Oxymoron

There is a 'Horizon' program, 9pm BBC2 Thursday 20th March, about 'The Biological Origin of Religion'.

Oolon Colluphid

Thanks Oxymoron, I have been meaning to point this one out.

From the voice-over trailer at the end of last week’s Horizon, I got the impression that Richard Dawkins, Britain’s Atheist Laureate, will be subjected to some brain stimulation to give him some religious experiences. Should be absolutely fascinating!

Ah, I see from the website that my impression was correct. See:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/horizon...donbrain.shtml

Cheers, DT

Treacle Worshipper

Thanks for the heads up.
TW

Oolon Colluphid

Just to let you all know, this postponed (cos of the start of the war, I’d guess) programme is now scheduled to be shown two weeks from now, on the 17th April.

DT

Oxymoron

What did people think?

I was underwhelmed, then not inconsiderably irritated. For the last 10 minutes, the voice-over kept saying that there was a bit of the brain dedicated to religious belief and I wanted to scream at the TV "excuse me: I have no religious belief therefore humans cannot be hard-wired to believe in it".

Dawkins made me laugh. Try as they could, they couldn't give him a mystical experience with their electromagnets. Rock on Richard!

Salmon of Doubt

I was irritated by it too. I didn't like the implications about how deficient the brain was if you couldn't feel religious experiences. Well, I mean maybe my brain is deficient in that regard, but I personally consider it an advantage! That was never mentioned. To me it seemed that the program was skewed in favour of religion, which is a shame, as it means the fundies left in Britain still have influence with the BBC. I bet they got letters of complaint even before the program was aired. They usually do.

Bits of it were interesting, but I rarely watch Horizon now anyway. They're often pseudoscientific, and far too overly dramatic, over-emphasising things that are interesting on their own to the point where they become cheesy and annoying.

Treacle Worshipper

I found some of it quite interesting, especially the idea that religious experience can be caused by brain injury.

They did seem determined to say that, even if god doesn't exist, religion is still somehow good & necessary, rather than something we might be starting to evolve away from.

I didn't really see what they were trying to prove with the meditation/prayer segment, apart from that meditation affects the operation of the brain. You can meditate without belief (I do sometimes), and presumably it has the same effect.

And, if some of our brains lack the "religious" structure, that must mean that we can't be held responsible for our decision not to believe. So much for choosing to go to hell
TW

EvilMudge

Was this a new episode or a rehash of the one shown a few years back?

Actually now that I come to think of it, maybe that wasn't horizon, as they managed to induce the effects of a low dose of LSD using electromagnets, far too scientific for Horizon.

From a Neuropsychological point of view, Religious behaviour is so close to mental illness that one day it'll probably take the place of homosexuality (as in it's been taken off the list) on the big list of common mental disorders.

Mecha_Dude

Evolution in action!

Majestyk

Considering that, something like 90% of humanity holds a theistic view of reality, wouldn't it seem reasonable that there is something about the structure of the human brain which produces a tendancy to accept/develop mtythologies?

I can easily envision how a tendancy towards religion would have been beneficial to preliterate cultures. From an evolutionary perspective, the answers that people intuit to define the world around them don't have to be accurate so long as they contribute to their proliferation. It isn't important that people think that, the horned god of four legged animals sprays its scent on the distant mountains each year, so long as they are in the right spot, at the right time, each year to intercept the elk herds on their annual migration.

Of course, once a culture achieves a couple of technological milestones such as, literacy and an accurate calender, the tendancy towards religion may no longer be as necessary but, it's still there.

Then again, there's the evolution of religions themselves. Some belief systems benefit proliferation more than others. That's a whole 'nother topic, though.

At least that's the theory I operate under at this time. We won't really know until we've accurately mapped, identidied, and understand all of the brains functions at the synaptic level.