition, and in Christianity, appearances are very easy to maintain without internalizing anything.

ligesh

They are both human, they are both evolved, and they both exhibit similar traits: Belief in an EXTERNAL anthropomorphic supernatural entity, and yet they indulge activities that we would expect such a belief would prevent. To me that's enough similarity to warrant a single unified approach.

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:: Ligesh :: http://ligesh.com

newtype_alpha

Currently, the statistics are the ONLY thing you have in your favor. It doesn't really indicate much to be conclusive, since a similar case could be made from the same statistics that certain ethnicities are genetically predisposed to violence. Neither hypothesis has any real support unless the former (yours) can demonstrate the link and the latter can demonstrate the existence of that predisposition or the gene that causes it.

I don't think it can. The causal mechanism is unclear.

I don't doubt that for an instant. My point is that while God CAN give a person the courage to do what he wants, you have not yet demonstrated (in this case) that God DOES. Suicide bombers and religious wars are easy to demonstrate: a man shouts "God is great!" before blowing himself up, it's not hard to guess what he was thinking when he died. You run into this problem with ordinary criminals: when a gang banger drives by a group of rival gang members on the corner, strafes them with an AK-47 while shouting "Break yoself fool!" connecting that action with belief in divinity is quite a bit more difficult.

In essence, humans do not really NEED God to give them courage, especially if they are fueled by something OTHER than religious ferver (pride, greed, adrenaline, testoserone, or just infantile rage).

I have no idea what you're talking about here. Since when have scientists done anything of the sort? And who is it, exactly, that assumes beleif in God is maladaptive? Where are you getting THAT from?

newtype_alpha

Why would "we" expect anything of the sort?

How? The expectation of theists having better morality than atheists is not a given, in fact it seems to be nothing more than an attempt at apologetics by certain theistic factions. If the theists turn out to be wrong in this assertion (as has already been demonstrated) then theists are no more or less moral than atheists. That means your explanation would also have to explain the behavior of atheists, in which case "God" ceases to be a central factor in the hypothesis.