Why theism is the norm

[Malcolm McMahon]

When you examine brain size in primates it most strongly correlates to
troop size. That suggests that the evolutionary justification for us carrying
around vast amounts of physically inconvenient head-cheese is mostly about
relating to other human beings. Language is primarily for gossip.
Conversation is a substitute for nit-picking.

I think we understand the world with circuitry primarily designed to
understand people.

Consider how we approach the understanding of novelty. The first question
we ask, when introduced to something new, is what is it *like*. We
understand through simile. First we find something it's like, then we
learn the differences.

What's the primal simile that fits in a brain designed for empathy? "Like
Me". The primal explanation for anything that happens is that somebody
did it. The primal way to understand any phenomenon is animism.

We all say things like "It's going to rain". That "It" is the primal sky
God.


Add to this our psychological neoteny. All domesticated animals are
neotenous, that is carry infantile features, both physical and mental
into adulthood. The human race is, by a long way, the most domesticated
species of all and our neoteny is, likewise, extreme.

And what's the most obvious feature of the thinking of any infant mammal?
Dependency on it's parents. We're *wired* to want parents, who are
omnipotent. When we discover, as teenagers, the limitations of our real
parents we look for substitutes. Some find them for a while in leaders.
Some find them in a paternalist god.

Those, I think, are the reasons why theism is still a majority belief.
We're virtually hardwired for it.

[Christopher A. Lee]

On Wed, 6 Jun 2012 10:47:59 -0700 (PDT), Malcolm McMahon
<malcol...@googlemail.com> wrote:

>We all say things like "It's going to rain". That "It" is the primal sky
>God.

We also say things like "they have discovered" rather than "physicists
have discovered".

I think you are reading something into it that isn't there.

It's just that the way the verb is used requires a pronoun.

[..]

>
>Those, I think, are the reasons why theism is still a majority belief.
>We're virtually hardwired for it.

No.

We're hard wired to absorb programming from our parents.

Religion and its god are taught at the same time as basic vocabulary,
before the child has even learned to think.

Children learn whichever god their parents believe in - and more
importantly those who aren't taught one don't grow up believing in
one.

[Mike Lovell]

On 2012-06-06, Christopher A. Lee <chrisl...@comcast.net> wrote:
>>Those, I think, are the reasons why theism is still a majority belief.
>>We're virtually hardwired for it.
>
> No.
>

> [...]

You don't sit on the fence do you! :-)

--
Jews, Christians & Muslims
The content of your posts will show how much you
really believe God is looking over your shoulder

[Malcolm McMahon]

On Wednesday, 6 June 2012 20:38:17 UTC+1, Christopher A. Lee wrote:
> On Wed, 6 Jun 2012 10:47:59 -0700 (PDT), Malcolm McMahon
> <malcol...@googlemail.com> wrote:
>
> >We all say things like "It's going to rain". That "It" is the primal sky
> >God.
>
> We also say things like "they have discovered" rather than "physicists
> have discovered".

In both cases the very language is structured to imply sentient agency (in the latter case rather more accurately).

>
> I think you are reading something into it that isn't there.
>
> It's just that the way the verb is used requires a pronoun.
>

And why is this so?

> [..]
> >
> >Those, I think, are the reasons why theism is still a majority belief.
> >We're virtually hardwired for it.
>
> No.
>
> We're hard wired to absorb programming from our parents.
>

If it were only that there would be *far* less consistency of religious belief, and religious belief would be far less universal.

Yes, as a domesticated species we are wired to accept memes from the society we live in. Some religion would happen in a more neutral context, as a kind of parasitic meme. But I don't think the universality of it, and the common structure, would exist if it wasn't part of human nature.

> Religion and its god are taught at the same time as basic vocabulary,
> before the child has even learned to think.
>

The specifics, yes. It's like language. We're all born with a "language acquisition mechanism, but the particular language is learned from those around us. The common structure of all human language is a function of the neurology that supports it.

I think religion is the same way.

> Children learn whichever god their parents believe in - and more
> importantly those who aren't taught one don't grow up believing in
> one.

Actually it's often the case that children wind up taking the *opposite* position to their parents. The Atheist's child takes holy orders. Granted they do it mostly to annoy their parents ;-)

[Christopher A. Lee]

On Wed, 6 Jun 2012 13:05:30 -0700 (PDT), Malcolm McMahon

<malcol...@googlemail.com> wrote:

>On Wednesday, 6 June 2012 20:38:17 UTC+1, Christopher A. Lee wrote:
>> On Wed, 6 Jun 2012 10:47:59 -0700 (PDT), Malcolm McMahon
>> <malcol...@googlemail.com> wrote:
>>
>> >We all say things like "It's going to rain". That "It" is the primal sky
>> >God.
>>
>> We also say things like "they have discovered" rather than "physicists
>> have discovered".
>
>In both cases the very language is structured to imply sentient agency (in the latter case rather more accurately).
>
>> I think you are reading something into it that isn't there.
>>
>> It's just that the way the verb is used requires a pronoun.
>
>And why is this so?

It's just the way language evolved - we've got first, second and third
person pronouns - there's no "zero-th person pronoun" form of the
verb.

>> >Those, I think, are the reasons why theism is still a majority belief.
>> >We're virtually hardwired for it.
>>
>> No.
>>
>> We're hard wired to absorb programming from our parents.
>
>If it were only that there would be *far* less consistency of religious
>belief, and religious belief would be far less universal.

Why?

Hindu parents teach their kids the Hindu gods, they don't come up with
them on their own. Same for parents of all the other religions.

And kids whose parents don't teach them gods at all, don't come up
with them.

>Yes, as a domesticated species we are wired to accept memes from
>the society we live in. Some religion would happen in a more neutral
>context, as a kind of parasitic meme. But I don't think the universality
>of it, and the common structure, would exist if it wasn't part of human
>nature.

But it's not universal.

For starters, those of us who weren't taught it, didn't grow up as
believers.

And don't forget the Piraha tribe.

They had no concept of god and weren't interested in what this
missionary (who eventually lost his faith over it) had to say on the
subject. He tried several approaches including trying to find their
creation myths (they didn't have any). When he talked about Jesus they
asked if he'd met this man.

And like most theists he couldn't get around the idea that it was all
irrelevant to some other people.

<http://www.ffrf.org/publications/freethought-today/articles/the-pirahae-people-who-define-happiness-without-god/>

It's a similar story about the missionaries who went to China.

http://www.alternet.org/story/151766/why_the_christian_right_becomes_more_extreme_as_america_grows_more_tolerant?page=entire

The missions were slow getting off the ground and the number of
converts tiny. That was deeply contrary to the expectations of the
missionaries who thought that the inhabitants of these dark lands
would be profoundly grateful to receive the light of the gospel.

“And, that didn’t happen,” Palmer said. “It so didn’t happen on such a
monumental scale that this raised huge questions. The missionaries
were left with only three possible answers: that no one was
interested,” which was unthinkable.

“The second one was that somehow they had failed,” Palmer said. “They
were not able to communicate the gospel, and were failing Jesus. Quite
a few of them had monumental nervous breakdowns. … The average life of
a missionary in inland China in the second half of the Nineteenth
Century was just two years.

“Many of them just fell apart and had to be shipped home and were
basically wrecks thereafter, because they felt they personally had
failed their commission.”

Or the missionaries could see the challenge in a way less disparaging
of the Christian message or their own abilities.

“The third option was … the devil,” Palmer said. “They were not
dealing with ordinary human beings who were not accepting the gospel.
They were dealing with the devil. And, the devil in the form of
anything you wanted, in the form of statues of other gods, Taoist,
Hindu shrines or holy men who wandered the countryside, it didn’t
really matter.

“These forces of evil were actually blocking the poor people who all
wanted to convert but the devil was in the way.”

>> Religion and its god are taught at the same time as basic vocabulary,
>> before the child has even learned to think.
>
>The specifics, yes. It's like language. We're all born with a
>"language acquisition mechanism, but the particular language
>is learned from those around us. The common structure of all
>human language is a function of the neurology that supports it.

Perhaps, but it's all about man being born less developed than other
animals due to the cranium size - a tradeoff between survival of the
mother and the infant.

So development that in other species takes place in the womb during
the final stages of pregnancy is post partum.

Man is a software animal, and that is when the software is implanted.

As for absorbing programming, feral children from places like India
don't have what makes them any more than genetically human - they
think they are and they behave like the animal that raised them.

>I think religion is the same way.

So how do you explain the fact that those who were never taught
religion don't grow up believing in it?

This is fairy common in Western Europe where the demographics mean
that not just parents but grandparents, aunts, uncles and even the
teenage girl next door you pay to baby-sit are likely not to be theist
so it isn't surreptitiously taught.

>> Children learn whichever god their parents believe in - and more
>> importantly those who aren't taught one don't grow up believing in
>> one.
>
>Actually it's often the case that children wind up taking the
>*opposite* position to their parents. The Atheist's child takes
>holy orders. Granted they do it mostly to annoy their parents ;-)

I have yet to meet any atheist who grew up in a theism-free
environment, who ended up believing.

There is simply too much to un-learn and by that time it is just the
stuff of fairy tales.

The first time they come across it, it's a joke and it comes as a
surprise that anybody could take that sort of thing seriously.

But perhaps you can give me examples.

Here's an interesting web page on the asymmetry of conversion...

http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~slocks/conversion_asymmetry.html

[Burkhard]

On Jun 6, 8:38 pm, "Christopher A. Lee" <chrislee95...@comcast.net>
wrote:

> On Wed, 6 Jun 2012 10:47:59 -0700 (PDT), Malcolm McMahon
>

These are two different issues really. one is: is a tendency to form
religious beliefs (of any kind) hard-wired, possibly though evolution?
To this, the answer of many evolutionary biologists is: probably yes.
It explains the empirical fact that religions are pretty much
ubiquitous in human societies Anthropologists such as Donald Brown
( Human Universal 1991) list various forms of religious beliefs
(including, relevant for the OP, the belief to control weather) . This
can't be explained simply by learning and the effects of imperialism -
even when we discover new tribal societies without contact to the
outside world, we typically find religious belief systems of one form
or the other) And we also see that societies where religious activity
of all kinds was actively discouraged for man generations revert very
quickly to sizeable religious communities, see e.g. what happened in
Poland or the Romania.

Evolutionary psychologists have identified proto-religious belief
formation in children that can't be explained by learning (either
because the environment was not religious, or because the religious
beliefs of the child were inconsistent with those of the surrounding
society, and there are also tentative clams for proto-religious
behaviour in other primates.

See for the discussion e.g.
Schloss, J. P. & Murray, M. (ed.) (2009) The Believing Primate:
Scientific, Philosophical, and Theological
Perspectives on the Origin of Religion. Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
and in there particularly the paper by Schloss, "Evolutionary
Theories
of Religion: Science Set Free or Naturalism Run Wild?"

Also worth reading are the works of Jesse Berig on this, e.g.
(2006).
The folk psychology of souls. Behavioural & Brain Sciences, 29,
453-498.
Berig and Parker, B. D. (2006). Children's attributions of
intentions to an
invisible agent. Developmental Psychology, 42, 253-262. with.,
McLeod,
K. A., & Shackelford, T. K. (2005). Reasoning about dead agents
reveals
possible adaptive trends. Human Nature, 16, 360-381.

all that is quite different from adopting a _specific_ religious
belief system. That indeed is largely learned from parents and peers.
You could compare it to language learning: we probably have an inborn
ability to learn languages, and a tendency to do so. But for learning
any specific language, we need environmental input.

[Christopher A. Lee]

And it's refuted by all those of us who ware never raised to be
theist.

We _do_ exist.

>Evolutionary psychologists have identified proto-religious belief
>formation in children that can't be explained by learning (either
>because the environment was not religious, or because the religious
>beliefs of the child were inconsistent with those of the surrounding
>society, and there are also tentative clams for proto-religious
>behaviour in other primates.

Why haven't they talked with those of us who were never raised to be
theist?

We _do_ exist.

>See for the discussion e.g.
> Schloss, J. P. & Murray, M. (ed.) (2009) The Believing Primate:
>Scientific, Philosophical, and Theological
>Perspectives on the Origin of Religion. Oxford: Oxford University
>Press.

Did they address any of us who were never raised to be theist?

After all, we _do_ exist.

> and in there particularly the paper by Schloss, "Evolutionary
>Theories
> of Religion: Science Set Free or Naturalism Run Wild?"
>
> Also worth reading are the works of Jesse Berig on this, e.g.
>(2006).

Do they tell those of us who weren't realised to be these, that we
don't exist?

How do they explain us?

How do they explain the Piraha tribe?

> The folk psychology of souls. Behavioural & Brain Sciences, 29,
>453-498.
> Berig and Parker, B. D. (2006). Children's attributions of
>intentions to an
> invisible agent. Developmental Psychology, 42, 253-262. with.,
>McLeod,
> K. A., & Shackelford, T. K. (2005). Reasoning about dead agents
>reveals
> possible adaptive trends. Human Nature, 16, 360-381.
>
>all that is quite different from adopting a _specific_ religious
>belief system. That indeed is largely learned from parents and peers.
>You could compare it to language learning: we probably have an inborn
>ability to learn languages, and a tendency to do so. But for learning
>any specific language, we need environmental input.

Did they talk to any of us who were never raised to be theist?

Or did they hide their heads in the sand?

Like too many people who are presented with us as counter-examples?

[Alex W.]

On Wed, 6 Jun 2012 13:05:30 -0700 (PDT), Malcolm McMahon wrote:

> On Wednesday, 6 June 2012 20:38:17 UTC+1, Christopher A. Lee wrote:
>> On Wed, 6 Jun 2012 10:47:59 -0700 (PDT), Malcolm McMahon
>> <malcol...@googlemail.com> wrote:
>>
>>>We all say things like "It's going to rain". That "It" is the primal sky
>>>God.
>>
>> We also say things like "they have discovered" rather than "physicists
>> have discovered".
>
> In both cases the very language is structured to imply sentient agency (in the latter case rather more accurately).

So why, if there is an implicit sentient agency, is it a neutrum?
There are very few gender-neutral deities around -- most of them
are anthropomorphic to a fault, caricatures of humans with
certain traits magnified to grotesque proportions. This includes
sex. Weather deities are, by a very large margin, male.

>
>>
>> I think you are reading something into it that isn't there.
>>
>> It's just that the way the verb is used requires a pronoun.
>>
>
> And why is this so?

That's a peculiarity of language; nothing to do with implicit
belief. Neither Latin nor Greek, for instance, require pronouns
to render the statement "it is going to rain", and yet these
cultures had multiple weather deities.

>
>> [..]
>>>
>>>Those, I think, are the reasons why theism is still a majority belief.
>>>We're virtually hardwired for it.
>>
>> No.
>>
>> We're hard wired to absorb programming from our parents.
>>
>
> If it were only that there would be *far* less consistency of religious belief, and religious belief would be far less universal.
>
> Yes, as a domesticated species we are wired to accept memes from the society we live in. Some religion would happen in a more neutral context, as a kind of parasitic meme. But I don't think the universality of it, and the common structure, would exist if it wasn't part of human nature.
>
>> Religion and its god are taught at the same time as basic vocabulary,
>> before the child has even learned to think.
>>
>
> The specifics, yes. It's like language. We're all born with a "language acquisition mechanism, but the particular language is learned from those around us. The common structure of all human language is a function of the neurology that supports it.

That there is a common basic structure of language is the theory
Chomsky became famous for (his posited "language acquisition
device"), and it is far from proven.

[Alex W.]

On Wed, 06 Jun 2012 12:38:17 -0700, Christopher A. Lee wrote:

>>Those, I think, are the reasons why theism is still a majority belief.
>>We're virtually hardwired for it.
>
> No.
>
> We're hard wired to absorb programming from our parents.

As the OP points out in another post, we also appear to be
hardwired to reject parental programming. If so, why does this
countervailing instinct not undermine the generational
propagation of religion?

>
> Religion and its god are taught at the same time as basic vocabulary,
> before the child has even learned to think.

Two problems with this.

Firstly, it does not explain the demonstrated success of some
religions in proselytising and converting the believers of other
and often radically different religious models. Christianity has
been phenomenally adept at overcoming and destroying the belief
systems of native societies that may not even have known gods
before the first missionary set foot on their soil. How does
paental programming explain the ease with which ancestor worship
or animist spirit religions were defeated?

Secondly, the specific instance of ex-Communist countries. How
can parental programming explain the massive resurgence of belief
in people who have not had such parental indoctrination for
several generations, where in fact all their sources of
information and programming have been determinedly and
comprehensively a-religous and a-theist for almost 90 years?

[Alex W.]

On Wed, 06 Jun 2012 15:44:49 -0700, Christopher A. Lee wrote:

> On Wed, 6 Jun 2012 14:51:36 -0700 (PDT), Burkhard
> <undesira...@gmail.com> wrote:


>>>
>>> Children learn whichever god their parents believe in - and more
>>> importantly those who aren't taught one don't grow up believing in
>>> one.
>>
>>These are two different issues really. one is: is a tendency to form
>>religious beliefs (of any kind) hard-wired, possibly though evolution?
>>To this, the answer of many evolutionary biologists is: probably yes.
>>It explains the empirical fact that religions are pretty much
>>ubiquitous in human societies Anthropologists such as Donald Brown
>>( Human Universal 1991) list various forms of religious beliefs
>>(including, relevant for the OP, the belief to control weather) . This
>>can't be explained simply by learning and the effects of imperialism -
>>even when we discover new tribal societies without contact to the
>>outside world, we typically find religious belief systems of one form
>>or the other) And we also see that societies where religious activity
>>of all kinds was actively discouraged for man generations revert very
>>quickly to sizeable religious communities, see e.g. what happened in
>>Poland or the Romania.
>
> And it's refuted by all those of us who ware never raised to be
> theist.
>
> We _do_ exist.

But that is where the problem lies: you exist, but so do tens of
millions who were born and raised just like you, and yet they
caught religion the moment the iron curtain fell. What explains
their conversion?

[Alex W.]

On Wed, 06 Jun 2012 15:44:49 -0700, Christopher A. Lee wrote:

>

> Did they address any of us who were never raised to be theist?
>
> After all, we _do_ exist.

OK, then, so where does religion come from?
There must have been a time when these deities were created in
the minds of our ancestors, when our forefathers (and -mothers)
caught the faith bug. Obviously, that first generation would not
have been raised in any given belief set, so how did they dream
up their pantheon?

[Christopher A. Lee]

On Thu, 7 Jun 2012 00:31:32 +0100, "Alex W." <ing...@yahoo.co.uk>

wrote:

>On Wed, 6 Jun 2012 13:05:30 -0700 (PDT), Malcolm McMahon wrote:
>
>> On Wednesday, 6 June 2012 20:38:17 UTC+1, Christopher A. Lee wrote:
>>> On Wed, 6 Jun 2012 10:47:59 -0700 (PDT), Malcolm McMahon
>>> <malcol...@googlemail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>>We all say things like "It's going to rain". That "It" is the primal sky
>>>>God.
>>>
>>> We also say things like "they have discovered" rather than "physicists
>>> have discovered".
>>
>> In both cases the very language is structured to imply sentient
>> agency (in the latter case rather more accurately).
>
>So why, if there is an implicit sentient agency, is it a neutrum?
>There are very few gender-neutral deities around -- most of them
>are anthropomorphic to a fault, caricatures of humans with
>certain traits magnified to grotesque proportions. This includes
>sex. Weather deities are, by a very large margin, male.

Latin used "ningit", which is the third person singular, neuter form
meaning "it snows" - but Latin (like modern Greek) didn't use pronouns
as the subject of the verb.

The future tense would be "ningerat" - it will snow"

The French say "il neige", literally "he snows" but that's because
their nouns are either masculineor feminine.

>>> I think you are reading something into it that isn't there.
>>>
>>> It's just that the way the verb is used requires a pronoun.
>>>
>> And why is this so?
>
>That's a peculiarity of language; nothing to do with implicit
>belief. Neither Latin nor Greek, for instance, require pronouns
>to render the statement "it is going to rain", and yet these
>cultures had multiple weather deities.
>
>
>>
>>> [..]
>>>>
>>>>Those, I think, are the reasons why theism is still a majority belief.
>>>>We're virtually hardwired for it.
>>>
>>> No.
>>>
>>> We're hard wired to absorb programming from our parents.
>>>
>>
>> If it were only that there would be *far* less consistency of
>> religious belief, and religious belief would be far less universal.

So why did those of us who were raised in a theism-free zone never
become theists?

>> Yes, as a domesticated species we are wired to accept memes
>> from the society we live in. Some religion would happen in a more
>> neutral context, as a kind of parasitic meme. But I don't think the
>> universality of it, and the common structure, would exist if it
>> wasn't part of human nature.

So why wouldn't it be purely memetic?

And how do you explain those of us weho were never raised to be theist
and never became theist?

>>> Religion and its god are taught at the same time as basic vocabulary,
>>> before the child has even learned to think.
>>
>> The specifics, yes. It's like language. We're all born with a
>> "language acquisition mechanism, but the particular language
>> is learned from those around us. The common structure of all
>> human language is a function of the neurology that supports it.
>
>That there is a common basic structure of language is the theory
>Chomsky became famous for (his posited "language acquisition
>device"), and it is far from proven.

Chomsky was refuted by the Piraha tribe.

It was only a small tribe, but their language was/is a
counter-example.

They're the same tribe that didn't have the concept of a god and
weren't interested in it, causing the missionary (who was also a
linguist and an anthropologist) to lose his faith.

Counter-examples might be inconvenient but they need to be addressed.

[Alex W.]

On Wed, 06 Jun 2012 16:48:07 -0700, Christopher A. Lee wrote:

> On Thu, 7 Jun 2012 00:31:32 +0100, "Alex W." <ing...@yahoo.co.uk>
> wrote:
>
>>On Wed, 6 Jun 2012 13:05:30 -0700 (PDT), Malcolm McMahon wrote:
>>
>>> On Wednesday, 6 June 2012 20:38:17 UTC+1, Christopher A. Lee wrote:
>>>> On Wed, 6 Jun 2012 10:47:59 -0700 (PDT), Malcolm McMahon
>>>> <malcol...@googlemail.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>We all say things like "It's going to rain". That "It" is the primal sky
>>>>>God.
>>>>
>>>> We also say things like "they have discovered" rather than "physicists
>>>> have discovered".
>>>
>>> In both cases the very language is structured to imply sentient
>>> agency (in the latter case rather more accurately).
>>
>>So why, if there is an implicit sentient agency, is it a neutrum?
>>There are very few gender-neutral deities around -- most of them
>>are anthropomorphic to a fault, caricatures of humans with
>>certain traits magnified to grotesque proportions. This includes
>>sex. Weather deities are, by a very large margin, male.
>
> Latin used "ningit", which is the third person singular, neuter form
> meaning "it snows" - but Latin (like modern Greek) didn't use pronouns
> as the subject of the verb.
>
> The future tense would be "ningerat" - it will snow"

Nitpicking here, but is -bat not the imperfect? Should it not be
-bit for the future tense?

It's been 30 years....

>
> The French say "il neige", literally "he snows" but that's because
> their nouns are either masculineor feminine.

The Germans have another neuter: "es schneit".

[Christopher A. Lee]

On Thu, 7 Jun 2012 00:41:46 +0100, "Alex W." <ing...@yahoo.co.uk>
wrote:

>On Wed, 06 Jun 2012 12:38:17 -0700, Christopher A. Lee wrote:
>
>>>Those, I think, are the reasons why theism is still a majority belief.
>>>We're virtually hardwired for it.
>>
>> No.
>>
>> We're hard wired to absorb programming from our parents.
>
>As the OP points out in another post, we also appear to be
>hardwired to reject parental programming. If so, why does this
>countervailing instinct not undermine the generational
>propagation of religion?

That's the rebellion phase.But the basic programming is still there -
like language and the basic thought processes.

Religion is taught at such an early age it becomes like a program
loaded into flash memory, like a BIOS which wasn't originally hard
coded.

And those who don't have it loaded don't grow up to be theists. There
is simply too much to un-learn when they come across it later in life.

Did you read the "asymmetry of conversion" link I posted?

>> Religion and its god are taught at the same time as basic vocabulary,
>> before the child has even learned to think.
>
>Two problems with this.
>
>Firstly, it does not explain the demonstrated success of some
>religions in proselytising and converting the believers of other
>and often radically different religious models. Christianity has
>been phenomenally adept at overcoming and destroying the belief
>systems of native societies that may not even have known gods
>before the first missionary set foot on their soil. How does
>paental programming explain the ease with which ancestor worship
>or animist spirit religions were defeated?

How is that a problem? They're already theists and already accept the
god concept.

>Secondly, the specific instance of ex-Communist countries. How
>can parental programming explain the massive resurgence of belief
>in people who have not had such parental indoctrination for
>several generations, where in fact all their sources of
>information and programming have been determinedly and
>comprehensively a-religous and a-theist for almost 90 years?

It was already there, under cover.

Now, once again, how do you explain all those of us who were never
taught to be theists and never became thest?

We _do_ exist.

And are counter-examples that can't be swept under the carpet.

[Christopher A. Lee]

On Thu, 7 Jun 2012 00:45:25 +0100, "Alex W." <ing...@yahoo.co.uk>
wrote:

The Russian Orthodox Church was there all the time.

The believers just came out of the closet.

[Christopher A. Lee]

On Thu, 7 Jun 2012 00:48:31 +0100, "Alex W." <ing...@yahoo.co.uk>
wrote:

>On Wed, 06 Jun 2012 15:44:49 -0700, Christopher A. Lee wrote:
>
>>
>> Did they address any of us who were never raised to be theist?
>>
>> After all, we _do_ exist.
>
>OK, then, so where does religion come from?

For f*ck's sake - it evolved over millennia.

Starting with just-so stories around the campfire. Or bed-time stories
to children.

"Daddy, what are those lights in the sky?"

"Daddy, where did the leopard get its spots?"

Those who told them didn't have to believe them,

But some gullible person did, or somebody who didn't told them to
their children who believed.

>There must have been a time when these deities were created in
>the minds of our ancestors, when our forefathers (and -mothers)
>caught the faith bug. Obviously, that first generation would not
>have been raised in any given belief set, so how did they dream
>up their pantheon?

Do you honestly think that the stories required real superbeings?

[Alex W.]

Poland is, I feel, a special case. Catholicism never went away
in that country. It was not suppressed as rigorously as
elsewhere, and the local church managed to redefine themselves as
a focal point for resistance to the Socialist regime. This gave
them a legitimacy and the support to remain a vital part of
Polish society. Interestingly, now that their political role has
vanished along with the regime, their power has waned quite
considerably and in a very short time.

Another argument for the evolutionary aspect is that religion
was, and remains in some parts, a valuable survival tool for
communities. Put simply, a community with strong identity and
strong bonds will have a better chance to survive. Conformity
and homogeneity are serious advantages, and success will breed
success. In addition, it functioned as a repository for communal
knowledge about anything from dietary practices and farming
advice to the way past challenges to the community were resolved.
This, too, would have been a major boon to struggling subsistence
societies.

[Christopher A. Lee]

On Thu, 7 Jun 2012 01:11:22 +0100, "Alex W." <ing...@yahoo.co.uk>

More like fifty for me - I was extrapolating back from modern Italian
- eg where Luciano Pavarotti sings "Vincero" (I will win) in Nessun
Dorma.

>> The French say "il neige", literally "he snows" but that's because
>> their nouns are either masculineor feminine.
>
>The Germans have another neuter: "es schneit".

That's one of the things which fascinates me, the roots of English and
other languages.

"Snow" comes from the German tribes that came to England after the
Romans pulled out.

Often there are words with Latin roots that mean basically the same
thing but with subtle differences.

But I can't think of one for snow in English from the Latin root.

[Tronscend]

Hi,

I generally agree. Whereever so, snippage occurs.
However ...

"Malcolm McMahon" <malcol...@googlemail.com> skrev i melding
news:2aa27e3e-6b50-4d88...@googlegroups.com...

