Similarly, an autistic individual who has difficulty forming models of the minds of flesh & blood humans around them might find it nearly impossible to comprehend on a gestalt level the possibility that a noncorporeal entity which they have never seen exists out there and wishes to have a special personal relationship with all humans.

Born on a Blue Day, the autobiography of Daniel Tammet - an autistic savant, has been charging up the best seller lists recently (currently at #34 on Amazon). Tammet is unusual for an autist, he is introspective. He is also religious. And he is also gay. My hunch is that these are not unrelated.

But there is more to the story. Being the oldest of several siblings, he has a brother who is also autistic. If his autistic brother turns out to be a religious non-gay, the hunch will be proven wrong. If he turns out to be a non-religious non-gay, then the hunch will gain weight. The book does not say.

Tammet came into religion through the writings of G K Chesterton, who Tammet thinks was at least mildly autistic.

There shouldn't be an adaptationist / non-adaptationist dichotomy, because "religion" is an enormous catch-all category like "technology" or "economics". Back when people didn't know much about cancer they'd loosely speak as though there was one cancer with one cause that manifested itself in many ways, whereas there are many cancers with many causes -- "cancer" is a disease-family.

Explaining atheism and irreligion might be easier, since it's the exception. Historically the diminishing of religion seems associated with the depersonalization of the state, the objectification of law, and the attainment of a degree of order. There is an intermediate form, as in the Enlightenment and Stoicism. The Stoic and Enlightenment God is so depersonalized that it's tempting to call the Stoics and Deists atheists, but they weren't. Some claim that they were just pretending to be theists, but I doubt that; I think that they needed a single God in order to have a guarantee of a single order. (The problem with polytheism, e.g. in Homer, is that there can be no order because the many major and minor Gods have independent wills and work against one another).

In this concept, the Deist and Stoic God was a guarantors of the uniqueness of order and of value.

So there's a progression: polytheism --> monotheism --> depersonalized monotheism --> atheism. That's a hard progression and can only happen in a world which is thought of as orderly in nature, both actually to a degree and potentially (with the establishment of rational laws). So it coordinates with the move from chaotic international orders and chaotic plural states to a law-governed world. (by the XVIII c wars were between well-ordered states over alternative conceptions of world order, though Catholics still had polytheistic elements.)

Religions are authoritative, objective social organizations which reward and punish and can compete with other ordering forms (law, the state). In my experience religious belief is associated with people (including many college graduates) who feel left out of the objective order and status hierarchies put in place by the university and the state. I used to have a college-grad friend whose anti-evolution theism was clearly related to his lack of success in joining the educated elite.

As far as terrorism goes, wherever its been studied the actual terrorists often turn out not to have been especially religious. Often religion is just used as an ethnic marker. In some cases it seems that terrorism is used as a sort of penance for not having practiced the religion, or revenge taken on the non-religious world which refused to accept them when they tried to apostacise. But again, terrorism is a complex phenomenon and shouldn't be expected to have a single cause.

I think Pascal was autistic too. I've only read a little bit of his book, but he was a very odd fish and many of his religious ideas seem like autism raised to the level of doctrine.

The Times article was surprisingly good. However, I think that it didn't clearly express the idea of gene/culture coevolution. This is not surpising, because I think that Americans and American society have strong biases toward individualistic, psychologictic forms of ahistorical naturalism which minimize "culture".

Let me express it schematically in the most simpleminded way. What I think happens as this: early humans at some point developed a gene allowing culturalization and the formation of loyalties to culturally-defined groups and obedience to the principles of the group. (These groups are usually also biologically defined by kinship, but the difference between group A and group B is not only the genetic one, but is also, and more so, the difference between the cultures of group A and group B.)

At this point call the non-culturizable humans H1 and the culturalizable humans H2. There would be competition between these two groups, but there would also be competition between H2A, H2B, H2C... etc.

If any of the H2 social groups, say H2X, by cooperating in its own special way, gains an advantage, its genes will then supplant both the H1 genes AND all the other H2A, H2B, H2C gene-culture groups. If the advantage is big,ultimately, all humans will be H2.

When H2X supplants H2A.... etc., presumably there will be various genetic differences between H2X and the other groups (since we're assuming that these are partly kinship groups), and so various H2X genes will increase their prevalence without being causatives. Call them markers.

At the same time, if any H2 individual is thrown into a pool of H1 individuals, the H2 genes will disappear, because they are only advantageous when the H2 individul is able to form a cooperating group with other H2 individuals.

On the average, H2 members of functioning H2 groups are better off fertility-wise, but many individual members of H2 groups are worse off. In other words, these groups are hierarchal, with a utilitarian "greatest good of the greatest number" on the average, but to the disadvantage of many of the individual (individually-altruistic) H2 group members.

This is pretty longwinded even given the simplified schematic form. I hope that it's useful to some people here.

The animus of some evolutionists against cultural-group selection, against selection for the ability to acculturate and become altruistic, and also against religion, seems to me to come from an individualistic, psychologistic kind of rationalist bias, as though individual factual correctness were the source of social order.

re: autists. there hasn't been enough work done in this area, but, i think that they can adhere to precise theologies and what not (e.g., pascal, if he was one such). the problem is that they should have a difficult time personalizing and conceptualizing god as a being, as opposed to an abstract concept.

