Religious belief is human nature, huge new study claims

Originally posted by captaintyinknots

Originally posted by jiggerj

Originally posted by Royalkin
My beliefs are my beliefs, they might not necessarily be your beliefs and that's fine. We all have the capability to form our own opinions and beliefs, to follow whatever path we choose. Even though I am a Christian, I find some who share my faith quite repulsive, not because of their beliefs, but because of their rabid desire to either convert people or condemn then to Hell.

This is just wrong, Jesus didn't do it this way, and I don't think anyone else should. It's not my purpose as a Christian to lecture people, if they want to know and they ask me about it, I will tell them. I can't convert people, all I can do is talk to them in a kind manner and hopefully make a connection. Christianity should be about charity, love, kindness, and helping one another. It shouldn't be about who has the biggest church or who has converted the most people. Preachers don't bring people to God, God brings people to himself

As an athiest, I don't mind if people want to believe in a mythical magical being. I just hate it when children are exposed to it in the form of brainwashing. Let the kids grow up first, so they can form a mature decision about such things.

EXACTLY. To claim it is human nature is silly, considering we have no testimony from a tme before religion exhisted.

Im not saying people would naturally have beliefs in todays religions.. This ties in with the missionaries who visited an African tribe who had never been visited before. The missionaries came to the village and left on an airplane. As the missionaries returned years later, a shrine was built of the airplane and it had become a deity to the tribe, not Jesus as they taught in Christianity.

There has not been a generation that has lived without religious indoctrination in one way or another. Therefore, to claim it is natural is naive.

There are cases of uncontacted tribes of people and animism (worshiping & sacrificing animals) and the worship of plants and animals.

Also, to justify believing in something that one WANTS to be true as natural is simply a cop-out.

Its the IDEA of believing that is natural, not who or what they worship.

edit on 5/12/11 by ziggyproductions05 because: (no reason given)

Originally posted by ziggyproductions05

Originally posted by captaintyinknots
reply to post by ziggyproductions05

 

I disagree whole-heartedly, and I hate the term 'human-nature' for that reason. All of a sudden we can call a line of thinking, an act of aggression, a belief in something that has ZERO EVIDENCE as natural, or human nature.

I dont see how a line of thinking isnt natural. How would our thoughts be unnatural? Whats natural about humans having faith and believing in something is that it wont always have to be Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, etc that we are accustomed to having faith in like many do today, it could simply be a tree, the sun or some other natural occurence that could provide a source of survival that we put our faith and beliefs in.

The term human nature is narcissistic to its core. If we want to justify something, we call it human nature. Nevermind that in the natural world, we are the only entities who make these things up.

How is it narcissistic? Isnt that hard to determine if any other creature on this planet does or dosnt have a certain set of beliefs? I think thats narcissistic to think. Social behavior exists in all groups of animals and people and is quite natural. The whole point of this study is that it IS natural to have a belief system or faith in something..

Thoughts are not unnatural. To try and justify something that is WHOLLY a human condition as natural is silly. Having faith and believing in a religion is a concoction of the human mind. As I said before, to try and justify something that one WANTS to be true as natural is narcissistic. You cannot say with any certainty that religion would exist today without indoctrination. Therefore, you CANNOT claim it is natural. There is ZERO justification to call it that.

It is narcissistic because it is an attempt to justify what we as humans do. It isnt a look at what is actually NATURAL, it is a look at something that humans WANT to be true, so they claim it must be in our nature.

Again, this is a show of a lack of understanding as to what is natural. Social behavior is not the same as religious belief. And even social behavior is LEARNED over time, and therefore, not natural.

I know that the point of this article is to say that it is natural. I am saying this article is drivel from a pro-religion source. Learned behavior is not natural, it is acquired.

All that you described there are learned behaviors. The tribes made a shrine to the airplane becuase they just LEARNED about the airplane. Worshipping animals and plants are LEARNED behaviors.

An IDEA IS natural. Basing everything one believes on ONE IDEA is not. It is an attempt to justify what is around us.

