Re: Is religion "cultural baggage" or a natural, default way of
From: P.Comm (tjsrno_at_spampost.com)
Date: 09/25/04
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Date: Sat, 25 Sep 2004 19:56:02 GMT
Hey Daarth -
Consider that you are modern human being living in the tech age here. Once
upon a time, there were no science books of encyclopedias to answer any
questions.
Today, I think more or less that religion is SIMPLY a cultural thing - kind
of cohesive thing.
"darth_versive" <darth_versive@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:8e0e3045.0409092221.6405b11f@posting.google.com...
> liger007@msn-dot-com.no-spam.invalid (Matt_D) wrote in message
> news:<413f6a6c$1_2@127.0.0.1>...
>> I personally believe that the "default" is that a child will believe
>> whatever is told them, and hopefully you teach them the right thing.
>> When I asked my Dad a question like "why is the sky blue?" he
>> answered "because of the oxygen in the atmosphere". If I asked a
>> question he didn't know the answer to, the book he consulted was
>> Encyclopedia Britannica, and I always thanked my Dad for not spewing
>> biblical nonsense and instead counting on rational scientific
>> explanations for life, the world and all the rest.
>> He never talked down about religion, or stopped us from going to
>> church over the years for whatever reason, but after learning about
>> the world from a scientific perspective, the religious experience
>> just wasn't there. To me it seemed obviously false and unappealing.
>> Personally I am quite thankful for being unencumbered by ancient
>> superstition, and I intend to raise my daughter the same way. She
>> will not hear about Adam and Eve when she asks where people came
>> from. She will not hear that stories about virgin births, burning
>> bushes, or cramming animals into arks really happened anymore than
>> she will be told that bigfoot or UFO's are real.
>> In my opinion religious and superstitious beliefs are learned
>> behaviors just like other negative traits. People that are otherwise
>> rational and educated believe in fortune tellers because they went
>> with their mom's as a kid. Kids learn to drink or commit crimes
>> because their friends or even parents do it. People believe in all
>> kinds of stupid things for stupid reasons because they were taught to
>> believe them at some time in their pasts. Teaching your kids is
>> important, but sometimes it's what they DON'T learn that really makes
>> a difference.
>
> Then would you agree with my original post in the original thread? It
> seems like you are making some of the same points that I did. Did you
> read the original post?
>
> (I don't know why Trigger started a new thread, then omitted 2 of the
> 3 original newsgroups, then truncated my original subject heading, and
> then omitted the quote of my original post. I'm sure he must have had
> his reasons. But here it is, and with the other newsgroups added back
> in to this reply.)
>
> DV
>
>
>
> From: darth_versive (darth_versive@yahoo.com)
> Subject: Is religion "cultural baggage" or a natural, default way of
> thinking?
> Newsgroups: alt.religion, alt.religion.christian, sci.anthropology
> Date: 2004-09-06 15:32:55 PST
>
>
> Some people say that the fact that religion is so common in society
> shows that people naturally think in religious terms. Of those who
> say this, some say it's because God designed us this way, and others
> say it's a result of evolution.
>
> Other people say that atheism is the "default" state of mind, and that
> religion is just "cultural baggage" from past centuries, which will
> fade away as the culture becomes more educated in modern knowledge.
>
> I think that this is a question that can be answered in terms of the
> social, behavioral and cognitive sciences. At least I think it can be
> answered in these terms a lot better than it can be answered by just
> arguing about it without reference to scientific research in these
> areas.
>
> While a lot more research needs to be done before this question can be
> answered definitively, enough data is out there now for us to at least
> discuss it.
>
> To start with, isn't talking about "cultural baggage" and "default
> ways of thinking"--as if this is an "either/or" issue--a bit
> simplistic?
>
> That is, isn't "cultural baggage" a natural part of the human
> condition? That is, didn't we evolve within some cultural environment
> or other? If so, then whatever mental structures are involved in
> taking on "cultural baggage" is just as "natural" as those involved in
> acquiring language. At least it seems this way to me.
>
> And so, if a particular system of thought or worldview is part of a
> particular human culture, then I would think that acquiring whatever
> system of thought is present during child development would be
> "natural," or the "default"--whether that happened to be an atheistic
> system of thought or a theistic system of thought.
>
> So, the "default" state of the human mind is one that is open to a
> variety of different ways of thinking, just like it is open to a
> variety of languages. It has evolved the mental structures to quickly
> "make sense" of the world in terms of some system of thought or the
> other, in the same way as it has evolved the structures to quickly
> acquire some language or the other.
>
> In the same way that the mind is no more predisposed to acquire French
> than German, perhaps it is no more predisposed to acquire a theistic
> system of thought than an atheistic one. Perhaps the greater
> prevalence of theistic systems of thought over atheistic ones nowadays
> is that these theistic systems of thought have been around longer, and
> have themselves "evolved" in such a manner as to come up with more
> appealing answers to those sorts of questions that people have been
> asking since the beginning (such as, why am I here? what's my purpose
> in life? what happens after I die? etc.). The atheism I usually see
> around me seems less designed to answer these sorts of questions from
> young, developing minds, like the theistic systems are, and more
> designed to address the minds of adults, and to deny or to not believe
> the answers that the theists have come up with, rather than coming up
> with psychologically appealing answers of their own to these
> fundamental questions that children ask. Therefore, perhaps the
> theists just happen to get to the young people first more often, with
> the answers to those questions that they want answers to; and getting
> there first, these ideas are much harder to dislodge from the mind
> than if an atheistic system of thought had been there with the same
> sorts of answers when the young minds were first asking these
> questions.
>
> It seems to me that the older someone gets, the harder it is for them
> to change their general perspective on life, and therefore the less
> likely it is that someone will change that perspective. There are
> many exceptions to this rule, of course, but on the average, most
> people who are raised in a particular system of thought will remain in
> that system of thought. And so that may be part of the answer as to
> why theistic worldviews are so much more prevalent than atheistic
> worldviews nowadays, and why theists are so resistant to the reasoning
> of atheists.
>
> At least, this seems like a reasonable hypothesis to me. Has anybody
> heard of any research, or do they have any scientific evidence, that
> might undermine this hypothesis?
>
> DV
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