Gurdur

A truism to some degree, but also an argument for psychological determinism if you take it too far.

All humans, including believers, tend not to accept beliefs that contradict their immediate senses. In what ways would theism contradict immediate senses ?

Not when it directly imperils survival or even comfort.

I do not see how studies of anomalous and mystical experiences can explain religion - especially when mystical experiences account for only a small minority of religious believers.
Evidence already given in a previous post of mine, as indeed a point already made.

[ December 16, 2002: Message edited by: Gurdur ]</p>

Wyz_sub10

This is non-sequitar. Theism is quite possibly a product for meeting a need expressed through brain chemistry.

Why do you think humans enjoy music? Music did not arise with no purpose. We eat because we're hungry, we sleep because we're tired, we appeal to a higher power because of a need.

It does not follow that just because something is created that it was done so irrespective of brain "wiring".

By the way, what does "null" mean, in your opinion?

Gurdur

Not at all.

You'll need to provide evidence for this theory.
As I've already pointed out 3 times now, mystical and other anomalous experiences only account for a small minority of believers - and no difference in either brain chemistry, archictecture or function has ever been found in a non-mystical theist (the majority) as opposed to an atheist.

Bad metaphor - and no more than a metaphor.

Modern abstract art. While all human activities rest upon human biology, you cannot deny many human activities rely on far more cognitive non-hard-wired development.

Wrong question.
The word "null" in the quote from me means here "from the beginning".

If you try reducing all religion down to brain function, then you must explain where did religion come from in the first place.

If you accept biological evolution, then you must accept that religion most likely started off from vague impressions, vague experiences - and then these were developed in consciously chosen imagination and further non-hard-wired cognition.

Or, as I said much earlier:
"It's not the experience, it's how you interpret it".

Even atheists have mystical experiences (I quoted beforehand the example of Theryvaada Budhhism, with its attendent meditation), they simply interpret them differently.

Which destroys the theory a believer must believe.

[ December 16, 2002: Message edited by: Gurdur ]</p>

Kenny

Scigirl,

I’m not sure why many atheists tend to make so much of these studies. They are interesting, but the can be explained just as well on theism as they can on naturalism. In Christian theology, for example, especially in Reformed circles, there has long been the tradition that God has designed our cognitive faculties in such a way that, all else being equal, human beings are naturally predisposed to believe in God (i.e. the sensus divinitatis) because God has designed them in this way (whether through direct creation or through guided evolution). If that is the case, then coming then belief in God is simply a natural output of properly functioning cognitive faculties aimed at the production of a true belief -- making that belief warranted for human beings in much the same way as, say, belief in the principle of induction or belief in the existence of other minds. These beliefs are notoriously difficult to prove on inferential grounds and the reason we hold them so strongly probably has more to do with the fact our brains are hardwired to do so than us having arrived at them through any sort of inferential means. Yet, no one is really prepared to deny that such beliefs are rational (or, if they are, then they have to concede that hardly any of our beliefs actually are rational).

The reason many people do not believe in God, on this account, is due to other cognitive factors which have invaded out minds as a result of the fall (i.e. the noetic effects of sin), specifically, a strong psychological predisposition to repress knowledge of the existence of God or, at least, knowledge of certain of attributes of God, out of fear of judgment and desire to live for ourselves without divine infringement. Without the fall, however, belief in God would be just as natural and just as strongly held as belief in other minds or belief in induction.

I don’t think that studies, such as those you’ve cited, make this theistic account any more likely than an atheistic one, or vice versa – both interpretations can accommodate them rather easily. How we interpret them already depends on our metaphysical presuppositions. The only difficulty that such studies may pose for Christian theology, as far as I can see, (and I’m still skeptical of their results) is that they might suggest that some fail to believe in God, not for moral reasons, but for biological ones. However, this need not necessarily be the case. The fact that some may have a greater biological disposition towards mystical or religious experiences does not entail that such persons will come to believe in or submit to the God of Christian theism or that they have any greater disposition than anyone else to believe in the God of Christian theism. How such persons interpret these experiences will depend, somewhat, on the choices which these persons make, and such choices, according to Christian theology, have moral dimensions to them. As long as the noetic effects of sin are in operation, such persons may have a greater tendency to be “religious,” but, on Christian theology, that does not entail that such persons will be right with God.

