Did we evolve to believe in the supernatural?

[Kave]

The subject struck a chord with me. Too bad I'm not a subscriber to American Scientist, I'd love to get a look at this article:

http://www.americanscientist.org/templa ... etid/49627

P.S. I notice that the article's author is a faculty member of the UA.

[Barbara Fitzpatrick]

I can't get to the whole article, either, but I think belief in the supernatural is a logical outcome of the human brain's recognition of connectivity (which would indicate an evolutional component). Without the logic development/training to sift out things happening concurrently that are not connected, a person (young child, primative society, etc) will connect them - and if that person is not the cause of the events in question, is equally likely to assign causal powers to one or the other. And, at least with a child, it takes only a few repetitions to make that connection. If the action or whatever really isn't causal, but the person performing same thinks it is, that person will have more confidence in the outcome - it will be the confidence that made the difference, but the person will give credit to the supernatural result of doing whatever (hold your mouth right, hum your music, light candles, cross your fingers, turn around 3 times and spit over your left shoulder, pray, etc - all of those are efforts to supernaturally influence events to a specific outcome).

[Doug]

The subject struck a chord with me. Too bad I'm not a subscriber to American Scientist, I'd love to get a look at this article:

http://www.americanscientist.org/templa ... etid/49627

P.S. I notice that the article's author is a faculty member of the UA.

DOUG
We evolved to look for patterns and structure. Even where there is no pattern, we often try to create one, and this can lead to the mistaken view that something was "supposed to happen" or that things "happen for a reason." For example, people hate to see loved ones die in senseless accidents. The solution: there are no senseless accidents. It was that person's "time" to go. The child was "called up to be with God," and so on. If we evolved to believe in the supernatural, why do supernatural beliefs differ? And why must they be taught? We wouldn't expect either if we were "hard-wired" for such beliefs.

[Barbara Fitzpatrick]

Belief in the supernatural is like language - somewhere along the way we evolved language - there are hundreds, if not thousands of different languages, and each specific language has to be taught (it isn't formally taught, but through hearing it and people talking to the baby, etc it IS taught) to a child growing up in that society. The child learns the society's basic supernatural belief the same way, but just like we are taught "standard english" speech patterns and grammar when we are "mature" enough to understand, specific supernatural rules - dogma/doctrine - are taught when the child is mature enough to understand (or immature enough to still believe). In fact, that universality of belief in the supernatural is at least one line of "evidence" that a supernatural exists - that for some reason we are cut off from a direct knowledge, sort of like a deaf person learning language, but the concept supernatural, like the concept language, exists. (Pax, Doug & DAR - I didn't say I believed that constitutes proof, just that it is considered to be evidence in some circles.)

[Dardedar]

DAR
I think it is even simpler than that Barbara. Supernaturalistic, magical thinking can just be part of our natural wanting to know answers to the unknown and making up answers to satisfy this thirst. It can also be a natural out growth of our pattern seeking skills bestowed to us by evolution. Very often it is our natural and not so perfect attempts at discerning cause and effect. Let me give you a recent example. Although I am a thorough going skeptic (some say I am too skeptical but I doubt it), I also don't take myself too seriously most of the time and like to play with ideas. While I was in Vegas I jumped right into gambling to see what all the racket was about. People get addicted to this? I am good at assuming a role of naive neophyte (I hope it is just a role). So there I am playing the slots and I then I win a big one, that is, 400 nickels, $20. That's a big deal for a newbie like me (just ask Tamara). So I found my self automatically, innately trying to replicate what I might have done to cause such a fortunate event. Just so happens that while I had pushed the spin button on the machine this lucky time, I had turned and was looking at someone else at another machine. Oooh, maybe that's it. So I, completely irrationally, found it irresistible to for the next while try this method of winning. I think it actually worked for a while. A very short while. The next two spins were pretty good, then the magic wore off.

Superstitious thinking comes natural to humans for many reasons. It need not be a sign of an actual supernatural any more than a baby being afraid of the dark means there is an actual boogie man.

D.
---------------------
"I think religions began in the primal past of the species in an effort for humans to cope with the universe. Why did it thunder? Why did people die? Why is there suddenly a drought or a forest fire? So the inexplicable was attributed to hidden occult causes.
Philosophy developed seeking reasons, and then science, five-and-a-half centuries ago, seeking causal explanations. The early function of religion, I think, has largely been replaced by science."
–Paul Kurtz

“I think religion is used to manipulate people and, ultimately, to control them. And I think it was probably more important a few centuries ago than it is today, in terms of being able to control people…. I think that at the bottom of all this is a yearning–a yearning on the part of individual humans to connect with something bigger, something more primordial, something original and “out there” that is undefinable. I think that this is a natural urge. And I think religion manipulates that urge in humans.”
--George Carlin

[Barbara Fitzpatrick]

Unfortunately, it is very possible to become addicted to gambling - but if you don't start (don't take that 1st drink)... - so I stay out of casinos.

What you (and Kurtz & Carlin) say is probably, if not definitely true, but still doesn't rule out that "concept supernatural", like concept language exists. Just because there isn't a boogie man doesn't mean there isn't something to be afraid of in the dark. The fact that specific religions, and other social beliefs, have been used to control people doesn't make the concept invalid - concept supernatural is probably an outcome of the need for answers and connectivity, but it is possible that the need for answers and connectivity is the outcome of concept supernatural just as written language is an outcome of concept language. If so, it is definitely hardwired in, and science is another result of it, since science is an objective form of seeking answers and connectivity.