> Language is primarily for gossip.

Language can be for group coordination.
That includes gossip as one tool, but has a wider reach.

>The first question we ask, when introduced to something new, is what is it
>*like*. We
understand through simile. First we find something it's like, then we
learn the differences.

"Definitio per genus proximum et differentiam specificam"...
Yup.

> We all say things like "It's going to rain".
> That "It" is the primal sky God.

Sry, here you are confusing "language" with "English".
The latter is a too narrow base for the general case.

....

I'd like to add one more factor.
General: Every level of cognition has rules pertaining to the specific
level.

There is the "understanding/explanation" level...
I have to resort to imagery to present this:
(sort of "A")) Something like a "template" with "fill-in fields", where most
of the fields, if not all, contain a "default value entry", which it is up
to experience to change. Experience may even change the number of fields,
etc. (risking exploding the analogy here....).
(kinda "B") One of these template fields is the "Why is ...". We crave
explanations.
If we don't know any and/or can't find any, we make them up.
Like "whay are we here/what is the meaning of life" question.
It is simply an extrapolation from the smallest and most mundane questions
like
"Why do we eat?"
"In order not to starve."
"Why don't we want to starve?"
"Well ... "
The series of questions (and their increasing scope) does not have any limit
in the mind of those who do not know, yet command language. Hence, Just-So
stories are born.

Add to that (like, "C", you know), the rules of narratology; in order to
stay intersting, the heroes must have identifiable traits, the villains must
threaten primeval fears, the action must be relentlessly paced. Stories are
the best ways to transmit material to learners.

A dash of unhappy psychology (hopes and fears, like the parents you
mentioned),
and a smidgeon of happy psychology: everything is about ME - i.e. you get a
role
in the cosmic drama. If you do not sort garbage, The FSM, with its many and
mighty arms, must do it for you.

And so on. There are, perhaps, many roots of religion.
More brain study will perhaps give us more knowledge ...

[Answer_42]

On Jun 6, 4:05 pm, Malcolm McMahon <malcolm.m...@googlemail.com>
wrote:

[..]

> > >Those, I think, are the reasons why theism is still a majority belief.
> > >We're virtually hardwired for it.
>
> > No.
>
> > We're hard wired to absorb programming from our parents.
>
> If it were only that there would be *far* less consistency of
> religious belief, and religious belief would be far less universal.
>
> Yes, as a domesticated species we are wired to accept memes
> from the society we live in. Some religion would happen in a
> more neutral context, as a kind of parasitic meme. But I don't
> think the universality of it, and the common structure, would
> exist if it wasn't part of human nature.

Yes, I think you're on to something ... It makes a lot of sense to me.
The problem when talking to theist about this is that they
automatically go to "See, god exists, or else we would not be like
that..." They have difficulty disassociating natural biological traits
from the environment.

> > Religion and its god are taught at the same time as basic vocabulary,
> > before the child has even learned to think.
>
> The specifics, yes. It's like language. We're all born with a "language
> acquisition mechanism, but the particular language is learned from
> those around us. The common structure of all human language is a
> function of the neurology that supports it.
>
> I think religion is the same way.

Yes, it's like the imaginary friend kids have. The brain is built to
allow something like that to happen. It seems a natural thing--for
kids. Adult's gods are like that as well, but of course, to adults, it
is not the same thing because they are adults, and, well, adults
simply do not have imaginary friends!

[Christopher A. Lee]

On Thu, 7 Jun 2012 05:29:12 -0700 (PDT), Answer_42
<ipu.be...@gmail.com> wrote:


>
>Yes, it's like the imaginary friend kids have. The brain is built to
>allow something like that to happen. It seems a natural thing--for
>kids. Adult's gods are like that as well, but of course, to adults, it
>is not the same thing because they are adults, and, well, adults
>simply do not have imaginary friends!

Kids know their imaginary friends are made up.

[Malcolm McMahon]

On Thursday, 7 June 2012 04:23:43 UTC+1, Tronscend wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I generally agree. Whereever so, snippage occurs.
> However ...
>
> "Malcolm McMahon" <malcol...@googlemail.com> skrev i melding
> news:2aa27e3e-6b50-4d88...@googlegroups.com...
>
> > Language is primarily for gossip.
> Language can be for group coordination.
> That includes gossip as one tool, but has a wider reach.

Yes. In fact the traditional assumption was that language evolved for coordinating hunting etc., but hunters of the quadrupedal persuasion don't seem to much feel the lack.

There's a certain logic though, when your troop size rises to, say, 100, then group bonding through mutual grooming becomes impractical. There aren't enough hours in the day to evaluate the status of all the individuals around you directly.

Hence gossip becomes essential to survival.

>
> > We all say things like "It's going to rain".
> > That "It" is the primal sky God.
>
> Sry, here you are confusing "language" with "English".
> The latter is a too narrow base for the general case.

Well, as far as introspection is concerned that's the only language I have access to.

But similar structure seems to be common to many languages.

We could use a passive sentence like "Rain is immanent" but we don't, we phrase it in terms of *agency*.

Furthermore we very often anthropomorphise that agent, as in "If I put the washing on the line its sure to rain." Here we're ascribing human attributes of mischief and perversity to the undefined "it".

Perhaps Murphy's law is the most widely held superstition.

>
> ....
>
> I'd like to add one more factor.
> General: Every level of cognition has rules pertaining to the specific
> level.
>
> There is the "understanding/explanation" level...
> I have to resort to imagery to present this:
> (sort of "A")) Something like a "template" with "fill-in fields", where most
> of the fields, if not all, contain a "default value entry", which it is up
> to experience to change. Experience may even change the number of fields,
> etc. (risking exploding the analogy here....).
> (kinda "B") One of these template fields is the "Why is ...". We crave
> explanations.
> If we don't know any and/or can't find any, we make them up.
> Like "whay are we here/what is the meaning of life" question.
> It is simply an extrapolation from the smallest and most mundane questions
> like
> "Why do we eat?"
> "In order not to starve."
> "Why don't we want to starve?"
> "Well ... "
> The series of questions (and their increasing scope) does not have any limit
> in the mind of those who do not know, yet command language. Hence, Just-So
> stories are born.

We like to think of our decisions as dictated by our own logic, but no system of logic produces conclusions without axioms external to that system.

My favourite quote (which I wish I had an origin for) is:

"The great thing about being a rational being is that it allows you to come up with a logical reason for whatever it is you've decided to do."

God's can certainly be useful in formulating these rationalisations of behaviour.

>
> Add to that (like, "C", you know), the rules of narratology; in order to
> stay intersting, the heroes must have identifiable traits, the villains must
> threaten primeval fears, the action must be relentlessly paced. Stories are
> the best ways to transmit material to learners.
>
> A dash of unhappy psychology (hopes and fears, like the parents you
> mentioned),
> and a smidgeon of happy psychology: everything is about ME - i.e. you get a
> role
> in the cosmic drama. If you do not sort garbage, The FSM, with its many and
> mighty arms, must do it for you.
>
> And so on. There are, perhaps, many roots of religion.
> More brain study will perhaps give us more knowledge ...

Gods and saints have a lot in common with celebrities. There is a spurious sense of acquaintance.

[Malcolm McMahon]

On Wednesday, 6 June 2012 22:21:49 UTC+1, Christopher A. Lee wrote:
> On Wed, 6 Jun 2012 13:05:30 -0700 (PDT), Malcolm McMahon
> <malcol...@googlemail.com> wrote:
>
> >On Wednesday, 6 June 2012 20:38:17 UTC+1, Christopher A. Lee wrote:
> >> On Wed, 6 Jun 2012 10:47:59 -0700 (PDT), Malcolm McMahon
> >> <malcol...@googlemail.com> wrote:
> >>
> >> >We all say things like "It's going to rain". That "It" is the primal sky
> >> >God.
> >>
> >> We also say things like "they have discovered" rather than "physicists
> >> have discovered".
> >
> >In both cases the very language is structured to imply sentient agency (in the latter case rather more accurately).
> >
> >> I think you are reading something into it that isn't there.
> >>
> >> It's just that the way the verb is used requires a pronoun.
> >
> >And why is this so?
>
> It's just the way language evolved - we've got first, second and third
> person pronouns - there's no "zero-th person pronoun" form of the
> verb.

But don't forget that language evolved in the context of the human brain. The syntax isn't something that was arrived at randomly. I think it reflects the way we structure our thinking.

We could say "Rain is immanent", but we don't. We assume an agency.

>
> >> >Those, I think, are the reasons why theism is still a majority belief.
> >> >We're virtually hardwired for it.
> >>
> >> No.
> >>
> >> We're hard wired to absorb programming from our parents.
> >
> >If it were only that there would be *far* less consistency of religious
> >belief, and religious belief would be far less universal.
>
> Why?
>
> Hindu parents teach their kids the Hindu gods, they don't come up with
> them on their own. Same for parents of all the other religions.
>

And yet, the Hindu religion isn't so very different from, say, Christianity. It even has a trinity at the top which the more sophisticated say are "aspects" of one godhead. Minor Hindu gods serve very much the same function as saints.

It's a bit more sophisticated, of course, but that's because it's been around longer.

> And kids whose parents don't teach them gods at all, don't come up
> with them.
>

There are layers of superstition. A child that somehow avoids contact with religious ideas (pretty rare, I should think) can't be expected to recapitulate the whole historical development of a religion, but I'd expect to see superstition and animism, the bedrock on which the religious edifice is built.

He'll probably grow up to consciously reject all this stuff, but it'll still be lurking.

> >Yes, as a domesticated species we are wired to accept memes from
> >the society we live in. Some religion would happen in a more neutral
> >context, as a kind of parasitic meme. But I don't think the universality
> >of it, and the common structure, would exist if it wasn't part of human
> >nature.
>
> But it's not universal.
>
> For starters, those of us who weren't taught it, didn't grow up as
> believers.
>
> And don't forget the Piraha tribe.
>
> They had no concept of god and weren't interested in what this
> missionary (who eventually lost his faith over it) had to say on the
> subject. He tried several approaches including trying to find their
> creation myths (they didn't have any). When he talked about Jesus they
> asked if he'd met this man.
>

Yet they believe in spirits, which could invest animals, objects and people. These seem to be people who give no thought for either the past or the future, hence they scarcely need creation myths.

Tribal religion does not always come up with a chief God. A "Great Spirit", and if they do they don't always regard it as useful information. It's hard to believe a Great Spirit will actually give you its attention (which I think is why Catholics pray to saints, and Hindus to smaller deities).

And yet they may believe that many things have supernatural agency.

> And like most theists he couldn't get around the idea that it was all
> irrelevant to some other people.

Many still can't c.f. alt.atheism.

>
> <http://www.ffrf.org/publications/freethought-today/articles/the-pirahae-people-who-define-happiness-without-god/>
>

[Christopher A. Lee]

On Thu, 7 Jun 2012 10:11:26 -0700 (PDT), Malcolm McMahon

<malcol...@googlemail.com> wrote:

>On Wednesday, 6 June 2012 22:21:49 UTC+1, Christopher A. Lee wrote:
>> On Wed, 6 Jun 2012 13:05:30 -0700 (PDT), Malcolm McMahon
>> <malcol...@googlemail.com> wrote:
>>
>> >On Wednesday, 6 June 2012 20:38:17 UTC+1, Christopher A. Lee wrote:
>> >> On Wed, 6 Jun 2012 10:47:59 -0700 (PDT), Malcolm McMahon
>> >> <malcol...@googlemail.com> wrote:
>> >>
>> >> >We all say things like "It's going to rain". That "It" is the primal sky
>> >> >God.

Which still has to be supported.

>> >> We also say things like "they have discovered" rather than "physicists
>> >> have discovered".
>> >
>> >In both cases the very language is structured to imply sentient agency
>> >(in the latter case rather more accurately).
>> >
>> >> I think you are reading something into it that isn't there.
>> >>
>> >> It's just that the way the verb is used requires a pronoun.
>> >
>> >And why is this so?
>>
>> It's just the way language evolved - we've got first, second and third
>> person pronouns - there's no "zero-th person pronoun" form of the
>> verb.
>
>But don't forget that language evolved in the context of the human brain.
>The syntax isn't something that was arrived at randomly. I think it reflects
>the way we structure our thinking.

So support this.

>We could say "Rain is immanent", but we don't. We assume an agency.

So support this.

[Christopher A. Lee]

On Thu, 07 Jun 2012 12:49:22 -0500, Robert Parker
<robpa...@gmail.com> wrote:

>On Wed, 06 Jun 2012 17:13:56 -0700, "Christopher A. Lee"
><chrisl...@comcast.net> wrote:
>
>>>But that is where the problem lies: you exist, but so do tens of
>>>millions who were born and raised just like you, and yet they
>>>caught religion the moment the iron curtain fell. What explains
>>>their conversion?

Note that he didn't answer my point about those of us who weren't
raised to be theist and didn't grow up theist, even though it refuted
by counter-example the original claim that the human brain is hard
wired for theism and religion

>>The Russian Orthodox Church was there all the time.
>>
>>The believers just came out of the closet.
>

>Thank you, I have argued that for years.

It totally amazes me how believers miss the obvious.

The same poster couldn't grasp that it didn't take a real god for the
earliest religious beliefs, just somebody telling stories that
somebody else, very likely a child, believed.

But then believers will say anything rather than admit that god-belief
and religion have to be taught.

They can't seem to think beyond their own god and their own religion.

Kids raised in polytheistic societies don't/didn't believe in anything
remotely like the previous poster's creator-monotheist god. Or its
religions.

Eg neither the ancient Greek gods, the Norse gods nor the Hindu
pantheon are what he would recognise as god(s).

These gods aren't omnipotent and have all the human failings. Their
religions are completely different.

[Christopher A. Lee]

On Thu, 07 Jun 2012 12:38:05 -0500, Robert Parker
<robpa...@gmail.com> wrote:


>>all that is quite different from adopting a _specific_ religious
>>belief system. That indeed is largely learned from parents and peers.
>>You could compare it to language learning: we probably have an inborn
>>ability to learn languages, and a tendency to do so. But for learning
>>any specific language, we need environmental input.
>

>Have you considered mans tendency to not admit "I don't know" and say very
>wisely "God did it". IOW the god of gaps.

I still want to know how many people who had not been taught to be
theist as children and didn't grow up theist, his authorities asked.

Of whom there are plenty of examples here.

Because we are counter-examples to his claim that our brains are
hard-wired for god-belief and religion.

Which should be acknowledged not ignored or dismissed.

As are the Piraha tribe who neither had nor needed a god or religion,
which was such a shock to a missionary that he lost his faith.

[Answer_42]

On Jun 7, 9:22 am, "Christopher A. Lee" <chrislee95...@comcast.net>
wrote:

> On Thu, 7 Jun 2012 05:29:12 -0700 (PDT), Answer_42
>

> <ipu.belie...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >Yes, it's like the imaginary friend kids have. The brain is built to
> >allow something like that to happen. It seems a natural thing--for
> >kids. Adult's gods are like that as well, but of course, to adults, it
> >is not the same thing because they are adults, and, well, adults
> >simply do not have imaginary friends!
>
> Kids know their imaginary friends are made up.

Not at first... and not always...
Adults carry on with the delusion that their imaginary friend is
real...

[Christopher A. Lee]

On Thu, 07 Jun 2012 12:50:25 -0500, Robert Parker
<robpa...@gmail.com> wrote:

>On Wed, 06 Jun 2012 15:44:49 -0700, "Christopher A. Lee"
><chrisl...@comcast.net> wrote:
>
>>>all that is quite different from adopting a _specific_ religious
>>>belief system. That indeed is largely learned from parents and peers.
>>>You could compare it to language learning: we probably have an inborn
>>>ability to learn languages, and a tendency to do so. But for learning
>>>any specific language, we need environmental input.
>>
>>Did they talk to any of us who were never raised to be theist?
>>
>>Or did they hide their heads in the sand?
>>
>>Like too many people who are presented with us as counter-examples?
>

>Maybe because you are so rare. I have never encountered a person that
>wasn't at least exposed to religion even with out being forced to go to
>church. Years ago when I was active in Church and taught the young boys
>Sunday school. Many parents used the church as a free day care on Sunday
>morning. As a child religion was a common subject for discussion.

One of the atheist(?) trolls here who has stalked me in the past
dismisses me because I am so rare that "I don't count" - even though
I'm not the only one here.

We're like a control group, and the fact that they didn't use one even
though on exists, renders the research worthless.

When I was a boy it was less common than it is now.

But my parents were atheist, and we lived with my atheist grandmother
(born 1887) and aunt who baby-sat us when my parents went out. I
never met my atheist grandfather (born 1888) on that side because he
died when my mother was a little girl (she's 92 next month), Their
parents were atheist, as was at least one great-great... going back to
the early 1800s.

It's quite common these days in Western Europe and the UK where
religion isn't as pervasive and the demographics are such that many
kids have atheist parents and grandparents. Even the teenage girl next
door who gets paid for baby sitting is more likely to be atheist.

And they don't grow up to be theist or religious either.

[walksalone]

Malcolm McMahon <malcol...@googlemail.com> wrote in
news:306d176f-d7b2-4b51...@googlegroups.com:

> On Thursday, 7 June 2012 04:23:43 UTC+1, Tronscend wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> I generally agree. Whereever so, snippage occurs.
>> However ...
>>
>> "Malcolm McMahon" <malcol...@googlemail.com> skrev i melding
>> news:2aa27e3e-6b50-4d88...@googlegroups.com...
>>
>> > Language is primarily for gossip.
>> Language can be for group coordination.
>> That includes gossip as one tool, but has a wider reach.
>
> Yes. In fact the traditional assumption was that language evolved for
> coordinating hunting etc., but hunters of the quadrupedal persuasion
> don't seem to much feel the lack.
>
> There's a certain logic though, when your troop size rises to, say,
> 100, then group bonding through mutual grooming becomes impractical.
> There aren't enough hours in the day to evaluate the status of all the
> individuals around you directly.

Point of weird information. Among aboriginal NA Tribes, about 23 adult
males is all the band could deal with. Even tghe grolup I summered with
only had 19 adult males. Seems their egos get ion the way if there are
too damn many of them.

> Hence gossip becomes essential to survival.

Thde Chinese telephone comes to mind.
How can you tell a woman is really old? She forgets her gossip.

>> > We all say things like "It's going to rain".
>> > That "It" is the primal sky God.
>>
>> Sry, here you are confusing "language" with "English".
>> The latter is a too narrow base for the general case.
>
> Well, as far as introspection is concerned that's the only language I
> have access to.
>
> But similar structure seems to be common to many languages.
>
> We could use a passive sentence like "Rain is immanent" but we don't,
> we phrase it in terms of *agency*.
>
> Furthermore we very often anthropomorphise that agent, as in "If I put
> the washing on the line its sure to rain." Here we're ascribing human
> attributes of mischief and perversity to the undefined "it".
>
> Perhaps Murphy's law is the most widely held superstition.

Or the most accurate.

walksalone who has learned to accept that what I think I heard may not be
what I heard. That's my story & I'm sticking to it.

It is an ironic habit of human beings to run faster when we have lost our
way. -Rollo May, psychologist (1909-1994)

>> I'd like to add one more factor.
>> General: Every level of cognition has rules pertaining to the
>> specific level.

snip

[Alex W.]

IIRC, "it will rain" is "pluviabit".
Don't quote me on this, though.

>
>>> The French say "il neige", literally "he snows" but that's because
>>> their nouns are either masculineor feminine.
>>
>>The Germans have another neuter: "es schneit".
>
> That's one of the things which fascinates me, the roots of English and
> other languages.
>
> "Snow" comes from the German tribes that came to England after the
> Romans pulled out.
>
> Often there are words with Latin roots that mean basically the same
> thing but with subtle differences.

Or, more confusing even, are words in different languages that
mean the same thing but are derived from different Latin roots.
The French "explication" is the English "explanation", and the
English "exhibition" is the French "exposition" which word, i
turn, means something quite unrelated in English.

>
> But I can't think of one for snow in English from the Latin root.

The thesaurus does not have one either. Presumably, snow was one
of these basics that the Norman conquerors did not experience...
:-)

[Alex W.]

Sorry, but I find that a highly improbable suggestion. Obviously
the Orthodox church did survive, but to suppose that literally
hundreds of millions of Christians throughout Eastern Europe
maanging to keep secret, preserve and pass on their faith through
several generations? And not only the Russian Orthodox church at
that, but also various flavours of Catholics and several
independent Orthodox churches (Serbia, Ukraine, Bulgaria et al)?
Surely that is rather far-fetched.

[Alex W.]

On Wed, 06 Jun 2012 17:19:06 -0700, Christopher A. Lee wrote:

> On Thu, 7 Jun 2012 00:48:31 +0100, "Alex W." <ing...@yahoo.co.uk>
> wrote:
>
>>On Wed, 06 Jun 2012 15:44:49 -0700, Christopher A. Lee wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> Did they address any of us who were never raised to be theist?
>>>
>>> After all, we _do_ exist.
>>
>>OK, then, so where does religion come from?
>
> For f*ck's sake - it evolved over millennia.
>
> Starting with just-so stories around the campfire. Or bed-time stories
> to children.
>
> "Daddy, what are those lights in the sky?"
>
> "Daddy, where did the leopard get its spots?"
>
> Those who told them didn't have to believe them,
>
> But some gullible person did, or somebody who didn't told them to
> their children who believed.

So someone, at some point -- and probably a great many someones,
independently of each other in cultures all over the world --
would have had to invent the concept of supernatural beings from
scratch. Theistic abiogenesis.

How do you conceive of something of which you cannot conceive
because there is no frame of reference, nothing whatever that is
comparable, nothing that could by association or suggestion put
the notion of a superbeing into your head? They would quite
literally have no words to describe such a creature.

>
>>There must have been a time when these deities were created in
>>the minds of our ancestors, when our forefathers (and -mothers)
>>caught the faith bug. Obviously, that first generation would not
>>have been raised in any given belief set, so how did they dream
>>up their pantheon?
>
> Do you honestly think that the stories required real superbeings?

As we are discussing the creation of gods, yes. How does one
tell a story in which responsibility for rainfall is assigned to
a god without actually mentioning such a superbeing?

[Christopher A. Lee]

On Thu, 7 Jun 2012 21:22:37 +0100, "Alex W." <ing...@yahoo.co.uk>

Hardly.

If it were really spontaneous you would have expected equal quantities
of all the different Christian, Jewish, Islamic, Hindu etc
denominations.

But theists never consider the obvious, even "Christians manqué"
Instead they all just happened to "spontaneously" believe the local
church which had survived throughout the communist period.

It wasn't a theism-free environment. The churches survived under
government supervision, and religion was practiced at home.

Now explain why you dismiss all those who grew up in a theism-free
environment and were never taught to be theist in the first place, who
never grew up theist.

Instead of dismissing us.

And stop pretending I am the only one when you know perfectly well
there are other examples in alt.atheism, and even the Brazilian Piraha
tribe who don't even have the concept of gods or creation myths.

[Christopher A. Lee]

On Thu, 7 Jun 2012 21:27:54 +0100, "Alex W." <ing...@yahoo.co.uk>

wrote:

>On Wed, 06 Jun 2012 17:19:06 -0700, Christopher A. Lee wrote:
>
>> On Thu, 7 Jun 2012 00:48:31 +0100, "Alex W." <ing...@yahoo.co.uk>
>> wrote:
>>
>>>On Wed, 06 Jun 2012 15:44:49 -0700, Christopher A. Lee wrote:
>>>
>>>>
>>>> Did they address any of us who were never raised to be theist?
>>>>
>>>> After all, we _do_ exist.
>>>
>>>OK, then, so where does religion come from?
>>
>> For f*ck's sake - it evolved over millennia.
>>
>> Starting with just-so stories around the campfire. Or bed-time stories
>> to children.
>>
>> "Daddy, what are those lights in the sky?"
>>
>> "Daddy, where did the leopard get its spots?"
>>
>> Those who told them didn't have to believe them,
>>
>> But some gullible person did, or somebody who didn't told them to
>> their children who believed.
>
>So someone, at some point -- and probably a great many someones,
>independently of each other in cultures all over the world --
>would have had to invent the concept of supernatural beings from
>scratch. Theistic abiogenesis.

So explain the Piraha tribe who have no concept of gods and no
creation myths.

>How do you conceive of something of which you cannot conceive
>because there is no frame of reference, nothing whatever that is
>comparable, nothing that could by association or suggestion put
>the notion of a superbeing into your head? They would quite
>literally have no words to describe such a creature.

For f*ck's sake, why not try thinking?

God-beliefs have evolved over time, from the original beliefs.

The "just-so" stories told at the dawn of civilisation weren't about
invisible creator-monotheists. But about things like a strong man in a
chariot pulling the sun across the sky.

>>>There must have been a time when these deities were created in
>>>the minds of our ancestors, when our forefathers (and -mothers)
>>>caught the faith bug. Obviously, that first generation would not
>>>have been raised in any given belief set, so how did they dream
>>>up their pantheon?
>>
>> Do you honestly think that the stories required real superbeings?
>
>As we are discussing the creation of gods, yes.

What a revealing answer.

In all the years you have been here you still haven't learned that you
can't presume gods outside your religious beliefs.

Instead of just saying that the stories required REAL superbeings,
justify this claim.

> How does one
>tell a story in which responsibility for rainfall is assigned to
>a god without actually mentioning such a superbeing?

How does this explain why they required REAL superbeings?

The characters in the stories reflected the men and women they already
knew.

Invisible omnipotent creator-monotheist gods evolved from these.

You know perfectly well that the Greek pantheon, the Roman pantheon,
the Hindu pantheon, the Norse pantheon etc don't have
creator-monotheist gods an their gods are more like hero figures in
stories, with human failings.

[Burkhard]

On Jun 6, 11:44 pm, "Christopher A. Lee" <chrislee95...@comcast.net>

wrote:
> On Wed, 6 Jun 2012 14:51:36 -0700 (PDT), Burkhard
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>

> <undesirableal...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >On Jun 6, 8:38 pm, "Christopher A. Lee" <chrislee95...@comcast.net>

> >wrote:

> >> On Wed, 6 Jun 2012 10:47:59 -0700 (PDT), Malcolm McMahon
>

> >> <malcolm.m...@googlemail.com> wrote:
> >> >We all say things like "It's going to rain". That "It" is the primal sky
> >> >God.
>
> >> We also say things like "they have discovered" rather than "physicists
> >> have discovered".
>

> >> I think you are reading something into it that isn't there.
>
> >> It's just that the way the verb is used requires a pronoun.
>

> >> [..]

