• Is Religion Biologically Hardwired?
    14 replies, posted
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AT8bLaomvq0
Specific religions are not hardwired, no. The feelings of both "deific presence" and "transcendant revelation leading oneness" are hardwired and can be literally stimulated electrically or chemically on demand, which this video actually doesn't cover, since it's more concerned with sociological constructs and societal shifts.
I would assume that all social constructs are at least somewhat tied to some biological process. It seems strange to me that you could possibly disconnect the two.
For a long time i have sensed in myself that even while i am atheist in practical therms, i feel very fulfilled at the idea of spiritual rituals in my head, and i have thought for a long time that my brain gets pleasure for that and there's this paradox where I know in data i behave with no spiritual needs because they probably arent real in the sense that i hold reality, but if i could play "along" with it I'll fill that "spiritual need" being satisfied. What i learned then to do was a simple exercise, where after i told myself "Ok, lets accept theres no god to be proven in my capacity, but, as an exercise, I will, in my mind, bring my dad for a moment and talk to him as if he was still alive". I learnt not long ago that that is pretty much what "the day of the dead " is for Mexicans, and after being ok with both ideas (one, that probably god doesnt exist and my brain needs spiritual inputs and that two, its just an exercise to give that release to my brain) that im learning to incorporate very religious rituals to my routine from a very atheist perspective, and it has been very helpful and full filing. Sorry for the long post jesus.
The title is so click bait as fuck like what even
Humanity is linked psychologically to some belief of a higher power or spiritual belief. Far as I'm aware of, it's a coping mechanism for death.
Life itself feels like a coping mechanism for death
Pretty much this. Plus people don't like the idea that people like mass murderers and child molesters can go unpunished and innocent people don't get any good outcomes. Heaven and Hell seem like a pretty good way to reward and punish the appropriate people.
To bad it just became a viral transmission system for evangelism.
I personally have in mind that the fear/admiration to the supernatural is not an origin and appeared after the tendency to fill the ignorance or the unknown with higher entities. I can't speak for all since not every one shares the same reasons or goals. As a kid I was told that God made the sky because my grandmother was religious and she always gave me that example but never told me how. Years later I found a more detailed and complete answer for curiosity and that replaced my previous mindset. I wouldn't say "hardwired" but close. Almighty deities are an irrefutable and undeniable answer and that leaves no space to question it. It fits perfectly into what you can't explain. As someone who started the primary education in an evangelical school, during my last 2 years there you could hear other kids of 8 or 9 years old chatting every now and then about the concept of being punished for your bad actions long after you are gone. The books were completelly different, only about describing with games the concepts of good will, moral, solidarity, having faith during your moments of desperation, listen to the one in need, etc. And yet it was common during the free time to hear them talking with their parents about divine punishment and the Final Judgement. One is not old enough to care about it in that age but it gets unnerving later on when you remember those days.
The beginning of the video talks about the psychological phenomenon where we ascribe personhood, intention or agency to purely physical events and how that has occurred as a result of evolution from 0:08 onwards, which is effectively what you are referring to.
Nope. He's not covering the phenomenon I am, which has nothing to with ascribing 'divinity' or 'presence' to perceived phenomenon or patterns. A canadian experiment with neural probes produced almost instantaneous religiosity or "enlightened peaceful' feelings much akin to an ayahuaska high (speaking of instant religiosity) by direct stimulation. dude there's an anthropomorphised lion guy and treatise on how this translates into modernity in the middle of the video. That has jack to do with the phenomenon I'm talking about, which is near instantaneous. For all you're given they presented someone high as balls on mushrooms not getting eaten by a lion and ascribing it to "animus" or "spirits" or who knows what to someone else, who then made a statue of it. I'm not talking about coincidental stimulus at all, but chemicals or elcctric impulse directly triggering responses in the brain.
Bad title, as usual. How about "religiosity". Any religion is a system that governs many dimensions of human experience ranging from reenacting drama to being in a physical tribe to laws to storytelling to artistic symbolism and so on. I'm immediately suspicious when somebody starts ruminating on whether religiosity is hardwired without defining what exactly is being talked about. The fact that you instinctively imagine conscious intent behind some anxiety-provoking events happening I wouldn't equate with a religion, it's only a part of it that most modern religious people use to a extremely limited degree, usually to explain the climax of orgies of probability that no scientists can describe still but which affects their lives, either badly or positively.
Exactly, this is literally anthropology 101 by the way. It basically comes down to religion enhancing group cohesiveness which increases the survival rate of individual members.
I always felt it was more just a manifestation of some peoples need for leadership into some kind of all powerful god figure or figures telling people what to do and structure their lives for them. Same reason many cultures ended up with god kings and such.
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