In my experience religious belief is associated with people (including many college graduates) who feel left out of the objective order and status hierarchies put in place by the university and the state.

this is pretty close to rod starks' model of cult/sect formation. there are different flavors of religious organizations. some, such as episcopalianism, tend to attract social climbers who don't want intense or demanding religious associations, but are looking for some respectibility. others, like fundamentalist sects, do attract the marginal and those looking for resources, emotional and material. in the united states this plays out in sectarianism, but in monopoly religious cultures it tends to express itself as different factions within the religious order with alternative orientations (e.g., high church vs. low church).

john, the animus comes from the conception that many group level dynamics can be more plainly reduced to individual level effects. e.g., imagine that group H2 is fixed for an allele A, for altruism. you state that it increases reproductive variance, more are hyper-fecund, while more are sub-fecund. but, if the average fitness across the individuals increases vis-a-vis !H2 groups, then the increase in fitness is reducible to the level of allele A.

also, there is a difference between cultural group selection, and genetic group selection. for group selection to have much power between group difference needs to exceed within group difference. for most genetic characters this does not occur for neighboring groups, but for cultural ones it can. the reason that the former does not occur is that even minimal levels of intermarriage dampens between group variation. in contrast, culture is not always subject to this, neighboring groups can practice disjoint religions, speak different dialects and exhibit alternative tatoo markings despite intermarriage because of acculturation. in genetics both parents contribute 1/2, but in culture that need not be so, and, if peer groups matter most than mixed-breed children maybe genetical hybrid but monocultural.

Yeah, but now it's two-level. Level one, H2 is superior to H1 IF A1 individuals form altruistic cultural groups. Level 2, H2 individuals can form many different cultural groups based on altruism, H2A, H2B,..... and there's a competition between these groups, and the ones which benefit their members flourish.

I understand that group selection only makes sense biologically or as an explanation if there's some way that individual genes are favored, even if it's only on the average over a cultural group.

But my point is that you do not want every individual H2 to have a rational secular understanding of what's happening, and especially you don't really want the altruists who actually make sacrifices to know about the sacrifice they're making. The altruism isn't usually a conscious deliberate sacrifice; it's usually customary, rule-following behavior which is altruistic in effect but not necessarily consciously so, and certainly not thought out in its consequences. (This is, of course, the "ideology" of Marxism, deluding the exploited. The worker bees and soldier bees are altruistic, but don't clearly understand that they work and sacrifice so that the queen and the drones can lie around and fuck all the time).

So I think that the culturalism of coevolutionary cultural-group selection for individual altruism works against the rationalizing, secularist idea that if all individuals were rational everything would be better. Altruism is not grounded on clear thinking.

A lot of talk about rationality gets confused between individual rationality, utilitarian social rationality "on the average", and then the ideal individual rationality of wanting to be the only freeriding member of an altruistic, utilitarian group.

1) i agree that talk of 'rationality' is generally unclear

2) re: But my point is that you do not want every individual H2 to have a rational secular understanding of what's happening. i want to focus on the "every." the hawk & dove game, and other game theoretic models, suggest that

a) alternative strategies/morphs can persist within the same population at equilibrium frequencies

b) individuals can condition their strategy based on the circumstances, so the frequency of strategies is not necessarily due to obligate fixed behavior, but a constant flux of individual choices

p.s. rational actor behavior tends to increase with IQ. the relatively low average IQ of humans suggests that evolutionarily this was neither necessary or conducive to elevated fitness. the normal distribution of the trait also suggests that there hasn't been long term directional selection to eliminate population level variation, so one could posit frequency dependent dynamics

I'm mostly just saying, as in my previous post, that the most successful society might not be transparent, and might effectively mislead many or most of its individual members, and thus might be made up of individually-irrational members.

Or that the way to a society's success is not necessarily through the maximum dissemination of individual rationality through a society.

So that the refutation of of irrational individual beliefs might not be the way toward the elimination of irrational social (group) behavior.

Whereas a lot of rationalistic progressives, people like PZ Meyers or Dawkins, seem to think in terms of increasing individual rationality or true understanding as the way toward rational social behavior. And perhaps to a degree this confuses their thinking about social-group selection.

And perhaps to a degree this confuses their thinking about social-group selection.

perhaps. though i think a lot of it is just animus with superstition.

Or that the way to a society's success is not necessarily through the maximum dissemination of individual rationality through a society.

within group 'rationality' (e.g., optimizing status or wealth) can lead, of course, to group level irrationality (e.g., reducing average group fitness).

don't have recourse to introspection informed by my own religious sensibilities since I generally lack one.


If I might inquire, which one?

If I might inquire, which one?

mostly agency detection. lesser extent theory of mind.

why do people believein god? simple. we are raised by gods. Mommy & daddy are god. They can kill you; they have godlike power over you. They are god.

It's ingrained into us at age 0 and it's very hard to shake that powerful inculcation.

the problem is that they should have a difficult time personalizing and conceptualizing god as a being, as opposed to an abstract concept.