Originally posted by jiggerj

Originally posted by captaintyinknots
reply to post by ziggyproductions05

 

What a crock of garbage. Outside of eating, breathing, drinking, and relieving oneself, EVERYTHING that humans do is unnatural. To suggest that a belief structure is natural is a testament to the fact that people dont know what 'natural' means.

I agree in the direction you're going with this, but you forgot things that we can still witness in the lower primates. Things like: selfishness, greed, the need to dominate, fear, curiosity, to fight, to kill, to hunt, the instinct to care for our young... All of these things are what defines man. Religion comes from fear of the unknown, so that too is natural. If mankind were wiped out and restarted, over and over and over, religion would be there everytime. Probably not the same religions or the same gods, but fear in a higher power would keep repeating itself.

You make a point, and I will say I was overly simplistic in what is natural to humans, and I did so just to make a point. Humans to more thins that are natural than what I said.

What do you base your assertion, that if humanity was erased and restarted, religion would exist, on?

Originally posted by captaintyinknots


All that you described there are learned behaviors. The tribes made a shrine to the airplane becuase they just LEARNED about the airplane. Worshipping animals and plants are LEARNED behaviors.

Its just like a nomadic tribe coming upon a new type of animal they've never seen before and eventually the adoration can lead to worship.

An IDEA IS natural. Basing everything one believes on ONE IDEA is not. It is an attempt to justify what is around us.

edit on 12-5-2011 by captaintyinknots because: (no reason given)

It is an attempt to figure out whats around us. The need to figure everything out is something us humans do. For all we know this could be in our DNA. The 'faith' factor doesnt mean you have to base all your beliefs on one idea. It could be as simple as saying when you die you inhabit a certain object, animal, plant, etc...Not to mention the use of faith and religion can also help a social group ween out its thieves, liars, and murderers. Check out this excerpt from a book called The Faith Instinct by Nicholas Wade.

“Early human societies transitioning away from [the] male dominance [of ape communities] thus faced two social problems of the utmost severity—the threat of free riders from within and the threat of hostile neighbors from without. How were the new societies to be fortified against these threats? One solution would have been to build on the premoral systems that had evolved in primate societies: from these emerged the innate moral dispositions of early humans. “There appears to be a universal short list of values that all cultures share: negative ones that proscribe killing, seriously deceptive lying, or theft within the group, and positive ones that call for altruism and cooperation for the benefit of the whole community,” writes Christopher Boehm.

But moral restraint by itself is not sufficient to deter freeloading or to energize a group to prepare for warfare. Knowing what’s right and doing it are two different things. Freeloaders may figure the chances of getting caught are acceptably low. A man may desire deeply to defend his community, but what rational motive could make him sacrifice his life to do so?

A solution gradually emerged to counter the two acute threats of freeloading and of warfare: religion.

Religious behavior addressed these two leading challenges to social order in the evolving human lineage. It both enforced the moral instincts and motivated people to pay any cost in defense of their community. Religion secured a new level of social cohesion by implanting in people’s minds a stern overseer of their actions. The Nuer, for instance, believe that “If a man wishes to be in the right with God he must be in the right with men, that is, he must subordinate his interests as an individual to the moral order of society,” writes E. E. Evans-Pritchard. It was belief in these supernatural supervisors that enabled egalitarian societies to emerge from the dictatorship of the alpha male which primate societies had endured for so long.

Ants, the other evolutionary masters of social living, are distinctive for the high degree of cooperation between members of the same colony. But with ants, just as with people, sociality toward the in-group is combined with relentless hostility toward other ant colonies. Ants are territorial and will fight pitched battles at their borders with neighboring groups. Some species have developed special soldier castes. Victory may lead to the opponents’ extinction, their queen being killed, their workers and larvae eaten or enslaved, and their territory and other property annexed. “The greatest enemies of ants are other ants, just as the greatest enemies of men are other men,” observed the Swiss myrmecologist Auguste Forel.

