Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site cybvax0.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!cmcl2!seismo!harvard!think!mit-eddie!cybvax0!mrh From: mrh@cybvax0.UUCP (Mike Huybensz) Newsgroups: net.religion Subject: Re: Evolving Religions Message-ID: <686@cybvax0.UUCP> Date: Thu, 15-Aug-85 13:42:13 EDT Article-I.D.: cybvax0.686 Posted: Thu Aug 15 13:42:13 1985 Date-Received: Mon, 19-Aug-85 20:38:18 EDT References: <242@weitek.UUCP> Reply-To: mrh@cybvax0.UUCP (Mike Huybensz) Organization: Cybermation, Inc., Cambridge, MA Lines: 52 Keywords: evolution religion sociobiology In article <242@weitek.UUCP> mmm@weitek.UUCP (Mark Thorson) writes: > An earlier discussion about the evolution of religious beliefs made > an analogy between the history of religion and Darwinian evolution > -- the point being that one could interpret the history of religion > as a process of adaptation to social neccessity. > > I am interested in a tighter form of the analogy: is religion itself > an adaption of the human species? If people were raised in total isolation > from culture, would they form a belief in God? Is there a piece of brain > tissue with the function of promoting such belief? I think so. The same way lying, stealing, cheating, and killing are adaptations, would arise spontaneously, and are behaviors whose capability is provided by our brains. > As an aetheist, I've always found it remarkable how many people believe > in God. I consider the total lack of physical evidence for the super- > natural to be an overwhelming argument against belief in an all- > powerful, omnipresent, omniscient being. I think a system that included > a supreme being, billions of ghost-like "souls", and perhaps some angels, > demons, etc would have to have SOME physical manifestation. > > So why do so many people believe in such things? Instead of atheism being > the default belief system among human societies, theism is. Atheism > is in fact rather rare. > > I perceive two possibilities: > > 1. God, heaven, hell, etc exist and it just happens to be part of their > nature that they are undetectable, immeasurable, can't get there from > here, etc. > > 2. They don't exist, but the belief in their existance has survival value > so the human brain is organized for belief rather than non-belief. Number 2 almost corresponds to my ideas. A certain amount of belief is adaptive, because the amount of useful information that must be transmitted is impractical to test. On the other hand, lies exist. We use many sorts of heuristics to decide what to believe. If we can test, we might. We can decide who we trust. And more abstractly still, we can identify untestable information. Religions specialize in the "untestable". (Untestable from the standpoint of their origin: as times change, tests might become possible, and so beliefs change.) Things like moral codes are heuristics that (for individuals) are essentially untestable. Myths are generally untestable. There can be survival value for believing some untestable things. So religions evolve and are selected for. -- Mike Huybensz ...decvax!genrad!mit-eddie!cybvax0!mrh