Is God a product of Natural Selection?

[CriticalThought]

I followed your logic in the first post. You are saying something a little different here. People who believed that there could be a tiger in the woods survived longer because sometimes there was a tiger in the woods. They didn't create the tiger...

They never saw the tiger, so they invented it in their mind. They assumed the brustle in the grass was caused by a tiger.

I never realized this would be such a difficult concept for people to grasp.

 

[FederalRepublic]

They never saw the tiger, so they invented it in their mind. They assumed the brustle in the grass was caused by a tiger.

I never realized this would be such a difficult concept for people to grasp.

You seem to miss the reason why they would assume the brustle in the grass was caused by a tiger. That noise might be a tiger, so he's better safe than sorry. I get that, but the existence of the tiger is not something created by their imagination to explain the noise. They already know that tigers exist.

 

[CriticalThought]

You seem to miss the reason why they would assume the brustle in the grass was caused by a tiger. That noise might be a tiger, so he's better safe than sorry. I get that, but the existence of the tiger is not something created by their imagination to explain the noise. They already know that tigers exist.

*facepalm*

All I am arguing is that through natural selection people have become inclined to believe in what may not exist. In other words, it takes considerably greater effort to be skeptical than it takes to simply believe. The default setting in humans is to believe what you are told, and you have to learn to be skeptical. Once that pattern was established all people had to do was suggest the existence of God and people were more prone to believe it than be skeptical of it due how they evolved. Think of how children believe in Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy.

Why is this such a hard concept for people to grasp?

 

[Ahlevah]

(I)t takes considerably greater effort to be skeptical than it takes to simply believe.

I'm not so sure about that. I think it's easier to be a skeptic and smugly demand "evidence" that a deity exists. Taking a "leap of faith" to the point in which one truly believes in God is difficult, nearly impossible for some people.

 

[CriticalThought]

I'm not so sure about that. I think it's easier to be a skeptic and smugly demand "evidence" that a deity exists. Taking a "leap of faith" to the point in which one truly believes in God is difficult, nearly impossible for some people.

Interesting. But we aren't talking just about what is easier. We are talking about cost and consequence. There is considerably greater cost and consequence for choosing to not believe in God that there is for choosing to believe in him/her/it.

Also, do you believe that an unconditionally loving deity who always has your back is not an incentive for people to believe in God?

 

[Ahlevah]

There is considerably greater cost and consequence for choosing to not believe in God that there is for choosing to believe in him/her/it.

Only if you believe that something that can't be touched, seen, felt, heard, or smelled might exist. Since many people today are taught that empiricism is reality, and only reason supports the concept of the existence of a deity, that task becomes more difficult.

Also, do you believe that an unconditionally loving deity who always has your back is not an incentive for people to believe in God?

On that basis alone, not really. If I told you that there's an invisible ten-foot rabbit following you and if you don't believe me you'll drop dead sooner than if you believed me, is that an incentive for you to believe me?

 

[Hatuey]

God itself is an evolution in philosophical thought and ignorance. Long before Semitic peoples were trying to create a notion of God, human beings were blaming everything around them on the very basic elements around them. Fire, water, earth, wind, animals. These were the first Gods. When humans realized that these forces and objects were not 'Gods' and could be controlled, then they claimed each one as a gift from the Gods. This is when we have the appearance of polytheistic religions. The Greeks, Mayas, Romans all believed in beings which had absolute power over the world they couldn't control. To these Gods they sacrificed human life, animals and personal wealth in hopes that they would keep the uncontrollable world stable. The fatal flaw in this polytheistic religions was exposed by Socrates. How does one know how to appease the Gods if they are all different entities? If they are angered and pleased by different things then it is impossible to create a formula in which they are all pleased.

Enter Abrahamic religions: Christianity, Judaism and Islam are religions in which it is no longer necessary to please many Gods. The entire world can be made better simply by pleasing a single God. This is revolutionary because humanity now has reached a point in which it knows how to control various elements around it but has not reached the state of a truly technologically advanced species.

As we know more and more about our world, there is less of a need for a God, Gods or elements. This non-scientific nonsense about God being a scientist is ridiculous and working from an argument of ignorance. It's religion trying to hold on as phenomenons which could not be explained 200 years go are now scientific facts which the average high school student can explain.

Humans haven't gotten smarter and lost faith. We've gotten more knowledgeable and have lost the need for faith.

 

[FederalRepublic]

*facepalm*

All I am arguing is that through natural selection people have become inclined to believe in what may not exist. In other words, it takes considerably greater effort to be skeptical than it takes to simply believe. The default setting in humans is to believe what you are told, and you have to learn to be skeptical. Once that pattern was established all people had to do was suggest the existence of God and people were more prone to believe it than be skeptical of it due how they evolved. Think of how children believe in Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy.

Why is this such a hard concept for people to grasp?

*facepalm* back at ya'.

The people who were naturally selected out of existence were not eaten because they were skeptical. They were eaten because they ignored the noise.

