Brains 'are hardwired to believe in God and imaginary friend

[braha_kahn]

Brains 'are hardwired to believe in God and imaginary friends'
By Fiona Macrae

Religion is part of human nature and our brains are hard wired to believe in God, scientists believe.

The evidence includes studies of babies and children which have shown the brain is programmed to think of the mind as being separate from the body.

This distinction allows us to believe in the supernatural, to conjure up imaginary friends - and to conceive of gods, this week's New Scientist reports.

Other studies suggest our minds come with an overdeveloped sense of cause and effect, which primes us to see purpose and design everywhere, even when there is none.

Children as young as seven or eight believe that rocks, rivers and birds have been created for a specific purpose.

Taken together, the two traits mean were are perfectly programmed to believe in god.

Professor Paul Bloom, a psychologist at Yale University in the US, said: 'There's now a lot of evidence that some of the foundations for our religious beliefs are hard-wired.

'All humans possess the brain circuitry and it never goes away.'

source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/ ... iends.html
more to read:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg2 ... s-god.html

 

[spice]

Maybe, but how did it come to be that way?

By generation after generation passing that trait along.

God didn't hardwire us to believe in god, surely.....

 

[endlessness]

By generation after generation passing that trait along.

.

but dont you think that to think that, you must have first of all a belief in the linearity and uni-directional causality of the universe?

it may work in totally different levels. Like the 'attractors' in chaos mathematics, it may be pulled from the front, or a mixture of both, an interrelated network or some altogether transcendental order.

in this sense, the way in which our look for this 'Other' manifests itself doesnt necessarily mean that it is purely accidental or blindly genetic/organic, but meaningful in some sense

just like we seem to have a 'separation' tendency inside of ourselves, to classify and distinguish between things, see differences, etc, then so also we have a programmed unifying impulse. It is only logical imo, as we see that in all levels of existence there is a great importance to the dynamic balance between opposites

 

[misfit]

Exactly, spice. That's why: "religion is part of human nature" sounds a little naive and silly, to me.

I would put it like this "Religion became part of, some, human cultures".

And God doesn't, necesseraly, imply Religion.

 

[Caduceus Mercurius]

The first gods and goddesses of mankind were the stars we see above our heads and the natural processes we see occuring around us, not imaginary friends. Monotheism is a very recent misconception.

 

[JJJ]

Hmm, this concept has always been difficult for me. I would like to believe in a purpose and in a meaning behind eveything. I know that such a meaning can not be rationally found and proven, and that it must be an intuïtive thing. And in the same time, I know that rationally, this longing for a meaning in life maybe be evolutionary. So that makes that I should encounter every mystical feeling that I have very suspiciously, as rationally, having such a mystical experience might be just an evolutionary helpful illusion...

This is also really the ratio vs. intuition battle... Western society is good at saying 'ratio is everything' and putting everything that is felt intuïtively aside as nonsense. And research like this is a perfect example of that: our ratio is becoming so strong that it completely pushes intuïtion and mystical feelings aside as evolutionarily determined and misleading. Like a cuckoo chicken, throwing all other chickens out of the nest.

The problem is also, that ratio and intuition mean nothing to each other. They are such different domains, that every intuitive statement is pointless from a rational point of view and vice versa. If I see someone kindly helping another person, my intuition says: "here something happens that makes a differences, I feel true meaning in this", while my ratio shouts over it: "oh, nothing to see, that's just empty, evolutionarily determined behaviour". Uniting the two for me is a huge challenge . And maybe it's really the main issue for most people that are busy with spirituality in a western context.

 

[GOD]

"The first gods and goddesses of mankind were the stars we see above our heads"

The first gods were not that and had nothing to do with astrology . The first GODS were seen as spirits , manifestations of things that the people didnt understand on the earth around them . The first godly mystery was child birth . Then came sun worship . Its easy to understand . When one starts to think that there might be more to things than meets the eye one starts to look close around one ruleing one thing out after another . Then one spreads the search out from there .

Here is an article i found :-


How Our Brains Create God

The controversies are endless


The Sun-God Ra preceded Jesus Christ by thousands of years, and commanded the respect of the most advanced nations on Earth at that time

The idea of a god or goddess, no matter how old, has always been responsible for a single thing, namely bringing people together, especially in times of need. Religion may have very well played a part in the aggregation of the first human societies, when people were much more exposed to the whims of nature than they are today. At this point, the main religions of the world are fairly elaborate, and have tens and hundreds of millions of followers worldwide. But, in the old days, such complex gods were not yet invented, and people only believed in the natural forces they saw, as in the Sun, the wind and the Earth itself.

Belief in the same things may have helped the first human groups come closer together, and also knit intricate social connections, whose role was to keep them from losing members. A larger degree of cooperation in hunting and taking care of the young ones may have aided only specific communities survive over others, which basically made religion an evolutionary trait.

Furthermore, times of great despair are generally known to unite people in a search for their respective gods and goddesses. For example, in 1929-1930, when the Great Depression was wrecking havoc in the United States, many citizens turned to Islam, Buddhism, Christianity, or even to hard-line orientations belonging to one of these creeds. Their attendance was not motivated by a sudden re-encounter with their god, but rather by the fact that they were uncertain of what tomorrow was going to bring.

In other words, insecurity is one of the main catalysts for people to start attending service in a church, mosque or temple again, even if their whole lives up to one point were incompatible with the teachings of those religions. This has lead some researchers to believe that the brain develops an innate ability to believe in a god. That's not to say the mind is hard-wired in that, but that by the very nature of our construction, we are prone to believe in the supernatural.

