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Are we hard-wired for religion?
gnomexxx
Member Posts: 2,920
Are we hard-wired for religion?
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Sight unseen: Are we hard-wired for religion?
By Jeffrey Weiss
The Dallas Morning News
Almost every faith centers on a Supernatural Enforcer. An invisible power - a god, ancestral spirits or karma - rewards those who follow the rules and punishes those who don't.
Why do most religions have that in common? It's not inevitable, after all. A faith with a god who is indifferent toward people is simple to imagine. But it's much harder to find.
Believers will say their religion reflects divine will: that's the way God (or something) planned it.
But a less theological explanation finds support from an experiment conducted at a British college psychology department: Maybe that common element of modern religions was the product of Darwinian evolution.
Refreshments are sold on the honor system in the break room at the University of Newcastle - people who get a cup of coffee or tea are supposed to leave money. Researchers found that when they added a picture of eyes above the payment box, more than twice as much money was deposited, compared with weeks when the eyes were replaced by a picture of flowers.
People were subconsciously triggered into acting more honestly, as if they were actually being watched, even though they knew the eyeballs were mere paper and ink.
Those results, published last month in the journal Biology Letters, support a controversial theory that connects prehistoric humans to modern faiths.
The theory says that so many of today's religions feature Supernatural Enforcers because of survival of the fittest. That sort of religion was most successful at prodding people into greater cooperation and honesty, which in turn helped their culture thrive, say the theory's supporters.
If that is true, successful early religions may have developed as they did because of how prehistoric human brains had previously evolved. Our ancestors may have been hard-wired in ways that inclined them to accept the notion of a powerful God (or something) who enforces rules of right and wrong.
Whether this theory gains mainstream acceptance - and it's a long way from that - it represents an increasingly common science strategy. Evolution started as a theory about biology. It's now used in anthropology, psychology, economics and political science to explain how people behave - even how and why they pray.
For this particular theory about religion, scientists started with a hard question: Why are people as honest and cooperative as they are?
In general, people are nicer than they need to be, experiments show. That's not to say some individuals aren't liars or cheats. But many of us show a bit of Good Samaritan, even when we don't know whom we're helping and seem to gain no benefit.
But that seems to contradict evolution theory, because successful individual cheaters should gain a Darwinian advantage. A prehistoric thief who swiped the equivalent of a cup of coffee would have been better off than the honest fellow who "paid" for it. And the thief, by gaining an advantage that improved his odds of survival, would have been more likely to pass on those "selfish" genes.
Relatively successful cultures, on the other hand, seem to be made up of relatively coperative and generous people. Charles Darwin suggested as much in 1871, in "The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex:"
"A tribe including many members who ... were always ready to aid one another, and to sacrifice themselves for the common good, would be victorious over most other tribes; and this would be natural selection."
If that's so, evolution raced in opposite directions, pushing our ancestors toward both selfishness and cooperation. Cooperation may have won by a nose - but why?
A rabbi or priest might say it's because we're created in God's image. But some scientists find a more naturalistic answer in the power of religion, specifically the power of a perceived Supernatural Enforcer to nudge people toward cooperation.
That leads to more hard questions: How did the first Supernatural Enforcer religion appear? Is there something about the way people are put together that made that concept more acceptable?
Maybe so.
Scientists agree that human brains pay special attention to faces. And all kinds of critters - from tropical fish to jungle monkeys to mall shoppers - act more honestly if they think they're being observed, said David Sloan Wilson, an evolutionary biologist at Binghamton University in New York.
Call it the Santa Claus Effect: "He knows when you've been bad or good, so be good for goodness sake."
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Comments
I don't believe that people are "hard-wired" for religion. I think that people are in search of answers that no one seems to be able to provide, and therefore depend on a God to answer them. I think there is nothing wrong with that untill they start pushing their own personal beliefs onto other people that may have found those answers in other places, such as science or within themselves.
Where and when did you find these facts about religion? From books? People? or just the common facts in your mind?
Religion?
If you decide to incorperate the terms for a topic, you first must define what a word or phase means. When that is established then you can go on to explain why what you think is correct, with providing cited books, website, etc.
