Where does religion come from?
06 Jun '13 00:26One thought, our intelligence enables us to see patterns in randomness when in fact nothing is there. Chimps, for instance, cannot imagine patterns embedded in randomness because they have no sense of mind, they cannot visualize internally the idea there might be an active mind behind everything they cannot understand. Their brains are just not sophisticated enough.
Humans on the other hand, can attribute patterns, like thinking a god is giving them special messages in lightning, thunder, volcanoes, earthquakes, floods and so forth.
So 50,000 years ago, a favored son dies and during the burial rituals, lightning blows up a nearby tree, they would come to the conclusion that perhaps the spirit of the dead son is trying to communicate with them or that some kind of god is trying to give them a message that only they can understand,
Understand because they see patterns in randomness, like the randomness of storms and such when in fact they are in fact TOTALLY random.
It is our innate intelligence that causes us to see patterns where there are none so things that happen causes people who feel they have no control over their lives to see patterns where there are none and to feel they are in the presence of some godhead or other when the whole rapture effect is totally inside their own brains. That area is called the "temporal parietal junction' one on each side of the brain. That area can be stimulated in many ways to give yourself an out of body experience for instance, experiments with virtual reality goggles and touch has shown the brain can be fooled into thinking its own location is not where it is in reality.
All that takes place inside the brain and that tells me that is the seat of religious feelings, which can be regularly induced with several different kinds of stimulation.
Take a look at this site:
http://science.howstuffworks.com/science-vs-myth/afterlife/science-life-after-death1.htm
Religious folks are totally, lifelongly convinced they are communicating with a god and it is communicating back but it is all inside their own brains. Non believers have totally different internal brain scans from the totally religious.
Bottom line: Religious folks are completely duped by their own intelligence when in fact there is only randomness in the world but because they are to the last person feeling they by themselves have no control over their lives, give their lives over to an imagined deity.
If people understood that and were able to shuck the shackles of simulated religious feelings, they can finally grow up and be adults which as a race, we are not even close.
Humans on the other hand, can attribute patterns, like thinking a god is giving them special messages in lightning, thunder, volcanoes, earthquakes, floods and so forth.
So 50,000 years ago, a favored son dies and during the burial rituals, lightning blows up a nearby tree, they would come to the conclusion that perhaps the spirit of the dead son is trying to communicate with them or that some kind of god is trying to give them a message that only they can understand,
Understand because they see patterns in randomness, like the randomness of storms and such when in fact they are in fact TOTALLY random.
It is our innate intelligence that causes us to see patterns where there are none so things that happen causes people who feel they have no control over their lives to see patterns where there are none and to feel they are in the presence of some godhead or other when the whole rapture effect is totally inside their own brains. That area is called the "temporal parietal junction' one on each side of the brain. That area can be stimulated in many ways to give yourself an out of body experience for instance, experiments with virtual reality goggles and touch has shown the brain can be fooled into thinking its own location is not where it is in reality.
All that takes place inside the brain and that tells me that is the seat of religious feelings, which can be regularly induced with several different kinds of stimulation.
Take a look at this site:
http://science.howstuffworks.com/science-vs-myth/afterlife/science-life-after-death1.htm
Religious folks are totally, lifelongly convinced they are communicating with a god and it is communicating back but it is all inside their own brains. Non believers have totally different internal brain scans from the totally religious.
Bottom line: Religious folks are completely duped by their own intelligence when in fact there is only randomness in the world but because they are to the last person feeling they by themselves have no control over their lives, give their lives over to an imagined deity.
If people understood that and were able to shuck the shackles of simulated religious feelings, they can finally grow up and be adults which as a race, we are not even close.
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