>
> >> >Those, I think, are the reasons why theism is still a majority belief.
> >> >We're virtually hardwired for it.
>
> >> No.
>
> >> We're hard wired to absorb programming from our parents.
>

> >> Religion and its god are taught at the same time as basic vocabulary,
> >> before the child has even learned to think.
>

> >> Children learn whichever god their parents believe in - and more
> >> importantly those who aren't taught one don't grow up believing in
> >> one.
>
> >These are two different issues really. one is: is a tendency to form
> >religious beliefs (of any kind) hard-wired, possibly though evolution?
> >To this, the answer of many evolutionary biologists is: probably yes.
> >It explains the empirical fact that religions are pretty much
> >ubiquitous in human societies Anthropologists such as Donald Brown
> >( Human Universal 1991) list various forms of religious beliefs
> >(including, relevant for the OP, the belief to control weather) . This
> >can't be explained simply by learning and the effects of imperialism -
> >even when we discover new tribal societies without contact to the
> >outside world, we typically find religious belief systems of one  form
> >or the other) And we also see that societies where  religious activity
> >of all kinds was actively discouraged for man generations revert very
> >quickly to sizeable religious communities, see e.g. what happened in
> >Poland or the Romania.
>
> And it's refuted by all those of us who ware never raised to be
> theist.
>
> We _do_ exist.
>

You seem to think that if a trait is adaptive, or has for some other
reason biologically underpinnings, every single member of the species
should exhibit this trait. If this were true, we'd have to throw away
about 99% of the theory of evolution. Biology is messy, and universal
laws as those fond in physics largely absent, as many leading
biologists have observed. There can for instance be no doubt that our
physiology enables us to run away from predators very fast, and is
therefore adaptive. That does not mean that we can all run as fast as
Usin Bolt, and some of us can't run at all. It seems equally clear
that in sexually reproducing species, "finding members of the opposite
sex attractive" is selected for (cf. already Darwin on sexual
selection), that is not refuted by the fact that in many species, we
find sizeable numbers of individuals who are attracted to the same
sex. This may in turn be adaptive, or it might just be a non-adaptive
trait preserved through drift, but either way, that does not detract
from the fact that sexual selection has biological foundations that
are adaptive. Our teeth indicate that we are adapted omnivores, yet
there are vegetarians. Evolutinary theory tells us taht we lost our
primate tail through natural selection, that is not falsified by those
individuals that are born with that particular atavism. etc etc etc
Evolutionary biology deals in statistically significant patterns of
correlation only, not 1005 absolutes

> >Evolutionary psychologists have identified proto-religious belief
> >formation in children that can't be explained by learning (either
> >because the environment was not religious, or because the religious
> >beliefs of the child were inconsistent with those of the surrounding
> >society, and there are also tentative clams for proto-religious
> >behaviour in other primates.
>
> Why haven't they talked with those of us who were never raised to be
> theist?
>
> We _do_ exist.

How do you know they didn't? In the human studies that is. Not sure
if you mean: did they talk to non-human primates that were not
religiously educated, seems a meaningless idea to me.

>
> >See for the discussion e.g.
> > Schloss, J. P. & Murray, M. (ed.) (2009) The  Believing Primate:
> >Scientific, Philosophical, and Theological
> >Perspectives on the Origin of Religion. Oxford: Oxford University
> >Press.

>
> Did they address any of us who were never  raised to be theist?
>
> After all, we _do_ exist.

Well, they used the standard scientific methodology for studies of
this type - sufficiently large sample sizes, statistically controlled
sampling, control for factors, control groups where applicable. So
yes, they did, or at least studies on child development would include
children from all sorts of backgrounds. The fact that there are non-
religious people is neither here not there.

>
> > and in there particularly the paper by Schloss, "Evolutionary
> >Theories
> > of Religion: Science Set Free or Naturalism Run Wild?"
>
> > Also worth reading are the works of Jesse Berig on this, e.g.
> >(2006).
>
> Do they tell those of us who weren't realised to be these, that we
> don't exist?
>

No, why should they? It does not follow from their studies. Biologists
who study the genetic basis for our ability to reason symbolically and
the evolutionary basis for writing don't tell people with dyslexia
that they don't exist either, nor do biologists who study the adaptive
advantage of experiencing sugar as pleasurable tell people who chose
a healthy diet that they don't exist either.

What they might be doing though is do carry out further studies to
find out of the exceptions from the pattern have biological
foundations too, or if they are the result of environmental factors
that override the biological predisposition. Pretty common in humans.
Evolutionary, we have the tendency to like sugar, and we developed
that trait when sugar sources were scarce, so we have the tendency to
overeat. Of course, our explicit knowledge of nutrition allows (some
of) us to control overeating.

> How do they explain us?
>
You'd have to look at the literature. Off hand, the mainstream
explanation is likely to be that atheists have the same cognitive
traits that lead in many people to theism (ability to reason about
invisible causes, ability to form ad hoc causal theories etc), but
that your environment meant that these traits did not result in the
expression of this trait after early childhood, possibly though
learned behaviour. Pretty typical for many traits that are latent
unless triggered and supported by their environment. Ability to sign
e.g. is likely an offshoot of adaptive primate behaviour (ways of
modulating warning cries, see e.g. the studies on Orang Utans on using
instruments), but that does not mean that without a musical
environment, that capacity results in an ability to sing well.

More radical and more problematic explanations can be found in studies
in the neuroscience of religion, e.g. the work of Michael Persinger.
These might argue that there are indeed differences in brain structure
responsible for different attitudes to religiosity. Personally, I'm
rather sceptical of these studies, and woudl emphasise nurture over
nature more.

> How do they explain the Piraha tribe?

Don't think there are any specific studies from evolutionary
biologists researching evolution of religion on them, with just a few
hundred odd members a bit difficult to do. But again, several
straightforward answers are possible:

- just one of those things. As I said above, biology and anthropology
rarely deal with situations where we have universal laws. Even the
strongest evidence for evolution, the multiple nested hierarchies,
only work if you look at the general patterns, not necessarily an
isolated trait across species (as an example think of tool use that
thanks to crows). Reality is messy, deal with it, the strong patterns
of association tell us all we need to know

- nothing to explain. The idea that they don't have religion comes
from a single source, Daniel Everret's studies He was a more than
competent linguist, but not a very good anthropologist. In particular,
his missionary/Christian glasses mean he conceptualises all religions
on the model of the monotheistic creator religions of the Judeo-
Christian-Islamic family making him blind to very different forms of
religious systems.But anthropologists, sociologists of religion or
evolutionary scientists studying the cognitive basis for religious
belief don;t have to constraint themselves to this type of religion.
As far as I recall, the Piraha's do believe in spirit entities that
can be warded off with necklaces when malign, and can give warning
shouts when benign. For purpose of cultural universals, that's ore
than enough.

- more interesting, but more controversial: the Piraha are lacking
indeed the cognitive schemata whose overshot are religion. One
hypothesis you find in the above studies that the ability to reason
about invisible agents is highly adaptive (you parents look out for
you even when you can't see them, e.g.) Now the Piraha apparently also
have no notion of history - and history is all about reasoning about
actions of people you can't see.Reasoning about abstract objects is
also a relevant trait, and we find mathematics in varying degree in
most cultures - and again, the Piraha seem to be lacking some pretty
common concept of "number". So that all could be evidence that they
are indeed lacking some otherwise pan-human cognitive traits, some of
which are also the basis of religions. But that would need much more
careful studies, I'm not that much into Saphir Whorff to make that
call on the basis of just one major linguistic study 9Everret's again)

> > The folk psychology of souls. Behavioural & Brain Sciences, 29,
> >453-498.
> > Berig and  Parker, B. D. (2006). Children's attributions of
> >intentions to an
> > invisible agent. Developmental Psychology, 42, 253-262. with.,
> >McLeod,
> >  K. A., & Shackelford, T. K. (2005). Reasoning about dead agents
> >reveals
> > possible adaptive trends. Human Nature, 16, 360-381.

>
> >all that is quite different from adopting a _specific_ religious
> >belief system. That indeed is largely learned from parents and peers.
> >You could compare it to language learning: we probably have an inborn
> >ability to learn languages, and a tendency to do so. But for learning
> >any specific language, we need environmental input.
>
> Did they talk to any of us who were never raised to be theist?
>
> Or did they hide their heads in the sand?
>

Let's see: You dismiss a significant body of scientific research,
published in high quality (by the usual impact metrics) peer reviewed
journals, without even reading them, let alone identifying specific
weaknesses in their data or methodology, simply because their
conclusions don't fit your world view. Who exactly is having his head
in the sand here?

[Burkhard]

On Jun 7, 11:08 pm, "Christopher A. Lee" <chrislee95...@comcast.net>

Sorry, but so what? The claim that started this discussion is that
religion is a cultural universal, and therefore most likely based on
some underlying cognitive mechanism. This does not mean that they all
develop the idea of a single creator god - unless you want to argue
that only monotheistic creator religions are "true" religions which
would be frankly odd.

[Dakota]

Oppressed populations tend to cling to beliefs they held in better
times. The beliefs provide comfort during the storm.

[Dakota]

The human mind has evolved to associate actions with causes. The Sun is
a very important factor in sustaining life so it's easy to see how the
Sun could become an object of worship. Clouds could easily have been
recognized as the cause of rain. As communications skills advanced, some
clever people could have recognized the power they could gain if they
explained natural phenomena in terms of deities whose attributes they
defined themselves. The deities of successful social groups soon became
dominant as societies merged. It's been downhill ever since.

[Christopher A. Lee]

No, it wasn't.

It was that the human brain is hard wired for god belief and religion.

Which is refuted by the counter examples of those atheists here who
were never taught to be theist in the first place, the various
atheistic Hindu and Buddhist sects, and the Piraha tribe in Brazil who
don't even have the concept of gods.

None of which has been addressed except to dismiss me, invent straw
man or ask silly questions with obvious answers.

[Christopher A. Lee]

>> And it's refuted by all those of us who were never raised to be
>> theist.
>>
>> We _do_ exist.

Couldn't answer this?

>You seem to think that if a trait is adaptive, or has for some other
>reason biologically underpinnings, every single member of the species
>should exhibit this trait.

Another mind reader-wannabe tells me what is in my mind and gets it
wrong rather than addressing the point.

[..]

>> >all that is quite different from adopting a _specific_ religious
>> >belief system. That indeed is largely learned from parents and peers.
>> >You could compare it to language learning: we probably have an inborn
>> >ability to learn languages, and a tendency to do so. But for learning
>> >any specific language, we need environmental input.
>>
>> Did they talk to any of us who were never raised to be theist?
>>
>> Or did they hide their heads in the sand?

Couldn't answer this?

>Let's see: You dismiss a significant body of scientific research,
>published in high quality (by the usual impact metrics) peer reviewed
>journals, without even reading them, let alone identifying specific
>weaknesses in their data or methodology, simply because their
>conclusions don't fit your world view. Who exactly is having his head
>in the sand here?

Not I.

Where did they talk to those people who were never taught to be theist
and never grew up to be theist?

Whose existence as a control group that was ignored, renders their
"research" worthless?

>> Like too many people who are presented with us as counter-examples?

As well as with other groups that were never taught to be theist,like
those Hindius sects that are atheist?

Or the Brazilian Piraha tribe who don't even have the concept of gods
or creation myths?

[Alex W.]

On Thu, 07 Jun 2012 14:57:41 -0700, Christopher A. Lee wrote:

>
> Now explain why you dismiss all those who grew up in a theism-free
> environment and were never taught to be theist in the first place, who
> never grew up theist.
>
> Instead of dismissing us.

I do not dismiss you or those like you; never have.

I simply do not subscribe to your position which extrapolates
from you and those like you to reach a universal principle. To
claim that "hey, it happened to me and I know some fellers it
also happened to, therefore it must be generally true" is not
rigorous in the least.

>
> And stop pretending I am the only one when you know perfectly well
> there are other examples in alt.atheism, and even the Brazilian Piraha
> tribe who don't even have the concept of gods or creation myths.

The Piraha tribe unbelief has not, as yet, been independently
confirmed. All we have so far is the reports of Daniel Everett,
and I suggest that until we have separate and confirmed
verification we ought not to treat his work as confirmed fact.

[Alex W.]

Do they know so during the time they are caught up playing with
their invisible friends? Kids have this remarkable and enviable
ability to immerse themselves so completely in a world, I would
hesitate to claim that in those moments they know that their
friend is not real.

Certainly with less benign imaginary people, kids can and do
believe fully. A child who has an imaginary bogeyman in the
wardrobe or under the bed can and will have the most horrific
time possible come bedtime: tantrums, nightmares, panic attacks,
bedwetting, it all becomes very possible when they are sent to
spend the night with the 'orrible monster lurking invisibly
waiting for mummy to turn off the light and leave the room. Been
there, seen that, and also experienced the utter inability to
convince the child that there is nothing under the bed.

[Alex W.]

On Thu, 7 Jun 2012 10:11:26 -0700 (PDT), Malcolm McMahon wrote:

> On Wednesday, 6 June 2012 22:21:49 UTC+1, Christopher A. Lee wrote:
>> On Wed, 6 Jun 2012 13:05:30 -0700 (PDT), Malcolm McMahon
>> <malcol...@googlemail.com> wrote:
>>
>>>On Wednesday, 6 June 2012 20:38:17 UTC+1, Christopher A. Lee wrote:
>>>> On Wed, 6 Jun 2012 10:47:59 -0700 (PDT), Malcolm McMahon
>>>> <malcol...@googlemail.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> >We all say things like "It's going to rain". That "It" is the primal sky
>>>> >God.
>>>>
>>>> We also say things like "they have discovered" rather than "physicists
>>>> have discovered".
>>>
>>>In both cases the very language is structured to imply sentient agency (in the latter case rather more accurately).
>>>
>>>> I think you are reading something into it that isn't there.
>>>>
>>>> It's just that the way the verb is used requires a pronoun.
>>>
>>>And why is this so?
>>
>> It's just the way language evolved - we've got first, second and third
>> person pronouns - there's no "zero-th person pronoun" form of the
>> verb.
>
> But don't forget that language evolved in the context of the human brain. The syntax isn't something that was arrived at randomly. I think it reflects the way we structure our thinking.
>
> We could say "Rain is immanent", but we don't. We assume an agency.

You assume an agency because the structure of the English
language suggests this to you. Pick a language without need for
pronouns in making such a statement, and your point falls down.

[Alex W.]

On Thu, 07 Jun 2012 15:08:43 -0700, Christopher A. Lee wrote:

> On Thu, 7 Jun 2012 21:27:54 +0100, "Alex W." <ing...@yahoo.co.uk>
> wrote:
>
>>On Wed, 06 Jun 2012 17:19:06 -0700, Christopher A. Lee wrote:
>>
>>> On Thu, 7 Jun 2012 00:48:31 +0100, "Alex W." <ing...@yahoo.co.uk>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>>On Wed, 06 Jun 2012 15:44:49 -0700, Christopher A. Lee wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Did they address any of us who were never raised to be theist?
>>>>>
>>>>> After all, we _do_ exist.
>>>>
>>>>OK, then, so where does religion come from?
>>>
>>> For f*ck's sake - it evolved over millennia.
>>>
>>> Starting with just-so stories around the campfire. Or bed-time stories
>>> to children.
>>>
>>> "Daddy, what are those lights in the sky?"
>>>
>>> "Daddy, where did the leopard get its spots?"
>>>
>>> Those who told them didn't have to believe them,
>>>
>>> But some gullible person did, or somebody who didn't told them to
>>> their children who believed.
>>
>>So someone, at some point -- and probably a great many someones,
>>independently of each other in cultures all over the world --
>>would have had to invent the concept of supernatural beings from
>>scratch. Theistic abiogenesis.
>
> So explain the Piraha tribe who have no concept of gods and no
> creation myths.

See elsewhere in the thread. We have one single person's report
on the unbelief system of the Piraha. Scientifically speaking,
if there is no independent confirmation through repeat
observation, it's practically valueless, the anthropological
equivalent of Pons' and Fleischmann's cold fusion claims.

Even if Everett's observations are shown to be correct, all it
would establish is the general *possibility* and not a general
principle.

>
>>How do you conceive of something of which you cannot conceive
>>because there is no frame of reference, nothing whatever that is
>>comparable, nothing that could by association or suggestion put
>>the notion of a superbeing into your head? They would quite
>>literally have no words to describe such a creature.
>
> For f*ck's sake, why not try thinking?
>
> God-beliefs have evolved over time, from the original beliefs.
>
> The "just-so" stories told at the dawn of civilisation weren't about
> invisible creator-monotheists. But about things like a strong man in a
> chariot pulling the sun across the sky.

In other words, a god. So where did that idea spring from?

What original beliefs? Where did they come from? You argue that
all religious beleif stems from parental indoctrination -- but
this does not explain the first birth of such belief when there
was not and could not have been any parental indoctrination
because they did not hold any such notions they could pass on.
Surely you are not arguing "turtles all the way down", are you?

If the concept does not exist, nor the words to describe it, nor
the frame of reference to generate such notions, how could the
idea of supernatural beings ever have been born?

>
>>>>There must have been a time when these deities were created in
>>>>the minds of our ancestors, when our forefathers (and -mothers)
>>>>caught the faith bug. Obviously, that first generation would not
>>>>have been raised in any given belief set, so how did they dream
>>>>up their pantheon?
>>>
>>> Do you honestly think that the stories required real superbeings?
>>
>>As we are discussing the creation of gods, yes.
>
> What a revealing answer.
>
> In all the years you have been here you still haven't learned that you
> can't presume gods outside your religious beliefs.
>
> Instead of just saying that the stories required REAL superbeings,
> justify this claim.
>
>> How does one
>>tell a story in which responsibility for rainfall is assigned to
>>a god without actually mentioning such a superbeing?
>
> How does this explain why they required REAL superbeings?
>
> The characters in the stories reflected the men and women they already
> knew.

Yeah, right.
"My uncle Gog was so strong, he called the rain down from the
sky"?

"Granddad Ugg was so powerful he dragged the sun over the horizon
every morning"?

>
> Invisible omnipotent creator-monotheist gods evolved from these.

Now you're the one thinking im limited terms of monotheism.

>
> You know perfectly well that the Greek pantheon, the Roman pantheon,
> the Hindu pantheon, the Norse pantheon etc don't have
> creator-monotheist gods an their gods are more like hero figures in
> stories, with human failings.

Who is talking of creator gods anyway? I cry red herring.

I am asking how the very notion of supernatural beings arose in
the first place. If every generation inherited such ideas
(specific and in general) from their parents, then humanity must
always have believed in some sort of superbeings. If that is not
so, then what happened? For 99% of the time that our species has
existed, we have been utterly dependent on accurate and detailed
observation of nature for our survival. Failure to predict the
turn of the seasons, when the floods come, what animal makes
which noise, or the signs of impending volcano eruptions would be
fatal. So we should, by rights, have been predisposed to
supposing a natural explanation for "sun rising every day" or
"water falling from the sky". And yet, at some point, someone
came up with an alternative explanation that defied actual
observation: magic beings did this. And this person (or persons)
must have done so without having any prior knowledge of the
possibility of imagining such creatures. It would be like one of
the Piraha waking up one morning and inventing the idea of the
internet.

This is what I am asking, plain and simple: how did our species
come up with such a notion in the first place?

[Christopher A. Lee]

On Fri, 8 Jun 2012 01:31:01 +0100, "Alex W." <ing...@yahoo.co.uk>
wrote:

>On Thu, 07 Jun 2012 06:22:40 -0700, Christopher A. Lee wrote:
>
>> On Thu, 7 Jun 2012 05:29:12 -0700 (PDT), Answer_42
>> <ipu.be...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>>
>>>Yes, it's like the imaginary friend kids have. The brain is built to
>>>allow something like that to happen. It seems a natural thing--for
>>>kids. Adult's gods are like that as well, but of course, to adults, it
>>>is not the same thing because they are adults, and, well, adults
>>>simply do not have imaginary friends!
>>
>> Kids know their imaginary friends are made up.
>
>Do they know so during the time they are caught up playing with
>their invisible friends? Kids have this remarkable and enviable
>ability to immerse themselves so completely in a world, I would
>hesitate to claim that in those moments they know that their
>friend is not real.

It's pretty standard to ask for an extra piece of cake for their
pretend friend, which they very kindly eat for it.

I've never come across a kid who believed its own make-believe.

[Christopher A. Lee]

On Fri, 8 Jun 2012 01:41:52 +0100, "Alex W." <ing...@yahoo.co.uk>
wrote:

>On Thu, 07 Jun 2012 14:57:41 -0700, Christopher A. Lee wrote:
>
>>
>> Now explain why you dismiss all those who grew up in a theism-free
>> environment and were never taught to be theist in the first place, who
>> never grew up theist.
>>
>> Instead of dismissing us.
>
>I do not dismiss you or those like you; never have.
>
>I simply do not subscribe to your position which extrapolates
>from you and those like you to reach a universal principle. To
>claim that "hey, it happened to me and I know some fellers it
>also happened to, therefore it must be generally true" is not
>rigorous in the least.

Learn to read for comprehension instead of making up things I have
never said.

And then explain where these "authorities" took into account the
control group of those who were never taught to be theist in the first
place.

I have justified its being memetic over and over again, but this has
never been addressed.

For example not just those of us here who were never taught to be
theist, but also those raised in atheistic sects of eastern religions
and also the Piraha tribe of Brazil who don't even have the concept of
a god.

Please, pretty please with ribbons on, acknowledge these instead of
dismissing these as well.

>> And stop pretending I am the only one when you know perfectly well
>> there are other examples in alt.atheism, and even the Brazilian Piraha
>> tribe who don't even have the concept of gods or creation myths.
>
>The Piraha tribe unbelief has not, as yet, been independently
>confirmed. All we have so far is the reports of Daniel Everett,
>and I suggest that until we have separate and confirmed
>verification we ought not to treat his work as confirmed fact.

Translation: you can't address any of the examples.

And what is "unbelief" in the real world beyond the Bible?

All you have to do is step aside from your theistic presumptions and
into the real world.

[Christopher A. Lee]

On Fri, 8 Jun 2012 02:06:22 +0100, "Alex W." <ing...@yahoo.co.uk>

So he was lying?

He was a missionary who couldn't get the concept of gods through to
them, and had no axe to grind, and it caused him to lose his faith.

He was also a Chomsky-linguist and anthropologist.

Did you bother to read the extract I cut'n'pasted about the nineteenth
and twentieth century Christian missionaries in China also finding
that their audience simply wasn't interested?

>Even if Everett's observations are shown to be correct, all it
>would establish is the general *possibility* and not a general
>principle.

It provides more counter examples that refute the original claim that
theism is hard wired in the human brain.

Those who are taught theism in their early years grow up theist.

Those who aren't, don't.

And that includes members of atheistic schools of Hinduism and
Buddhism.

>>>How do you conceive of something of which you cannot conceive
>>>because there is no frame of reference, nothing whatever that is
>>>comparable, nothing that could by association or suggestion put
>>>the notion of a superbeing into your head? They would quite
>>>literally have no words to describe such a creature.
>>
>> For f*ck's sake, why not try thinking?
>>
>> God-beliefs have evolved over time, from the original beliefs.
>>
>> The "just-so" stories told at the dawn of civilisation weren't about
>> invisible creator-monotheists. But about things like a strong man in a
>> chariot pulling the sun across the sky.
>
>In other words, a god. So where did that idea spring from?

BUT ONE THAT IS BASICALLY A HUMAN BEING.

IN FRIKKING JUST-SO STORIES TOLD TO A GULLIBLE AUDIENCE.

Can't you read?

>What original beliefs? Where did they come from? You argue that
>all religious beleif stems from parental indoctrination -- but
>this does not explain the first birth of such belief when there
>was not and could not have been any parental indoctrination
>because they did not hold any such notions they could pass on.
>Surely you are not arguing "turtles all the way down", are you?

Asked and answered.

Stop pretending.

Why do you imagine it took actual supernatural beings?

>If the concept does not exist, nor the words to describe it, nor
>the frame of reference to generate such notions, how could the
>idea of supernatural beings ever have been born?

ASKED AND ANSWERED.

STOP PRETENDING.

WHY DO YOU IMAGINE IT TOOK ACTUAL SUPERNATURAL BEINGS?

>>>>>There must have been a time when these deities were created in
>>>>>the minds of our ancestors, when our forefathers (and -mothers)
>>>>>caught the faith bug. Obviously, that first generation would not
>>>>>have been raised in any given belief set, so how did they dream
>>>>>up their pantheon?
>>>>
>>>> Do you honestly think that the stories required real superbeings?
>>>
>>>As we are discussing the creation of gods, yes.
>>
>> What a revealing answer.
>>
>> In all the years you have been here you still haven't learned that you
>> can't presume gods outside your religious beliefs.
>>
>> Instead of just saying that the stories required REAL superbeings,
>> justify this claim.

Well?

>>> How does one
>>>tell a story in which responsibility for rainfall is assigned to
>>>a god without actually mentioning such a superbeing?
>>
>> How does this explain why they required REAL superbeings?

Well?

>> The characters in the stories reflected the men and women they already
>> knew.
>
>Yeah, right.
>"My uncle Gog was so strong, he called the rain down from the
>sky"?

They were used to people doing things.

Which is why the just-so stories were about people.

>"Granddad Ugg was so powerful he dragged the sun over the horizon
>every morning"?

Deliberately stupid caricature rather than address what has already
been explained.

>> Invisible omnipotent creator-monotheist gods evolved from these.
>
>Now you're the one thinking im limited terms of monotheism.

I'm not the one who believes in a creator-monotheist and can't
understand how it evolved from just-so stories about people dong the
things they couldn't understand.

Because those are the kind you imagine people come up with because you
imagine they are hard wired for that belief.

>> You know perfectly well that the Greek pantheon, the Roman pantheon,
>> the Hindu pantheon, the Norse pantheon etc don't have
>> creator-monotheist gods an their gods are more like hero figures in
>> stories, with human failings.
>
>Who is talking of creator gods anyway? I cry red herring.

I cry weaseling on your part.

Because those are the kind you imagine people come up with because you
imagine they are hard wired for that belief.

>I am asking how the very notion of supernatural beings arose in
>the first place.

Asked and answered.

Stop pretending.

Why do you imagine it required real supernatural beings?

[snip]

>This is what I am asking, plain and simple: how did our species
>come up with such a notion in the first place?

Asked and answered.

Stop pretending.

Why do you imagine it required real supernatural beings?

[Smiler]

On Fri, 08 Jun 2012 02:06:22 +0100, Alex W. wrote:

> On Thu, 07 Jun 2012 15:08:43 -0700, Christopher A. Lee wrote:
>

<snip>

>
> I am asking how the very notion of supernatural beings arose in the
> first place. If every generation inherited such ideas (specific and in
> general) from their parents, then humanity must always have believed in
> some sort of superbeings. If that is not so, then what happened? For
> 99% of the time that our species has existed, we have been utterly
> dependent on accurate and detailed observation of nature for our
> survival. Failure to predict the turn of the seasons, when the floods
> come, what animal makes which noise, or the signs of impending volcano
> eruptions would be fatal. So we should, by rights, have been predisposed
> to supposing a natural explanation for "sun rising every day" or "water
> falling from the sky". And yet, at some point, someone came up with an
> alternative explanation that defied actual observation: magic beings did
> this. And this person (or persons) must have done so without having any
> prior knowledge of the possibility of imagining such creatures. It
> would be like one of the Piraha waking up one morning and inventing the
> idea of the internet.
>
> This is what I am asking, plain and simple: how did our species come up
> with such a notion in the first place?

As an excuse to replace "I don't know."? :-)

Ugg, Gog and their tribe are out hunting. One of the tribe gets hit by
lightening and dies.

Ugg "Shit, this is powerful stuff!"
Gog "Yep. Maybe it wants us to bow down to it?"

They try bowing down, and hey! It works! (They're not as tall, bowing
down, so the next lightening strike hits a nearby tree, or the 'atheist'
who doesn't bow down). Extrapolate and evolve from there. It's only a
small step from that to get to Thor or any of the other 'lightening' gods.

--
Smiler,
The godless one. a.a.# 2279
All gods are tailored to order. They're made to
exactly fit the prejudices of their believers.

[Burkhard]

On Jun 8, 12:37 am, "Christopher A. Lee" <chrislee95...@comcast.net>
wrote:

Yes, that's what I said, Universal Cognitive mechanisms are those that
are hard-wired.

>
> Which is refuted by the counter examples of those atheists here who
> were never taught to be theist in the first place,

No, it isn't really, noyt any more than the claim that people are hard-
wired for learning language is falsified by peopel who grow up in a
deaf community and as a result do not learn to speak. Lots of hard-
wired capacities require the right type of environmental input to
become fully developed or fixed, that does not make them less hard-
wired.

is the various

> atheistic Hindu and Buddhist sects,

Why would any of them be an arguemnt that religious beliefs are not
hardwired? Lots of thigs are hardired in our brain becuase it was
adaptive at soem pint in our evolutionary history. Thta does not mean
that we as humans can't through a process of reasoning move beyond it.
The same Hinduist and Buddhist sects e.g. wil lalso be vegetarians,
even though we are biologocally spekaing omnivores, and our brain
hardwired to find meat pasureable.

and the Piraha tribe in Brazil who
> don't even have the concept of gods.