It is striking that, with both ants and people, evolution should have made cooperation and warfare two sides of the same coin. Social cohesion is critical to both the ant and human systems. With ants, cohesion is secured by the shared chemical signals that regulate their behavior and the high degree of relatedness among members of a colony. Neither of these factors is compatible with human physiology. This is why ants don’t need religion but people do.”

reply to post by ziggyproductions05


You are still talking about learned behavior. The first thought when seeing something strange isnt "I should worship that". In the end it comes down to, as I have said before, an attempt to justify the world around us. Which is, again, learned behavior.

reply to post by captaintyinknots


Okay I'll try again.

Hitler killed 11 million people in the Holocaust; 6 million Jews. 60,000,000 or so people died in the conflict would you call this a religious war or a secular one? Was religion responsible for the invasions of Poland or Czech? Did religion cause the Death of 3 million German civilians? No it didn't.

Are we in the Middle east because of religion? I'd say no. Did religion have a factor in the 9/11 attacks? Taking the official story at face value I'd say yes. How many people died on September 11th? 5000? How many people have US soldiers killed in Iraq? Around 100,000. So religion is a factor in this conflict, is it the only factor or a major one? No.

It's not that I don't understand your point in fact I agree with it. I'm saying that religion is a minor factor in most modern conflicts and that wars based on religion alone are few and far between.

Originally posted by Buddha1098
reply to post by captaintyinknots

 

Okay I'll try again.

Hitler killed 11 million people in the Holocaust; 6 million Jews. 60,000,000 or so people died in the conflict would you call this a religious war or a secular one? Was religion responsible for the invasions of Poland or Czech? Did religion cause the Death of 3 million German civilians? No it didn't.

Are we in the Middle east because of religion? I'd say no. Did religion have a factor in the 9/11 attacks? Taking the official story at face value I'd say yes. How many people died on September 11th? 5000? How many people have US soldiers killed in Iraq? Around 100,000. So religion is a factor in this conflict, is it the only factor or a major one? No.

It's not that I don't understand your point in fact I agree with it. I'm saying that religion is a minor factor in most modern conflicts and that wars based on religion alone are few and far between.

I never said religion was the only factor in war. I said it was A factor in nearly every war. Trying to separate secular and religious wars is pointless. They intertwine throughout every conflict in history.

Therefore, trying to say one or the other has caused more death is pointless, wrong, and a misnomer.

reply to post by captaintyinknots What do you base your assertion, that if humanity was erased and restarted, religion would exist, on?


Utter fear of the unknown. Primitive man's inability to comprehend that the awesome power of a tidal wave is just a part of nature. All the gods of the past originated from this lack of logic. The god of thunder. THE HEKATONKHEIRES were three giant gods of violent storms and hurricanes. Pele, for volcanoes. Ruaumoko - God of Earthquakes. The list of gods in extensive. They had to be derived out of fear.

Originally posted by jiggerj
reply to post by captaintyinknots What do you base your assertion, that if humanity was erased and restarted, religion would exist, on?

 

Utter fear of the unknown. Primitive man's inability to comprehend that the awesome power of a tidal wave is just a part of nature. All the gods of the past originated from this lack of logic. The god of thunder. THE HEKATONKHEIRES were three giant gods of violent storms and hurricanes. Pele, for volcanoes. Ruaumoko - God of Earthquakes. The list of gods in extensive. They had to be derived out of fear.

Ahh, see, that's exactly my point. Religion is a learned behavior to try and explain what we dont know. Nothing natural about it

reply to post by captaintyinknots


Again when I compare 6 million to 60 million it is easy for me to see which caused more deaths, but we are arguing semantics as you said in the beginning.

But you are right WWII wasn't a purely secular war.

Originally posted by Buddha1098
reply to post by captaintyinknots

 

Again when I compare 6 million to 60 million it is easy for me to see which caused more deaths, but we are arguing semantics as you said in the beginning.

But you are right WWII wasn't a purely secular war.

6 million to 60 million. But would one have happened without the other? They are all intertwined. Action/reaction. My point is simply that you cannot in any way separate the two, as there are undertones of both in EVERY war.

