Big Spoon

As I understand, there is an area of the brain which controls the individuals distinction between fantasy and reality. It has been shown that during prayer and other religious activities, the activity in this area of the brain decreases significantly. Now this would provide a good (ie grounded in reason) explanation for religious experiences, of which those who experience them swear they're real.

It also raises the question, are humans biology inclined to believe in God?
Your thoughts?

VonEvilstein

On your first point, it seems to tie in with what one might expect.
The brain's an amazing complex, emergent system - we have very little idea how the mind, the product of said system, actually works.

As for your second point, my answer would be a resounding "no". For the simple reason that there is no reason to assume this positive assertion, without any evidence. All evidence I have encountered, would point in the direction of religion being an entriely socially caused phenomenon.

Personally, I'd liken it to a computer virus... one that spreads to those poor, unprotected minds, when theycome into contact with a mind that has already been infected.

Salmon of Doubt

Are humans biologically inclined to believe in god?

Probably not, although we are inclined to tell elaborate stories, which would probably include stories of the world's creation.

After all, what else is there for primitive people to talk about? They can gossip about each other, exchange information... or tell stories. It's no wonder that every civilisation has come up with legends and mythical stories. I guess sometimes these stories just get exaggerated and people start to believe them. Maybe this evidence observed in the brain explains why people believe they've seen miracles, but I don't think it would cause people to invent God in the first place.

Oolon Colluphid

Random thoughts, not very scientific, but anyway...

I’d say that we might be (depending on how you define 'god' of course). We are, after all, a neotenous (or paedomorphic) ape. How about another of the child-like features we retain into adulthood being a need for a parent-figure? Naturally for adults this would have to be a super-parent, with a control over the world akin to the one our real parents seem to have when we’re infants. Such a figure or figures would be as benign and loving, and as able to punish us, as our parents were... and the motives for these actions might be just as incomprehensible to us as our parents’ ones were.

Further support from the language that gets used: we are ‘god’s children’, there’s a prayer that starts with ‘our father’, there are (ubiquitous? -- that would be a test of it) Sky Fathers and Earth Mothers... and so on.

This obviously doesn’t explain all aspects of it, but then god-belief is a complex phenomenon, so there are probably several strands of stuff going on in it. But maybe some of it...?

Thoughts?

Cheers, DT

Jimmy Higgins

God is irrelevent to the question. Belief in god is the effect. What is the cause? Insecurity and ignorance (not ignorance as in stupidity, but rather incomplete knowledge of the universe). Mankind has tens of thousands of myths/legends on how this is that or why that is this. A myth is used to explain an ideal that can't be explained naturally. More importantly, through this myth or legend, we obtain knowledge and from the knowledge we gain control, or atleast the illusion of such. Special dances, magic spells, sacrifices, praying are all tools of the myth to allow some form of control over that which we don't understand. This control leads to comfort, the comfort covering over the insecurity.

Death, floods, birth pain, tough farming, etc... Of all of this, we can now explain pretty much each aspect to our satisifactory, and therefore the myth loses its necessity for existence. We can survive without it. All except for the myth of death. We are born like a potato, we die like a potato, but we are too insecure with our ignorance to accept our ending of that of a potato. Therefore the myth of god remains. Granted, the question being asked regarding death and the origin of life are a bit more complicated than the hydrologic cycle, its still ignorance powering the myth. God shelters the ignorance and brings comfort, more importantly control! This is why praying exists, even in its unbelievably dichotomistic and contradicting form, people do it for a sense of control, even when their god has a plan and that plan can't be altered.

The inherent sense of insecurity is what leads to the necessity of myth. The myth creates a manner of control. Why hasn't god died yet? Well, it took thousands of years to get off of polytheism and the thunder gods. We still have a little ways to go.

But in short, yes human beings have a propensity to insecurity which leads to god.

Tufted

Early man was the first animal that understood undertaking certain events could lead to a premature death. This consciousness would work against risking your life in either hunting or fighting other clans. Through the process of natural selection, those that believed in life after death were more willing to sacrifice their lives for the good of the group (Mr. Spock did this altruistically). Clans with low theistic reserves would be selfish, and die prematurely. So, after many hundreds of thousands of years, the propensity to believe in a god has been ingrained in the human mind.

It is difficult for some of us to fight this inborn tendency with logic.

A well written book on this subject is "The God part of the Brain". by Matthew Alper.

Doubting Didymus

Hmm, I think it's much more likely that religion is an emergent property of unrelated features of the brain, rather than being hard wired for it, as the god spot hypotheses suggest.

I reckon Darwins Terriers and vonevilsteins suggestions are closer to the truth. It is easy to see how the religion snowball could get rolling, given that children believe anything their parents tell them (a clearly beneficial attribute) and also given the brains capability to produce spiritual sensations. With these start conditions, any idea that requires the individual to pass on that idea is likely to take off like a rocket, passed down the generations and spread in stories. The biological explaination for religion is already there, in the functions of the brain we already know about. 'Hard wiring' for religiousness, as a selective adaptation, is an almost superfluous hypothesis.