This is not such a problem if you accept that the social perception and cognition deficits can vary widely in persons with autistic spectrum disorders. There are those with the mildest disorders such as nonverbal learning disabilities (NLD), increasing in severity to Aspergers, high-functioning autism to full blown autism. Joe Palombo, a clinical social worker from Chicago believes that some individuals on the spectrum are only mildly impaired (NLD) and have theory of mind abilities.

http://www.amazon.com/Nonverbal-...73043231&sr=8- 1

"the relatively low average IQ of humans"

Relative to what? Aren't humans the highest IQ critters we know of?

why do people believein god? simple. we are raised by gods. Mommy & daddy are god. They can kill you; they have godlike power over you. They are god.

it isn't that simple, though that is a large part of it. in in gods we trust atran references some literature on the study of god-concepts in children, and there is a tendency for increased sophistication and belief in god-concepts toward puberty. in other words, children become less credulous of convential god-concepts as they age, at the same time as their parents become less important.

vary widely in persons with autistic spectrum disorders

i'm assuming the extreme cases. i'm aware of the quantitative nature of these traits.

razib,

might it be helpful to make a distinction between polytheistic (pagan) and monotheistic religions (and perhaps also animist)?

also, it could be that stress play(s)ed a significant role in determining who wa(i)s more inclined (susceptible?) to religious belief and behavior.

i use myself as an example of one who is strongly inclined to religious belief, experience and practice. it happens that i experienced an unusually high level of physical and psychological stress as a young child, and I developed dissociative (and maladaptive) ideas and behaviors, magical thinking, that included non-physical agents, both "good" and "bad." i also have a severely depressive bipolar disorder. so, ptsd and bipolar, both suspected to have a biological, genetic origin.

both mental disorders show, in brain scans, heightened stimulation in the left frontal lobe of the brain, and share many symptoms and features in common with epilepsy.

i know that julian jaynes' hypothesis, "origin of consciousness in the breakdown of the bicameral mind" is now considered to be fallacious. but i wonder if the three abrahamic faiths might have a common origin, nonetheless, in that historical period, marked by prolonged heightened stress brought on by both natural and societal calamity in the fertile crescent.

i'm wandering with this, i know, but i'll add one more bit of evidence arguing for a stress-seizure connection to religious belief (in a single, personal god): Saul of Damascus' being struck, as it were, by lightning (seizure) whereupon he encountered his "living god" in jesus of nazareth.

From the article:

Agent detection evolved because assuming the presence of an agent — which is jargon for any creature with volitional, independent behavior — is more adaptive than assuming its absence. If you are a caveman on the savannah, you are better off presuming that the motion you detect out of the corner of your eye is an agent and something to run from, even if you are wrong. If it turns out to have been just the rustling of leaves, you are still alive; if what you took to be leaves rustling was really a hyena about to pounce, you are dead.

[...]

What does this mean for belief in the supernatural? It means our brains are primed for it, ready to presume the presence of agents even when such presence confounds logic. The most central concepts in religions are related to agents,” Justin Barrett, a psychologist, wrote in his 2004 summary of the byproduct theory, “Why Would Anyone Believe in God?” Religious agents are often supernatural, he wrote, “people with superpowers, statues that can answer requests or disembodied minds that can act on us and the world.”

If religiosity stems from the over-reactivity of a mental module that detects agency, then shouldn't people who are more anxious be more prone to religion? It is said that there are no atheist in foxholes. But the association could be investigated more systematically.

A Google Scholar search for items with both "religion" and "anxiety" yields this article on the top of first page of results.

ABSTRACT:

Anxiety has correlated both positively and negatively with religion in past research. We suggest this is because undifferentiated measures of both religion and anxiety have been used. When intrinsic and extrinsic scales were correlated with Cattell's factors of trait anxiety, intrinsics were less anxious than non-intrinsics, and extrinsics were more anxious than non-extrinsics on some -- but not all -- components of trait anxiety. Studies using a general measure of religiousness will find a positive correlation with anxiety if the sample contains more extrinsics than intrinsics, and a negative one if the sample contains more intrinsics than extrinsics, or no relationship if an inappropriate component of anxiety is measured.

Agency detection: I'm not religiously inclined despite extensive religious training, something I share with my late father, but when I unexpectedly experience sharp pain my immediate reaction is anger, even when no one is to blame (e.g., if I bang my head on a closet door I'll slap the door angrily).

Not to raise the Buddhism/religion question again, but elite Buddhism teaches you to objectify persons and deny them agency (in a sense) since their actions are the result of causes. So being angry at a malefactor (assumed to be stupid and unhappy) is as mistaken as being angry at a cupboard door. Marcus Aurelius also taught something like that.

Razib, of course I oversimplified, and I don't deny what you point out about puberty at all, but doens't that really prove my point? Which was that we have, I think, a deep groove cut in our consciousness (oops, I almost said "soul") into which the god-idea courses like a huge flow of water.

John, "Buddhism" may teach a lot, but a lot of "normal" religio-magical bullshit has poked thru. Take a look at the popular Tibetan form: full of demons and dragons and big daddies. You can't escape from this stuff, it appears.

Word up, diana.

Thailand is the most Buddhist country on the planet. There you will find spirit houses on nearly every other street corner.

Within the cognitive-anthropological approach, I find it implausible that atheism as a surface phenomenon owes more a reduced or constrained application of the modules you list (agent detection, causation theory, theory of mind), as opposed to an increase in competing social motives like "be scientific", "be modern", or "be mentally liberated". The latter two might be expected to create a wave dynamic in a society where religion and antireligion are appropriately balanced.

One a personal level: has anybody else here ever had a kind of emotional/ethical trouble throwing away or destroying worthless inanimate objects? I get that quite a bit, as well as the slapping the closet phenomenon that John describes, but I'm a self-described atheist too.