First , that's a highly debatable claim, valid only for a very
specific conception of gods. Second even if it were true, you don't
need gods to have a religion. Ancestor worship is a religion for all
intents and purposes, but needs no deities. Some forms of pantheism
and pantheism also don't have the notion of god(s) , yet are
religions. Others still just have a pantheon of demons and other such
spirit entities, or personified abstract properties.

[Christopher A. Lee]

On Fri, 8 Jun 2012 09:44:23 -0700 (PDT), Burkhard
<undesira...@gmail.com> wrote:


>> >Sorry, but so what? The claim that started this discussion  is that
>> >religion is a cultural universal, and therefore most likely based on
>> >some underlying cognitive mechanism. This does not mean that they all
>> >develop the idea of a single creator god - unless you want to argue
>> >that only monotheistic creator religions are "true" religions which
>> >would be frankly odd.
>>
>> No, it wasn't.
>>
>> It was that the human brain is hard wired for god belief and religion.
>Yes, that's what I said, Universal Cognitive mechanisms are those that
>are hard-wired.

Not the same thing.

>> Which is refuted by the counter examples of those atheists here who
>> were never taught to be theist in the first place,
>
>No, it isn't really, noyt any more than the claim that people are hard-
>wired for learning language is falsified by peopel who grow up in a
>deaf community and as a result do not learn to speak. Lots of hard-
>wired capacities require the right type of environmental input to
>become fully developed or fixed, that does not make them less hard-
>wired.

Yes, it is really - we form part of a control group that has never
been taken into account, just rationalised away.

It is obvious that religion and gods are taught - because children
learn whatever religion and gods their parents teach them.

With the control being those who weren't taught either religion or
gods.

Please take this control group into account instead of ignoring it or
trying to rationalise it away.

You cannot ignore the fact that not just the children of atheist
parents who are fortunate enough grow up in a theism-free environment,
but also children raised in those Eastern religions that don't have
gods, don't grow up to be theist.

Nor can you ignore the fact that the same atheist children don't grow
up believing a religion.

Which is what is happening here, and has never been addressed.

Just repeating assertions doesn't cut it.

And to carry on with your analogy, feral children in places like rural
India can't speak.

What there is, is the capacity for the child to absorb programming
from those around them.

Which is how the child learns to speak, why feral children can't speak
and why they act like the animals they grew up with.

Which is why the child learns its parents' religion and gods, and why
those who aren't taught gods don't grow up believing them, and why
those who aren't taught religion don't grow up believing one..

>is the various
>> atheistic Hindu and Buddhist sects,
>
>Why would any of them be an arguemnt that religious beliefs are not
>hardwired?

Duh. GOD-BELIEFS.

Check the subject line.

Although It has expanded to include religion.

Which also has to be taught.

Because just as kids who aren't taught gods don't grow up believing in
them, those who aren't taught religion don't grow up believing in any
religion.

You must have noticed that the children of Hindus don't grown up
believing in the Christian god or Christianity, the children of
Christians don't grow up believing in the Hindu pantheon or Hinduosm
etc.

And also noticed the fact there are several atheists in the Usenet
atheist groups who were never taught to be theist as a child and never
grew up believing in gods.

If religion and gods really were hard-wired then you would get
children who aren't taught gods would grow up believing in them - so
you would get kids raised in non-theistic religions as well as by
atheists who manage to keep theists and theism at bay, believing in
gods.

And you would get the same atheist kids growing up believing in a
religion.

> Lots of thigs are hardired in our brain becuase it was
>adaptive at soem pint in our evolutionary history. Thta does not mean
>that we as humans can't through a process of reasoning move beyond it.
>The same Hinduist and Buddhist sects e.g. wil lalso be vegetarians,
>even though we are biologocally spekaing omnivores, and our brain
>hardwired to find meat pasureable.

So show that this "lots of things" include gods and religion - taking
the control group into account.

> and the Piraha tribe in Brazil who
>> don't even have the concept of gods.
>
>First , that's a highly debatable claim, valid only for a very
>specific conception of gods. Second even if it were true, you don't
>need gods to have a religion. Ancestor worship is a religion for all
>intents and purposes, but needs no deities. Some forms of pantheism
>and pantheism also don't have the notion of god(s) , yet are
>religions. Others still just have a pantheon of demons and other such
>spirit entities, or personified abstract properties.

You need to show that they actually did these things.

Which the CHRISTIAN MISSIONARY who was also an anthropologist and
linguist, who went there with the intention of converting them found
they didn't.

You're trying to rationalise things that aren't even there based on
theistic preconceptions.

[Alex W.]

That is definitely a possible scenario.

My problem is squaring this with the absolute reliance of Ugg,
Gog and their tribe on exact and reliable observations of nature
for their survival. If over time ten people are hit by lightning
and all that connects them is tribal membership and being the
tallest point during a thunderstorm, the obvious, observational
conclusion is not "let's try bowing down before it", is it?

[Alex W.]

Never said that, and I would not presume to.

>
> He was a missionary who couldn't get the concept of gods through to
> them, and had no axe to grind, and it caused him to lose his faith.
>
> He was also a Chomsky-linguist and anthropologist.

Disowned by CHomsky himself, but that is beside the point.

His is one single account.
There is no other published research.
In scientific terms, this makes his observations and claims
interesting but in no way conclusive. No researcher worthy of
the name would dream of using Everett's reports because they have
not been confirmed, just as no researcher would use any other
experimental data or study results that had not been confirmed
through repetition -- not least because doing so usually has
serious and damaging consequences for that researcher's
professional credibility. This is no more and no less than the
proper application of the scientific method. It has nothing to
do with you, me, sacks of rice falling over in China or atheism.
It is what every responsible and scientifically literate person
does.

You really do not get it, do you?
You cannot tell just-so stories if you do not know what they are,
have never heard any, have no idea that such a fanciful way of
telling lies is even possible.

>
>>What original beliefs? Where did they come from? You argue that
>>all religious beleif stems from parental indoctrination -- but
>>this does not explain the first birth of such belief when there
>>was not and could not have been any parental indoctrination
>>because they did not hold any such notions they could pass on.
>>Surely you are not arguing "turtles all the way down", are you?
>
> Asked and answered.
>
> Stop pretending.
>
> Why do you imagine it took actual supernatural beings?
>
>>If the concept does not exist, nor the words to describe it, nor
>>the frame of reference to generate such notions, how could the
>>idea of supernatural beings ever have been born?
>
> ASKED AND ANSWERED.
>
> STOP PRETENDING.
>
> WHY DO YOU IMAGINE IT TOOK ACTUAL SUPERNATURAL BEINGS?

Because that's what gods are, doofus.
We today know the astronomical mechanisms by which the sun
appears to rise every morning; our distanct ancestors did not.
They had no idea. So there must have been some spark of the
imagination, some leap of speculation to invent a supernatural
process to trundle the sun out from the horizon in the mornings.

Doing things, yes.
Doing unnatural, supernatural things, no.
Even to declare -- for fun or power -- that dancing around the
fire singing ooga booga abracadabra was the one sure way to make
the sun rise would have required the invention of the concept of
magic. That's the point I keep trying to make: that at some
point, this big idea had to be invented, with no prior knowledge
or experience. How can this be possible for a mind that has
completely and utterly devoid of anything related to magic?

>
>>"Granddad Ugg was so powerful he dragged the sun over the horizon
>>every morning"?
>
> Deliberately stupid caricature rather than address what has already
> been explained.
>
>>> Invisible omnipotent creator-monotheist gods evolved from these.
>>
>>Now you're the one thinking im limited terms of monotheism.
>
> I'm not the one who believes in a creator-monotheist and can't
> understand how it evolved from just-so stories about people dong the
> things they couldn't understand.
>
> Because those are the kind you imagine people come up with because you
> imagine they are hard wired for that belief.
>
>>> You know perfectly well that the Greek pantheon, the Roman pantheon,
>>> the Hindu pantheon, the Norse pantheon etc don't have
>>> creator-monotheist gods an their gods are more like hero figures in
>>> stories, with human failings.
>>
>>Who is talking of creator gods anyway? I cry red herring.
>
> I cry weaseling on your part.
>
> Because those are the kind you imagine people come up with because you
> imagine they are hard wired for that belief.

Why would I imagine such tommyrot? I have read enough creation
myths to know perfectly well that this is not so.

>
>>I am asking how the very notion of supernatural beings arose in
>>the first place.
>
> Asked and answered.
>
> Stop pretending.
>
> Why do you imagine it required real supernatural beings?

Asked but never answered because you never explain this VAST leap
from "nature" to "supernature". And it is a huge step -- bigger,
in fact, than the reverse. You never bothered to show how people
came up with reified explanations for observed, real and provable
phenomena that are unobserved, unprovable, unreliable, with no
corporeal existence but with apparently limitless ability to
affect the real world. Newton had an apple falling on his head
to help him come up with the law of gravity. Those distant
ancestors had nothing of the sort -- by its very definition, the
supernatural is beyond the observable world.

>
> [snip]
>
>>This is what I am asking, plain and simple: how did our species
>>come up with such a notion in the first place?
>
> Asked and answered.
>
> Stop pretending.
>
> Why do you imagine it required real supernatural beings?

Because that is what was required by the explanation they came up
with.

[Alex W.]

That does not amount to a refutation in any way.

Because some dogs are born with three legs does not amount to a
refutation that canis lupus familiaris is not hardwired to be
born for quadripedal locomotion.

Or, to take a more personal example: I myself was born with
complete anosmia: a complete absence of the sense of smell. The
only thing my nose is good for is to hold up my specs. As it
happens, there are some others like me. This unfortunate
accident of birth does not, however, in any way refute the
general body plan of human genetics which does indeed have homo
sapiens sapiens hardwired for olfaction. Under your argument,
however, that is exactly what it should do and you are aberrant
and deluded for smelling the coffee in the morning.

In other words, finding an exception to a rule does not in itself
and without some extremely massive other evidence invalidate said
theory.

[Alex W.]

On Thu, 07 Jun 2012 18:14:35 -0700, Christopher A. Lee wrote:

> On Fri, 8 Jun 2012 01:41:52 +0100, "Alex W." <ing...@yahoo.co.uk>
> wrote:
>
>>On Thu, 07 Jun 2012 14:57:41 -0700, Christopher A. Lee wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> Now explain why you dismiss all those who grew up in a theism-free
>>> environment and were never taught to be theist in the first place, who
>>> never grew up theist.
>>>
>>> Instead of dismissing us.
>>
>>I do not dismiss you or those like you; never have.
>>
>>I simply do not subscribe to your position which extrapolates
>>from you and those like you to reach a universal principle. To
>>claim that "hey, it happened to me and I know some fellers it
>>also happened to, therefore it must be generally true" is not
>>rigorous in the least.
>
> Learn to read for comprehension instead of making up things I have
> never said.
>
> And then explain where these "authorities" took into account the
> control group of those who were never taught to be theist in the first
> place.
>
> I have justified its being memetic over and over again, but this has
> never been addressed.

Even memes are born, but yet again, you seem to be unaware of
this.

>
> For example not just those of us here who were never taught to be
> theist, but also those raised in atheistic sects of eastern religions
> and also the Piraha tribe of Brazil who don't even have the concept of
> a god.
>
> Please, pretty please with ribbons on, acknowledge these instead of
> dismissing these as well.

There it is again: your very specialised use of the word
"acknowledge" which you use to mean "accept without reservation".
That, I'm afraid, is not how the word is used in the English
language.

At the risk of being tedious, I shall go once more into the
breach and state, for the umpteenth time, that I am perfectly
happy to acknowledge your existence, the existence of other
unbelievers from birth, and even the existence of the unbelieving
Piraha.

Now, I would like you to acknowledge that the mere existence of
such people does not prove a blessed thing. Logically, and under
the rigour of the scientific method, your conclusion does not
follow from the mere fact of your existence. If you wish to use
the tools of rationality, then why not try something new today
and bloody well do so for a change?

[Christopher A. Lee]

On Sat, 9 Jun 2012 00:34:57 +0100, "Alex W." <ing...@yahoo.co.uk>

They didn't start off supernatural.

Just as "just-so" stories.

They evolved into stories about magical beings over time.

You have never one even tried to answer the question:

Why do you imagine they required real supernatural beings?

>>>> So explain the Piraha tribe who have no concept of gods and no
>>>> creation myths.
>>>
>>>See elsewhere in the thread. We have one single person's report
>>>on the unbelief system of the Piraha.

What "unbelief system" of the Piraha?

>>> Scientifically speaking,
>>>if there is no independent confirmation through repeat
>>>observation, it's practically valueless, the anthropological
>>>equivalent of Pons' and Fleischmann's cold fusion claims.
>>
>> So he was lying?
>
>Never said that, and I would not presume to.

Here's a clue:

Everett wasn't just a missionary charged with converting them, he was
also a cultural anthropologist and a Chomsky-linguist.

They had no concept of a god of any kind, nor did they have creation
myths.

Their language didn't even follow Chomsky's rules.

They simply weren't interested in his god-concept, and their responses
made it clear they couldn't comprehend what he was talking about.

They had no word for God, nor the idea of one - they simply didn't
know when he was talking about, and the concept was alien to them.

But instead of even acknowledging this, you dismiss him.

In exactly the same way you dismissed all the other counter-examples
that form a control group of people who were never taught to be theist
and didn't grow up to be, and who were never taught a religion and
didn't grow up believing in one.

[Christopher A. Lee]

On Sat, 9 Jun 2012 00:36:13 +0100, "Alex W." <ing...@yahoo.co.uk>
wrote:

>On Thu, 07 Jun 2012 16:37:25 -0700, Christopher A. Lee wrote:

>>>Sorry, but so what? The claim that started this discussion is that
>>>religion is a cultural universal, and therefore most likely based on
>>>some underlying cognitive mechanism. This does not mean that they all
>>>develop the idea of a single creator god - unless you want to argue
>>>that only monotheistic creator religions are "true" religions which
>>>would be frankly odd.
>>
>> No, it wasn't.
>>
>> It was that the human brain is hard wired for god belief and religion.
>>
>> Which is refuted by the counter examples of those atheists here who
>> were never taught to be theist in the first place, the various
>> atheistic Hindu and Buddhist sects, and the Piraha tribe in Brazil who
>> don't even have the concept of gods.
>
>That does not amount to a refutation in any way.
>
>Because some dogs are born with three legs does not amount to a
>refutation that canis lupus familiaris is not hardwired to be
>born for quadripedal locomotion.

Argument by analogy rather than addressing the point.

Which demonstrates you have nothing otherwise you would have used it,.

Now, explain why the control group consisting of examples of those who
were never taught to be theist and didn't grow up to be theist, and
those who were never taught a religion and didn't grow up believing in
one, should be ignored or dismissed.

Which renders any "research" on the subject worthless.

>Or, to take a more personal example: I myself was born with
>complete anosmia: a complete absence of the sense of smell. The
>only thing my nose is good for is to hold up my specs. As it
>happens, there are some others like me. This unfortunate
>accident of birth does not, however, in any way refute the
>general body plan of human genetics which does indeed have homo
>sapiens sapiens hardwired for olfaction. Under your argument,
>however, that is exactly what it should do and you are aberrant
>and deluded for smelling the coffee in the morning.

Why not address what has been explained over and over again instead of
using more bad analogies?

The obvious conclusion is that you can't.

>In other words, finding an exception to a rule does not in itself
>and without some extremely massive other evidence invalidate said
>theory.

What "rule"?

[Christopher A. Lee]

On Sat, 9 Jun 2012 00:44:09 +0100, "Alex W." <ing...@yahoo.co.uk>

wrote:

>On Thu, 07 Jun 2012 18:14:35 -0700, Christopher A. Lee wrote:
>
>> On Fri, 8 Jun 2012 01:41:52 +0100, "Alex W." <ing...@yahoo.co.uk>
>> wrote:
>>
>>>On Thu, 07 Jun 2012 14:57:41 -0700, Christopher A. Lee wrote:
>>>
>>>>
>>>> Now explain why you dismiss all those who grew up in a theism-free
>>>> environment and were never taught to be theist in the first place, who
>>>> never grew up theist.
>>>>
>>>> Instead of dismissing us.
>>>
>>>I do not dismiss you or those like you; never have.
>>>
>>>I simply do not subscribe to your position which extrapolates
>>>from you and those like you to reach a universal principle. To
>>>claim that "hey, it happened to me and I know some fellers it
>>>also happened to, therefore it must be generally true" is not
>>>rigorous in the least.
>>
>> Learn to read for comprehension instead of making up things I have
>> never said.
>>
>> And then explain where these "authorities" took into account the
>> control group of those who were never taught to be theist in the first
>> place.
>>
>> I have justified its being memetic over and over again, but this has
>> never been addressed.
>
>Even memes are born, but yet again, you seem to be unaware of
>this.

Either learn to stop lying, or to read for comprehension.

>> For example not just those of us here who were never taught to be
>> theist, but also those raised in atheistic sects of eastern religions
>> and also the Piraha tribe of Brazil who don't even have the concept of
>> a god.
>>
>> Please, pretty please with ribbons on, acknowledge these instead of
>> dismissing these as well.
>
>There it is again: your very specialised use of the word
>"acknowledge" which you use to mean "accept without reservation".
>That, I'm afraid, is not how the word is used in the English
>language.

Either learn to stop lying or to read for comprehension.

>At the risk of being tedious, I shall go once more into the
>breach and state, for the umpteenth time, that I am perfectly
>happy to acknowledge your existence, the existence of other
>unbelievers from birth, and even the existence of the unbelieving
>Piraha.

THEN STOP DISMISSING THEM and admit the somewhat conclusion that has
been pointed out over and over again.

And what's an "unbeliever" in the real world outside Christianity?

>Now, I would like you to acknowledge that the mere existence of
>such people does not prove a blessed thing. Logically, and under
>the rigour of the scientific method, your conclusion does not
>follow from the mere fact of your existence.

NOT JUST MINE BUT ALSO ALL THE OTHER EXAMPLES YOU IGNORE OR DISMISS.

And by your own reasoning you also have to acknowledge that the
existence of theists doesn't prove a blessed thing either.

> If you wish to use
>the tools of rationality, then why not try something new today
>and bloody well do so for a change?

IT SHOWS THE BRAIN ISN'T HARD WIRED FOR THEISM AND THAT YOU HAVE TO
LOOK FOR OTHER REASONS.

Why not show some honesty for a change?

Why not actually address all these counter-0examples?

Why not demonstrate that brain actually _is_ hard wired for theism,
not just for absorbing programming that includes theism?

I have demonstrated that theism is part of the programming that gets
absorbed, and that it isn't hard wired.

By the control groups that weren't taught gods or religion.

[Dakota]

I suppose that nearly everything was mysterious to primitive man.
Accurately associating effects with causes was likely very difficult
in the absence of a methodology. Major effects such as the daily
light-dark cycle and the changing of the seasons might easily have
called for a major cause. In such an environment, the distinction
between natural and supernatural might have been very blurry indeed.

It seems likely that primitive man had no concept of a supernatural.
They could only try to puzzle out what they observed. At some point
they observed and felt the effects of the wind and realized that
expelling air from their lungs had a similar effect though
significantly different in scale. It's not a great leap to assume a
powerful being caused the wind in a similar fashion. They never saw
the powerful being though. Bingo! We now have an invisible powerful
being. With such a convenient and plausible explanation, early man
could begin piling on other attributes until the invisible powerful
being became a god. Some of the attributes would have had positive
effects on the well being of the primitive social group. Sunshine and
rain might qualify. Other attributes would have had very unpleasant
effects. Lightning and floods come to mind. Figuring out ways of
keeping the god happy might have occupied the times when it was too
dark to hunt or gather food. Thus religion was born. It's been
downhill ever since.

It is not helpful to apply today's definition of the term
supernatural. The OED finds no example of the term in English until 1526.

supernatural, a. (n.)

(s(j)uːpəˈnætjʊərəl, -tʃərəl)

[ad. med.L. supernātūrālis (Thomas Aquinas), f. super- super- 4 a +
nātūra nature: see -al1. Cf. OF. supernaturel (16th c.; mod.F.
surnaturel), It. soprannaturale, Sp., Pg. sobrenatural.]

A.A adj.

1.A.1 That is above nature; belonging to a higher realm or system than
that of nature; transcending the powers or the ordinary course of nature.

1526 Pilgr. Perf. (W. de W. 1531) 190 Fayth is a super⁓naturall
lyght, & therfore it is indiuysyble, as all graces supernaturall be.

[Dakota]

I can't accept that the human brain is 'hard wired' for god belief or
religion. It does seem to have evolved to recognize patterns and to
associate effects with causes. Before the mental tools for performing
these tasks had developed beyond a primitive state, humans weren't
very good at coming up with the right associations. Thus were gods born.

[Burkhard]

On Jun 8, 12:33 am, "Christopher A. Lee" <chrislee95...@comcast.net>
wrote:

> On Thu, 7 Jun 2012 15:22:15 -0700 (PDT), Burkhard

>

I did, in the paragraph below. Your argument is based on a
misunderstanding of what it means that traits are hardwired.
To summarise: That there are people who are not theists is not an
argument that religion is not hard-wired. Here an example why
the_type_ of argument you are making fails: Sexual preferences are
clearly hardwired. In sexually reproducing species, sexual
preferences for members of the opposite sex are not just hardwired,
but adaptive. We know that at least since Drawin made sexual selection
a key component of the ToE Yet we find across several species sizeable
groups whose members are attracted by the same sex. (probably
hardwired too, possibly adaptive) That does not mean that sexual
references are not hardwired

> >You seem to think that if a trait is adaptive, or has for some other
> >reason biologically underpinnings, every single member of the species
> >should exhibit this trait.
>
> Another mind reader-wannabe tells me what is in my mind and gets it
> wrong rather than addressing the point.
>

No mind reading necessary, apart from the usual Gricean implicature
that you at least tried to make a relevant argument that you yourself
believe to be correct.

You offer atheists (or adults who claim to have been atheists from
birth) as a counterexample to the claim that theism is hardwired. For
this argument to be valid , you have to assume that the existence of
members of a species who don't have trait A is an argument against the
claim that a is hardwired. For obvious reasons, it isn't. If it were,
more than 95% of all biology, and pretty much all of the ToE, would be
wrong. For almost all traits, we find that there will be members of a
species who do not exhibit that trait, either because it is not
hardwired in them, or because the environmental conditions do not
allow the trait to be expressed, even though it is present.

> [..]
>
> >> >all that is quite different from adopting a _specific_ religious
> >> >belief system. That indeed is largely learned from parents and peers.
> >> >You could compare it to language learning: we probably have an inborn
> >> >ability to learn languages, and a tendency to do so. But for learning
> >> >any specific language, we need environmental input.
>
> >> Did they talk to any of us who were never raised to be theist?
>
> >> Or did they hide their heads in the sand?
>
> Couldn't answer this?
>

I rather did, in the part you snipped. Those studies that are based on
child development are statistical studies that follow proper
scientific protocol as far as sample size, control for factors,
sampling procedure etc are concerned, so the children come from all
sorts of families.

Studies in the field that are explicitly atheists- theist comparative
include Bethany Heywood's PhD on teleo-functional reasoning about
significant life events in atheistic, theist and autistic populations,
or Richard Sozi's comparative studies of secular and religious kibbuz
in israel: Sosis, Richard and Bradley Ruffle Ideology, Religion, and
the Evolution of Cooperation: Field Tests on Israeli Kibbutzim
Research in Economic Anthropology 23:89-117.

> >Let's see: You dismiss a significant body of scientific research,
> >published in high quality (by the usual impact metrics) peer reviewed
> >journals, without even reading them, let alone identifying specific
> >weaknesses in their data or methodology, simply because their
> >conclusions don't fit your world view. Who exactly is having his head
> >in the sand here?
>
> Not I.
>
> Where did they talk to those people who were never taught to be theist
> and never grew up to be theist?

In their field studies. you know, the ones reported in the peer
reviewed scientific literature you don't even read because the results
seem to upset you

>
> Whose existence as a control group that was ignored, renders their
> "research" worthless?

and you know they were ignored without reading the literature how
exactly?

>
> >> Like too many people who are presented with us as counter-examples?
>
> As well as with other groups that were never taught to be theist,like
> those Hindius sects that are atheist?
>

A counterexample" based on your misunderstanding of the science only.
We have lots of hardwired traits that we do not necessarily express,
especially when the hardwiring occurred under different environmental
conditions that are not operative any longer. as humans, we are
capable of learning, and overriding quite a lot of the hard-wired
instincts. These Hindus e.g. are also vegetarians, even though as a
species we are hardwired to like meat.

> Or the Brazilian Piraha tribe who don't even have the concept of gods
> or creation myths?

addressed in the part you snipped. Even if we ignore the very weak
empirical basis for the claim, it is not a problem for the idea that
religious instincts are hardwired. and religions in general and
theistic religions in particular do not need to have a creator god.

[Burkhard]

On Jun 8, 2:29 am, "Christopher A. Lee" <chrislee95...@comcast.net>
wrote:

Only if you are a creationists who thinks that when science got a
detail wrong, lying was involved. The idea of peer review is not so
much to detect dishonesty (for that it is actually quite bad) but to
check results so that people don;' make mistakes - or are honestly
mislead by their prior assumptions.

Things go wrong, That's why in science we have peer-publication peer
review to check for the more obvious mistakes, and post publication
peer review to replicate findings. Often, we find the original results
need to be revised. There is no implication of dishonesty when asking
fo confirmation of results, it is normal scientific practice

>
> He was a missionary who couldn't get the concept of gods  through to
> them, and had no axe to grind, and it caused him to lose his faith.
>

That argument works against you more than for you. Because he did not
have any formal training in anthropology, but was a Christian
missionary, the concern is that he assumed that all religions must
look roughly like the monotheistic abrahamic religions he was familiar
with. The Piraha may well not have this type of religion, but that
does not mean they have no religion, or proto-religious practices. a
properly trained anthropologist would have been trained to avoid this
type of projection, as Everetts work was not peer reviewed, and there
are few follow up studies by others, this claim shoudl be terated with
cautions.

Indeed, as far as i remember his work (admittedly from some time ago)
he does describe Piraha art which includes amulets to ward off evil
spirits. From a scientific perspective, e.g. Durkheim's definition of
religion, that is all that is needed.

> He was also a Chomsky-linguist and anthropologist.

He was a linguist, true. and he started using Chomskian tools. Chomsky
himself however called him a charlatan. As far as I know, he never
studied anthropology (unless you simply subsume linguistics under
anthropology), and most certainly never training in the sociology of
religion.

>
> Did you bother to read the extract I cut'n'pasted about the nineteenth
> and twentieth century Christian missionaries in China also finding
> that their audience simply wasn't interested?
>
> >Even if Everett's observations are shown to be correct, all it
> >would establish is the general *possibility* and not a general
> >principle.
>
> It provides more counter examples that refute the original claim that
> theism is hard wired in the human brain.

No they don;t. The claim that a capacity is hardwired does simply not
mean that all members of the species need to exhibit the trait.

What do you mean with "actual"?

The account would be like this: very early humans observed certain
events such as lighting. Now, two hardwired conceptual schemes kick
in, one is: "if there is an effect, there must be a cause". The other
is "sometimes there are actors even if I can't see them " (something
children learn when they first realise that their parents are still
around even when they can't see them) This results in the introduction
of such an invisible actor, obviously a powerful one (lighting is
frightening) They also may observe something like: the lighting missed
our camp just when i touched my nose. At this point, another hardwired
cognitive scheme kicks in, "when two things happen after each other,
assume the first was the cause for the second". and in humans (or our
ancestral species, there is also an ability for symbolic reasoning,
which means the symbol of touching the nose becomes a ritual to avoid
the lighting being .

This is an "actual human being" in the sense that it is not a story
about an acural human that in transmission got exaggerated to god-
hood, it is "born supernatural", and not learned. But if is of course
not a claim that lighting comes from actual supernatural beings -
science has nothing to say about that.