Originally posted by captaintyinknots
reply to post by ziggyproductions05

 

You are still talking about learned behavior. The first thought when seeing something strange isnt "I should worship that".

Of course it may not be your first thought when seeing something a little strange, firstly it depends how strange it is and what it is in relation to your own enviornment/life. You have grown up in this society and your beliefs are pretty much set but im sure you could be shown something strange enough to rock your belief system.

The original idea of having faith is to be used as a way to extend ones life and as a survival tool for you and the people around you. Faith could simply be part of human instict. Whether its faith to believe in God or faith to believe there is no God, how we use the faith is what is interesting.

In the end it comes down to, as I have said before, an attempt to justify the world around us. Which is, again, learned behavior.

Its like a revolving door

If religious belief is human nature, then I'm unnatural.
I must be some kind of artificial being, because I don't care about purpose.

I think that for many, the term "religious" has become a dirty word. So, we get a new study like this, using that old term, and of course people may have reactions based on the many images associated with that term.

A better term might be "paradigm", or world-view. That's what religions are, besides the many other things that they may be, at their core, they are a way of looking at the world.

If that's the case, then we all have "religion", in that sense. But again, I prefer the term paradigm (probably because I'm not a religionist).

Now that the terms are better defined, I would say that I think the study has merit. Yes, of course, humans must adopt some kind of paradigm, some "system" of "beliefs" about how they fit into the world they find themselves in. And no, we don't need to assume it would necessarily be something they had to inherit from anyone else. We can easily imagine an individual separated from parents and society at an early age, and they would still be forced to form a world-view, of some kind, based on their experiences.

Should we call that world-view "religion"? No, not if we prefer precision, but it might very much look like it, and using the old term isn't automatically erroneous.

So, I feel I can say, using "their" terms, that yes, "religious belief" does seem to be part of our "natural" programming. I see no controversy really, and the idea is useful I think, especially for the Utopian thinkers among us, who imagine religion can somehow be stamped-out one day. Give that idea up! People will still need a world-view to replace whatever nonsense they inherited, so you would only be "replacing" religion, not erasing it.

Religion, as "bad" as it is, is apparently here to stay.

JR

reply to post by Royalkin


Pretty one sided relationship. What about if you are happy and know no such relationship? I think many people just don't want to believe that it was all for nothing and need to believe that there is something better than they were handed. Maybe there is...but until then, it is exactly what it is....just a belief...a hope.

reply to post by Benevolent Heretic

I absolutely think that it's human nature to want to believe in something - to think that there's a grand design and purpose to all that we don't understand - that someone is taking care of it all - that for suffering the hardships of life, there will be a wonderful and great reward someday...

Ummm, no, that is the nature of some people, well a lot of people, but not all people, and this study clearly fails to account for people who don't fit within their little boxes. Every single human mind on this planet is designed differently, you can't quantize human nature or self aware consciousness, because it's a dynamic phenomena.

Originally posted by ziggyproductions05


Interesting. Maybe this facet of human nature helps us in long term survival? Im personally open to all ideas of our creation and dont subscribe to any particular religion. This reminds me of lone African tribes who were visited by christian missionaries and created a shrine of the airplane the missionaries arrived in to worship. It seems we people NEED something to believe in.



religion.blogs.cnn.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

Keyword there is survival. Studies have also shown that humans invent meaning for survival which is why we see faces in clouds or jesus christ on burnt toast! If everytime we heard or saw something indistinct and thought nothing of it and it turned out to be deadly we die. If everytime we heard or saw something indistinct but made meaning (usually fearful) then we flee and survive. Thus erring on the side of caution and detecting danger when there isn't any promotes better survival. So we are afraid of the dark, mysterious noises make us jump etc etc. The mechanism in the brain that does this also makes us see the man in the moon and jesus christ on burnt toast.

Please read the full article on this in the New Scientist, it's facinating stuff and for me at least it explained why people believe in all sorts of nonsense.

I can't wait til the world is full of atheist, and agnostics.

Oh how scientifically advanced we will be

I do not believe in ANY religion, but myself.

Is believing in yourself also an religion?