JubalsCall

Oh, Thanks for the informatin then.

Tibbs

JubalsCall

The argument you are using sounds like one for God. If believing in a god is built into us, then how do we not know that it was not built into our brains by a god?

Tibbs

Clutch

Presumably this was before every one of your arguments was systematically dismantled at IIDB?

Marlowe

This is not a reason for not believing in god - even according to the researchers who discovered that spiritual belief (not god-belief since a good deal of their research deals with Buddhist meditators, and Buddhism is a non-Theistic religious system) is built into the human brain. You might want to read Why God Won't Go Away: Brain Science and the Biology of Belief by Andrew Newberg MD and Eugene D'Aquili PhD. Their research shows how the experience of mystics, and of spiritual meditation is inherent, natural, beneficial and real in the human brain. It shows how the human brain is naturally constructed to produce stories of meaning and how survival mechanisms led to a dissolving of the self in ecstatic religious experience that is absolutely real in the same way that any experience is real to the human brain. If you wish to argue their conclusions, you're going to have to go to whether or not there is Objective Reality because their research clearly shows that the intuitive experience of religion is as real as smelling cookies baking in the oven.

JubalsCall

Atheism is not believing in a god right? If that is so, then they have crossed the line already from believing in a deity to not believing in one. See the chart

Believing Can't Say Not-believing
(Theist) (Agnostics) (Any Atheist)
I I
Devot Kind of Belives I I Weak Ath. Strong Ath.
I I

From what you said they still make a descion not to believe, but one is just a stronger conviction than the other. It's just like people from other relgions who believe in their faith more than some other people in their faith.

They still made a positive claim that there is no god, unless they are agnostics and say that can't really know for sure.

I may lack a believe in Germany or some other contry because I've never been there. That lack of believe is in it self saying that I don't believe there is a Germany even though it's not as strong as others belief that there is no Germany. (Sorry, a very bad illustration)

There are three main starting choice in the belief of any diety or dieties: atheist, agnostic, or theist. Both atheist and theist take sides no matter how much they might believe or not believe. And of course like you already know, the agnostic just desided to stay neutral.

May be this makes sense. Tell me if it doesn't.

Tibbs

Mageth

The argument you are using sounds like one for God. If believing in a god is built into us, then how do we not know that it was not built into our brains by a god?

Well, we don't know that it was built into our brains by a god either, do we? Further, one cannot logically reach the conclusion from this information that it was built into our brain by a particular god. Note that, if true, this brain function may affect "religious" feelings in people with belief in any god, even a sun-worshipper. Hell, maybe it was built into our brain by the sun?

JubalsCall

Sorry on my last post the chart I made didn't come out well

Hopefully this will be better.

This may or many not work!

JubalsCall

Good point, Mageth. That's what I was kind of going for. I really just wanted to say that you could not use that argument against a god becasue the opposite can be just as true. They both cancel themselves. So neither side can effectively use that argument.

Thanks
Tibbs

Mageth

This is not a reason for not believing in god - even according to the researchers who discovered that spiritual belief (not god-belief since a good deal of their research deals with Buddhist meditators, and Buddhism is a non-Theistic religious system) is built into the human brain. You might want to read Why God Won't Go Away: Brain Science and the Biology of Belief by Andrew Newberg MD and Eugene D'Aquili PhD. Their research shows how the experience of mystics, and of spiritual meditation is inherent, natural, beneficial and real in the human brain. It shows how the human brain is naturally constructed to produce stories of meaning and how survival mechanisms led to a dissolving of the self in ecstatic religious experience that is absolutely real in the same way that any experience is real to the human brain. If you wish to argue their conclusions, you're going to have to go to whether or not there is Objective Reality because their research clearly shows that the intuitive experience of religion is as real as smelling cookies baking in the oven.

I honestly don't see how it follows that a built-in brain function lends credence to the notion of a spiritual realm (if that's what you're getting at here). Yes, the religious feelings some people experience are real, in that the people are truly, physiologically experiencing them; it's just that now we have a biological explanation for those religious feelings.

Jayhawker Soule

See also Neuro-theology: a rather skeptical perspective
.