Of course, these beliefs can take on dramatic shapes, as history tells us. The deeds of the Catholic Church, for example, that killed people because they didn't fit the priests' ideal of a worshiper, that tortured and burned thousands at the stake for a single word, that led crusades on foreign lands for money, that prevented the progress of science as much as it could, by killing researchers, astronomers and mathematicians for heresy, and that kept control over schools for several centuries, are a clear reminder of what unfounded religious fanaticism can do.

 

[Dantediv86]

because we don't have all the answers we want answered, and the strife our brain goes through to find those answers brings us to create a model that fits in to the closest explanation of what happens to have some kind of answer...that's why people who don't believe in a godly being believe in other things, but still believe.
that's why we have imaginary friends, faeries, magic, God, gods and goddesses, science...some of us get happy, others don't and express the appreciation of the existence of a godly being that creates and destroys and transforms the world by exploring tha nature around us...there was a fancy philosophical term for all that but i have forgotten it....

 

[spice]

The concept of animism also explains a lot of it, ascribing 'gods' as responsible for everything which was so mysterious to early man, whether it was, as mentioned, the sun, or thunder, or any other natural process....


I agree, monotheism is fairly young.....it is the collective form of 'ego' applied to
diety.


It's all a bunch of crap, if you ask me......

 

[VerusDeus]

"The evidence includes studies of babies and children which have shown the brain is programmed to think of the mind as being separate from the body"

How do you proof that the brain is programmed to think of mind as separate from the body?

Also, this could just as well mean that the mind or spirit IS separable from the body, which would be proof that there is more than just the physical world.

 

[GOD]

"The evidence includes studies of babies and children which have shown the brain is programmed to think of the mind as being separate from the body"

How do you proof that the brain is programmed to think of mind as separate from the body?"

Its crap .

If there is anything to the sentance it should have said :- "The evidence includes studies of babies and children which have shown that they think of the mind as being separate from the body"

"Also, this could just as well mean that the mind or spirit IS separable from the body, which would be proof that there is more than just the physical world".

No .

 

[Caduceus Mercurius]

The first gods were not that and had nothing to do with astrology .

I didn't mention or imply astrology. I meant all the stars above our heads, not just those near the ecliptic.

The deeds of the Catholic Church, for example, that killed people because they didn't fit the priests' ideal of a worshiper, that tortured and burned thousands at the stake for a single word, that led crusades on foreign lands for money, that prevented the progress of science as much as it could, by killing researchers, astronomers and mathematicians for heresy, and that kept control over schools for several centuries, are a clear reminder of what unfounded religious fanaticism can do.

Indeed! :wink:

 

[restin]

I agree, monotheism is fairly young.....it is the collective form of 'ego' applied to
diety.


It's all a bunch of crap, if you ask me...... Smile

Don't underestimate it, without it you wouldn't be here now.

Monotheism made one thing: It centered the role of Man in the Universe, in contrast to previous religions that centered nature before themselves. Therefore, human evolution, which is also a part of a fight against nature, which is based on breaking out of the cycle of nature, can only happen thanks to monotheism.

 

[GOD]

I think your tin foil hat has slipped and is covering your eyes.........

 

[dennis1978]

spice his first post said it all.

and, i think god his last post was kind of hylarious

 

[Caduceus Mercurius]

Monotheism made one thing: It centered the role of Man in the Universe, in contrast to previous religions that centered nature before themselves. Therefore, human evolution, which is also a part of a fight against nature, which is based on breaking out of the cycle of nature, can only happen thanks to monotheism.

Which previous religions are you talking about?
Human evolution a fight against nature?!

 

[restin]

pagan/nature-centralized religions. Yes,for modern man nature is below himself. That's why we allow ourself to cultivate plants, grow and slaughter animals, destroy forests etc. In Christian Culture, God created Earth for man. It is fascinating, how strong this thought still is in our culture.

 

[Dantediv86]

pagan/nature-centralized religions. Yes,for modern man nature is below himself. That's why we allow ourself to cultivate plants, grow and slaughter animals, destroy forests etc. In Christian Culture, God created Earth for man. It is fascinating, how strong this thought still is in our culture.

so all the amerindians never killed a beast to eat and never cultivated a plant?
so what about all those arians that were herding cattle and growing hemp?

 

[misfit]

Restin has a point.

Don't compare how we treat nature (agriculture and our way of dealing with "cattles") with the amerindians. They lived in equilibrium with nature, and respected it. They saw the animals they eaten (and hunted), aswell as their cultivations as gifts from nature. Gifts of the holy spirit.
The way we deal with animals (those that go to our plates) is not with respect. We practice holocausts, all over the world.
The way we deal with agriculture, what we gather, is not with the idea that they are gifts from nature. But we sneak our ground/earth without any respect at all. Either for nature itself and for all living beings that live in it, including ourselfs.

And how we, western culture, dealt with that? With, around, 40 million deaths (including enslavement, murdering, rape of women, among other brutal behaviours) of Amerindians, after Colombo invasion of america.

 

[restin]

I agree, my formulation was weak.

The difference is the relation between man and nature. In the ancient religions, nature stood above man, while this changed with monotheistic cultures. Monotheism is, I said wrong, not christian, but officially began with Abraham...

I am too tired to formulate what I want to say.