Also, if you are including your so called religions beliefs, you must do research and define what the actual text is and means.
Anyone can rant and rave about a topic that they consider to be important, but the people who can defend their theory with proof in text or studies and, this is a big one, have no contradictions within their research.
Anyways what you are talking about is the set up of a persons sence of right and wrong. True, most people's sence of right and wrong come from sort of a belief inside a religion. But, if a person does not believe in religion or a so called higher power, they only define their actions on what they believe is right or wrong, which is contradictory, becuse one person's right is another person's wrong.
Our laws in the United States as much of Eurpoe, are based on a religion called Christianity. So if you dont believe in religion, do you believe in laws? Yes. Why? Because, the laws are set up by man, and thus they can change the laws if the right people wanted to.
Religion is not the correct term in your theory. The correct term is Belief. Everyone has beliefs not religion. So before you go on talking about religion, please, use the correct terms.
People have the freedom to choose, do to their free will. If they accept a belief or not, that is their decision.
I will not every force my beliefs onto someone that does not want to believe them, but i will proudly proclaim them to all that I am a Christian, who believes that Jesus Christ died for ours sins and was raised from the dead. But, that is my beliefs, so you can choose to listen to them or not, for I cannot gudge anyone for their freedom to choose.
My point is that a person must do appropriate research before posting anything that could possibly be wrong or right. Use correct terms, defined words and phrases, and cite the research used.
The theory says that so many of today's religions feature Supernatural
Enforcers because of survival of the fittest. That sort of religion was
most successful at prodding people into greater cooperation and
honesty, which in turn helped their culture thrive, say the theory's
supporters.
Who are you ranting to?
I put the link up to the article that the story is from.
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I hope some day we can all put aside our racisms and prejudices and just laugh at people
Well there isn't much need to diss almlostlast's post. It speaks for itself.
*edit* saying that was pretty jack-ass of me. Sorry man.
He said that most likely people would get together to celebrate another year of survival and somewhere in the mix it may have turned into the myth of Jesus.
It would certainly make sense. In a tight knit group such as early nomadic humans were, it would make sense that those who shared a common belief would gain an advantage when it comes to reproduction, we have seen similar cases over and over again in more recent history. Over time, this can and eventually will transfer into a common genetic trait.
the 25th of December was a day of worship in most Peagan religions, Constantine, when he converted the Roman empire to Christianity, kept that day of worship for easier conversion of the people. It wasn't when Jesus was actually born, that is estimated to be some time in march or april, because the spring is the most common time for birth. Jesus isn't a myth though, his holiness? maybe, but not his existance.A little more to the story here, the Roman Empire at the time was a confused jumble when it came to religion. Most people think of the greek gods under new names, that only scratches the surface. The Romans conquered nations not only through conquest, but by making everyone else want to be part of them. A newly aquired part of the country suddenly had access to new trade, new technology usually leaps ahead of their own, and somewhat best of all, they got to keep their culture and beleifs. Every single "pagan" religion the Roman empire came into contact with, they ended up absorbing it.
Such a system has its advantages, but the people of Rome were beginning to fragment apart in terms of culture. They needed a common figurehead and Constantine recognized that. The Christian religion had been made illegal decades ago by another emporer, they worshipped in secret, meeting underground. In spite of this it was growing, and had the potential of becoming a common religion if it could come out of hiding. Constantine obliged, he made christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire, solidifying both his power as a leader and the nation itself in one stroke. It was a brilliant political move. Incidently, Constantine did not become baptised untill he was on his deathbed, some think he finally believed himself, I think they simply waited till he was too weak to protest.
As a part of the change, the emporer incorporated some of the many symbols of the old religions into the new. For example, the image of a certain sun god was that of a bearded man with a glowing disc behind his head, it became their image of Jesus himself, that disc became the halos we see everywhere. The summer and spring pagan holidays kept their date. The Christmas tree, mistletoe, they were both taken from the druids in the north
No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
Hemingway
If you don't wan't people to disagree or argue with you, don't post - That's just arrogant and stupid.
"Correct meanings and terms."
Uhm, care to explain what the correct meanings and terms are? Because I found it not to be confusing or threatning towards my beliefs rather than you whom may have thought it were an attack towards your beliefs?
