main
side
curve
  1. In Memory of LAJ_FETT: Please share your remembrances and condolences HERE

JCC Will religious belief ever disappear?

Discussion in 'Community' started by poor yorick, Jan 28, 2014.

?

Will religious belief disappear?

  1. Yes, because science

    4 vote(s)
    10.5%
  2. Yes, but for some other reason

    1 vote(s)
    2.6%
  3. No, religious belief is a basic product of human consciousness

    20 vote(s)
    52.6%
  4. No, God wouldn't allow it

    7 vote(s)
    18.4%
  5. I am a beautiful, unique snowflake, and I think something else

    6 vote(s)
    15.8%
  1. Rogue_Ten

    Rogue_Ten Chosen One star 7

    Registered:
    Aug 18, 2002
    brah, do you even the bible?
     
    Ender Sai likes this.
  2. Darth Guy

    Darth Guy Chosen One star 10

    Registered:
    Aug 16, 2002
    I have a hankerin' for some pomegranate from the Tree of Knowledge.
     
    anakinfansince1983 likes this.
  3. GrandAdmiralJello

    GrandAdmiralJello Comms Admin ❉ Moderator Communitatis Litterarumque star 10 Staff Member Administrator

    Registered:
    Nov 28, 2000
    ophie, can I change my answer to "human nature is forever doomed to debate whether or not Christianity is true in every single thread" ?
     
  4. Point Given

    Point Given Manager star 7 Staff Member Manager

    Registered:
    Dec 12, 2006

    Skywalker8921 and those replying to her, please respect the OPhelia's wishes. There are other threads to discuss this in.
     
    Jedi Merkurian and harpua like this.
  5. Skywalker8921

    Skywalker8921 Jedi Knight star 4

    Registered:
    Jun 9, 2011
    What are you trying to say, Rogue?

    Harps, Ender, yes I do but I see no reason to share it with you.
     
  6. Ender Sai

    Ender Sai Chosen One star 10

    Registered:
    Feb 18, 2001
    EDIT: Removing as I saw PG's post.
     
  7. Zapdos

    Zapdos Force Ghost star 5

    Registered:
    Jan 7, 2013
    ophelia this was a great idea for a thread, at least in theory. but the jcc isn't ready yet, it seems.
     
  8. Darth Guy

    Darth Guy Chosen One star 10

    Registered:
    Aug 16, 2002
    It's the thread the JCC deserves, but not the one it needs right now.

    Or some ****.
     
  9. Harpua

    Harpua Chosen One star 9

    Registered:
    Mar 12, 2005
    We just need to start a "Theist/Atheist Thunderdome™ " thread... this way anytime a "God is real" "Nuh-uh he isn't" thread diversion happens, people can be banished to the appropriate thread.
     
  10. Lord Vivec

    Lord Vivec Chosen One star 9

    Registered:
    Apr 17, 2006
    It's not who you are on the inside, but what you post that matters.
     
    Jedi Merkurian likes this.
  11. Zapdos

    Zapdos Force Ghost star 5

    Registered:
    Jan 7, 2013
    why don't you go ahead? oh, and can we make it sticky?
     
    Point Given likes this.
  12. Harpua

    Harpua Chosen One star 9

    Registered:
    Mar 12, 2005
    Okay... hold on... iIma eat some grub and I'll post it when I get back... promise.
     
    Point Given likes this.
  13. Ender Sai

    Ender Sai Chosen One star 10

    Registered:
    Feb 18, 2001
    ophelia, harpua:

    http://www.samharris.org/images/uploads/Harris_Sheth_Cohen.pdf
    http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0007272

    This paper suggests that religious thought, when contrasted with varying statements of objectively factual (2 + 2 = 4) and subjective nature, is in no way unique to other thoughts. That is, the brain treats questions about faith like it treats questions about any other every day matters. The second paper has this to say, which aligns with what I've been arguing albeit more elegantly:

    According to Boyer, religious beliefs and concepts must arise from mental categories and cognitive propensities that predate religion—and these underlying structures might determine the stereotypical form that religious beliefs and practices take. These categories relate to things like intentional agents, animacy, social exchange, moral intuitions, natural hazards, and ways of understanding human misfortune. On Boyer's account, people do not accept implausible religious doctrines because they have relaxed their standards of rationality; they relax their standards of rationality because certain doctrines fit their “inference machinery” in such a way as to seem credible. And what most religious propositions may lack in plausibility they make up for in the degree to which they are memorable, emotionally salient, and socially consequential; all of these properties are a product of our underlying cognitive architecture, and most of this architecture is not consciously accessible. Boyer argues, therefore, that explicit theologies and consciously held beliefs are not a reliable indicator of the contents or causes of a person's religious outlook.

    Now, I'm not a scientist so I admit I am attempting to interpret data here that I'm not an expert on. But it seems to me that the assertions made by Harris and Boyer indicate a cognitive bias towards some form of belief system. So in a way, that parable Douglas Adams used to tell to illustrate the futility of creationism (fourth one down: http://www.positiveatheism.org/hist/quotes/douglas.htm) isn't just about a small minded person but about someone who has a mind receptive to a simplified, omniscient model.