Used to call rain from the sky? I somehow doubt that they observed
humans actually making it rain.

>
> Which is why the just-so stories were about people.
>
> >"Granddad Ugg was so powerful he dragged the sun over the horizon
> >every morning"?
>
> Deliberately stupid caricature rather than address what has already
> been explained.
>
> >> Invisible omnipotent creator-monotheist gods evolved from these.
>
> >Now you're the one thinking im limited terms of monotheism.
>
> I'm not the one who believes in a creator-monotheist and can't
> understand how it evolved from just-so stories about people dong the
> things they couldn't understand.
>
> Because those are the kind you imagine people come up with because you
> imagine they are hard wired for that belief.
>
> >> You know perfectly well that the Greek pantheon, the Roman pantheon,
> >> the Hindu pantheon, the Norse pantheon etc don't have
> >> creator-monotheist gods an their gods are more like hero figures in
> >> stories, with human failings.
>
> >Who is talking of creator gods anyway?  I cry red herring.
>
> I cry weaseling on your part.
>
> Because those are the kind you imagine people come up with because you
> imagine they are hard wired for that belief.
>

Because creator gods are one form of god does not mean that everyone
hardwired for religion comes to creator gods, even when the
environment allows to develop the trait. We are hardwired for learning
languages, that does not mean everybody will learn German.

(Just to make the analogy explicit: language + religion; German =
monotheistic creator god))

[Burkhard]

On Jun 8, 6:26 pm, "Christopher A. Lee" <chrislee95...@comcast.net>
wrote:

> On Fri, 8 Jun 2012 09:44:23 -0700 (PDT), Burkhard
>

> <undesirableal...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >> >Sorry, but so what? The claim that started this discussion is that
> >> >religion is a cultural universal, and therefore most likely based on
> >> >some underlying cognitive mechanism. This does not mean that they all
> >> >develop the idea of a single creator god - unless you want to argue
> >> >that only monotheistic creator religions are "true" religions which
> >> >would be frankly odd.
>
> >> No, it wasn't.
>
> >> It was that the human brain is hard wired for god belief and religion.
> >Yes, that's what I said, Universal Cognitive mechanisms are those that
> >are hard-wired.
>
> Not the same thing.

Really? Give me a cite please to a study of a universal cognitive
mechanism that is not hardwired, i can't thin k of one off hand,.

>
> >> Which is refuted by the counter examples of those atheists here who
> >> were never taught to be theist in the first place,
>
> >No, it isn't really, noyt any more than the claim that people are hard-
> >wired for learning language is falsified by peopel who grow up in a
> >deaf community and as a result do not learn to speak. Lots of hard-
> >wired capacities require the right type of environmental input to
> >become fully developed or fixed, that does not make them less hard-
> >wired.
>
> Yes,  it is really - we form part of a control group that has never
> been taken into account, just rationalised away.

That simply shows your ignorance of the literature,
(while at the same time accusing the scientists who carried them out,
and their peer reviewers, of serious incompetence)

>
> It is obvious that religion and gods are taught - because children
> learn whatever religion and gods their parents teach them.
>

That is a non sequitur. Children learn whatever language their parents
speak. But that is not an argument against the claim that our ability
to learn languages is not hardwired. Or that certain grammaticla
universal are not hardwired (which was Chomsky's claim)

You are dismissing now not just the large body of scientific work on
the evolution of religion, you are also rejecting the even larger body
of work on the evolution of language, all of which assumes that our
language instinct became hardwired through adaptive pressures.

> With the control being those who weren't taught either religion or
> gods.
>
> Please take this control group into account instead of ignoring it or
> trying to rationalise it away.

Read the peer reviwed scientific literature and show were they did not
take relevant control groups into account. Be specific.

>
> You cannot ignore the fact that not just the children of atheist
> parents who are fortunate enough grow up in a theism-free environment,
> but also children raised in those Eastern religions that don't have
> gods, don't grow up to be theist.

And people who grow up in environments that are adverse to physical
activity don;t become runners, yet the morphology that allows humans
to run is hardwired and adaptive.

People who grow up in societies that have'nt yet developed mathematics
don;'t become mathematicians, even though the ability to manipulate
numerical symbols is hardwired ( Geary, David C.Reflections of
evolution and culture in children's cognition: Implications for
mathematical development and instruction.
American Psychologist, Vol 50(1), Jan 1995)

Many hardwired traits require environmental input to express them.

>
> Nor can you ignore the fact that the same atheist children don't grow
> up believing a religion.
>
> Which is what is happening here, and has never been addressed.
>
> Just repeating assertions doesn't cut it.

I've given you several cites to the relevant scientific literature.
That is rather more than making assertions.

>
> And to carry on with your analogy, feral children in places like rural
> India can't speak.

Indeed. Which shows that not all hardwired traits are expressed, as I
said all along. Which makes all your alleged counter examples
irrelevant.

>
> What there is, is the capacity for the child to absorb programming
> from those around them.
>
> Which is how the child learns to speak, why feral children can't speak
> and why they act like the animals they grew up with.

So you are saying this is evidence that these children don;t have the
biological apparatus to learn languages?
amazing! any studies to back you up on that?

> Which is why the child learns its parents' religion and gods, and why
> those who aren't taught gods don't grow up believing them, and why
> those who aren't taught religion don't grow up believing one..
>
> >is the various
> >> atheistic Hindu and Buddhist sects,
>
> >Why would any of them be an arguemnt that religious beliefs are not
> >hardwired?
>
> Duh. GOD-BELIEFS.
>
> Check the subject line.
>
> Although It has expanded  to include religion.
>
> Which also has to be taught.
>
> Because just as kids who aren't taught gods don't grow up believing in
> them, those who aren't taught religion don't grow up believing in any
> religion.
>
> You must have noticed that the children of Hindus don't grown up
> believing in the Christian god or Christianity, the children of
> Christians don't grow up believing in the Hindu pantheon or Hinduosm
> etc.
>

And as i said several times, that is not a counter argument to the
claim that religious instincts are hardwired, only that our
environment allows us to override these instincts, especially when
they are not longer adaptive. To give another example, according to at
least some studies (problematic ones, in my opinion, but for reasons
irrelevant to the discussion here), the tendency to rape may well be
hardwired from way back in our evolutionary history (Craig Palmer's
controversial 2000 study e.g.), but that does not mean that these
days that our normative systems do not normally prevent people
becoming rapists.

> And also noticed the fact there are several atheists in the Usenet
> atheist groups who were never taught to be theist as a child and never
> grew up believing in gods.
>
> If religion and gods really were hard-wired then you would get
> children who aren't taught gods would grow up believing in them

No, that is just another non-sequitur. Even when traits are hardwired,
we are not just nature, we are also nurture. What we would
hypothesise though (and for practical reasons can;t test) is that if
children were left entirely to their own devises, with no adults
around ever, they would come up with their own rituals,theories of
invisible agents, and what happens to those of their mates who they
see dying. All that confirmed, as far as this is possible, through
studies in child psychology, e.g. Alcorta, C. & Sosis, R. (2010)
Signals and Rituals of Humans and Animals, in Encyclopedia of Animal
Rights and Animal Welfare, ed. Marc Bekoff, pp. 519-523,

Note that they include in their studies non-human primates

- so
> you would get kids raised in non-theistic religions as well as by
> atheists who manage to keep theists and theism at bay, believing in
> gods.
>
> And you would get the same atheist kids growing up believing in a
> religion.
>

> >                  Lots of things are hardired in our brain because it was
> >adaptive at some pint in our evolutionary history. Thta does not mean

> >that we as humans can't through a process of reasoning move beyond it.
> >The same Hinduist and Buddhist sects e.g. will also be vegetarians,

> >even though we are biologically speaking omnivores, and our brain
> >hardwired to find meat pleasurable.

>
> So show that this "lots of things" include gods and religion - taking
> the control group into account.
>
> > and the Piraha tribe in Brazil who
> >> don't even have the concept of gods.
>
> >First , that's a highly debatable claim, valid only for a very
> >specific conception of gods. Second even if it were true,  you don't
> >need gods to have a religion. Ancestor worship is a religion for all
> >intents and purposes, but needs no deities. Some forms of pantheism
> >and pantheism also don't have the notion of god(s) , yet are
> >religions. Others still just have a pantheon of demons and other such
> >spirit entities, or personified abstract properties.
>
> You need to show that they actually did these things.

I'd say the burden of proof is here with you rather than me, you claim
they don't. As far as I know, there are no specific studies on their
belief system. But then again, as far as I recall Everett, they do use
amulets to ward off spirits, and I think they also believe that some
totem animals sometimes warn them from danger

>
> Which the CHRISTIAN MISSIONARY who was also an anthropologist and
> linguist,  who went there with the intention of converting them found
> they didn't.
>

I don;t think he was trained as anthropologist. And that he was a
Christian missionary is a reason to treat his report with some care.
When he speaks of "religion" he may well have thought of the type of
religion he was most familiar with. So when he claimed they have no
religion, he does not necessarily man the same with religion as an
anthropologist, evolutionary biologist or sociologist of religion
would

> You're trying to rationalise things that aren't even there based on
> theistic preconceptions.

What theistic preconceptions? I have no idea what the religious
affiliations of most of the scientists are who claim that the
religious instinct is hardwired. And that despite knowing their work,
and occasionally bumping into them on conferences. It really does not
matter, the evidence speaks for itself. But at least one of the most
prominent advocates of the "hardwire theory" describes himself as
"irreligious" (Jesse Bering) . Another one is Desmond Morris (in "The
naked Ape) While I don't know his belief directly, he provided the
illustrations for some of Dawkin's books. You can draw from that any
inference you want. and Stephen J Gould who argued that religious
belief is hardwired, but not adaptive ("Exaptation: a crucial tool for
an evolutionary psychology". Journal of Social Issues (47): 43–65.)
was an agnostic.

[Malcolm McMahon]

On Saturday, 9 June 2012 01:33:30 UTC+1, Christopher A. Lee wrote:
>
> IT SHOWS THE BRAIN ISN'T HARD WIRED FOR THEISM AND THAT YOU HAVE TO
> LOOK FOR OTHER REASONS.
>
> Why not show some honesty for a change?
>
> Why not actually address all these counter-0examples?
>

OK, if we take the comparison with language, a wolf-child will still have the LAM, but won't develop an actual language. Put a bunch of them together on a desert island, though, and I'd bet they'll have put together their own language in three or four generations.

The brain can be hard-wired to encompass a religion, but that doesn't guarantee it will happen to every individual.

Remember I'm not claiming that some God wired us this way on purpose, but rather our evolutionary history produces this effect as a byproduct of fitting us to be good social animals.

"Universality" is thus, perhaps, too broad a claim, though "vast majority" still clearly applies. I will also concede that "theism" is, perhaps, too narrow a class, "religion" might be a better term.

Your "Godless" tribe, still, apparently, has a belief in supernatural intervention (which, to my mind, is the most basic belief of religion), even though they haven't built it into a religion with a supreme being. If the Wiki article it to be believed they are a people with remarkably narrow minds. With almost no awareness of past or future. It seems to me they have been fortunate enough to live in an environment that is so benign that they have little need of such thought.

[Christopher A. Lee]

On Sat, 9 Jun 2012 04:20:43 -0700 (PDT), in alt.atheism.moderated
Burkhard <undesira...@gmail.com> wrote:

>> >> And it's refuted by all those of us who were never raised to be
>> >> theist.
>>
>> >> We _do_ exist.
>>
>> Couldn't answer this?
>
>
>I did, in the paragraph below. Your argument is based on a
>misunderstanding of what it means that traits are hardwired.

No, it is not - it is based on the fact that religion is taught in
childhood.

And that those who aren't taught it don't grow up religious.

Why don't you explain why those who aren't taught it don't grow up
religious?

And why those who aren't taught gods don't grow up believing in them
either?

Everything else is a red-herring.

Including your attempted mind-reading.

[Christopher A. Lee]

Except of course that Everett's preconceptions were that all languages
followed Chomsky's rules, and that everybody had a concept of god.

The Piraha didn't, the concept couldn't even be explained to them
because they didn't have the words and concepts to do so, and they
weren't interested.

You forget that Everett was a missionary who was highly motivated to
communicate Christianity and its god.

He was also a Chomsky-linguist and an anthropologist - although I find
it hard to imagine an anthropologist who would set out to cause
upheaval in a remote culture by teaching them his religion. It's
almost like a breach of the Prime Directive.

And what he found was that it completely contradicted his
presumptions.

Causing him such a crisis of faith that he eventually became an
atheist.

But in any case they are merely one of the several groups of people
who were never raised to be theist and never grew up theist.

Others have been mentioned: those of us whose atheist parents never
mentioned gods or religion, and who grew up theism- and religion-
free.

And children raised in Eastern religions which don't have gods, who
don't grow up theist.

All these are examples of people whose brains weren't hard wired for
theism and/or religion.

The original claim was very strong, that our brains are hard-wired for
theism, later extended to religion.

Which has not been justified, and well-supported counter-examples were
given.

But instead of defending the original claim and actually addressing
the counter-examples, they have been rationalised away as if the
original claim were a given.

It's not.

Especially when it's made to people who grew up in a theism-free
environment in their early years, never came up with gods themselves
and didn't come across the idea until somebody else brought it up
after they had learned to think for themselves.

[Christopher A. Lee]

On Sat, 9 Jun 2012 05:33:32 -0700 (PDT), Malcolm McMahon
<malcol...@googlemail.com> wrote:

>On Saturday, 9 June 2012 01:33:30 UTC+1, Christopher A. Lee wrote:
>>
>> IT SHOWS THE BRAIN ISN'T HARD WIRED FOR THEISM AND THAT YOU HAVE TO
>> LOOK FOR OTHER REASONS.
>>
>> Why not show some honesty for a change?
>>
>> Why not actually address all these counter-0examples?
>
>OK, if we take the comparison with language, a wolf-child will still have the
>LAM, but won't develop an actual language. Put a bunch of them together on
>a desert island, though, and I'd bet they'll have put together their own
>language in three or four generations.

"I'll bet".

And even if they did, how does this demonstrate that religion and
god-belief are hard wired?

And how does your red herring address the counter-examples of groups
that weren't raised theist and/or religious.

If it were hard wired they would have come up with gods and religion
on their own.

These won't go away no matter how many people try rationalise them out
of existence.

>The brain can be hard-wired to encompass a religion, but that doesn't
>guarantee it will happen to every individual.

So show it is, not just saying it "can be".

>Remember I'm not claiming that some God wired us this way on purpose,

Good thing that's just your straw man.

>but rather our evolutionary history produces this effect as a byproduct of
>fitting us to be good social animals.

You're saying it is hard-wired without any evidence.

The counter-examples are just part of the evidence it is memetic and
the "hard wiring" is more like installing a program in flash memory.

The other evidence that it is taught, is that children learn their
parents' god (if they have one) and their parents' religion (if they
have one).

>"Universality" is thus, perhaps, too broad a claim, though "vast majority"
>still clearly applies. I will also concede that "theism" is, perhaps, too
>narrow a class, "religion" might be a better term.

So demonstrate that these are hard-wired instead of just insisting it.

>Your "Godless" tribe, still, apparently, has a belief in supernatural
>intervention (which, to my mind, is the most basic belief of religion),

Why not go to the original source?

There are plenty of interviews with Everett, and even videos by him on
the web.

>even though they haven't built it into a religion with a supreme being.
>If

If.

It seems to me to be an article written by somebody with an axe to
grind.

Everett didn't. He went out there as a missionary who was also a
linguist and an anthropologist, expecting to convert them. He believed
that theism was inherent too.

He didn't expect a people with no concept of gods, supernatural etc
and a language without even the words to communicate these concepts.

And this caused such a crisis for his faith that he became an
atheist.

But as I said earlier, there are interviews containing his own words,
and his own videos out there.

> the Wiki article it to be believed they are a people with remarkably
>narrow minds.

More rationalisation.

> With almost no awareness of past or future. It seems
>to me they have been fortunate enough to live in an environment that
>is so benign that they have little need of such thought.

And?

They accept that things just "are" without any supernatural agency to
do it, because they don't even have the concept of the supernatural
nor the words to develop it.

And they don't have any creation myths.

In a way it reminds me of my puzzled "why would it need somebody to
create the Earth?" when my class teacher tried to convert an 8-year
old boy who had been raised in a theism-free environment.

It helped that I was an early reader who had already read both kids'
science books, and had read kids' versions of the Greek myths and
learned that gods were characters in stories, before hearing about
Christianity for the first time.

But at least English has the words to communicate the concept, even
though it is obviously silly the first time you hear it when you
weren't taught it in your earliest years.

[Christopher A. Lee]

On Sat, 9 Jun 2012 05:42:56 -0700 (PDT), Burkhard
<undesira...@gmail.com> wrote:

>On Jun 8, 6:26 pm, "Christopher A. Lee" <chrislee95...@comcast.net>
>wrote:
>> On Fri, 8 Jun 2012 09:44:23 -0700 (PDT), Burkhard
>>
>> <undesirableal...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> >> >Sorry, but so what? The claim that started this discussion is that
>> >> >religion is a cultural universal, and therefore most likely based on
>> >> >some underlying cognitive mechanism. This does not mean that they all
>> >> >develop the idea of a single creator god - unless you want to argue
>> >> >that only monotheistic creator religions are "true" religions which
>> >> >would be frankly odd.
>>
>> >> No, it wasn't.
>>
>> >> It was that the human brain is hard wired for god belief and religion.
>> >Yes, that's what I said, Universal Cognitive mechanisms are those that
>> >are hard-wired.
>>
>> Not the same thing.
>
>Really? Give me a cite please to a study of a universal cognitive
>mechanism that is not hardwired, i can't think of one off hand,.

So demonstrate that theism is a "hard wired universal cognitive
mechanism" instead of shifting the burned of proof after your red
herring.

Instead of just presuming it.

The claim that theism is hard wired has never been supported.

We are expected to take it as a given.

But on the other hand we have provided counter-examples from several
different groups that are evidence that it is memetic, not hard wired.

You need to actually address these rather than trying to rationalise
them away.

Especially when you talk to members of one these groups.

[Fidem Turbare, the non-existent atheist goddess]

On Sat, 09 Jun 2012 09:15:58 -0700
"Christopher A. Lee" <chrisl...@comcast.net> wrote:
> On Sat, 9 Jun 2012 05:42:56 -0700 (PDT), Burkhard
> <undesira...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Jun 8, 6:26 pm, "Christopher A. Lee" <chrislee95...@comcast.net>
>> wrote:
>>> On Fri, 8 Jun 2012 09:44:23 -0700 (PDT), Burkhard

[snip]

>>>> Yes, that's what I said, Universal Cognitive mechanisms are those
>>>> that are hard-wired.
>>>
>>> Not the same thing.
>>
>> Really? Give me a cite please to a study of a universal cognitive
>> mechanism that is not hardwired, i can't think of one off hand,.
>
> So demonstrate that theism is a "hard wired universal cognitive
> mechanism" instead of shifting the burned of proof after your red
> herring.

Ha ha! Is "burned of proof" a subtle reference to witch burnings? (I
know you meant "burden of proof" but I just couldn't resist!)

> Instead of just presuming it.
>
> The claim that theism is hard wired has never been supported.

We're actually hard-wired as atheists, and as our brains develop we get
better at conceptualizing concepts and creating new ideas. With enough
practice (e.g., 21 days to change a habit, etc.) we can gradually
change our thinking, and during the growth phase our brains tend to be
far more receptive to change (which is undoubtedly why religious
leaders are so keen to indoctrinate children -- childhood is probably
the easiest and, thus, also the most convenient time during which to
brainwash people).

> We are expected to take it as a given.
>
> But on the other hand we have provided counter-examples from several
> different groups that are evidence that it is memetic, not hard wired.
>
> You need to actually address these rather than trying to rationalise
> them away.
>
> Especially when you talk to members of one these groups.

The fact that there are so many atheists in the world is a pretty good
anecdote in favour of your point too.

--
Fidem Turbare, the non-existent atheist goddess
"Jesus is unnecessary and a liar. ... It is useless for a man to come
to Jesus and follow Him, as all these earnest Christians will go on to
Hell, anyway. ..."
-- Broil Jab (April 13, 2012)

[Christopher A. Lee]

On Sat, 9 Jun 2012 11:15:41 -0700, "Fidem Turbare, the non-existent
atheist goddess" <god...@fidemturbare.com> wrote:

>On Sat, 09 Jun 2012 09:15:58 -0700
>"Christopher A. Lee" <chrisl...@comcast.net> wrote:
>> On Sat, 9 Jun 2012 05:42:56 -0700 (PDT), Burkhard
>> <undesira...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> On Jun 8, 6:26 pm, "Christopher A. Lee" <chrislee95...@comcast.net>
>>> wrote:
>>>> On Fri, 8 Jun 2012 09:44:23 -0700 (PDT), Burkhard
>[snip]
>>>>> Yes, that's what I said, Universal Cognitive mechanisms are those
>>>>> that are hard-wired.
>>>>
>>>> Not the same thing.
>>>
>>> Really? Give me a cite please to a study of a universal cognitive
>>> mechanism that is not hardwired, i can't think of one off hand,.
>>
>> So demonstrate that theism is a "hard wired universal cognitive
>> mechanism" instead of shifting the burned of proof after your red
>> herring.
>
>Ha ha! Is "burned of proof" a subtle reference to witch burnings? (I
>know you meant "burden of proof" but I just couldn't resist!)

An artifact of the spelling checker - my aging eyes see what they
expect to see.

>> Instead of just presuming it.
>>
>> The claim that theism is hard wired has never been supported.
>
>We're actually hard-wired as atheists, and as our brains develop we get
>better at conceptualizing concepts and creating new ideas. With enough
>practice (e.g., 21 days to change a habit, etc.) we can gradually
>change our thinking, and during the growth phase our brains tend to be
>far more receptive to change (which is undoubtedly why religious
>leaders are so keen to indoctrinate children -- childhood is probably
>the easiest and, thus, also the most convenient time during which to
>brainwash people).

Not specifically hard wired as atheists, we don't believe unless and
until we are taught to.

Babies are trivially atheist in the same way they are trivially
amoral, apolitical and a whole slew of other labels for the absence of
acquired attributes.

The only difference is that theists have a mental block shutting out
the idea that theism is taught, and when they can't they try to
rationalise it away.

>> We are expected to take it as a given.
>>
>> But on the other hand we have provided counter-examples from several
>> different groups that are evidence that it is memetic, not hard wired.
>>
>> You need to actually address these rather than trying to rationalise
>> them away.
>>
>> Especially when you talk to members of one these groups.
>
>The fact that there are so many atheists in the world is a pretty good
>anecdote in favour of your point too.

There seem to be differences in the atheism of those who were never
taught to believe, and those who lost their belief. Even though
they're both atheist.

[Fidem Turbare, the non-existent atheist goddess]

On Sat, 09 Jun 2012 13:07:45 -0700

"Christopher A. Lee" <chrisl...@comcast.net> wrote:
> On Sat, 9 Jun 2012 11:15:41 -0700, "Fidem Turbare, the non-existent
> atheist goddess" <god...@fidemturbare.com> wrote:
>> On Sat, 09 Jun 2012 09:15:58 -0700
>> "Christopher A. Lee" <chrisl...@comcast.net> wrote:

[snip - responses I find to be generally agreeable]

>>> We are expected to take it as a given.
>>>
>>> But on the other hand we have provided counter-examples from
>>> several different groups that are evidence that it is memetic, not
>>> hard wired.
>>>
>>> You need to actually address these rather than trying to
>>> rationalise them away.
>>>
>>> Especially when you talk to members of one these groups.
>>
>> The fact that there are so many atheists in the world is a pretty
>> good anecdote in favour of your point too.
>
> There seem to be differences in the atheism of those who were never
> taught to believe, and those who lost their belief. Even though
> they're both atheist.

...and the atheists who were taught to be theists but for whom the
teaching was ineffective -- an important third group.

--

Fidem Turbare, the non-existent atheist goddess

"When I obtained permission not to have to stand for the Lords Prayer,
I was made to sit in the school office while someone read from the
Bible over the P.A. system directly in front of me."
-- Darwin Bedford (November 2002), Ambassador of Reason

[Christopher A. Lee]

On Sat, 9 Jun 2012 19:21:27 -0700, "Fidem Turbare, the non-existent

atheist goddess" <god...@fidemturbare.com> wrote:

>On Sat, 09 Jun 2012 13:07:45 -0700
>"Christopher A. Lee" <chrisl...@comcast.net> wrote:
>> On Sat, 9 Jun 2012 11:15:41 -0700, "Fidem Turbare, the non-existent
>> atheist goddess" <god...@fidemturbare.com> wrote:
>>> On Sat, 09 Jun 2012 09:15:58 -0700
>>> "Christopher A. Lee" <chrisl...@comcast.net> wrote:
>[snip - responses I find to be generally agreeable]
>>>> We are expected to take it as a given.
>>>>
>>>> But on the other hand we have provided counter-examples from
>>>> several different groups that are evidence that it is memetic, not
>>>> hard wired.
>>>>
>>>> You need to actually address these rather than trying to
>>>> rationalise them away.
>>>>
>>>> Especially when you talk to members of one these groups.
>>>
>>> The fact that there are so many atheists in the world is a pretty
>>> good anecdote in favour of your point too.

It's not an anecdote, it's data.

You have to be careful here, because a sock puppet of one of the
partipants calls it anecdotal so he can dismiss it.

The same trolling sock puppet jumped on me when I called religion and
theism part of the human condition, telling me I had "admitted it was
innate after all" when I had obviously done no such thing.

[Malcolm McMahon]

On Saturday, 9 June 2012 17:10:37 UTC+1, Christopher A. Lee wrote:
> On Sat, 9 Jun 2012 05:33:32 -0700 (PDT), Malcolm McMahon
> <malcol...@googlemail.com> wrote:
>
> >On Saturday, 9 June 2012 01:33:30 UTC+1, Christopher A. Lee wrote:
> >>
> >> IT SHOWS THE BRAIN ISN'T HARD WIRED FOR THEISM AND THAT YOU HAVE TO
> >> LOOK FOR OTHER REASONS.
> >>
> >> Why not show some honesty for a change?
> >>
> >> Why not actually address all these counter-0examples?
> >
> >OK, if we take the comparison with language, a wolf-child will still have the
> >LAM, but won't develop an actual language. Put a bunch of them together on
> >a desert island, though, and I'd bet they'll have put together their own
> >language in three or four generations.
>
> "I'll bet".

Well, it's not exactly an experiment that one could do ethically, is it?

>
> And even if they did, how does this demonstrate that religion and
> god-belief are hard wired?
>

What it does is to demolish your counter argument based on the fact that children brought up without religion don't spontaneously invent a fully fledged monotheistic religion. I wouldn't expect them to. That would take generations to build up.

It would start with the rituals that most children spontaneously generate amongst their peers. Of course scientific education reduces the tendency, providing natural explanations in the absence of which supernatural ones naturally emerge.

What the hardwired theory suggests is that a child reared without either religious or scientific education will, by default, turn to the supernatural.

>
> >Remember I'm not claiming that some God wired us this way on purpose,
>
> Good thing that's just your straw man.

Just an impression I feared you were getting. I'm not a theist. I don't believe that what we're discussing has anything to do with the real existence of God or Gods. These are purely mental phenomena.

>
> >but rather our evolutionary history produces this effect as a byproduct of
> >fitting us to be good social animals.
>
> You're saying it is hard-wired without any evidence.
>

I regard the fact that the majority of the human race are theistic, and of those remaining most believe in supernatural influence on reality as evidence in itself. Add to that the way religions clearly provide substitute parent figures.

I don't pretend that there are no exceptions, that's only to be expected where evolution has provided only a template, leaving society to fill in the details.

> So demonstrate that these are hard-wired instead of just insisting it.
>

I'm not "insisting", I'm presenting a theoretical explanation of observed phenomena. You're the one unwilling to consider it.