So in your opinion he's not using the correct meanings and terms because you seem to be confused about what meanings and terms actually MEAN.
Believing in rather vague and superstitious things that are written in the bibe, koran or any other script written by man seems rather stupid, in my opinion - using religion as a tool for fear. opression or any other form of exploitation is horrible - in my opinion... But living by the good values and standards told throughout those writings is good - in my opinion.
Anyways, people will continue being governed blindly by religion and more atrocities will be the outcome, people should really stop thinking based on emotions.
Most people in an arguement whom are firm believers when confronted with these thing as resurecction, jesus "magic" and so on - they are most "taught" since young age to believe in these kind of things and they'll defend their beliefs due to that.
I know that theres a broad variety of believers, whom just believe in the after-life, a higher power and what not and those between to extremists.
I CREATED MYSELF!
"<Claus|Dev> i r pk"
SW:TOR|War40K:DMO|GW2
It is an interesting article, though I disagree with the deductions they have made. First off, I didnt think many religions have "Supernatural Enforcers," just the Judeo-Christian religions. Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, etc are still major religions but dont have a Big Man in the Sky who watches everything you do. Lots of native religions (such as Native Americans and Pacific Islanders) didnt believe in that sort of thing to the best of my knowledge.
But I dont think that people needed religions to cooperate in our early history. It wasnt an option of "Do I cooperate and live, or do I be a pain in the ass and die?" You stayed with your group because human instinct is to be social. Look at any other primate; they all work in groups to survive. Perhaps when we changed from hunter-gatherers to agricultural a religion that could coerce the populace into compliance would be beneficial, but by that time in our history we had already spread across the entire globe. Maybe its kind of like convergent evolution? I dont know, doesnt seem like there is enough evidence to support this theory yet.
What I have always thought was that the first group of humans that evolved began to be religious and thought of some key concepts, such as some supernatural being created the Earth. From there we migrated across the planet over the span of many, many generations. Each generation added something to their religion based on their experiences or lost something along the way. But I dont have any proof to support that so I will not really argue this point to anyone.
One point about the article I dont understand is how they link the study of people giving more money when those eyes were present to prehistoric man. It only shows anything about modern man from what I gathered.
No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
Hemingway
Here's something else to add onto that, which I read here
the year 325 when the Roman Emporer Constantine brought together the
Council of Nicea, forming the basis for many of the traditions of
Christianity as we know it today. Here is my understanding of what went
on:
Perceiving a threat to an Empire in total control of the
Western world from a new religion that preached personal empowerment so
liberating that it gave its followers a spiritual connection great
enough to cause brutal martyrdom to be met with rapturous joy,
Constantine made a decisive and strategically brilliant move... he
co-opted the movement.
The Council of Nicea was formed to find
out what was most empowering about this new Christian movement, then
sift off its most potent gems into secret schools (thereby hiding the
knowledge) and then glean what could be used to blend into their
existing power base in order to keep the movement from totally
unseating their control, as it was originally destined to do. While the
broad history of the co-opting of that truly revolutionary, early
Christianity into a distorted form meant to dominate through fear and
manipulation is outside the scope of this essay, the concept can be
understood simply with the following with a more direct translation of
the Lord's Prayer, now quoted below:
The Lord's Prayer
Translated from Aramaic into English
Rather than from Aramaic to Greek to Latin to English fulfillment, as all is gathered and made whole once again.
I hope some day we can all put aside our racisms and prejudices and just laugh at people
No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
Hemingway
Yeah I almost wish that Dan Brown would write a non-fiction book stating a good deal of facts about the knights Templar. Or at least specify where he found most of the facts which were incorperated into the book. Don't get me wrong the DaVinci Code was an awesome book, I just need factual documentation on things so in history class I can say this is what happened and have evidence behind it. I do thing Dan Brown is ingenious in the way he puts fact with fiction, it almost seems to resemble the bible(please don't take offense.)
I hope some day we can all put aside our racisms and prejudices and just laugh at people
A. We still have not mapped out the majority of the human genetic code, there are thousands of genes we dont have a clue as to their function, just because we haven't yet identified such a gene does not mean its not there.