God Bless,
Kenny

P.S. As a Calvinist, I also do not believe that the reason that some people, such as myself, do come to believe in the God of Christianity and submit to Him has anything to do with any greater moral virtue on their part, but is solely a function of God’s grace which he gives entirely independent of any merit, according to His sovereign purposes.

[ December 16, 2002: Message edited by: Kenny ]</p>

scigirl

I understand what you are saying about mystical experiences (sort of) but that's not necessarily what I'm talking about here. I'm talking about a function of our brain being to link events together, which causes us to percieve certain events as cause and effect when they aren't necessarily so.

Allow me to further explain...here's an excerpt from Michael Shermer's "Why People Believe Weird Things":
He goes on to quote some prominent evolutionary psychologists, who rarely get respect, but I think their ideas may have some merit and warrant further study:
Shermer goes on to make the following points:
He then goes on to explain that this Belief Engine can cause us to believe in type one errors (believing a falsehood) and type 2 hits (rejecting a truth). I find this analysis to be much oversimplified, and probably there is a spectrum, not an either/or type of system going on.

However, in terms of the 'pattern recognition' theory...I learned about NMDA receptors in neuro class this week - how temporal or spacial events can strengthen or weaken synapses as "coincidence detectors," which could be the basis for memory and learning. These receptors got me thinking again about Shermer's theory.

Is there anything we know about the human brain that might lend credence to this theory, or disprove this theory?

In addition, you say we don't ignore our immediate senses. I think this is mostly true. However, our immediate senses often lie to us. I posted this in the out of body thread, but I think they are worth reproducing:

From The Human Brain, by John Nolte (my med school neuro text):
So couple our pattern-recognition with our ability to screw up sensory inputs. Combine that with the societal re-enforcement that "x feeling is a sign from Zeus or God or whoever" and you strengthen those faulty synapses. The next generation is taught the same pavlovian connections...

Is this making any sense?

scigirl

pz

My two cents: our brains are adapted for sophisticated model building. All of our sensory input is highly filtered, processed and modified before it reaches our awareness, and even then, there is so much information available that we have to throw away huge quantities of it by matching it to a simpler model. I think a lot of our childhood is spent building this internal model of reality, and we spend our lives refining it by matching what we see in the world around us to it.

Where these 'god modules' (or whatever catchy name people want to attach to them) fit into the story is that part of that mental reality we experience includes processed experience and internally generated states. Our brains aren't these optimally adapted computers, they are mushrooms that grew up fast, selected for a few broad parameters of functionality, and other odd bits of extraneous activity just came along for the ride. Pieces of our brain have the capacity to do strange things on their own, or put a peculiar twist on some piece of incoming information. We then have to accommodate that glitch or spin into our mental world-model.

The way I see it, we all get these quirky things in our brains, we just differ in how we model it. Some people have a model that incorporates an external magic sky daddy who blits junk directly into their minds; it's a perfectly adequate model to explain their experience, but has the serious limitation that it uses a rather kludgy patch called "god" that may not mesh well with other experiences. Some of us have models that do not use the god kludge to explain anything, but we have to develop other mental tools to do the job.

For instance, we have this sensation called "awe". It seems to kick into gear whenever we encounter a
flood of new or complex information that is right at the edge of comprehensibility. I can think of a lot of different ways our brains could cope with the influx. One is to close our eyes, shut all thought down, and maybe sit and start crying...that's the response kids will sometimes make.

Another is the theist response: "too much stuff! How can I make sense of it? Must be god." They don't understand it any better, but they've found a resolution to their confusion in their internal model, so they feel good about it. They've also shut down rational thought, but they've shunted the complexity off into a handy pigeonhole so they can at least continue to function.

