Red Expendable

I wanted to pose the question(s) (hopefully this is the right forum) about belief in the supernatural (gods, ghosts, etc.) and it's relationship, if any, to evolution.

From my new-found learning on evolution, I was assuming that that belief in the supernatural - in whatever forms - are an attribute specific to human beings, as opposed to other animals which do not have this attribute.

That being said, does this 'belief' provide human beings with a worthy attribute for our continued survival?

If so, can anyone give any examples?

If not, why do human continue to show this attribute in large portion of the population and for such a long period of human beings existence?

Also, if not, then does it seem that this belief-attribute is disappearing from humanity, or is it too soon to tell?

I don't want to say that the majority of the people on the planet have this view/attribute or that they have had this view in the past - because I don't have the background info on it.

But it seems from my personal experience that most people do have SOME belief in the sueprnatural.

There's a possibility that I'm way off on this line of questioning, but I'm still learning, so bear with me.

There's other questions I was thinking about asking, but I'll stop there to see if this post makes any sense first!

RedEx

GodLessWarrior

I certaintly think it has a great deal to do with the fact that humans are aware of their own mortality. Thoughts related to what we now call supernatural were completely acceptable to our ancestors. We can see how religion, in general, has transformed over time from the worship of naturalistic gods/forces to personal beings that care about people on an individual basis.

Duvenoy

I don't think that this has much to do with the ToE, but, whaddahell.

At one time, religion was what held a society together. All the society's laws were in the beliefs, and a reminant of this can be seen in the Ten Commandments today.

Often, as we examine one religious claim after another, we forget that virtually everybody in those times were believers. There were no scientific studies to provide explanations for the phenomena surrounding these peoples. Thus, as we are a species that demands explanations, the supernatural was credited/blamed for practically everything.

doov

Ovazor

IIRC, Skinner wrote a paper about "superstition" in pigeons. In this case the birds developed "rituals" to get food (which in reality they did regardless of what they did). It was all about the pigeons being able to understand cause and effect, and somtimes to get it wrong.

I don't think the tendency to believe in supernatural as such is an attribute for our survival, but rather a by-product of the very useful attribute of pattern recognition. Sometimes we just find patterns that aren't there.

Red Expendable

So the birds developed a pattern recognition, in regards to obtaining food. I'm assuming you mean, they were being fed by people in a park?

If a pigeon is being fed at a particular spot everyday, it will always go there to get fed as long as the process continues (the person continues to feed it). If not eventually it will fly to new areas to obtain food to survive - a dumpster where people always throw food away, etc.

But human beings make a conscious choice either to believe in the supernatural or not. Even with upbringing and enviroment, they can accept or reject this.

So how exactly is pattern recognition related to belief in supernatural/god/unknown?

RedEx

Red Expendable

But that being said, with science making a HUGE impact on everyone, and being very in-your-face, even if you have these supernatural beliefs - that same person will embrace the science that makes there lives more comfy and also gives explainations, and at the same time still embrace things such as ghosts, gods, angels, etc.

Without having a response yet on the other post in regards to pattern recognition, I still don't see how belief can be based on pattern recognition, when all beliefs are without proof. So what is there to be recognized?

And don't all animals possess pattern recognition? But humans are the only animals with these beliefs, that I know of.

So are these beliefs (theism, etc.) NECESSARY for our survival? Are they being replaced by science? It seems that it is not.

I've not a done any surveys - but it hardly seems that the world has decreased in numbers of believers of supernatural and 'the unknown'.

At one time, it could be said that it could have helped human beings COPE because with did not KNOW. But even knowing, human beings more often than not embrace faith, and so forth.

I know, this is not necessarily an attribute as in a PHYSICALLY, but is it not an attribute still, specific to humans only?

RedEx

faust

I think this is probably the best explanation. We see it in other things that we have due to evolutionary survival advantages being misappropriated in new environments. For instance, we don't have nicotine receptors in our brains so that we can get addicted to smoking, they are there for another reason, and are stimulated by smoking in a "short circuit" that doesn't help our survival.
We have very good eyes, due to evolution, but we end up with blindspots b/c of it, and we are *excellent* at recognizing patterns, we're so good at it that we hit some false positives. That's why we have optical illusions. It's safer to recognize a pattern that doesn't exist than to maybe miss one that does exist.

Someone posted a quote that illustrated it very well. "It's better to stay out of the woods because you are afraid of fake demons, rather than getting eaten by a real bear."

Red Expendable

I still don't see how this shows that belief in supernatural is considered to be a by-product of pattern recognition.

And also does not explain that once shown a particular pattern to be false, that most human beings embrace it anyway.

Or to take your quote as an example: To show that there are no 'demons' in the woods, but there are bears, so be careful. Dispelling myths, and revealing facts, seem to be not so convincing to most people...

Even though telling people about a bear in the woods, a fact in a given scenario, would be beneficial to there survival if they were planning on entering that particular area. Yet to still believe in the 'demon' in the wood is not particually beneficial to someone who needs to cross the woods safely, and brings only a cross and not a gun (to defend against the bear).

Clearly this cannot be the pattern-recognition that you are talking about that would be beneficial to human beings survival? IS it?

RedEx

Ovazor

No, they were in cages I think, with a peck-the-button-get-the-food -kind of setup. Then they weakened the causality and the birds still learned to peck the button. But for one group of the pigeons there was no causality: the birds would get food from time to time no matter what they did. Some of the birds developed kind of rituals to conjure the food -no longer pecking anything but e.g. moving their head in certain way or something like that. IIRC, I read this story from the Unweawing the rainbow by Richard Dawkins.

I've never understood how anybody could consciously choose what to believe to be true.

In the same way to the pigeons. At some point one of our ancestors who didn't have our understanding of the world picked up a false positive pattern -it might be that when he made some motion or sound he was particularly lucky at finding food, or if he damced in certain way a drought ended soon after- and attributed the effect to a supernautral cause.

Duvenoy

Umm, I disagree. I think that science is gradually making inroads on superstition.

Consider: science has only been actually doing science for, what, a few hundred years or so (and I'm including the alchemists, here). This as opposed to many thousands of years of superstiiton.

It takes time, and science will probably never completely replace belief in 'spirits'. Never the less, as education becomes better, more people wake up to the world around them.

I will admit that sometimes the Bible-shouters and the Weekly World News causes me to wonder.

Pigeons: years ago, I read of a study that used these birds in one of the laboratory recognition experiments. They were in cages with the usual buttons, only one of which would produce food. As I recall, they were fairly quick to find the proper one and reacted to change easiy. No reference, sorry.

doov