I think, a deep groove cut in our consciousness (oops, I almost said "soul") into which the god-idea courses like a huge flow of water.

i agree with that like i agree with the fact of evolution. where i quibble is the process and the devil in the details. e.g., freudianism was actually on the right track insofar as it looked at the mind with an analytic bent, but, i generally believe that the models generated were flawed (and freudianism has tended to become cults of personality around celebrity analysts from what i can tell). similarly, we can go beyond reducing theism to parent-child relations, though the similarities are striking and notable. the insight that you offer is an important one for the person on the street to internalize, but i think here we (hopefully) take the importance of psychological context for granted.

might it be helpful to make a distinction between polytheistic (pagan) and monotheistic religions (and perhaps also animist)?

on a certain level (philosophical, institutional, historical) yes, but not a cognitive one. the literature surveyed in theological incorrectness shows that humans are conventially pagan, and most accurately henotheistic (e.g., mormonism is actually a pretty intuitive religion in its god concepts).

but i wonder if the three abrahamic faiths might have a common origin, nonetheless, in that historical period

historically this is not correct, since christianity arose in the 1st century and islam in the 7th. i think the seeds of the institutional higher religions were all seeded around this period...though i think that 'higher' religions are natural byproducts of the emergence of bureaucratic states with an intellectual elite. i think an argument can be made that philosophical theism (and religion in general) arose in the 7th and 6th centuries BCE precisely because philosophy and ethics as reflective and analytic projects arose then.

I find it implausible that atheism as a surface phenomenon owes more a reduced or constrained application of the modules you list (agent detection, causation theory, theory of mind), as opposed to an increase in competing social motives like "be scientific", "be modern", or "be mentally liberated".

like heritability we should be cautious about how we quantify and characterize this. i am simply asserting that all things being equal individuals exhibit different propensities toward religiosity. the frequency shift in theism in the soviet union/russia shows this, a large proportion follow the zeitgeist, but a minority in the theistic and atheistic camps remained solid in their belief or lack of.

I don't know what this adds to the conversation, but I think it's interesting that there has been a notable move away from Buddhism in many once-Buddhist countries.

China, of course, being the most spectactular and violent example but there are others. Many of the Red Guards who smashed those monasteries in Tibet were Tibetan, a fact conveniently overlooked by the Gere/Thurman crowd. Korea has moved away from Buddhism but more peaceably. Does Buddhism play *any* sort of role in Japan? Doesn't strike me that way. Seems like Zen Buddhism in Japan is an exotic export, like sake and kimonos, and an aristocratic mental sport.

but I think it's interesting that there has been a notable move away from Buddhism in many once-Buddhist countries.

one thing that is important to note is that in most northeast asian buddhist countries buddhism did not have an analogous role to christianity in western countries, it was not an 'established' religion. e.g., in korea during the past 700 years it was a 'mountain' religion, banished from centers of power. in china state confucianism looked suspiciously upon buddhism, and buddhist priests were of low status (when the jesuits learned this in the 16th century they changed their garb from that of buddhist priests to mandarins). in japan during the nationalist phase buddhism was marginalized in comparison to state shinto. the idea that china, japan and korea were 'buddhist' nations had something to do with how westerners perceived the relationship to religion and state. in china the state has generally been pluralist, promiscuously coopting and patronizing various cults and religions for the past 2,000 years. similarly, in japan buddhism became a sort of established religion during the tokugawa period precisely because it was 'indigenous' and affiliation with the local buddhist temple was required to weed out catholic christians. the attack on catholicism was though predicated on its relationship to foreign powers in korea the period after world war ii actually has witnessed a counter reaction among buddhists to growing christianization, and the past 10 years have seen a equilibrium between buddhists and xtians % wise. buddhism's relationship to the culture is more analogous to christianity or islam in sri lanka, burma & thailand (lesser extent cambodia).

Thailand is the most Buddhist country on the planet. There you will find spirit houses on nearly every other street corner.

Talk to almost any Thai. They'll tell you those spirit houses ("sahn", in Thai) come from the Hindu religion. Does every supernatural belief in a Buddhist country have to be "Buddhist"?

Does every supernatural belief in a Buddhist country have to be "Buddhist"?

this is a common trope. define away something as 'buddhist,' 'christian' or 'atheist' by asserting it as a cultural accretion. e.g., 'this is not islam, it is the culture....' the problem is that religions are not extricable from the culture, they are embedded within it and defined by it. i agree that philosophical buddhism is not superstitious, but the christianity of st. augustine is not particular superstitious either.

I live in Thailand. I don't define what "real" Buddhism is...I can simply walk up to ordinary folks and ask them what is Buddhist, and what isn't. Spurred on by the recent Buddhism-related posts, that's what I've done.

Maybe one problem is this: Abrahamic/Western religions are more exclusive. Most Christians would have a huge hangup with a Hanuman statue in their churches, but it's not unusual to see a Jesus figure on a Hindu shrine. In the South of Thailand, there's even a mixing of Buddhism and Islam. Step into the Himalayas, and the guy who exorcises evil spirits from your wife is probably Bonpo, not Buddhist (yes, Bon survives!) And Hinduism/Buddhism is rampant all over middle and Southern Thailand.

Given the Abrahamic exclusivity, it wouldn't be surprising if a western researcher attributed every supernatural belief in Thai society to Buddhism. In the spirit of not allowing elites to define a religion, however, when the Thai on the street tells me "this is Buddhist...that is Hindu", shouldn't we take him at his word?

J Goard - No, but I have a coffee mug that gets very upset if I use one of the other mugs.