> >Your "Godless" tribe, still, apparently, has a belief in supernatural
> >intervention (which, to my mind, is the most basic belief of religion),
>
> Why not go to the original source?
>
> There are plenty of interviews with Everett, and even videos by him on
> the web.
>
> >even though they haven't built it into a religion with a supreme being.
> >If
>
> If.
>
> It seems to me to be an article written by somebody with an axe to
> grind.
>



> Everett didn't.

Of course he did. His faith was his axe.

He went out there as a missionary who was also a
> linguist and an anthropologist, expecting to convert them. He believed
> that theism was inherent too.
>
> He didn't expect a people with no concept of gods, supernatural etc
> and a language without even the words to communicate these concepts.

But, apparently these people *do* have a belief in supernatural influence, the most basic kind of religion. He's just looking through the prism of his own theistic beliefs.

No doubt he'd regard the tendency to religion as "God given" which would imply everyone would naturally have a similar religious picture to himself.

>
> And this caused such a crisis for his faith that he became an
> atheist.
>
> But as I said earlier, there are interviews containing his own words,
> and his own videos out there.
>
> > the Wiki article it to be believed they are a people with remarkably
> >narrow minds.
>
> More rationalisation.
>
> > With almost no awareness of past or future. It seems
> >to me they have been fortunate enough to live in an environment that
> >is so benign that they have little need of such thought.
>
> And?
>

And therefore they don't even ask the questions that typical theistic religions pretend to answer.

It's to be expected that their spiritual beliefs would be simple because the world they live in is simple.

[Christopher A. Lee]

On Sun, 10 Jun 2012 02:28:48 -0700 (PDT), Malcolm McMahon

<malcol...@googlemail.com> wrote:

>On Saturday, 9 June 2012 17:10:37 UTC+1, Christopher A. Lee wrote:
>> On Sat, 9 Jun 2012 05:33:32 -0700 (PDT), Malcolm McMahon
>> <malcol...@googlemail.com> wrote:
>>
>> >On Saturday, 9 June 2012 01:33:30 UTC+1, Christopher A. Lee wrote:
>> >>
>> >> IT SHOWS THE BRAIN ISN'T HARD WIRED FOR THEISM AND THAT YOU HAVE TO
>> >> LOOK FOR OTHER REASONS.
>> >>
>> >> Why not show some honesty for a change?
>> >>
>> >> Why not actually address all these counter-0examples?
>> >
>> >OK, if we take the comparison with language, a wolf-child will still have the
>> >LAM, but won't develop an actual language. Put a bunch of them together on
>> >a desert island, though, and I'd bet they'll have put together their own
>> >language in three or four generations.
>>
>> "I'll bet".
>
>Well, it's not exactly an experiment that one could do ethically, is it?

So don't presume to know the result.

>> And even if they did, how does this demonstrate that religion and
>> god-belief are hard wired?
>
>What it does is to demolish your counter argument based on the fact that
>children brought up without religion don't spontaneously invent a fully fledged
>monotheistic religion. I wouldn't expect them to. That would take generations
>to build up.

Again, either learn to read or to stop lying about what people say by
putting words into their mouths that they didn't.

But in any case your "point" is both moot and a red herring until you
actually demonstrate they would.

Because "does" doesn't mean "would".

>It would start with the rituals that most children spontaneously generate
>amongst their peers. Of course scientific education reduces the tendency,
>providing natural explanations in the absence of which supernatural ones
>naturally emerge.

Some thing else you have to back up - that "supernatural ones
naturally emerge".

Now, instead of all these what-ifs, why not take into account the
control groups we already have, instead of trying to rationalise them
away?

You know, those who weren't taught to be theist in their early years
and didn't grow up theist let alone come up with gods.

And those who weren't taught religion in their early years and didn't
grow up religious let alone come up with it on their own.

Because they won't un-happen.

In fact given the way you try avoid taking any notice of them, one has
to wonder why.

And I'm sure you don't want this to be psychologised.

>What the hardwired theory suggests is that a child reared without either
>religious or scientific education will, by default, turn to the supernatural.

So either demonstrate it or admit it's just so much hot air.

Provide as much evidence for it as you have been given that it is
memetic, but you have tried to rationalise away.

Taking into account those groups that weren't taught theism or gods
and didn't come up with them as they grew up.

Explain (NOT RATIONALISE AWAY) the fact that those in the control
group you dismiss, were neither hard wired for ANY theism or ANY
religion OTHERWISE THEY WOULD HAVE COME UP WITH THEM.

Given the fact that you have never once tried to do this, the obvious

conclusion is that you can't.

>> >Remember I'm not claiming that some God wired us this way on purpose,
>>
>> Good thing that's just your straw man.
>
>Just an impression I feared you were getting. I'm not a theist. I don't believe
>that what we're discussing has anything to do with the real existence of God
>or Gods. These are purely mental phenomena.

I never said you were a theist.

Just that you keep claiming something you can't back up, and
rationalise away or dismiss all the counter-examples.

One has to wonder why.

>> >but rather our evolutionary history produces this effect as a byproduct of
>> >fitting us to be good social animals.
>>
>> You're saying it is hard-wired without any evidence.
>
>I regard the fact that the majority of the human race are theistic, and of
>those remaining most believe in supernatural influence on reality as
>evidence in itself.

Argument ad numerum.

And non-sequitur.

But why not look at percentages rather than just saying "most"?

All it is, is evidence that large numbers of people believe something.

It shows that it is part of the human condition.

Not that it is hard wired.

That is an unjustified conclusion. A non-sequitur because it doesn't
follow.

There are other ways for it to become part of the human condition.

Like its being memetic.

Which is supported by those groups you dismiss or try to rationalise
away.

You know, those who were never taught religion and/or theism.

Those members of Eastern religions that don't have gods, who weren't
taught them as children and didn't come up with them on their own.

Which I can't recall you ever addressing even though this has been
pointed out many times already.

Those atheists in this very group who were never taught theism or
religion in their earliest years and didn't encounter either until
they were older, and who never came up with them on their own.

Even if you think they are anomalies, it is the investigation of
anomalies which refines understanding.

Or the Piraha tribe whom you have tried to rationalise away even
though Everett was a missionary, an anthropologist and a linguist
whose only preconceptions were that god-belief was inherent and found
they had no concept of one, and for whom this was such a shock that he
lost his faith.

Even the fact that children who are taught gods and religion don't
come up with their own but believe the ones their parents teach them,
point to its being memetic.

> Add to that the way religions clearly provide substitute
>parent figures.

So how does this make it hard-wired?

Parents who teach their children a certain type of god, teach it as a
parent figure.

Other parents who teach other types of gods teach them just as
capricious people.

You must have noticed that polytheist gods aren't father figures.

>I don't pretend that there are no exceptions, that's only to be expected
>where evolution has provided only a template, leaving society to fill in
>the details.

Provide ACTUAL EVIDENCE that the human brain is hard wired for theism,
instead of just asserting it.

And provide AN ACTUAL EXPLANATION why it isn't memetic, because that
is what the ACTUAL EVIDENCE WHICH WON'T GO AWAY suggests.

>> So demonstrate that these are hard-wired instead of just insisting it.
>
>I'm not "insisting", I'm presenting a theoretical explanation of observed
>phenomena.

No, you're rationalising what you already believe,and not doing a very
good job of it.

At the same time dismissing or rationalising away evidence that it
isn't.

> You're the one unwilling to consider it.

This lie is a projection of your own unwillingness even to address the
evidence that it is taught rather than hard wired.

>> >Your "Godless" tribe, still, apparently, has a belief in supernatural
>> >intervention (which, to my mind, is the most basic belief of religion),
>>
>> Why not go to the original source?
>>
>> There are plenty of interviews with Everett, and even videos by him on
>> the web.

Well?

>> >even though they haven't built it into a religion with a supreme being.
>> >If
>>
>> If.
>>
>> It seems to me to be an article written by somebody with an axe to
>> grind.
>>
>> Everett didn't.
>
>Of course he did. His faith was his axe.

And unlike you he didn't try to rationalise away what he found, like
other missionaries eg to Imperial China.

Or if he did, he was honest enough to admit he couldn't keep it up.

>> He went out there as a missionary who was also a
>> linguist and an anthropologist, expecting to convert them. He believed
>> that theism was inherent too.
>>
>> He didn't expect a people with no concept of gods, supernatural etc
>> and a language without even the words to communicate these concepts.
>
>But, apparently these people *do* have a belief in supernatural influence,
>the most basic kind of religion. He's just looking through the prism of his
>own theistic beliefs.

So show where he says this.

>No doubt he'd regard the tendency to religion as "God given" which would
>imply everyone would naturally have a similar religious picture to himself.

More speculation to try and rationalise counter-examples away.

You seem to forget that he was also an anthropologist and as such
would have known all sorts of different god concepts.

>> And this caused such a crisis for his faith that he became an
>> atheist.
>>
>> But as I said earlier, there are interviews containing his own words,
>> and his own videos out there.
>>
>> > the Wiki article it to be believed they are a people with remarkably
>> >narrow minds.
>>
>> More rationalisation.
>>
>> > With almost no awareness of past or future. It seems
>> >to me they have been fortunate enough to live in an environment that
>> >is so benign that they have little need of such thought.
>>
>> And?
>
>And therefore they don't even ask the questions that typical theistic
>religions pretend to answer.
>
>It's to be expected that their spiritual beliefs would be simple because
>the world they live in is simple.

What spiritual beliefs?

Everett doesn't seem to describe any.

If you have seen some that I missed, then show me where he describes
them.

But in any case, you're rationalising because you can't allow it to be
memetic rather than hard wired.

[Burkhard]

On Jun 9, 5:15 pm, "Christopher A. Lee" <chrislee95...@comcast.net>
wrote:

> On Sat, 9 Jun 2012 05:42:56 -0700 (PDT), Burkhard
>
>
>
> <undesirableal...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >On Jun 8, 6:26 pm, "Christopher A. Lee" <chrislee95...@comcast.net>
> >wrote:
> >> On Fri, 8 Jun 2012 09:44:23 -0700 (PDT), Burkhard
>
> >> <undesirableal...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >> >> >Sorry, but so what? The claim that started this discussion is that
> >> >> >religion is a cultural universal, and therefore most likely based on
> >> >> >some underlying cognitive mechanism. This does not mean that they all
> >> >> >develop the idea of a single creator god - unless you want to argue
> >> >> >that only monotheistic creator religions are "true" religions which
> >> >> >would be frankly odd.
>
> >> >> No, it wasn't.
>
> >> >> It was that the human brain is hard wired for god belief and religion.
> >> >Yes, that's what I said, Universal Cognitive mechanisms are those that
> >> >are hard-wired.
>
> >> Not the same thing.
>
> >Really? Give me a cite please to a study of a universal cognitive
> >mechanism that is not hardwired, i can't think of one off hand,.
>
> So demonstrate that theism is a "hard wired universal cognitive
> mechanism" instead of shifting the burned of proof after your red
> herring.
>

I've given you already several cites to some of the relevant
scientific literature, that you keep snipping them in your replies
won't make them go away.

A very comprehensive and up to date overview of the hundreds if
empirical studies, meta-studies, computer simulations etc is in the
prize winning book by the (self described "irreligious", not that it
matters) Jesse Bering:
" The belief instinct: The psychology of souls, destiny and the
meaning of life. New York: W.W. Norton."

Another overview is in L Wolpert, (2006) Six Impossible Things Before
Breakfast: The Evolutionary Origins of Belief. London: Faber and Faber

As with all science, these things can be debated, and theories in
evolutionary sociology and psychology tend to be contested, but there
is a significant body of work from evolutionary psychology,
anthropology, child developmental psychology,primate studies, game
theory and comparative cognitive science that all indicate this result
- using all the tools we always use when studying evolutionary basis
of behaviour, from empirical large scale studies amongst humans to
comparative primate studies to computer simulations (such as the
"evoGod" programme developed by James Dow at Oakland University) it
is at least as well supported as an other theory in this field such as
evolution of language, evolution of cooperation or evolution of
symbolic reasoning (and carried out in the main by scientists working
in these cognate areas. There are by now entire dedicated peer
reviewed journals in the filed , e.g. Culture and Cognition published
by Brill, or Religion, Brain and Behaviour published by Taylor and
Francis'

The latter by the way had its latest Volume dedicated to the study of
atheism, you know, the sort of studies you claimed were ignored by the
researchers in the field.

There you find e.g. articles by Catherine Caldwell-Harris on
"Understanding atheism/non-belief as an expected individual-
differences variable" or Lee Kirkpatrick on "Explaining universality
and individual differences in terms of “human nature”" which would
also explain to you in much detail why your claimed counter examples
are nothing of that sort. Both firmly accept that religious belief is
evolutionary hard-wired: "a compelling body of schiolarship exists
which proposes that religious and spiritual beliefs exist in human
society because they reflect fundamental aspects of evolved human
nature" (Caldwell-Harris p.4) and show that stable atheist
communities are perfectly compatible with that view.

Evidence for the adaptive (at one point) and hardwired nature of
religious beliefs include e.g.

- studies with statistically controlled cohorts of children on how
they ascribe agency to invisible actors, reported in
Bering, J. M. & Parker, B. D. (2006). Children’s attributions of
intentions to an invisible agent. Developmental Psychology, 42,
253-262.(note: the invisible agent was intentionally chosen to be
utterly unrelated to any religious belief system, in fact, most
children in religious families would get into trouble for pronouncing
it)

- laboratory studies on reasoning about ad people in adults, reported
in Bering, J. M., McLeod, K. A., & Shackelford, T. K. (2005).
Reasoning about dead agents reveals possible adaptive trends. Human
Nature, 16, 360-381.

and a similar study in children - one that explicitly compared
religiously and non-religiously schooled children, another of the
studies you claimed do not exist:

Bering, J. M., Hernández-Blasi, C., Bjorklund, D. F. (2005). The
development of ‘afterlife’ beliefs in secularly and religiously
schooled children. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 23,
587-607.

or
Bering, J. M., & Bjorklund, D.F. (2004). The natural emergence of
reasoning about the afterlife as a developmental regularity.
Developmental Psychology, 40, 217-233.

In addition to empirical studies with children, there are computer
simulations similar to Dawkin's "methinks it is a weasel programme",
e.g.
James Dow, Is Religion an Evolutionary Adaptation? Journal of
Artificial Societies and Social Simulation vol. 11, no. 2 2

Then there are studies of non-human primates, on their group
behaviour, use of proto-rituals, grieving behaviour etc that support
the view, together with anthropological research from our earliest
records of use of symbols in our ancestors, such as studies on
Neanderhal burials or Cro-Magnon cave paintings.

A comprehensive overview is in Evolving God: A Provocative View on the
Origins of Religion by Barbara J. King, with a special emphasis on
studies in the great apes.

A review of her books stated by the way that "[...] many theological
types are likely to caricature King's arguments as a cool scientific
dismissal of religion", and in general, researchers that propose that
religion is hardwired through evolutionary processes face most f their
attacks from religious folks, making your ill informed opposition
tothe idea even more strange.

See e.g. Schloss, J.P. and Murray, M. (2010). Explaining and
explaining away religious belief: Comments on Van Till’s Criticisms of
Barrett. Theology and Science. 8(1): 17-23. for a discussion of
_religiously motivated_ criticism of the hardwiring thesis.

Other studies on the evolution of symbolic and ritualistic behaviour
in non-human animals linked ot religiosity in humans include e.g. Jill
Pruetz' " Reaction to fire by savanna chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes
verus) at Fongoli, Senegal: Conceptualization of fire behavior and the
case for a chimpanzee model", American Journal of Physical
Anthropology 2008, which builds on work by Jane Goodall on the
gorilla "rain dance".

This does not mean that everybody agrees on these findings, Berling,
cited above, things that the hardwiring took place much later, and
that it is a specific human trait:
Bering, J. M. (2001). Theistic percepts in other species: Can
chimpanzees represent the minds of non-natural agents? Journal of
Cognition and Culture, 1, 107-137.

In addition to these cognitive science focussed studies, there is even
more literature on the adaptive role of religious beliefs in forming
group cohesion in tribal societies, including enabling better
strategies to overpower other tribes:

Johnson, D. D. P. (2008) Gods of War: The Adaptive Logic of Religious
Conflict. In The Evolution of Religion: Studies, Theories, and
Critiques (ed. J. Bulbulia, et al ), pp. 111-117. Santa Margarita, CA:
Collins Foundation Press.

or

Johnson, D. D. P. & Bering, J. M. (2006) Hand of God, mind of man:
punishment and cognition in the evolution of cooperation. Evolutionary
Psychology 4: 219–233

many of which are game theory based, as is most work on the evolution
of cooperation, e.g.

Schloss, J. P. (2008) He Who Laughs Best: Religious Affect as a
Solution to Recursive Cooperative Defection. In The Evolution of
Religion: Studies, Theories, and Critiques

Ruffle, B. & Sosis., R. (2007) Does it pay to pray? Costly ritual and
cooperation. The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis and Policy 7, 1-35.
(another study that compares religious and non religious communities)

Sosis, R. (2004) The adaptive value of religious ritual. American
Scientist 92, 166-172.

and this is just the tip of the iceberg of a a huge number of studies,
meta studies, simulations etc that proponents of the hard-wiring idea
in one of its manifestations rely on as evidence.

> Instead of just presuming it.
>
> The claim that theism is hard wired has never been supported.
>
> We are expected to take it as a given.
>

No, you are expected to familiarise yourself with the extensive
academic literature in a field before you make pronouncements on it.

> But on the other hand we have provided counter-examples from several
> different groups that are evidence that it is memetic, not hard wired.
>

Not sure who the "we" is supposed to be, but as I and Alex tried to
explain to you, your alleged counter examples are about as relevant as
the creationist "counterexamples" that there are no crokoducks. They
are just not something the theory prohibits, and seemed to be based
entirely on your misunderstanding of the concept of hardwiring.

[Christopher A. Lee]

On Sun, 10 Jun 2012 07:43:17 -0700 (PDT), Burkhard
<undesira...@gmail.com> wrote:

>On Jun 9, 5:15 pm, "Christopher A. Lee" <chrislee95...@comcast.net>
>wrote:
>> On Sat, 9 Jun 2012 05:42:56 -0700 (PDT), Burkhard
>>
>> <undesirableal...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> >On Jun 8, 6:26 pm, "Christopher A. Lee" <chrislee95...@comcast.net>
>> >wrote:
>> >> On Fri, 8 Jun 2012 09:44:23 -0700 (PDT), Burkhard
>>
>> >> <undesirableal...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> >> >> >Sorry, but so what? The claim that started this discussion is that
>> >> >> >religion is a cultural universal, and therefore most likely based on
>> >> >> >some underlying cognitive mechanism. This does not mean that they all
>> >> >> >develop the idea of a single creator god - unless you want to argue
>> >> >> >that only monotheistic creator religions are "true" religions which
>> >> >> >would be frankly odd.
>>
>> >> >> No, it wasn't.
>>
>> >> >> It was that the human brain is hard wired for god belief and religion.
>> >> >Yes, that's what I said, Universal Cognitive mechanisms are those that
>> >> >are hard-wired.
>>
>> >> Not the same thing.
>>
>> >Really? Give me a cite please to a study of a universal cognitive
>> >mechanism that is not hardwired, i can't think of one off hand,.
>>
>> So demonstrate that theism is a "hard wired universal cognitive

>> mechanism" instead of shifting the burden of proof after your red

>> herring.
>
>I've given you already several cites to some of the relevant
>scientific literature, that you keep snipping them in your replies
>won't make them go away.

So put them at the top instead of expecting me to wade through the
dross.

And explain why the evidence is that it is memetic, not hard wired.

Those (some large, some small) groups that don't teach their children
gods or religion, don't produce kids that come up with gods or
religion on their own.

These form a control group which neither you nor Alex have ever
addressed.

And those that do teach gods and/or religion, teach wildly different
ones and their kids grow up believing these wildly different ones.

None of this will go away.

Any "scientific studies" that don't address these are worthless.

Which is what I have been saying.

And that YOU have to repeat (preferably in your own words) how these
studies explain why, if it is hard wired rather than memetic, those
groups who were never taught gods and/or religion as children, didn't
grow up believing in them.

Instead of expecting me to look for something that might not even be
there, but that you would have known about and been able to paraphrase
if you had read them.

Why do you expect me to do your work for you when you don't address
those groups who were never taught gods and/or religion and never grew
up believing in them.

Who when you include the non-theistic Eastern religions comprise a
third of the word's population.

>A very comprehensive and up to date overview of the hundreds if
>empirical studies, meta-studies, computer simulations etc is in the
>prize winning book by the (self described "irreligious", not that it
>matters) Jesse Bering:
>" The belief instinct: The psychology of souls, destiny and the
>meaning of life. New York: W.W. Norton."

And they're still worthless if they leave out those groups who were
never taught god/belief or religion and don't grow up believing in
them.

So show how he reached the conclusion that theism was hard wired not
memetic, in the light of the various groups that weren't taught to be
theist in their early years and didn't group up theist.

And how he explains those who were never taught gods or religion, and
didn't come up with them for themselves.

>Another overview is in L Wolpert, (2006) Six Impossible Things Before
>Breakfast: The Evolutionary Origins of Belief. London: Faber and Faber

So show how he reached the conclusion that theism was hard wired not
memetic, in the light of the various groups that weren't taught to be
theist in their early years and didn't group up theist.

And how he explains those who were never taught gods or religion, and
didn't come up with them for themselves.

>As with all science, these things can be debated, and theories in
>evolutionary sociology and psychology tend to be contested, but there
>is a significant body of work from evolutionary psychology,
>anthropology, child developmental psychology,primate studies, game
>theory and comparative cognitive science that all indicate this result
>- using all the tools we always use when studying evolutionary basis
>of behaviour, from empirical large scale studies amongst humans to
>comparative primate studies to computer simulations (such as the
>"evoGod" programme developed by James Dow at Oakland University) it
>is at least as well supported as an other theory in this field such as
>evolution of language, evolution of cooperation or evolution of
>symbolic reasoning (and carried out in the main by scientists working
>in these cognate areas. There are by now entire dedicated peer
>reviewed journals in the filed , e.g. Culture and Cognition published
>by Brill, or Religion, Brain and Behaviour published by Taylor and
>Francis'

So show how he reached the conclusion that theism was hard wired not
memetic, in the light of the various groups that weren't taught to be
theist in their early years and didn't group up theist.

And how he explains those who were never taught gods or religion, and
didn't come up with them for themselves.

And how he explains those who were never taught gods or religion, and
didn't come up with them for themselves.

>The latter by the way had its latest Volume dedicated to the study of
>atheism, you know, the sort of studies you claimed were ignored by the
>researchers in the field.

SO SHOW HOW THEY EXPLAIN IT, WITH REFERENCE TO THOSE GROUPS WHO WERE
NEVER TAUGHT GODS AND/OR RELIGION.

And the simple fact that when one has no reason to believe something,
then the default is that one doesn't.

>There you find e.g. articles by Catherine Caldwell-Harris on
>"Understanding atheism/non-belief as an expected individual-
>differences variable" or Lee Kirkpatrick on "Explaining universality
>and individual differences in terms of “human nature”" which would
>also explain to you in much detail why your claimed counter examples
>are nothing of that sort. Both firmly accept that religious belief is
>evolutionary hard-wired: "a compelling body of schiolarship exists
>which proposes that religious and spiritual beliefs exist in human
>society because they reflect fundamental aspects of evolved human
>nature" (Caldwell-Harris p.4) and show that stable atheist
>communities are perfectly compatible with that view.

So show how she reached the conclusion that theism was hard wired not
memetic, in the light of the various groups that weren't taught to be
theist in their early years and didn't group up theist.

And how she explains those who were never taught gods or religion, and
didn't come up with them for themselves.

>Evidence for the adaptive (at one point) and hardwired nature of
>religious beliefs include e.g.

WHERE DO THEY SHOW IT WAS HARD WIRED, NOT MEMETIC, AND HOW DO THEY
EXPLAIN THOSE GROUPS WHO WERE NEVER TAUGHT TO BE THEIST AND *D*I*D*N*T
COME UP WITH GODS OR RELIGIOUS BELIEFS?

>- studies with statistically controlled cohorts of children on how
>they ascribe agency to invisible actors, reported in

They know about people.

And explain things in terms of people.

>Bering, J. M. & Parker, B. D. (2006). Children’s attributions of
>intentions to an invisible agent. Developmental Psychology, 42,
>253-262.(note: the invisible agent was intentionally chosen to be
>utterly unrelated to any religious belief system, in fact, most
>children in religious families would get into trouble for pronouncing
>it)

So show how he reached the conclusion that theism was hard wired not
memetic, in the light of the various groups that weren't taught to be
theist in their early years and didn't group up theist.

And how he explains those who were never taught gods or religion, and
didn't come up with them for themselves.

>- laboratory studies on reasoning about ad people in adults, reported
>in Bering, J. M., McLeod, K. A., & Shackelford, T. K. (2005).
>Reasoning about dead agents reveals possible adaptive trends. Human
>Nature, 16, 360-381.

So show how he reached the conclusion that theism was hard wired not
memetic, in the light of the various groups that weren't taught to be
theist in their early years and didn't group up theist.

And how he explains those who were never taught gods or religion, and
didn't come up with them for themselves.

>and a similar study in children - one that explicitly compared
>religiously and non-religiously schooled children, another of the
>studies you claimed do not exist:

So show how he reached the conclusion that theism was hard wired not
memetic, in the light of the various groups that weren't taught to be
theist in their early years and didn't group up theist.

And how he explains those who were never taught gods or religion, and
didn't come up with them for themselves.

>Bering, J. M., Hernández-Blasi, C., Bjorklund, D. F. (2005). The
>development of ‘afterlife’ beliefs in secularly and religiously
>schooled children. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 23,
>587-607.

So show how he reached the conclusion that theism was hard wired not
memetic, in the light of the various groups that weren't taught to be
theist in their early years and didn't group up theist.

And how he explains those who were never taught gods or religion, and
didn't come up with them for themselves.

>or
>Bering, J. M., & Bjorklund, D.F. (2004). The natural emergence of
>reasoning about the afterlife as a developmental regularity.
>Developmental Psychology, 40, 217-233.

So show how he reached the conclusion that theism was hard wired not
memetic, in the light of the various groups that weren't taught to be
theist in their early years and didn't group up theist.

And how he explains those who were never taught gods or religion, and
didn't come up with them for themselves.

>In addition to empirical studies with children, there are computer
>simulations similar to Dawkin's "methinks it is a weasel programme",
>e.g.
>James Dow, Is Religion an Evolutionary Adaptation? Journal of
>Artificial Societies and Social Simulation vol. 11, no. 2 2

So show how he reached the conclusion that theism was hard wired not
memetic, in the light of the various groups that weren't taught to be
theist in their early years and didn't group up theist.

And how he explains those who were never taught gods or religion, and
didn't come up with them for themselves.

>Then there are studies of non-human primates, on their group
>behaviour, use of proto-rituals, grieving behaviour etc that support
>the view, together with anthropological research from our earliest
>records of use of symbols in our ancestors, such as studies on
>Neanderhal burials or Cro-Magnon cave paintings.
>
>A comprehensive overview is in Evolving God: A Provocative View on the
>Origins of Religion by Barbara J. King, with a special emphasis on
>studies in the great apes.

So show how she reached the conclusion that theism was hard wired not
memetic, in the light of the various groups that weren't taught to be
theist in their early years and didn't group up theist.

And how she explains those who were never taught gods or religion, and
didn't come up with them for themselves.

>A review of her books stated by the way that "[...] many theological
>types are likely to caricature King's arguments as a cool scientific
>dismissal of religion", and in general, researchers that propose that
>religion is hardwired through evolutionary processes face most f their
>attacks from religious folks, making your ill informed opposition
>tothe idea even more strange.

So show how he reached the conclusion that theism was hard wired not
memetic, in the light of the various groups that weren't taught to be
theist in their early years and didn't group up theist.