Then there is the scientists' response. We try to partition the complexity, break it down into smaller bits that we can fit into our models of the world, and start trying to build up a useful abstraction that encompasses it.

So, I think it works both ways. There is a biological basis to the different ways people think, but it's also a higher-level cause that is dependent on how we interpret the underlying biology.

To complicate it further, I also think it is true that how one thinks leads to deeper changes in how one's brain operates biologically -- the abstract model can get 'burned' into the gross organization of the brain over time, to the point where it can be visualized with the relatively crude techniques described in the papers you cited.

Gurdur

You've addressed this to Scigirl, Kenny, and I do not wish to be impolite to either Scigirl or you; but I would like to give my own answers to some points you raise, as long as it's understood, of course, these in no way replace Scigirl's answers, which would in any case probably be very different.


It's because we want to understand; when theism - especially Christianity and the God of the Pentateuch - seem so ridiculous, we wish to try and understand how anyone could fall for it, in essence.

Not exactly true. In order to accept these results and explain them away, a theist must first accept the entire metaphysical naturalist chain that lead to these results.

Or, IOW, an atheist doesn't have the problem that a theist does here.

A theory I'ld be happy to disprove, and examined at some length <a href="http://www.mathom.com/Religion2/Origins_Of_Religion_01_01_Basic_definitions.htm" target="_blank">starting here and going on</a>. I'ld be happy to put in more work on this if I could get a decent discussion - but I think I'm one of the few so passionately interested in this exact area.

However, that strikes me as special pleading, and begging the question.

No; while there is a <a href="http://www.mathom.com/Religion2/Origins_Of_Religion_Appendix_01_15.htm" target="_blank">quite a deal of Chrisian literature on this subject</a>, it often seems to me to be rather forced. Here Occam's Razor works well for atheism.

Not entirely correct. The literature here can only be interpreted in a Chrictian fashion if and only if you are interpreting already from a Christian viewpoint - Christianity (or theism in general) does not flow from the evidence in this area.

You already have this problem when facing the question of Down's Syndrome, other severe mental retardation, or Alzheimer's - there is no need to bring in putative small differences in brain function, never found as yet, between theists in general and atheists.

[ December 16, 2002: Message edited by: Gurdur ]</p>

scigirl

pz, thanks for your post.

Agreed, and this is also what Gurdur had said here:
So my question is - what is it that allows one person to interpret the awe/mystical experience as "god" and another as "just brain chemicals"? Obviously environment and education play a huge rule. But could some people be "wired" (for lack of a better term) to use the 'god' shunt?

Yeah perhaps sensory overload!

Hey were you spying on me in my first week of med school?

Yeah that seems to make some sense. We have a feeling of awe, our parents tell us "That's God honey" and the belief is positively re-inforced.

Also, do we know or understand any of the brain biology well enough to start to account for these phenomena?

scigirl

Gurdur

Yes, but this doesn't explain the initial choices.

Either you plump for

A: strict psychological determinism,

B: or you explain the initial choices as being a mixture of rational response, and possible wishful thinking - getting the warm fuzzies - in which case there's the choice not to get the warm fuzzies from a particular belief complex.

Personally I prefer (B), but I'm well-aware that the free-will/strict-psychological-determinism debate allows of no answer as yet, debates always descending into circular arguments as definitions.

Gurdur

Choice (as far as I'm concerned).

I'm aware an argument can be made for psychological determinism, I just don't buy it - it rests upon too many circular arguments.

I've had mystical experiences myself (resulting from drug use and/or meditation), I chose to interpret them in a way that reflects my natural metaphysics

Not initially; pz made the point you can train yourself to do it, but there is no evidence to support an initial differences claim.

Even Dosteovesky, author of The Brothers Karamazov, who had mystical experiences galore resulting from pre-epileptic-onset episodes, and wrote about them, never really developed a coherent theism, just going with the feeling but not being consequent in daily life.