You're arguing that natural selection has led to humans being cautious, but that does not explain why anybody would make something up just so they had something to be cautious of. The tiger was real, even if it wasn't always the thing that made the noise.

 

[Hatuey]

*facepalm* back at ya'.

The people who were naturally selected out of existence were not eaten because they were skeptical. They were eaten because they ignored the noise.

You're arguing that natural selection has led to humans being cautious, but that does not explain why anybody would make something up just so they had something to be cautious of. The tiger was real, even if it wasn't always the thing that made the noise.

It's silly to make the argument out to be 'making something up'. That means there is no basis for it whatsoever. In reality religion regardless of what it is, fulfills the very human need to make sense out of the noise when you lack the evidence to make an accurate decision on what the noise actually is. So there is a basis for it and it's called 'ignorance'. With each new religion we see the continuing pattern where people are trying to make sense of things they can't explain. Most people couldn't explain thunder in scientific terms. So it made sense for them to say that the reason was an angry deity in the sky. Once we understood the causes and conditions in which thunder is produced, there was no need to say that it was an angry deity in the sky. Religion provides answers when one's own knowledge of the world can't.

As far as natural selection leading humans to be cautious goes. Yes, it does explain why humanity needed to create religion. Religion provides a framework within which humans can operate and feel safe that if they do certain acts, they will be rewarded and not punished. Praying every day keeps you in the good graces of God and out of danger. Only we know that's not really true because people who pray every single day could still be eaten by lions, wolves and bears. Natural selection, ie. the daily dangers of life over an extended period of time, has indeed led to us ignorant humans, as the most intelligent species on the planet, to create a set of guidelines for how to avoid trouble hoping that if we stick to them we'll survive longer.

Religion and Gods is a product of natural selection but guided by our ignorance. Our lack of knowledge 5000 years ago led us to try and explain the world as something which is out of our control but under the control of something else. That something else when pleased gives us the (false) sense that we somehow have more control than we actually do.

 

[FederalRepublic]

It's silly to make the argument out to be 'making something up'. That means there is no basis for it whatsoever. In reality religion regardless of what it is, fulfills the very human need to make sense out of the noise when you lack the evidence to make an accurate decision on what the noise actually is. So there is a basis for it and it's called 'ignorance'. With each new religion we see the continuing pattern where people are trying to make sense of things they can't explain. Most people couldn't explain thunder in scientific terms. So it made sense for them to say that the reason was an angry deity in the sky. Once we understood the causes and conditions in which thunder is produced, there was no need to say that it was an angry deity in the sky. Religion provides answers when one's own knowledge of the world can't.

As far as natural selection leading humans to be cautious goes. Yes, it does explain why humanity needed to create religion. Religion provides a framework within which humans can operate and feel safe that if they do certain acts, they will be rewarded and not punished. Praying every day keeps you in the good graces of God and out of danger. Only we know that's not really true because people who pray every single day could still be eaten by lions, wolves and bears. Natural selection, ie. the daily dangers of life over an extended period of time, has indeed led to us ignorant humans, as the most intelligent species on the planet, to create a set of guidelines for how to avoid trouble hoping that if we stick to them we'll survive longer.

Religion and Gods is a product of natural selection but guided by our ignorance. Our lack of knowledge 5000 years ago led us to try and explain the world as something which is out of our control but under the control of something else. That something else when pleased gives us the (false) sense that we somehow have more control than we actually do.

I agree that religion fulfills a need to explain things we don't understand (this discussion is a pretty good example of that, actually). That does not explain why natural selection bred that need into us. I really don't have answers here, I'm mainly digging so I can understand where you guys are coming from. Would you look at that, another example...

 

[Orion]

The OP is way too complicated.

From an evolution science perspective, once humans became cognitively aware of their own mortality, it was probably traumatic. Spirituality developed as a coping mechanism to downgrade the stress caused to the physical body from such a realization. Most of our behaviours have evolved for survival and coping purposes and this includes the neural processes in our brains. Without physiological ways to process mental (and therefore neurological) trauma, we would have self-destructed as a species a long time ago. Anything we try to do or rationalize within our own minds in order to feel better is a result of millions of years of evolutionary coping mechanisms.

In the psych department of my old university, they would do experiments involving the application of high resonance magnetic fields to certain areas of the brain. There is one small portion of the limbic system responsible for you feeling like a separate, individual person. When the magnetic field is applied to that area, the segment is disabled, and you no longer feel like you. People with a deeply developed sense of spirituality end up activating the spiritual centre of the brain, which creates a sense of oneness and connectedness. Those people handle themselves well during the experiment. People with undeveloped spirituality, such as atheists, completely freak out... because without their individuality, they have no auxiliary method to relate reality to their experience.

Mind you, I count myself as a spiritual person, and science doesn't offer all of the explanations I have looked for... but it does provide some interesting insight. It's also important to note that I am not talking about God, but spirituality as a whole. God is monotheism and is relatively new in the grand scheme; pagan and earth-related religions with polytheistic views pre-date monotheism by a long, long time. God is not a product of natural selection specifically, but spirituality as a whole is.