Contra Harris, Buddhism does not inoculate its adherents against a belief in spooks. Were that the case, we would expect to observe the conspicuous absence of that belief in Thailand more than anywhere. In fact we observe the opposite. The more pious the Buddhist, the more likely she is to wai when she passes in front of a sahn (or chide her companion for failing to prayerfully ask for permission from the spirit of the house before taking a picture of the afore mentioned sahn).

An initial cautionary flag: I don't care about why people truly believe. I'd be satisfied with a good predictive/positive description of religious belief even if what's going on inside the head of a religious person is quite different.

A few observations:
(1) Some people are more deeply "spiritual" than others. That is, people exhibit varying degrees of preference for describing their choices with reference non-observable and mystical elements. A few anecdotal examples: a formerly deeply religious friend-of-friend declares herself an atheist but begins to describe people with reference to astrology. "Crunchy" talk about interactions with reference to energies.
(2) People enjoy the possibility of supernatural. Have you looked at what's on television these days -- for whatever reason people are drawn to shows where magical things happen.
(3) A snake handler in Appalachia will describe himself as Christian. So will a cleric in the Vatican. Neither one is likely to quibble that the other isn't Christian.

So a couple of conclusions:
(0.5) Religion is vague -- picking the scale at which is analyzed is important to the conclusions we draw.
(1) Behavioral Economics holds that Chessmasters are less happy as a result of knowing their rank precisely. Religion supplies a mechanism through which individuals can collude against reality. It can be oppressively harsh
(2) There is a qualia of religious experience. People find it a pleasant one. This is something I can I experience personally though I realize that I experience it less than others.

(3) My own personal view: I think of religion as a mental residual. This is not quite a byproduct (heat) and it's not quite functionalist (since there is a qualia). There are many things that the mind can account for -- and there are some things that it suspects it can (given further processing account for) -- people are religious where the mind cannot find a good way to account for a thing. A bad way is one that's costly -- and it can be costly not because it's not possible, but because it taste yicky.

It feels like the same article from The Atlantic last year.

Here's a new paper in Human Nature: Superstition and Belief as Inevitable By-products of an Adaptive Learning Strategy.

Barrett is an ID sympathetic twat, so rather than contradicting (as is always implied in the media for religious scientists) his god-belief actually serves as evidence that theism and pseudoscientific analytic schemas are related. (Same for F. Collins' ID-lite) Both atheism and generic default religiousness are more favorable to science than the developed traditions which appear to enhance unscientific cognitive biases.

It is a trade-off b/c I also believe these traditions may increase altruistic and reduce antisocial tendencies.

Beyond attributing agency, religion attributes intent. If it rains and crops are good, God (or the rain-god) is good to us, and if there's a drought, God is angry.

Both Malinowski (1920s) and Evans-Pritchard (ca. 1930s) explained that superstition was mostly functional in uncontrollable, unpredictable, highly consequential areas. To the extent something is predictable, reliable, and controllable by humans, it gets less superstitious attention -- normal routine methods are used for activities where they work, and superstitious ritual methods are used for the mysterious and uncontrollable part. (For example, good fishermen know what they're supposed to do and how, but they can't predict whether fish will be there on a given day.)

Actually, often everything is thought of as having a god in it, but the gods of orderly things are thought of as emotionally stable and predictable, and often as benevolent.

What Evans-Pritchard said was that the superstitious question is "Why did the house fall on my brother and kill him, and not on someone else's brother". According to E-P, the Nuer understood why buildings collapse (termites, etc.) but still thought that there was intention behind the human consequences of the event (killing my brother).

Learning that Nature is ultimately indifferent to human consequences even though it makes our life possible is a hard lesson and one reserved mostly to elites. (BTW, the Stoics basically believed in ID, contrary to what I used to think. Their God was very abstract, impersonal, and distant, but they thought that all of nature was controlled for a purpose.)

Diana:

That's nonsense--that parents are gods.

Within hours of birth, we're practicin' up at manipulating them. By the time we're seven or so, we can see that we're a whole lot smarter and that their only advantage is a matter of size (and maybe in having money--which we haven't had a chance to scrape together much of).

historically this is not correct [that the three abrahamic faiths might have a common origin] since christianity arose in the 1st century and islam in the 7th.

by common origin with respect to Judaism, Christianity and Islam, i mean conditions of greatly heightened social stress-where usual and normal social boundaries among individuals ad groups (crowding) are radically breached-and a threshold is attained (calamity) where innovation in the perceived identity, role(s) and function(s) of a deity (and possibly also a revision of cultural "memory") becomes necessary to renegotiate boundaries that will effectively relieve tension and anxiety.

the religio-psychic innovations of judaism, christianity, and islam might be seen as primary, secondary and tertiary responses to social/political/environmental crisis periods. Each subsequent iteration retains a kernel of the "memory" of the former, but adapts that memory to suit the needs of the society in crisis.

That's just you, Gene, you were a bad seed.

"
That's nonsense--that parents are gods. Within hours of birth, we're practicin' up at manipulating them."

Yes, kids manipulate their parents, and other adults to the extent they are capable, but that only proves my point, so thanks for bringing it up.

The very heart of the man/god relationship is exactly the sort of manipulation you seem to think disproves my thesis.

Primitive people propitiate gods with offerings of wheat, animal sacrifice, or prayer.

"By the time we're seven or so, we can see that we're a whole lot smarter and that their only advantage is a matter of size"

Kids are not smarter than adults. Adults only give things to children who have a genetic relationship with them, a truth of which the children are unaware until life teaches them otherwise, sometimes quite brutally. Apparently you never learned that. You must have had quite a sheltered life.