And how he explains those who were never taught gods or religion, and
didn't come up with them for themselves.

>See e.g. Schloss, J.P. and Murray, M. (2010). Explaining and
>explaining away religious belief: Comments on Van Till’s Criticisms of
>Barrett. Theology and Science. 8(1): 17-23. for a discussion of
>_religiously motivated_ criticism of the hardwiring thesis.

So show how he reached the conclusion that theism was hard wired not
memetic, in the light of the various groups that weren't taught to be
theist in their early years and didn't group up theist.

And how he explains those who were never taught gods or religion, and
didn't come up with them for themselves.

>Other studies on the evolution of symbolic and ritualistic behaviour
>in non-human animals linked ot religiosity in humans include e.g. Jill
>Pruetz' " Reaction to fire by savanna chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes
>verus) at Fongoli, Senegal: Conceptualization of fire behavior and the
>case for a chimpanzee model", American Journal of Physical
>Anthropology 2008, which builds on work by Jane Goodall on the
>gorilla "rain dance".

So show how he reached the conclusion that theism was hard wired not
memetic, in the light of the various groups that weren't taught to be
theist in their early years and didn't group up theist.

And how he explains those who were never taught gods or religion, and
didn't come up with them for themselves.

>This does not mean that everybody agrees on these findings, Berling,
>cited above, things that the hardwiring took place much later, and
>that it is a specific human trait:
>Bering, J. M. (2001). Theistic percepts in other species: Can
>chimpanzees represent the minds of non-natural agents? Journal of
>Cognition and Culture, 1, 107-137.

So show how he reached the conclusion that theism was hard wired not
memetic, in the light of the various groups that weren't taught to be
theist in their early years and didn't group up theist.

And how he explains those who were never taught gods or religion, and
didn't come up with them for themselves.

>In addition to these cognitive science focussed studies, there is even
>more literature on the adaptive role of religious beliefs in forming
>group cohesion in tribal societies, including enabling better
>strategies to overpower other tribes:
>
>Johnson, D. D. P. (2008) Gods of War: The Adaptive Logic of Religious
>Conflict. In The Evolution of Religion: Studies, Theories, and
>Critiques (ed. J. Bulbulia, et al ), pp. 111-117. Santa Margarita, CA:
>Collins Foundation Press.

So show how he reached the conclusion that theism was hard wired not
memetic, in the light of the various groups that weren't taught to be
theist in their early years and didn't group up theist.

And how he explains those who were never taught gods or religion, and
didn't come up with them for themselves.

>or
>
>Johnson, D. D. P. & Bering, J. M. (2006) Hand of God, mind of man:
>punishment and cognition in the evolution of cooperation. Evolutionary
>Psychology 4: 219–233
>
>many of which are game theory based, as is most work on the evolution
>of cooperation, e.g.

So show how he reached the conclusion that theism was hard wired not
memetic, in the light of the various groups that weren't taught to be
theist in their early years and didn't group up theist.

And how he explains those who were never taught gods or religion, and
didn't come up with them for themselves.

>Schloss, J. P. (2008) He Who Laughs Best: Religious Affect as a
>Solution to Recursive Cooperative Defection. In The Evolution of
>Religion: Studies, Theories, and Critiques

So show how he reached the conclusion that theism was hard wired not
memetic, in the light of the various groups that weren't taught to be
theist in their early years and didn't group up theist.

And how he explains those who were never taught gods or religion, and
didn't come up with them for themselves.

>Ruffle, B. & Sosis., R. (2007) Does it pay to pray? Costly ritual and
>cooperation. The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis and Policy 7, 1-35.
>(another study that compares religious and non religious communities)

So show how he reached the conclusion that theism was hard wired not
memetic, in the light of the various groups that weren't taught to be
theist in their early years and didn't group up theist.

And how he explains those who were never taught gods or religion, and
didn't come up with them for themselves.

>Sosis, R. (2004) The adaptive value of religious ritual. American
>Scientist 92, 166-172.
>
>and this is just the tip of the iceberg of a a huge number of studies,
>meta studies, simulations etc that proponents of the hard-wiring idea
>in one of its manifestations rely on as evidence.

WHERE DO THESE DEMONSTRATE IT WAS HARD WIRED, NOT MEMETIC?

AND HOW DO THEY EXPLAIN THE "CONTROL GROUP" WHO WEREN'T TAUGHT THEISM
OR RELIGION AND DIDNT COME UP WITH IT AS THEY GREW UP?

>> Instead of just presuming it.
>>
>> The claim that theism is hard wired has never been supported.
>>
>> We are expected to take it as a given.
>
>No, you are expected to familiarise yourself with the extensive
>academic literature in a field before you make pronouncements on it.

Translation: you can't support it.

YOU have to demonstrate how they explain (not rationalise) those
groups who weren't taught gods or religion and didn't come up with
them themselves.

Because whether you like it or not, these groups won't go away, and
can't be ignored no matter how much you try to rationalise them away/.

>> But on the other hand we have provided counter-examples from several
>> different groups that are evidence that it is memetic, not hard wired.
>
>Not sure who the "we" is supposed to be, but as I and Alex tried to
>explain to you, your alleged counter examples are about as relevant as
>the creationist "counterexamples" that there are no crokoducks. They
>are just not something the theory prohibits, and seemed to be based
>entirely on your misunderstanding of the concept of hardwiring.

More amateur-psychologised lies.

Because unlike crocoducks these examples actually exist.

And won't go away.

Stop pretending.

>> You need to actually address these rather than trying to rationalise
>> them away.
>>
>> Especially when you talk to members of one these groups.

Well?

[The Magpie]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

On 10/06/2012 15:43, Burkhard wrote:
>
> I've given you already several cites to some of the relevant
> scientific literature, that you keep snipping them in your replies
> won't make them go away.
>

Unfortunately, you have given several invalid citations (since they
operate on the presumptive or educational basis of religious children)
and have misunderstood the actual science. Remember that you are
talking about "hard-wired" here; meaning *inborn* and not any social
pressures at all.

>
> Jesse Bering: " The belief instinct: The psychology of souls,
> destiny and the meaning of life. New York: W.W. Norton."
>

This is an example of an invalid citation since it is based on *adult8
studies of *existing* and *social* states.

>
> Another overview is in L Wolpert, (2006) Six Impossible Things
> Before Breakfast: The Evolutionary Origins of Belief. London: Faber
> and Faber
>

You misunderstand Wolpert. What he showed was the innate tendency of
humans to associate *agency* to any observation; for instance, the
grass moves so it may be a lion therefore I will run away. We do that
for anything as part of our fight / flight responses.

>
> Culture and Cognition published by Brill,
>

Again, invalid because of its dependence on *culture* rather than biology.

>
> or Religion, Brain and Behaviour published by Taylor and Francis'
>

And this is invalid because it is a direct study of human *religion*
rather than innate states.

>
> Evidence for the adaptive (at one point) and hardwired nature of
> religious beliefs include e.g.
>
> - studies with statistically controlled cohorts of children on how
> they ascribe agency to invisible actors, reported in Bering, J. M.
> & Parker, B. D. (2006). Children’s attributions of intentions to an
> invisible agent.
>

Again, human *agency* attribution, not religion.

>
> - laboratory studies on reasoning about ad people in adults,
> reported in Bering, J. M., McLeod, K. A., & Shackelford, T. K.
> (2005). Reasoning about dead agents reveals possible adaptive
> trends. Human Nature, 16, 360-381.
>

Again, *agency* and not religion.

>
> and a similar study in children - one that explicitly compared
> religiously and non-religiously schooled children, another of the
> studies you claimed do not exist:
>

Invalid, since it depends on *existing* religious educations.

Every one of your examples falls into one of these camps. At no point
whatever do you or your citations demonstrate *religious* innate
features since the mere attribution of agency is not evidence of
theism. No doubt, the attribution of agency was a primary
developmental cause for new religions, but the religious beliefs
themselves are in every instance an example of *social* and *cultural*
development rather than innate states.

You fail, I am afraid, not because of you lack of documentation but
because of the inability and invalidity of your documents to support
the claims. In short, your science is bad.

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[Malcolm McMahon]

On Sunday, 10 June 2012 17:06:05 UTC+1, The Magpie wrote:
>
> Every one of your examples falls into one of these camps. At no point
> whatever do you or your citations demonstrate *religious* innate
> features since the mere attribution of agency is not evidence of
> theism. No doubt, the attribution of agency was a primary
> developmental cause for new religions, but the religious beliefs
> themselves are in every instance an example of *social* and *cultural*
> development rather than innate states.
>

The point about the assumption of agency actually rather neatly brings us back to the point I was making in the original post, before those with a horror of neural predestination lost their rag: The suggestion that the human tendency to ascribe sentient agency to all phenomena is what leads people to animism and, hence, to supernatural explanations, and that this tendency to assume agency may be based on the fact that we understand the world with brain circuitry which evolved principally to understand people.

In my experience with people, animistic beliefs form the basis of a lot of their responses. Swearing at a computer or other tool, for example, is such a response. Of course, logically, we disbelieve such absurd things, yet the belief still lurks. It's represented on the committee of the mind, even though it doesn't have a majority there.

Without the discipline of science, one can easily see how it could grab the gavel.

I'll leave digging out the references to Burkhard, if I may, since he has clearly studied the matter in much more depth than I have.

I have to confess to being just a dilettante on the subject.

[Fidem Turbare, the non-existent atheist goddess]

On Sat, 09 Jun 2012 23:10:48 -0700

[snip - text not replied to]

My reason for classifying it as an anecdote was to avoid turning this
into a debate about statistics. Perhaps I should have referred to it
as a "trivial observation of reality" at the very least.

--

Fidem Turbare, the non-existent atheist goddess

"Reason is the greatest enemy that faith has; it never comes to the aid
of spiritual things, but - more frequently than not - struggles against
the divine Word, treating with contempt all that emanates from God."
-- Martin Luther (1533)

[Christopher A. Lee]

On Sun, 10 Jun 2012 09:46:32 -0700 (PDT), Malcolm McMahon
<malcol...@googlemail.com> wrote:

>On Sunday, 10 June 2012 17:06:05 UTC+1, The Magpie wrote:
>>
>> Every one of your examples falls into one of these camps. At no point
>> whatever do you or your citations demonstrate *religious* innate
>> features since the mere attribution of agency is not evidence of
>> theism. No doubt, the attribution of agency was a primary
>> developmental cause for new religions, but the religious beliefs
>> themselves are in every instance an example of *social* and *cultural*
>> development rather than innate states.
>>
>
>The point about the assumption of agency actually rather neatly brings us
>back to the point I was making in the original post, before those with a
>horror of neural predestination lost their rag: The suggestion that the
>human tendency to ascribe sentient agency to all phenomena is what leads
>people to animism and, hence, to supernatural explanations, and that this
>tendency to assume agency may be based on the fact that we understand
>the world with brain circuitry which evolved principally to understand people.

The amateur-psychologised lie rather than address explanation.

[Christopher A. Lee]

On Sun, 10 Jun 2012 09:17:54 -0700, "Fidem Turbare, the non-existent

It _is_ a trivial observation of reality - and it makes me wonder why
so many people are in desperatre denial about it.

[Christopher A. Lee]

On Sun, 10 Jun 2012 17:06:05 +0100, The Magpie
<use...@pigsinspace.co.uk> wrote:

>-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>Hash: SHA1
>
>On 10/06/2012 15:43, Burkhard wrote:
>>
>> I've given you already several cites to some of the relevant
>> scientific literature, that you keep snipping them in your replies
>> won't make them go away.

It stopped a lot earlier than the stuff I snipped.

I wasn't going to plough through all the dross to get there.

>Unfortunately, you have given several invalid citations (since they
>operate on the presumptive or educational basis of religious children)
>and have misunderstood the actual science. Remember that you are
>talking about "hard-wired" here; meaning *inborn* and not any social
>pressures at all.

Yep.

But I don't even need to know what these studies say, if they ignore
the third of the world that weren't raised theist and didn't invent
gods for themselves.

Whether or not he likes it, they aren't crocoducks and won't go away.

Their very existence casts doubt on the quality of the research.

>> Jesse Bering: " The belief instinct: The psychology of souls,
>> destiny and the meaning of life. New York: W.W. Norton."
>>
>This is an example of an invalid citation since it is based on *adult8
>studies of *existing* and *social* states.

Every one of these was the fallacy of the argument from authority.

Somebody says something so that makes it so, without saying how they
reach their conclusion, and as you demonstrate, even what their
conclusion was.

And I'm not going to do his work for him and go hunting through all
that stuff to find what he thinks supports him, especially when he
can't be bothered to address the counter examples demonstrating theism

is memetic, not hard wired.

>> Another overview is in L Wolpert, (2006) Six Impossible Things
>> Before Breakfast: The Evolutionary Origins of Belief. London: Faber
>> and Faber
>>
>You misunderstand Wolpert. What he showed was the innate tendency of
>humans to associate *agency* to any observation; for instance, the
>grass moves so it may be a lion therefore I will run away. We do that
>for anything as part of our fight / flight responses.
>>
>> Culture and Cognition published by Brill,
>>
>Again, invalid because of its dependence on *culture* rather than biology.
>>
>> or Religion, Brain and Behaviour published by Taylor and Francis'
>>
>And this is invalid because it is a direct study of human *religion*
>rather than innate states.

Did any of these researchers take into account those who were never
taught to be theist in the first place, and didn't come up with gods?

Because in spite of all the dodge ball, that is the issue.

>> Evidence for the adaptive (at one point) and hardwired nature of
>> religious beliefs include e.g.
>>
>> - studies with statistically controlled cohorts of children on how
>> they ascribe agency to invisible actors, reported in Bering, J. M.
>> & Parker, B. D. (2006). Children’s attributions of intentions to an
>> invisible agent.
>>
>Again, human *agency* attribution, not religion.

Exactly.

They know people before they know anything else, and associate things
happening with people doing them.

So it is natural for them to assume people do things that they don't.

It starts there.

And evolves from there.

>> - laboratory studies on reasoning about ad people in adults,
>> reported in Bering, J. M., McLeod, K. A., & Shackelford, T. K.
>> (2005). Reasoning about dead agents reveals possible adaptive
>> trends. Human Nature, 16, 360-381.
>>
>Again, *agency* and not religion.
>>
>> and a similar study in children - one that explicitly compared
>> religiously and non-religiously schooled children, another of the
>> studies you claimed do not exist:
>>
>Invalid, since it depends on *existing* religious educations.

He was lying there - because I never said they didn't exist, just
that they were worthless if they didn't take into account the various
groups whose children aren't taught gods and don't come up with them
themselves.

>Every one of your examples falls into one of these camps. At no point
>whatever do you or your citations demonstrate *religious* innate
>features since the mere attribution of agency is not evidence of
>theism. No doubt, the attribution of agency was a primary
>developmental cause for new religions, but the religious beliefs
>themselves are in every instance an example of *social* and *cultural*
>development rather than innate states.

Yep.

Even the experiment that wasn't made although the poster would bet on
the outcome, could be explained by the children learning off each
other - although until he actually does the experiment there is
nothing to explain.

Starting with onomatopoeic words that the other kids recognise, with
non-verbal symbols for actions like running up and down on the spot,
punching the air, etc.

Thank you for checking these out.

But you shouldn't have needed to.

If he had read them for himself he would known what they said and been
able to explain it, how they reached their conclusions and how they
took into account those who weren't taught gods as children and didn't
grow up believing in them.

Of which the largest group consists of the non-theistic Eastern
religions.

Which have never been addressed.

And he wouldn't have called those of us here who weren't taught to be
theist, "crocoducks" - at least we _do_ exist no matter how much he
tries to rationalise us away.

And he wouldn't have needed to rationalise away the Piraha either.

>You fail, I am afraid, not because of you lack of documentation but
>because of the inability and invalidity of your documents to support
>the claims. In short, your science is bad.

Yep.

[Don Martin]

Malcolm McMahon <malcol...@googlemail.com> wrote:
> On Saturday, 9 June 2012 17:10:37 UTC+1, Christopher A. Lee wrote:
>> On Sat, 9 Jun 2012 05:33:32 -0700 (PDT), Malcolm McMahon
>> <malcol...@googlemail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> On Saturday, 9 June 2012 01:33:30 UTC+1, Christopher A. Lee wrote:
>>>>
>>>> IT SHOWS THE BRAIN ISN'T HARD WIRED FOR THEISM AND THAT YOU HAVE TO
>>>> LOOK FOR OTHER REASONS.
>>>>
>>>> Why not show some honesty for a change?
>>>>
>>>> Why not actually address all these counter-0examples?
>>>
>>> OK, if we take the comparison with language, a wolf-child will still have the
>>> LAM, but won't develop an actual language. Put a bunch of them together on
>>> a desert island, though, and I'd bet they'll have put together their own
>>> language in three or four generations.
>>
>> "I'll bet".
>
> Well, it's not exactly an experiment that one could do ethically, is it?
>
>>
>> And even if they did, how does this demonstrate that religion and
>> god-belief are hard wired?
>>
>
> What it does is to demolish your counter argument based on the fact that
> children brought up without religion don't spontaneously invent a fully
> fledged monotheistic religion. I wouldn't expect them to. That would take
> generations to build up.

The fundies will hate hearing this, but I suspect religions are as subject
to evolution as species and language. Starting simple and working their
way up, it is probably easier to having specialized gods, one for peace,
one for war, one for love, one for health (and a set of equal and opposite
demons for bad outcomes in case of conflicts). The one-size-fits-all god
of monotheism takes a while to design: christianity has got down to four
and seems stuck there.

> It would start with the rituals that most children spontaneously generate
> amongst their peers. Of course scientific education reduces the tendency,
> providing natural explanations in the absence of which supernatural ones naturally emerge.
>
> What the hardwired theory suggests is that a child reared without either
> religious or scientific education will, by default, turn to the supernatural.

When one is really puzzled, a crazy answer is better than none at all.

--
aa #2278 Never mind "proof." Where is your evidence?
BAAWA Chief Assistant to the Assistant Chief Heckler
Fidei defensor (Hon. Antipodean)
The Squeeky Wheel: http://home.comcast.net/~drdonmartin/

[Christopher A. Lee]

On Sun, 10 Jun 2012 18:43:19 GMT, Don Martin <drdon...@comcast.net>
wrote:

>Malcolm McMahon <malcol...@googlemail.com> wrote:
>> On Saturday, 9 June 2012 17:10:37 UTC+1, Christopher A. Lee wrote:
>>> On Sat, 9 Jun 2012 05:33:32 -0700 (PDT), Malcolm McMahon
>>> <malcol...@googlemail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> On Saturday, 9 June 2012 01:33:30 UTC+1, Christopher A. Lee wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> IT SHOWS THE BRAIN ISN'T HARD WIRED FOR THEISM AND THAT YOU HAVE TO
>>>>> LOOK FOR OTHER REASONS.
>>>>>
>>>>> Why not show some honesty for a change?
>>>>>
>>>>> Why not actually address all these counter-0examples?
>>>>
>>>> OK, if we take the comparison with language, a wolf-child will still have the
>>>> LAM, but won't develop an actual language. Put a bunch of them together on
>>>> a desert island, though, and I'd bet they'll have put together their own
>>>> language in three or four generations.
>>>
>>> "I'll bet".
>>
>> Well, it's not exactly an experiment that one could do ethically, is it?
>>
>>>
>>> And even if they did, how does this demonstrate that religion and
>>> god-belief are hard wired?
>>>
>>
>> What it does is to demolish your counter argument based on the fact that
>> children brought up without religion don't spontaneously invent a fully
>> fledged monotheistic religion. I wouldn't expect them to. That would take
>> generations to build up.

He was telling porkies, because I never said they did.

>The fundies will hate hearing this, but I suspect religions are as subject
>to evolution as species and language. Starting simple and working their
>way up, it is probably easier to having specialized gods, one for peace,
>one for war, one for love, one for health (and a set of equal and opposite
>demons for bad outcomes in case of conflicts). The one-size-fits-all god
>of monotheism takes a while to design: christianity has got down to four
>and seems stuck there.

You only have to look at the OT to see how its god and religion
evolved.

Language and religion are both memes, which evolve a lot faster than
species do.

>> It would start with the rituals that most children spontaneously generate
>> amongst their peers. Of course scientific education reduces the tendency,
>> providing natural explanations in the absence of which supernatural ones naturally emerge.
>>
>> What the hardwired theory suggests is that a child reared without either
>> religious or scientific education will, by default, turn to the supernatural.
>
>When one is really puzzled, a crazy answer is better than none at all.

The problem is that this theory takes no notice of the fact that a
third of the world's population are in non-theistic Eastern
religions/philosophies.

It's not just those here whom the poster pretends are like crocoducks
even though we do exist, or the Piraha tribe who don't have gods or
even the concept.

[Malcolm McMahon]

I *am*, by definition, an amateur psychologist, that is someone interested in this stuff without making a living (or even a disertation) of it, but I do object to you calling me a liar.

Are you, then a professional psychologist? I am well aware that the thesis that religious tendencies are, in some sense, hard wired by genetic evolution is held by many in the field, while being contentious. I started this thread to offer some thoughts I had on how this effect (if it exists) might come to be.

The whole hard-wired thesis is clearly a very emotional one for you, and perhaps rather than allowing those emotions out as gratuitous ad-homiems you should be asking yourself why that is.

[Christopher A. Lee]

On Sun, 10 Jun 2012 12:40:59 -0700 (PDT), Malcolm McMahon

<malcol...@googlemail.com> wrote:

>On Sunday, 10 June 2012 19:01:56 UTC+1, Christopher A. Lee wrote:
>> On Sun, 10 Jun 2012 09:46:32 -0700 (PDT), Malcolm McMahon
>> <malcol...@googlemail.com> wrote:
>>
>> >On Sunday, 10 June 2012 17:06:05 UTC+1, The Magpie wrote:
>> >>
>> >> Every one of your examples falls into one of these camps. At no point
>> >> whatever do you or your citations demonstrate *religious* innate
>> >> features since the mere attribution of agency is not evidence of
>> >> theism. No doubt, the attribution of agency was a primary
>> >> developmental cause for new religions, but the religious beliefs
>> >> themselves are in every instance an example of *social* and *cultural*
>> >> development rather than innate states.
>> >>
>> >
>> >The point about the assumption of agency actually rather neatly brings us
>> >back to the point I was making in the original post, before those with a
>> >horror of neural predestination lost their rag: The suggestion that the
>> >human tendency to ascribe sentient agency to all phenomena is what leads
>> >people to animism and, hence, to supernatural explanations, and that this
>> >tendency to assume agency may be based on the fact that we understand
>> >the world with brain circuitry which evolved principally to understand people.
>>
>> The amateur-psychologised lie rather than address explanation.
>
>I *am*, by definition, an amateur psychologist, that is someone interested in
>this stuff without making a living (or even a disertation) of it, but I do object to
>you calling me a liar.

Then the solution is easy: don't lie.

>Are you, then a professional psychologist? I am well aware that the thesis
>that religious tendencies are, in some sense, hard wired by genetic evolution
>is held by many in the field, while being contentious. I started this thread to
>offer some thoughts I had on how this effect (if it exists) might come to be.

And like the others who regularly post this contentious BS you took no
notice of responses that contradicted it.

>The whole hard-wired thesis is clearly a very emotional one for you, and

Like I said, any lie rather than actually address the points made.

>perhaps rather than allowing those emotions out as gratuitous ad-homiems
>you should be asking yourself why that is.

Project much, troll?

I suppose your own "before those with a horror of neural
predestination lost their rag" wasn't a gratuitous ad hominem on your
planet?

Either way, it was an outright lie.

You don't seem to grasp that you are talking to people without this
alleged hard-wiring.

And dismissing their responses instead of addressing them.

[Burkhard]

On Jun 10, 5:06 pm, The Magpie <use...@pigsinspace.co.uk> wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> On 10/06/2012 15:43, Burkhard wrote:
>
> > I've given you already several cites to some of  the relevant
> > scientific literature, that you keep snipping them in your replies
> > won't make them go away.
>
> Unfortunately, you have given several invalid citations (since they
> operate on the presumptive or educational basis of religious children)

No idea what you mean with that

> and have misunderstood the actual science. Remember that you are
> talking about "hard-wired" here; meaning *inborn* and not any social
> pressures at all.

Depends a bit on what you mean with the "at all" Many traits require
environmental input to become expressed - take again the example of
language. The ability to learn language is hardwired, as are probably
some basic grammatical categories (per Chomsky) yet without any
environmental input/social pressure children won;t learn a language

> > Jesse Bering: " The belief instinct: The psychology of souls,
> > destiny and the meaning of life. New York: W.W. Norton."
>
> This is an example of an invalid citation since it is based on *adult8
> studies of *existing* and *social* states.

Eh, no? It is based on a huge variety of studies, from childhood
studies to those on adults. In fact he starts with a bit of anecdotal
evidence from himself - how having been raised in an atheist
household, he nonetheless developed in early childhood a mini-theory
of sin, and how he thought it was the reason for his mother dying.

>
> > Another overview is in L Wolpert,  (2006) Six Impossible Things
> > Before Breakfast: The Evolutionary Origins of Belief. London: Faber
> > and Faber
>
> You misunderstand Wolpert. What he showed was the innate tendency of
> humans to associate *agency* to any observation; for instance, the
> grass moves so it may be a lion therefore I will run away. We do that
> for anything as part of our fight / flight responses.

Have you actually read the book? His main argument is based on the
evolution of tool making which necessitated the ability to reason
about objects not yet in existence". Note that hardwired does not
need to mean adaptive, nor does it need to mean that the hard wired
cognitive schemata is solely or primarily responsible for religious
ideas. One prominent school that argues for the hardwiring of
religious thinking sees it as a "spandrel or overshoot of otherwise
adaptive traits that do something else - and that includes our
tendency to ascripe agency to things, as you said. Still means it is
hardwired.

> > Culture and Cognition published by Brill,
>
> Again, invalid because of its dependence on *culture* rather than biology.
>

Mhh, this rather confirms my suspicion that you haven't actually read
any of the cites you reject above. "Culture and Cognition" is not a
book, but a journal with different articles every quarter. a
substantive number of these articles though deal with how cultural
traits have cognitive, and hence evolutionary, origins. Music,
language, and yes, religion are all topics published about in the
journal. Or are you arguing that _all_ evolutionary sociology and
evolutionary psychology is invalid, because it takes at its object of
study cultural and social artefacts?

> > or Religion, Brain and Behaviour published by Taylor and Francis'
>
> And this is invalid because it is a direct study of human *religion*
> rather than innate states.
>

Same as above - it is a peer reviewed journal where scientists who
study the evolutionary origins of religion publish. i cited is as
evidence that this is not a marginal school, but a well established
body of scholarship. As the tile says studies of the brain feature
prominently, - i don;t know where you ahve your "innate states", most
people have them in their brain.

> > Evidence for the adaptive (at one point) and hardwired nature of
> > religious beliefs include e.g.
>
> > - studies with statistically controlled cohorts of children on how
> > they ascribe agency to invisible actors, reported in Bering, J. M.
> > & Parker, B. D. (2006). Children’s attributions of intentions to an
> > invisible agent.
>
> Again, human *agency* attribution, not religion.
>

The agency is attributed to _invisible_ agents - the title says as
much. Religions typically attribute agency to invisible agents - gods,
demons, evil spirits. So finding evidence that we have a hardwired
tendency to attribute agency to invisible agents seems rather on point
to show that religious thinking is hardwired, don't you think?

> > - laboratory studies on reasoning about ad people in adults,
> > reported in Bering, J. M., McLeod, K. A., & Shackelford, T. K.
> > (2005). Reasoning about dead agents reveals possible adaptive
> > trends. Human Nature, 16, 360-381.
>
> Again, *agency* and not religion.
>

So religion is not about agents, like say, creator gods as one
extreme? Looks like attribution of agency to me. When religions have
thunder gods, or flood goods, does that not seem suspiciously like
attributing agency to nature?

