Re: Religion

On Aug 3, 8:02 pm, Alexm <amcwill...@xxxxxxx> wrote:
A Martian (if one existed) observing earth could fairly easily
perceive that humans have religions. Are there any other creatures on
earth the behaviors of which can be interpreted as being in some sense
religious in nature?

There are behaviors of animals that have been interpreted as being
homologous to religion. Read "The Ascent of man" by Charles Darwin.
Darwin talks about his dog, growling at a wind chime. He claims that
the confusion of the dog is either homologous or analogous to a human
believing in spirits. A Martian, seeing that dog growl at the wind
chime, could have seen it the same way.
Darwin makes an interesting observation which I am not sure is
true. He claims that most spirits are evil. He attributes that to the
defensive nature of natural selection. Natural selection favors
protective rather than trusting responses.
Dog hears wind chime, dog only has experience with humans who
ring wind chimes, dog concludes that a human is ringing the wind
chime, but an invisible human. One who isn't trying to pet him. It
must be an invisible intruder, the worse type of intruder! So the dog
barks. In actuality, it was only Satan...


.

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