Size is a huge advantage, and one that most adults are not averse to using when they have no genetic relationship to children.

Adults *kill* children, and more often than you seem to be aware, they do. All the kids being killed in Iraq will never be solemnly memorialized on any American television show. In most societies, they live on scraps and work very hard. They are not manipulative little consumers, they are beggars and laborers.

Adults can also starve them, move them at will, and put them to hard labor. And they do. In other words, they have total power over children, not the other way around.

What you are saying is middle-class Western nonsense, totally uninformed by the realities of life outside a narrow privileged framework.

What you are saying is middle-class Western nonsense, totally uninformed by the realities of life outside a narrow privileged framework.

You forgot that Gene Berman is a "true believer" in the free market, no wonder he has other unsubstantiated beliefs.

Razib:

I read that article too, but it seems to me that the problem with all that stuff is that they examine all the 'cognitive biases' that might lead to all the religious beliefs that they describe, but if they got deeper into it, that the assumptions about their own (Atran and Pascal) cognitive processes that lead them to think that at the end of their thought process that the 'know' something about humans and religion, if taken seriously and followed to the end, ultimately lead to a big picture that most people would call theism, and therefore are 'theistic' assumptions or axioms. None of the thinkers in the article seem to realize that.

I think as a general proposition that if one is going to examine what people think about religion... as if they are lab rats doesn't really fly unless one includes oneself as one of the lab rats. None of these guys seem have ever had that thought, and they might come up with something interesting when they do.

i misused the phrase "common origin" above, and boldface only emphasized its inaptness. i couldn't on the fly come up with a more precise term. still can't.

tomEG, i just wanted to make you clarify what you were saying. for the record.

tx

why do people believe in god? simple. we are raised by gods. Mommy & daddy are god. They can kill you; they have godlike power over you. They are god.


Young children doubtfully process such concepts (death and 'godlike power'), and when they do start understanding mind they make sharp distinctions between god and parents' powers. (see the cracker box experiment)

Do children ever even attribute supernatural abilities to their parents they don't attribute to other children?

Either way I don't understand the theory. Why should infant 'beliefs' about parents create childhood and adult beliefs in invisible agents? The newer, specific cognitive biases make more sense than Freudian-esque theories.

Jason,

"Do children ever even attribute supernatural abilities to their parents they don't attribute to other children?"

In a word, yes. Mommy & Daddy (and other adults) are capable of doing all sorts of amazing things that kids can't.

There's an endearing part of Portnoy's Complaint where little Alex is mystified, dumbfounded & amazed by his mother's ability to suspend fruit pieces in Jell-o.

"Either way I don't understand the theory. Why should infant 'beliefs' about parents create childhood and adult beliefs in invisible agents? The newer, specific cognitive biases make more sense than Freudian-esque theories."

There is nothing Freudian about this. Don't let the word scare you off. I am referring to a simple reinforcement process not a lot different from table manners or toilet training: for the 1st several years of your life you are helpless and dependent on large figures that supply all of your needs. Not nearly all your needs: all of them. You cannot do without them. They are bigger than you; their ways are mysterious and magical, if you don't behave properly they withhold love and sustenance, their glowering countenances fill you with terror.

All of this is reproduced in the relationship between the believer and god. The god belief is sheer infantilism, that's all. For that reason it is powerful & meaningful and will never be universally overcome. Being a helpless baby is something we can all identify with.

Regarding the parent dependency theory of divinity, are feral children less prone to a belief in divinity? And how do we account for atheists? Are atheists more likely to spend their infancy in the absence of parents?

Sections from the article:

But at a certain point in development, this changes. (Some new research suggests this might occur as early as 15 months.) The “false-belief test” is a classic experiment that highlights the boundary. Children watch a puppet show with a simple plot: John comes onstage holding a marble, puts it in Box A and walks off. Mary comes onstage, opens Box A, takes out the marble, puts it in Box B and walks off. John comes back onstage. The children are asked, Where will John look for the marble?

Very young children, or autistic children of any age, say John will look in Box B, since they know that’s where the marble is. But older children give a more sophisticated answer. They know that John never saw Mary move the marble and that as far as he is concerned it is still where he put it, in Box A. Older children have developed a theory of mind; they understand that other people sometimes have false beliefs. Even though they know that the marble is in Box B, they respond that John will look for it in Box A.

The adaptive advantage of folkpsychology is obvious. According to Atran, our ancestors needed it to survive their harsh environment, since folkpsychology allowed them to “rapidly and economically” distinguish good guys from bad guys. But how did folkpsychology — an understanding of ordinary people’s ordinary minds — allow for a belief in supernatural, omniscient minds? And if the byproduct theorists are right and these beliefs were of little use in finding food or leaving more offspring, why did they persist?

The above section seems to suggest that children are less prone to religion.

The idea of an infallible God is comfortable and familiar, something children readily accept. You can see this in the experiment Justin Barrett conducted recently — a version of the traditional false-belief test but with a religious twist. Barrett showed young children a box with a picture of crackers on the outside. What do you think is inside this box? he asked, and the children said, “Crackers.” Next he opened it and showed them that the box was filled with rocks. Then he asked two follow-up questions: What would your mother say is inside this box? And what would God say?

As earlier theory-of-mind experiments already showed, 3- and 4-year-olds tended to think Mother was infallible, and since the children knew the right answer, they assumed she would know it, too. They usually responded that Mother would say the box contained rocks. But 5- and 6-year-olds had learned that Mother, like any other person, could hold a false belief in her mind, and they tended to respond that she would be fooled by the packaging and would say, “Crackers.”