> > and a similar study in children - one that explicitly compared
> > religiously and non-religiously schooled children, another of the
> > studies you claimed do not exist:
>
> Invalid, since it depends on *existing* religious educations.
>

Why does this make it invalid? The study compares children who were
brought up in religious environments to those that weren't and found
that both performed the same attribution to invisible agents,
developed mini rituals etc etc. What you mean with "existing"
religious education (as opposed to what? Nonexisting?) you alone know

> Every one of your examples falls into one of these camps. At no point
> whatever do you or your citations demonstrate *religious* innate
> features since the mere attribution of agency is not evidence of
> theism. No doubt, the attribution of agency was a primary
> developmental cause for new religions, but the religious beliefs
> themselves are in every instance an example of *social* and *cultural*
> development rather than innate states.
>

Now I think that gets a bit closer to the problem - your
misunderstanding of what people claim when they say that we have
"belief instincts" or that religious thought is hardwired. Nobody (at
least no scientist) claims that Christianity is harwired, our that if
you leave children on their own, they come up with the Summa
Theologica when they are 14. Same with language: the foundations and
ability to learn are hardwired results of evolution, that does not
mean that if you leave children to their own devices, they end up
writing Kind Lear.

Rather, the argument is that several of our hardwired cognitive
schemata (agency is just one of them, there is also reasoning about
invisible actors, reasoning about mental states, etc etc) are the
foundation that lead in our distant ancestors to religious belief.

> You fail, I am afraid, not because of you lack of documentation but
> because of the inability and invalidity of your documents to support
> the claims. In short, your science is bad.
>

Well, if it's OK with you, I stay with a huge number of highly
competent scientists who published the results of their grant funded
research in peer reviewed journals, unless I have very strong reasons
not to. You haven't provided any, only a criticism of texts I suspect
you haven't really read, a misconception of test design, and a
misunderstanding of what hardwiring of religious thought actually
means.

> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
> Version: GnuPG v2.0.12 (MingW32)

> Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla -http://enigmail.mozdev.org/

[Burkhard]

On Jun 10, 5:46 pm, Malcolm McMahon <malcolm.m...@googlemail.com>
wrote:

:o)

I basically agree, with two small niggles, The first is your
reference to "animism" which can be misconstrued. There was a time, in
early anthropology, where people argued for an "evolutionary model of
religion". According to this model, "primitive" religions like animism
came first, then polytheism, then monotheism and eventually high
criticism. Funnily enough, that model was mainly proposed by people
who grew up in the monotheistic religions of Europe and had been
exposed to high criticism (and had read way too much Hegel)

This idea of a linear development of types of religion has been
abandoned for some time, it seems rather that as soon as any religions
were around, they came in all flavours, so "animism" should not be
seen as a missing link.

For a study on the cognitive foundations of animisn specifically, see
Leigh S. Shaffer: Religion as a Large-Scale Justification System
Does the Justification Hypothesis Explain Animistic Attribution?
Theory Psychology December 2008 vol. 18 no. 6 779-799

The second is one of scope: Everybody who argues for hardwiring of
religious thinking argues that "overshoots" like the one you discuss
are part of the picture. There is disagreement though how much of it
is "piggy backing" of this nature. Some claim that this is all there
is, and religious cognitive schemata were never directly selected for
(are not adaptive on their own right) Others argue that some forms of
religious thought were directly adaptive. This line of argument
typically comes from people who study the evolution of cooperation.

[Smiler]

On Sat, 09 Jun 2012 19:21:27 -0700, Fidem Turbare, the non-existent
atheist goddess wrote:

> On Sat, 09 Jun 2012 13:07:45 -0700
> "Christopher A. Lee" <chrisl...@comcast.net> wrote:
>> On Sat, 9 Jun 2012 11:15:41 -0700, "Fidem Turbare, the non-existent
>> atheist goddess" <god...@fidemturbare.com> wrote:
>>> On Sat, 09 Jun 2012 09:15:58 -0700
>>> "Christopher A. Lee" <chrisl...@comcast.net> wrote:
> [snip - responses I find to be generally agreeable]
>>>> We are expected to take it as a given.
>>>>
>>>> But on the other hand we have provided counter-examples from several
>>>> different groups that are evidence that it is memetic, not hard wired.
>>>>
>>>> You need to actually address these rather than trying to rationalise
>>>> them away.
>>>>
>>>> Especially when you talk to members of one these groups.
>>>
>>> The fact that there are so many atheists in the world is a pretty good
>>> anecdote in favour of your point too.
>>
>> There seem to be differences in the atheism of those who were never
>> taught to believe, and those who lost their belief. Even though they're
>> both atheist.
>
> ...and the atheists who were taught to be theists but for whom the
> teaching was ineffective -- an important third group.

Count me in that group. The indoctrination, such as it was, never 'took'.
So, like Christopher, I've always (as far as I can remember) been an
atheist.

--
Smiler,
The godless one. a.a.# 2279
All gods are tailored to order. They're made to
exactly fit the prejudices of their believers.

[Smiler]

Their 'hardwired' theory also leads to the monotheistic belief that
unbelievers must have a 'god-shaped hole' in their lives, and that we
unbelievers are somehow 'unnatural'.

[Burkhard]

On Jun 9, 4:23 pm, "Christopher A. Lee" <chrislee95...@comcast.net>
wrote:
> On Sat, 9 Jun 2012 04:20:43 -0700 (PDT), in alt.atheism.moderated
>
> Burkhard <undesirableal...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >> >> And it's refuted by all those of us who were never raised to be
> >> >> theist.
>
> >> >> We _do_ exist.
>
> >> Couldn't answer this?
>
> >I did, in the paragraph below. Your argument is based on a
> >misunderstanding of what it means that traits are hardwired.
>
> No, it is not - it is based on the fact that religion is taught in
> childhood.
>
> And that those who aren't taught it don't grow up religious.
>
> Why don't you explain why those who aren't taught it don't grow up
> religious?

Did this several times. Because without the right type of environment
input, some hard-wired traits do not become expressed.
(and of course, your own statement is wrong as formulated, as some
people obviously do change their outloook, but never mind)
>
> And why those who aren't taught gods don't grow up believing in them
> either?

Same thing. Just as people with innate and hardwired language instinct
don;t develop language without environment input,

> Everything else is a red-herring.

Nope, you just don't understand what follows from the theory that the
religious instinct is hardwired.

>
> Including your attempted mind-reading.

[Burkhard]

On Jun 9, 10:14 am, Dakota <ma...@NOSPAMmail.com> wrote:
> On 6/8/2012 6:36 PM, Alex W. wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> > On Thu, 07 Jun 2012 16:37:25 -0700, Christopher A. Lee wrote:
>
> >> On Thu, 7 Jun 2012 15:29:58 -0700 (PDT), Burkhard
> >> <undesirableal...@gmail.com>  wrote:
>
> >>> On Jun 7, 11:08 pm, "Christopher A. Lee"<chrislee95...@comcast.net>
> >>> wrote:
> >>>> On Thu, 7 Jun 2012 21:27:54 +0100, "Alex W."<ing...@yahoo.co.uk>
> >>>> wrote:
>
> >>>>> On Wed, 06 Jun 2012 17:19:06 -0700, Christopher A. Lee wrote:
>
> >>>>>> On Thu, 7 Jun 2012 00:48:31 +0100, "Alex W."<ing...@yahoo.co.uk>
> >>>>>> wrote:
>
> >>>>>>> On Wed, 06 Jun 2012 15:44:49 -0700, Christopher A. Lee wrote:
>
> >>>>>>>> Did they address any of us who were never  raised to be theist?
>
> >>>>>>>> After all, we _do_ exist.
>
> >>>>>>> OK, then, so where does religion come from?
>
> >>>>>> For f*ck's sake - it evolved over millennia.
>
> >>>>>> Starting with just-so stories around the campfire. Or bed-time stories
> >>>>>> to children.
>
> >>>>>> "Daddy, what are those lights in the sky?"
>
> >>>>>> "Daddy, where did the leopard get its spots?"
>
> >>>>>> Those who told them didn't have to believe them,
>
> >>>>>> But some gullible person did, or somebody who didn't told them to
> >>>>>> their children who believed.
>
> >>>>> So someone, at some point -- and probably a great many someones,
> >>>>> independently of each other in cultures all over the world --
> >>>>> would have had to invent the concept of supernatural beings from
> >>>>> scratch.  Theistic abiogenesis.
>
> >>>> So explain the Piraha tribe who have no concept of gods and no
> >>>> creation myths.
>
> >>>>> How do you conceive of something of which you cannot conceive
> >>>>> because there is no frame of reference, nothing whatever that is
> >>>>> comparable, nothing that could by association or suggestion put
> >>>>> the notion of a superbeing into your head?  They would quite
> >>>>> literally have no words to describe such a creature.
>
> >>>> For f*ck's sake, why not try thinking?
>
> >>>> God-beliefs have evolved over time, from the original beliefs.
>
> >>>> The "just-so" stories told at the dawn of civilisation weren't about
> >>>> invisible creator-monotheists. But about things like a strong man in a
> >>>> chariot pulling the sun across the sky.
>
> >>>>>>> There must have been a time when these deities were created in
> >>>>>>> the minds of our ancestors, when our forefathers (and -mothers)
> >>>>>>> caught the faith bug.  Obviously, that first generation would not
> >>>>>>> have been raised in any given belief set, so how did they dream
> >>>>>>> up their pantheon?
>
> >>>>>> Do you honestly think that the stories required real superbeings?
>
> >>>>> As we are discussing the creation of gods, yes.
>
> >>>> What a revealing answer.
>
> >>>> In all the years you have been here you still haven't learned that you
> >>>> can't presume gods outside your religious beliefs.
>
> >>>> Instead of just saying that the stories required REAL superbeings,
> >>>> justify this claim.
>
> >>>>>                                                                         How does one
> >>>>> tell a story in which responsibility for rainfall is assigned to
> >>>>> a god without actually mentioning such a superbeing?
>
> >>>> How does this explain why they required REAL superbeings?
>
> >>>> The characters in the stories reflected the men and women they already
> >>>> knew.
>
> >>>> Invisible omnipotent creator-monotheist gods evolved from these.
>
> >>>> You know perfectly well that the Greek pantheon, the Roman pantheon,
> >>>> the Hindu pantheon, the Norse pantheon etc don't have
> >>>> creator-monotheist gods an their gods are more like hero figures in
> >>>> stories, with human failings.

>
> >>> Sorry, but so what? The claim that started this discussion  is that
> >>> religion is a cultural universal, and therefore most likely based on
> >>> some underlying cognitive mechanism. This does not mean that they all
> >>> develop the idea of a single creator god - unless you want to argue
> >>> that only monotheistic creator religions are "true" religions which
> >>> would be frankly odd.
>
> >> No, it wasn't.
>
> >> It was that the human brain is hard wired for god belief and religion.
>

> I can't accept that the human brain is 'hard wired' for god belief or
> religion. It does seem to have evolved to recognize patterns and to
> associate effects with causes. Before the mental tools for performing
> these tasks had developed beyond a primitive state, humans weren't
> very good at coming up with the right associations. Thus were gods born.
>
>
Sure - and that means nonetheless that gods were born from a hardwired
feature of our brain.
This type of "piggy backing" might be the only way on which religious
beliefs are hardwired, though some argue that certain features were
adaptive themselves

[Burkhard]

On Jun 10, 7:01 pm, "Christopher A. Lee" <chrislee95...@comcast.net>
wrote:

Priceless, coming from someone who complained elsewhere about
"arguments from authority" when given the opinion of the
professionals.
So, amateurs who contradict you are out because they are amateurs, and
professionals are out because they are authorities. Cosy!

[Burkhard]

On Jun 10, 7:31 pm, "Christopher A. Lee" <chrislee95...@comcast.net>
wrote:

> On Sun, 10 Jun 2012 17:06:05 +0100, The Magpie
>
> <use...@pigsinspace.co.uk> wrote:
> >-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> >Hash: SHA1
>
> >On 10/06/2012 15:43, Burkhard wrote:
>
> >> I've given you already several cites to some of  the relevant
> >> scientific literature, that you keep snipping them in your replies
> >> won't make them go away.
>
> It stopped a lot earlier than the stuff I snipped.
>
> I wasn't going to plough through all the dross to get there.

So peer reviewed scientific studies are "dross" when they disagree
with your world view? How telling

>
> >Unfortunately, you have given several invalid citations (since they
> >operate on the presumptive or educational basis of religious children)
> >and have misunderstood the actual science. Remember that you are
> >talking about "hard-wired" here; meaning *inborn* and not any social
> >pressures at all.
>
> Yep.
>
> But I don't even need to know what these studies say,

Sure not Your world-view gives you all the answers a priori, why
bother with something as troublesome as evidence.

if they ignore
> the third of the world that weren't raised theist and didn't invent
> gods for themselves.
>
> Whether or not he likes it, they aren't crocoducks and won't go away.
>
> Their very existence casts doubt on the quality of the research.
>
> >> Jesse Bering: " The belief instinct: The psychology of souls,
> >> destiny and the meaning of life. New York: W.W. Norton."
>
> >This is an example of an invalid citation since it is based on *adult8
> >studies of *existing* and *social* states.
>
> Every one of these was the fallacy of the argument from authority.
>

Citations to peer reviwed literature are a "fallacy of argument from
authority"? I'll remember this next time when a creationists
contradicts the theory of evolution. Arguments from a position to know
(in Doug Walton's terminology) are perfectly valid and include
arguments from expert evidecne, the same type of evidence we use day
in day out in court. They only become fallacious if the authority is
not in a better position to know than anyone else, i.e. speaksoutside
his/her field of expertise.

All the scientists I studied are highly experienced biologists and
anthropologists with considerable experience in research, and all the
results, and the methodology, has been checked in the peer review
process and through post publication scrutiny.

> Somebody says something so that makes it so, without saying how they
> reach their conclusion,

Its in the articles, read them

> and as you demonstrate, even what their
> conclusion was.
>
> And I'm not going to do his work for him and go hunting through all
> that stuff to find what he thinks supports him, especially when he
> can't be bothered to address the counter examples demonstrating theism
> is memetic, not hard wired.

Because, as I and others explained to you, they are not counter
examples, not any more than the existence of gay people is a counter
example to the fact that sexual preferences are hardwired, or the
existenc eof deaf people is evidence against the hardwired nature of
language.

So yes, I addressed the issue, several times.

>
>
>
> >> Another overview is in L Wolpert,  (2006) Six Impossible Things
> >> Before Breakfast: The Evolutionary Origins of Belief. London: Faber
> >> and Faber
>
> >You misunderstand Wolpert. What he showed was the innate tendency of
> >humans to associate *agency* to any observation; for instance, the
> >grass moves so it may be a lion therefore I will run away. We do that
> >for anything as part of our fight / flight responses.
>
> >> Culture and Cognition published by Brill,
>
> >Again, invalid because of its dependence on *culture* rather than biology.
>
> >> or Religion, Brain and Behaviour published by Taylor and Francis'
>
> >And this is invalid because it is a direct study of human *religion*
> >rather than innate states.
>
> Did any of these researchers take into account those who were never
> taught to be theist in the first place, and didn't come up with gods?
>

Yes, several of them, and I gave you citations to articles that even
in their tile mention that religious and non-religious communities are
compared in the study.
(on the assumption you woudl not bother to read the actual article)

Jesse Bering, the most prominent advocate of the hardwiring thesis, is
an atheist who grew up in an atheist family himself. He starts his
book with a short sorty on his childhood, and how he came up with all
sorts of theories similar to religions. However, as a scientists he
understands that thhis would be a mere anecdote, so he back sit up by
several controlled studies that come to the same result

> Because in spite of all the dodge ball, that is the issue.
>
> >> Evidence for the adaptive (at one point) and hardwired nature of
> >> religious beliefs include e.g.
>
> >> - studies with statistically controlled cohorts of children on how
> >> they ascribe agency to invisible actors, reported in Bering, J. M.
> >> & Parker, B. D. (2006). Children’s attributions of intentions to an
> >> invisible agent.
>
> >Again, human *agency* attribution, not religion.
>
> Exactly.

Distinction without difference

> They know people before they know anything else, and associate things
> happening with people doing them.
>

So? What do you think religions do? It rains, I associate a person in
they with making the rain, hey presto, religion.

> So it is natural for them to assume people do things that they don't.
>
> It starts there.
>
> And evolves from there.
>
> >> - laboratory studies on reasoning about ad people in adults,
> >> reported in Bering, J. M., McLeod, K. A., & Shackelford, T. K.
> >> (2005). Reasoning about dead agents reveals possible adaptive
> >> trends. Human Nature, 16, 360-381.
>
> >Again, *agency* and not religion.
>
> >> and a similar study in children - one that explicitly compared
> >> religiously and non-religiously schooled children, another of the
> >> studies you claimed do not exist:
>
> >Invalid, since it depends on *existing* religious educations.
>
> He was lying there - because I  never said they didn't exist, just
> that they were worthless if they didn't take into account the various
> groups whose children aren't taught gods and don't come up with them themselves.

Try reading for comprehension, especially before you accuse others of
lying. I said it is a study that does exactly what you claim (here
agin) they don;t - compare children from atheist families to those in
religious families.

>
> >Every one of your examples falls into one of these camps. At no point
> >whatever do you or your citations demonstrate *religious* innate
> >features since the mere attribution of agency is not evidence of
> >theism. No doubt, the attribution of agency was a primary
> >developmental cause for new religions, but the religious beliefs
> >themselves are in every instance an example of *social* and *cultural*
> >development rather than innate states.
>
> Yep.
>
> Even the experiment that wasn't made although the poster would bet on
> the outcome, could be explained by the children learning off each
> other - although until he actually does the experiment there is
> nothing to explain.
>
> Starting with onomatopoeic words that the other kids recognise, with
> non-verbal symbols for actions like running up and down on the spot,
> punching the air, etc.
>
> Thank you for checking these out.
>
> But you shouldn't have needed to.
>
> If he had read them for himself he would known what they said and been
> able to explain it, how they reached their conclusions and how they
> took into account those who weren't taught gods as children and didn't
> grow up believing in them.

Doing all the homework for you? I gave you the cites and a short
summary, that alone was a rather long post.
and i explained several times why children from atheist households how
did not grow up theists are not a counter argument.

>
> Of which the largest group consists of the non-theistic Eastern
> religions.
>
> Which have never been addressed.

Sure did, you just ignored my answers

>
> And he wouldn't have called those of us here who weren't taught to be
> theist, "crocoducks" - at least we _do_  exist no matter how much he
> tries to rationalise us away.

It seems you misunderstood the analogy. A theory fails if and only if
we can observe something prohibited by the theory, or do not observe
something required by the theory. The creationist cocoduck argument is
flawed, because the theory of evolution does not require or predict
animals that are half duck, half crocodile. In the same way, your
"conterexample" of children from atheist households does not
invalidate the theory of hard-wiring, since the theory does not
require, or predict, that children brought up in an atheist
environment become theists.

> And he wouldn't have needed to rationalise away the Piraha either.
>
> >You fail, I am afraid, not because of you lack of documentation but
> >because of the inability and invalidity of your documents to support
> >the claims. In short, your science is bad.
>
> Yep.

Nope. He just misunderstands the science in the same way you do.

[Christopher A. Lee]

Only their "conclusions" were given, not the reasons why they reached
their conlusions.

And the evidence that theism is memetic was neveronce addressed, just
rationalised away.

>So, amateurs who contradict you are out because they are amateurs, and
>professionals are out because they are authorities. Cosy!

Lies like this are the reason you were in my killfile in the
un-moderated group, troll.

[Christopher A. Lee]

On Sun, 10 Jun 2012 14:58:32 -0700 (PDT), Burkhard
<undesira...@gmail.com> wrote:

>On Jun 10, 7:31 pm, "Christopher A. Lee" <chrislee95...@comcast.net>
>wrote:
>> On Sun, 10 Jun 2012 17:06:05 +0100, The Magpie
>>
>> <use...@pigsinspace.co.uk> wrote:
>> >-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>> >Hash: SHA1
>>
>> >On 10/06/2012 15:43, Burkhard wrote:
>>
>> >> I've given you already several cites to some of  the relevant
>> >> scientific literature, that you keep snipping them in your replies
>> >> won't make them go away.
>>
>> It stopped a lot earlier than the stuff I snipped.
>>
>> I wasn't going to plough through all the dross to get there.
>
>So peer reviewed scientific studies are "dross" when they disagree
>with your world view? How telling

Where did I say that?

You have yet to demonstratethat THEISM is hard wired, especially in
the light of a third of the world's population who weren't taught to
be theist and disn't grow up theist.

And especially when you insist it is, to people without this hard
wiring.

Who have provided evidence that it is memetic.

[Smiler]

On Sat, 09 Jun 2012 00:25:04 +0100, Alex W. wrote:

> On Fri, 08 Jun 2012 04:53:05 +0100, Smiler wrote:
>
>> On Fri, 08 Jun 2012 02:06:22 +0100, Alex W. wrote:
>>
>>> On Thu, 07 Jun 2012 15:08:43 -0700, Christopher A. Lee wrote:
>>>
>>>
>> <snip>
>>
>>
>>> I am asking how the very notion of supernatural beings arose in the
>>> first place. If every generation inherited such ideas (specific and in
>>> general) from their parents, then humanity must always have believed in
>>> some sort of superbeings. If that is not so, then what happened? For
>>> 99% of the time that our species has existed, we have been utterly
>>> dependent on accurate and detailed observation of nature for our
>>> survival. Failure to predict the turn of the seasons, when the floods
>>> come, what animal makes which noise, or the signs of impending volcano
>>> eruptions would be fatal. So we should, by rights, have been
>>> predisposed to supposing a natural explanation for "sun rising every
>>> day" or "water falling from the sky". And yet, at some point, someone
>>> came up with an alternative explanation that defied actual observation:
>>> magic beings did this. And this person (or persons) must have done so
>>> without having any prior knowledge of the possibility of imagining such
>>> creatures. It would be like one of the Piraha waking up one morning
>>> and inventing the idea of the internet.
>>>
>>> This is what I am asking, plain and simple: how did our species come up
>>> with such a notion in the first place?
>>
>> As an excuse to replace "I don't know."? :-)
>>
>> Ugg, Gog and their tribe are out hunting. One of the tribe gets hit by
>> lightening and dies.
>>
>> Ugg "Shit, this is powerful stuff!"
>> Gog "Yep. Maybe it wants us to bow down to it?"
>>
>> They try bowing down, and hey! It works! (They're not as tall, bowing
>> down, so the next lightening strike hits a nearby tree, or the 'atheist'
>> who doesn't bow down). Extrapolate and evolve from there. It's only a
>> small step from that to get to Thor or any of the other 'lightening'
>> gods.
>
> That is definitely a possible scenario.
>
> My problem is squaring this with the absolute reliance of Ugg, Gog and
> their tribe on exact and reliable observations of nature for their
> survival. If over time ten people are hit by lightning and all that
> connects them is tribal membership and being the tallest point during a
> thunderstorm, the obvious, observational conclusion is not "let's try
> bowing down before it", is it?

You're treating the tribe as if they were modern humans and not as the
recently-out-of the-trees ape descendants they were. What 'observational
conclusions' do you think they were capable of? Running away wouldn't
do them much good. In a thunderstorm, which direction is 'away'? I'd think
they would realise that they couldn't outrun lightening. Also, in the
middle of the African savana there's not much shelter from the elements.
All they knew was: Bow down/prostrate yourself = not struck, remain
standing/running = struck

Even if this rule didn't apply 100% of the time, it could have been waved
away by claiming that the 'unstruck standee' was one of the 'elect' :-)

[Christopher A. Lee]

On Sun, 10 Jun 2012 15:06:35 -0700 (PDT), Burkhard
<undesira...@gmail.com> wrote:

>On Jun 9, 4:23 pm, "Christopher A. Lee" <chrislee95...@comcast.net>
>wrote:
>> On Sat, 9 Jun 2012 04:20:43 -0700 (PDT), in alt.atheism.moderated
>>
>> Burkhard <undesirableal...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> >> >> And it's refuted by all those of us who were never raised to be
>> >> >> theist.
>>
>> >> >> We _do_ exist.
>>
>> >> Couldn't answer this?
>>
>> >I did, in the paragraph below. Your argument is based on a
>> >misunderstanding of what it means that traits are hardwired.
>>
>> No, it is not - it is based on the fact that religion is taught in
>> childhood.
>>
>> And that those who aren't taught it don't grow up religious.
>>
>> Why don't you explain why those who aren't taught it don't grow up
>> religious?
>
>Did this several times. Because without the right type of environment
>input, some hard-wired traits do not become expressed.

I didn't ask for a rationalisation in terms of what has yet to be
shown has any validity.

>(and of course, your own statement is wrong as formulated, as some
>people obviously do change their outloook, but never mind)

Very few atheists become theists.

There is too much to un-learn.

By that time they already have better real-world explanations.

The asymmetry of conversion...

http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~slocks/conversion_asymmetry.html

>> And why those who aren't taught gods don't grow up believing in them
>> either?
>
>Same thing. Just as people with innate and hardwired language instinct
>don;t develop language without environment input,

All an analogy does, is show how YOU see it.

Now give an explanation, not a rationalisation or an analogy, why
those who aren't taught gods don't grow up believing in them.

>> Everything else is a red-herring.
>
>Nope, you just don't understand what follows from the theory that the
>religious instinct is hardwired.

Yet again, any personal lie as an ad hominem rather than address the
points.

>> Including your attempted mind-reading.

[Christopher A. Lee]

On Sun, 10 Jun 2012 23:34:43 +0100, Smiler <Youm...@JoeKing.com>

I want to know why they can't address the evidence that it is memetic,
that they have been repeatedly given.

[Christopher A. Lee]

On Sun, 10 Jun 2012 23:40:38 +0100, Smiler <Youm...@JoeKing.com>

wrote:

>On Sat, 09 Jun 2012 19:21:27 -0700, Fidem Turbare, the non-existent
>atheist goddess wrote:
>
>>>>> But on the other hand we have provided counter-examples from several
>>>>> different groups that are evidence that it is memetic, not hard wired.
>>>>>
>>>>> You need to actually address these rather than trying to rationalise
>>>>> them away.
>>>>>
>>>>> Especially when you talk to members of one these groups.
>>>>
>>>> The fact that there are so many atheists in the world is a pretty good
>>>> anecdote in favour of your point too.
>>>
>>> There seem to be differences in the atheism of those who were never
>>> taught to believe, and those who lost their belief. Even though they're
>>> both atheist.
>>
>> ...and the atheists who were taught to be theists but for whom the
>> teaching was ineffective -- an important third group.
>
>Count me in that group. The indoctrination, such as it was, never 'took'.
>So, like Christopher, I've always (as far as I can remember) been an
>atheist.

There are several of us.

But one of the trolls pretends this is "anecdotal evidence" rather
than data points.

And another troll says we're like the creationist's crocoducks.

Even though we do exist and are counter-examples that actually
support the memetic explanation.

Other evidence they have rationalised away includes the third of the
world's population raised in non-theistic Eastern religions that are
often described as philosophies.

Not to mention the fact that kids get taught their parents' gods and
religion and don't come up with their own..

[Christopher A. Lee]

On Mon, 11 Jun 2012 00:17:05 +0100, Smiler <Youm...@JoeKing.com>
wrote:

>You're treating the tribe as if they were modern humans and not as the
>recently-out-of the-trees ape descendants they were. What 'observational
>conclusions' do you think they were capable of? Running away wouldn't
>do them much good. In a thunderstorm, which direction is 'away'? I'd think
>they would realise that they couldn't outrun lightening. Also, in the
>middle of the African savana there's not much shelter from the elements.
>All they knew was: Bow down/prostrate yourself = not struck, remain
>standing/running = struck
>
>Even if this rule didn't apply 100% of the time, it could have been waved
>away by claiming that the 'unstruck standee' was one of the 'elect' :-)

Or that he was a fabrication like a crocoduck.