    Harris goes on to write:

    Because our minds have evolved to detect patterns in the world, we may tend to detect patterns that aren't actually there—ranging from faces in the clouds to a divine hand in the workings of Nature. Hood [49] posits an additional cognitive schema that he calls “supersense”—a tendency to infer hidden forces in the world, working for good or for ill. On his account, supersense generates beliefs in the supernatural (religious and otherwise) all on its own, and such beliefs are thereafter modulated, rather than instilled, by culture. Hood likens our susceptibility to religious ideas to our propensity to develop phobias for evolutionarily relevant threats (like snakes and spiders) rather than for things that are far more likely to kill us (like automobiles and electrical sockets). Barrett [50] makes the same case, likening religion to language acquisition: we come into this world cognitively prepared for language; our culture and upbringing merely dictate which languages we will be exposed to.

    So the more you read this, the more you get the sense that Ophelia's original question about religious belief disappearing is probably no, but with a tonne of caveats about the evolution of religious belief from a structural standpoint. We may never stop looking to intuit a numinous influence to events but we equally may stop ourselves from being aware we are doing it.
     
    ophelia likes this.
  14. Mar17swgirl

    Mar17swgirl Chosen One star 7

    Registered:
    Dec 26, 2000
    See, the big difference between the socialism of the early Christians and the socialism of the Eastern Bloc was that the early Christians were, as you quoted, "of one heart and of one soul" - i.e. everyone who participated in the system, participated voluntarily. It wasn't enforced by the state (which still kept a class of privileged "ubermensch" anyway).

    EDIT: This was in response to harps' post about socialism on the last page. I forgot to refresh the page and didn't see the other posts. :p
     
    harpua likes this.
  15. Zapdos

    Zapdos Force Ghost star 5

    Registered:
    Jan 7, 2013
    awesome job, harpua

    let's see if it works...

    GOD IS REAL
     
  16. Ender Sai

    Ender Sai Chosen One star 10

    Registered:
    Feb 18, 2001
    Dammit people, I brought this bad boy back on topic with neuroscientific awesome. RESPOND PLX
     
  17. Harpua

    Harpua Chosen One star 9

    Registered:
    Mar 12, 2005
    I think by starting that other thread, I ripped a hole in the space/time continuum.
     
    anakinfansince1983 likes this.
  18. anakinfansince1983

    anakinfansince1983 Skywalker Saga/LFL/YJCC Manager star 10 Staff Member Manager

    Registered:
    Mar 4, 2011
    Cool. We should all be thinking fourth dimensionally.
     
  19. I Are The Internets

    I Are The Internets Shelf of Shame Host star 9 VIP - Game Host

    Registered:
    Nov 20, 2012
    So what dictates what is/isn't a religion? Just curious.
     
  20. Ender Sai

    Ender Sai Chosen One star 10

    Registered:
    Feb 18, 2001
    "Not Mormonism or Scientology"?
     
  21. poor yorick

    poor yorick Ex-Mod star 6 VIP - Former Mod/RSA VIP - Game Host

    Registered:
    Jun 25, 2002
    Enderz: Wonderful quotes! I was looking for stuff like that when I started this thread, but all I could readily find were the semi-crappy pages I linked to in the OP. :p

    BTW, I think I've changed my mind about the likelihood that Christianity is headed for extinction any time soon, no matter what trends are going on in Western Europe. Apparently 2.2 billion people, just shy of a third of the people on the planet, self-identify as Christian. I shall page GrandAdmiralJello as insurance, but I think the extinct religions of antiquity were never widely adopted outside their cultures of origin, and so when those specific cultures went belly-up, so did their gods. It's not like Christianity, or Islam, for that matter (just over 20% of the world's population), is believed in by a tiny super-elite that could be wiped out by war or disease or shifting trade routes.

    What could happen is a shift in the Christian world's center of gravity--from Europe and North America to South America and sub-Saharan Africa. It's an open question as to what would fill Christianity's void among groups that have abandoned it. I don't think most human minds take easily to atheism, for all the reasons quoted above.

    There are lots of competing definitions . . . some of which are listed here.
     
    Ender Sai likes this.
  22. Ender Sai

    Ender Sai Chosen One star 10

    Registered:
    Feb 18, 2001
    The Romans, rather sagely, allowed conquered people to keep their cultural and religious values, as it promoted harmony within the empire. Realistically, and I could be wrong but I don't think I am, the main battle has been and will continue to be Christianity and Islam. Both are religions that have aggressively expanded their territory and their numbers, and both have done so at sword point. They've had their run ins, and I would hazard a guess that Christianity and Islam, in opposition to one another at one public level, fuel their own numbers by virtue of this conflict.
     
  23. timmoishere

    timmoishere Force Ghost star 6

    Registered:
    Jun 2, 2007
  24. GrandAdmiralJello

    GrandAdmiralJello Comms Admin ❉ Moderator Communitatis Litterarumque star 10 Staff Member Administrator

    Registered:
    Nov 28, 2000
    Yeah, as Ender noted the Romans pretty much let people worship whomever they were before so long as they also officially worshipped the Roman gods (either by adding them to their pantheons, or doing something like "That Odin guy you worship? Call him Mercury when you say his name in Latin, and we're good.") -- but the Roman state religion was more a civic religion anyway, the ancient equivalent of a flag salute. But aside from a few highly charismatic cults -- Isis, Osiris, Mithras, Christianity... religion didn't really spread because like you suggest, it was closely tied to cultural practices. A Roman might worship his penates or his lares, but those don't mean anything to a Briton who'll continue his Celtic beliefs. And aside from the official temple to the Capitoline Triad or maybe to a deified emperor (which were more akin to federal buildings basically), they'd never come across Roman gods.
     
  25. Rogue_Ten

    Rogue_Ten Chosen One star 7

    Registered:
    Aug 18, 2002

    it is True... finally... i have been so blind.... but now i See. thank you Napkin
     
    anakinfansince1983 likes this.