The above section seems to suggest that children are more prone to religion.

I figure I should note that you guys (as well as others) are partly the cause of my recent admitting to myself that I'm an atheist, which I suppose I had not done earlier out of simple pig-headedness. So that's an extra sentence in purgatory for you corrupting heathens.

I had always laughed at the idea of "atheist Catholics" or Ayaan Hirsi Ali & Wafa Sultan style atheist muslims, but I guess my thinking was too platonic and based on prepositional logic because despite my lack of belief I'm still in some sense the same American Protestant or Calvinist (I was never very spiritual), enough so that I wouldn't present myself otherwise in meatspace.

In a word, yes. Mommy & Daddy (and other adults) are capable of doing all sorts of amazing things that kids can't.

I was more looking for research. Do children, at any age, think of their parents like they do supernatural agents? The answer doesn't appear to be 'yes'. The cracker paper, for instance, shows that when children begin to develop a theory of mind they think their moms are as omniscient as a random girl or a monkey, while God is given special powers. Before this age they just didn't have the concepts, so it clearly isn't a transferred belief.

tggp,

i'm an american protestant/calvinist atheist too, so i'm there will you brother.

Jason,
I have no research. Only my own wise & profound insights into the darkest recesses of yooman nature. :) (My theory is predicated on the insight that this process starts well before a suckling babe has a "theory of mind.")

In my opinion, discussions such as this are way up at the wrong end of the ladder. If we want to know why people beleive in God, we need to ask, why would a dog, or cat, or a frog, beleive in God? We need to start at the very beginning. Way before people enter the picture, religion does.

I would start with plankton. A single celled organism floating in the sea. During the day, it floats lower down, because the sun is too strong. At night, it rises, to get more food, or something, can't quite remember why, it's been so long since I was a plankton.

Is a plankton religious? I will go out on a limb here, and say no.

Ok...but is there something, in the behavior of a plankton, that would point, in some way, to the developement of religion later on? In the context of evolution, further on, plants, then animals, then intelligent animals. Is there something in the behavior of a plankton that predicts in some way the development of religion later on? I would say, yes, there most certainly is.

That's how basic the discussion needs to be, I think. It's not about society, or parents, or agents. It's biology, and it starts right at the beginning.

Diana:

I'm sorry--I seem to have hit some sort of nerve with my "middle-class Western nonsense." Are you writing from somewhere outside the Western orbit (or have some particular connection to the adult-child nexus in such places)? I can appreciate that child-rearing practices differ dramatically in different cultures and conditions but can still see no correlation "jumping out" at one to suggest that children--even very young children (and granted the completeness of their dependency) attribute anything approaching omnipotence to their parents. Why, then, in the US, where children are, at least in many cases, treated in a far gentler manner than that which you'd have us believe is the typical expectation of children as children--smaller, dependent, etc.--is there the relatively high degree of religious belief that seems to exist? There are some societies that are even more generally permissive (and have been so for far longer) than ours. Do they exhibit some high level of disbelief?

Also, I'm curious why you'd characterize me--someone of whom you know almost nothing--as having "lived a sheltered life" "in a narrow, privileged framework"--unless that's what you'd apply to anyone growing up in the previously-mentioned Western milieu (which wasn't quite as generous in treatment of the young yesterday as today). Nor can I know from where you got the idea that kindness and generosity are offered by adults only to their own kin. I don't doubt that a preponderance is in favor of family youngsters but I've been out and about for well over 60 years and have seen innumerable instances of (non-existent, you'd have us believe) generous behavior toward completely strange children, including having been the object of such behavior myself.

It's also opportune that Kevembuangga has chimed in to equate, for your benefit, my advocacy of free markets (along with other liberties) as of a piece with "other unsubstantiated beliefs" (referring to my previous comments which were offered in jest but taken as fuel for your own personal fire). And I shall make a connection of sorts, which I hope you will consider privately, at some length, as well worthy of more study, rather than as an argument requiring rebuttal.

People do what they do with purposiveness, whether specific or general. Emergent behavior patterns have been fashioned by a general perception of necessity, typically mediated by societal adaptations (culture) for dealing with such necessity. It is a task for historians, social scientists (if they, indeed, exist), and, perhaps for geneticists to account for differences among races, cultures, and nations in how they behave toward their offspring--to account for the factors that lead some to beat, starve, and force into hard, even dangerous labor their own children whom they also recognize as their own future (when aged) breadwinners while others vigorously exert themselves to provide luxurious amenities well into adolescence while adding formal training for entry into a society increasingly less dependent on labor than on more intellectual skills. More is involved than mere starkness of existence or proximity to starvation and adversity of the elements. The requirements of life are hard-won in either rural Pakistan or in Arctic isolation; but to such extreme conditions, one people behave one way and others entirely differently (with respect to the adult-child relationship).