B. Said genetic trait if it exists is not reported to make a person religious or not, simply that we behave differently if we feel something or someone is watching, even if logic tells us that theres nothing there. Such a thing may LEAD to a predisposition towards religion, but is far from a forcable factor.
C. genetic traits do not always breed true, certain genes are more dominant than others. For example, I have brown hair, no one on either side of my family has had brown hair for the past 3 generations.
D. One cannot "look" at a genetic strand to identify anything, first of all its too small to get any kind of reliable picture, and second a strand of human DNA is extremely long when unwrapped from its protien fold, long enough that it would take years to scan at any kind of efficient speed from end to end.
E. There are only two efficient ways to study what a gene in a multicellular lifeform does, one is to mess with it, screw it up and sit back and watch what happens, this of course is illegal in humans, and rightly so. That leaves us with option two, physical and/or behavioral tests on the macrobiological level. I am not however suggesting that the test shown as an example is a good way to test it, there are many psycological factors that could easily impact the results.
No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
Hemingway
the whole basis of your post is on the fact of "evolution" which the majority of the people in the world don't accept. the majority believe in "Creationism" and yes i believe people are "hard wired" or programmed to know there is a god, cause ultimately we were created to know god the creator and have a relationship with him. that is why we search for something higher, its just often misled.
Defiant
No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
Hemingway
A. We still have not mapped out the majority of the human genetic code, there are thousands of genes we dont have a clue as to their function, just because we haven't yet identified such a gene does not mean its not there.
B. Said genetic trait if it exists is not reported to make a person religious or not, simply that we behave differently if we feel something or someone is watching, even if logic tells us that theres nothing there. Such a thing may LEAD to a predisposition towards religion, but is far from a forcable factor.
C. genetic traits do not always breed true, certain genes are more dominant than others. For example, I have brown hair, no one on either side of my family has had brown hair for the past 3 generations.
D. One cannot "look" at a genetic strand to identify anything, first of all its too small to get any kind of reliable picture, and second a strand of human DNA is extremely long when unwrapped from its protien fold, long enough that it would take years to scan at any kind of efficient speed from end to end.
E. There are only two efficient ways to study what a gene in a multicellular lifeform does, one is to mess with it, screw it up and sit back and watch what happens, this of course is illegal in humans, and rightly so. That leaves us with option two, physical and/or behavioral tests on the macrobiological level. I am not however suggesting that the test shown as an example is a good way to test it, there are many psycological factors that could easily impact the results.
A. This is true. But since we have not identified it yet, we cannot say "This is genetic." You need proof to say something is true. Arguing that "Just because we havent found it yet doesnt mean its not there" might be true, but its not the same as saying "Its there; we just havent found it." Saying that there is a gene that disposes you towards religion without having any proof whatsoever other than some social psychology experiment does not make it so.
B. I will concede this point. I thought we were arguing on whether or not this gene makes a person religious.
C. While that is true, it would seem unlikely to me that someone who's entire lineage is composed of religious people would possess a different gene. You may have brown hair, but someone back in your family history had brown hair. However, if your family all have blonde hair... I think your mother was banging the mail man. (Little humor, dont be hatin'!).
D. You can view DNA by using a technique called electrophoresis. It is a basic technique that shows you the base pairs of an organisms DNA. If you take a Biology course you will probably do it.
E. I know that you cant really mess with someone's DNA just to try to identify a gene. What I am saying is that SINCE you cannot PROVE the existence of a religion gene, you cannot say that it is there. It very well may be there, but there is no proof to support this. Its just scientific method. If you can prove it, then it is so. If you cant prove it, it may still be so, but it may also not be so, and I hesitate to believe anything until it is proved. Any behavioral studies conducted reflect cultural and psychological influences, not necessarily genetic ones.
Electrophoresis still only lets you look at a tiny portion of DNA at a time, but aside from that we are still moving back into the realm of uncertainties.
My point was never to prove the gene exists, I dont have the recourses to test it myself, and this article has not shown true proof either. I simply wished to show how it does make sense in a loose way, and how it would be possible
No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
Hemingway