Kevembuangga may, indeed, insist that I indulge in an "unsubstantiated belief" when I state that, ceteris paribus, parents who are materially in more comfortable circumstances will extend the benefit of such comfort in good measure to their children as well--that is the behavior most typical of all humans. From such recognition follows the recommendation to he (or she) who finds certain treatment of children offensive and intolerable: it will be easier to effect the desired improvement in the conditions of children by improving the material circumstances of their parents than by trying to change the behavior of parents through passage or enforcement of sanctions against the undesired behavior. The plain fact is that, in some places (which have embraced capitalism, private property, and individual liberty), young girls and boys now go to school and enjoy "Western-style" childhoods, where less than a century ago, the very same children would have faced young lives of laborious drudgery (and forced prostitution). Are we to conclude that parents in one place suddenly began to feel differently toward their children? Or might we not be forgiven for suspecting that the improved system of production enabled the expression of feelings and impulses that had always existed but been worn down by a constant chafing of the chains of necessity?

sir,

bootee!!!!!!!!!!!!

yours truly.

c.v. snicker

I'm COMPLETELY SICK OF GOD.

WHO THE F*CK CARES?

WHO THE F*CK CARES?

Marching Morons...

Riding the Tiger:

Ride it like I try to ride the law, politics and science? (Mostly the law, since well, I'm a lawyer.) It seems to me that the first three have enormous impact on one another, and though religion is not totally insulated, it is harder to influence from the outside. You can convert people away from a faith but to change the direction of a whole religious sect seems to require an internal force. Even then, the result is often a split in the community. Splits are a good way to concentrate extremists. That can be good or bad I guess.

Anyway, this all leads me to think about how one can work for change in other peoples' faiths. Should I convert, in order to have legitimacy? I'm sure I would make a great...oh I dunno...Shia, Lutheran - whatever. I'm a smart guy, I might even get into leadership positions. Or should we try to befriend influential members of a faith in an attempt to use them as proxies?

I guess what I'm saying is:

Dear Razib,

I buy it. Now what?

Scritic:

I don't know whether Razib will notice and answer but will give you my own take on the matter, since I'm in essential agreement with him, particularly in viewing both the origin and continued success of both the god concept and of religion in what must be (personal and social) utilitarian considerations.

My own surmise is that "law"--the regulation and restriction of behavior which would otherwise, in its absence, take place--is the precedent concept.

As "proof" I'd simply offer that, on the one hand,we've no record whatever (either way) of what infants or the young think or might think in circumstances other than actual in every case known--entry into existence managed by adults of their species. In further support, we observe lower forms (above species which "shift for themselves" on birth) adults (usually parents but not always) routinely concern themselves with various offspring behavior. Particulars are not as important as noting that the universality of such (adult) behavior leads to the supposition that it's "paid off" in survival.

In species in which the family is also related to others of the species by what we'd call "social"
connections, raising of the young to various levels of independence entails regulation of behavior with regard to these others--in addition to that of their parents. And, in such instances, such regulation is exercised by both parents and the others concerned; the young learn limits. We may even presume that some, who do not learn such limits or who do not learn them sufficiently--are prime candidates for "removal from the gene pool" through just such eventualities as the regulated behavior had potential to preclude.

Humans are different. I do not mean to split hairs over whether or not a few species do not, in fact, exhibit behavior suggestive of thought, even purposive thought. What is clear to us, however, is that humans are possessed, seemingly from birth and universally, if "normal," with the faculty we call "reason," which consists principally in interpreting sensory stimuli according to a "hard-wired" pattern we call logic, whose structure recognizes some phenomena as related to yet others in an inviolable relationship we all know as "cause" and "effect." The function of reason (that which we can see it does and which it can be seen confers survival value on the individual and species) is to foretell as much as may be known about the conditions of an uncertain future.

It has been said (Hobbes, I think) that "Nature is red in tooth and claw." Each existing creature, if successful, deprives another of scarce sustenance (and the predator/prey relationship pales in comparison to the bloodless but no less decisively mortal competition between members of the same species for identical resources in their common niche. Malthus erred only in extrapolating his observation to humankind.

As I said, humans are different. By adulthood, each has learned that maximization of his own existence--sometimes the very continuation of that existence--depends to a very great extent not only on his own efforts to obtain sustenance but on those of others as well and by efforts of all to "get along"--meaning to behave in such manner as to promote a maximum of cooperative behavior and a minimization of such behavior as would interfere with the process by which the success of the individual benefits all and success of all benefits the individual. But not all individuals perceive the larger truth of matters in the same way nor to the same extent. Some may believe that aggression of a physical nature will bring them success. Or that they may offend against intersocial relationships in certain ways unlikely of detection by others and in ways that will, though damaging certain others, bring disproportionate satisfaction. It could well be said that not even a single person exists (or has) in whom some instance of anti-social thought or action has not occurred, whether or not realized. And, almost at the same time as the anti-social value of certain behaviors becomes a matter of general awareness, so too does some idea of some uniform response by individuals and their societies intended to minimize such occurrence and thus regularize an uninterrupted receipt of the benefits sought by socialization in the first place. I do not mean to imply that law is a product of society; rather, I suggest that they are, in fact, more or less coterminous: without law, there is no society. This would be the situation without regard to whether a god exists or not for any creature composed along the lines of the human being. From this line, it is my considered guess that an idea of god, being most likely temporally antecedent to that of law, is an "invention" pressed into service by men to assist in promoting and enforcing norms of social cooperation. Human enforcers may be slow or slow-witted, may be elsewhere or asleep, or may be of insufficient strength or numbers to contend with
every would-be malefactor and his companions. Only belief in a god omnipresent, omniscient, and omnipotent is fit for that particular job.

I'm not finished--but that's plenty for now.

I'm glad there is more. I'm not sure I have what I was asking for yet.

scritic-
this thread has dropped off the main page and perhaps off most radars by the time you commented. there's a contact form in the upper right if you want to get at a particular gnxper.