[Doug]

Just so happens that while I had pushed the spin button on the machine this lucky time, I had turned and was looking at someone else at another machine. Oooh, maybe that's it.

DOUG
Yes, that's it. It was her fault. That darned cleavage!

A friend of mine has an uncle who is addicted to gambling. Unfortunately, he moved to Las Vegas to become a slot machine repairman. Anyway, he would bet on the ponies. He had a foolproof system, he claimed. One day he was about the win the trifecta, which would give him a lot of money. However, he claims, he was distracted from his system by fooling around with a Rubick's Cube, and so didn't work his system right and he didn't win. Darn that cube! It's always something!

Eventually he lost his wife, his home, and his job (he wound up living in his car). My friend went with his mother to visit this uncle in his car. The mother recommended that he seek counseling for his gambling addiction. She told him he should go to Gamblers Anonymous. "What?" he said indignantly, "that's for losers!"

[Dardedar]

If so, it is definitely hardwired in, and science is another result of it, since science is an objective form of seeking answers and connectivity.

DAR
Here is an interesting and pertinent article on this I kept from a couple of years ago:

***
From the Jan. 29, 2001 issue of Newsweek, page 59.

---------------------------------------

Searching For the God Within

The way our brains are wired may explain the origin and power of religious beliefs

By Sharon Begley

NEWSWEEK

Jan. 29 issue
He begins the way he begins every meditation
session, lighting candles and jasmine incense before settling into a lotus
position. He focuses inward, willing the essence he regards as his true self to break free from his desires, worries and senses.

THERE IS A difference this time, though. The young Tibetan Buddhist has a length of twine beside him and an IV in his left arm. As he approaches the transcendent peak of his meditative state, he tugs on the twine. At the other end, in the next room, Dr. Andrew Newberg feels the pull, and quickly injects a radioactive tracer into the IV line. Then Newberg whisks him into a brain-imaging machine called SPECT‹and the man¹s sense of unity with the cosmos gets boiled down to a computer readout. A region at the top rear of the brain which weaves sensory data into a feeling of where the self ends and the rest of the world begins looks like the victim of one of California’s rolling blackouts. Deprived of sensory input by the man’s inward concentration, this ³orientation area cannot do its job of finding the border between self and world. The brain had no choice,² says Newberg.
³It perceived the self to be endless, as one with all of creation. And this
felt utterly real.²

³The human brain has been genetically wired to encourage religious beliefs.²

The tension between science and religion is about to get
tenser, for some scientists have decided that religious experience is just
too intriguing not to study. Neurologists jumped in first, finding a
connection between temporal lobe epilepsy and a sudden interest in religion.
As V. S. Ramachandran of the University of California, San Diego, told a
1997 meeting, these patients, during seizures, ³say they see God² or feel ³a
sudden sense of enlightenment.² Now researchers are looking at more-common varieties of religious experience. Newberg and the late Dr. Eugene d¹Aquili, both of the University of Pennsylvania, have a name for this field: neuro-theology. In a book to be published in April, they conclude that spiritual experiences are the inevitable outcome of brain wiring: ³The human brain has been genetically wired to encourage religious beliefs.²

Even plain old praying affects the brain in distinctive ways.
In SPECT scans of Franciscan nuns at prayer, the Penn team found a quieting of the orientation area, which gave the sisters a tangible sense of proximity to and merging with God. ³The absorption of the self into
something larger [is] not the result of emotional fabrication or wishful
thinking,² Newberg and d¹Aquili write in ³Why God Won¹t Go Away.² It
springs, instead, from neurological events, as when the orientation area
goes dark.

Neuro-theology also explores how ritual behavior elicits brain
states that bring on feelings ranging from mild community to deep spiritual unity. A 1997 study by Japanese researchers showed that repetitive rhythms can drive the brain¹s hypothalamus, which can bring on either serenity or arousal.

That may explain why incantatory hymns can trigger a sense of
quietude that believers interpret as spiritual tranquillity and bliss. In
contrast, the fast rapturous dancing of Sufi mystics causes hyperarousal,
scientists find, which can make participants feel as if they are channeling
the energy of the universe. Although the inventors of rituals surely didn¹t
know it at the time, these rites manage to tap into the precise brain
mechanisms that tend to make believers interpret perceptions and feelings as
evidence of God or, at least, transcendence. Rituals also tend to focus the
mind, blocking out sensory perceptions‹including those that the orientation area uses to figure out the boundaries of the self. That¹s why even nonbelievers are often moved by religious ritual. ³As long as our brain is wired as it is,² says Newberg, ³God will not go away.²

If brain wiring explains the feelings believers get from prayer and
ritual, are spiritual experiences mere creations of our neurons?
Neuro-theology at least suggests that spiritual experiences are no more
meaningful than, say, the fear the brain is hard-wired to feel in response
to a strange noise at night. Believers, of course, have a retort: the
brain¹s wiring may explain religious feelings, but who do you think was the master electrician?
***

[Barbara Fitzpatrick]

I don't know or care about a "master electrician" but have you considered the posibility that the hardwired in "concept supernatural" may be because there is one? Of course, "supernatural" is just something we don't understand - but as all life on earth is connected through the DNA we share, it's possible there is another connection to or amongst Life/living entities (I don't mean religion or god) that we currently don't understand - through rhythm or sound - heck electro-magnetic waves, whatever? You know, Newtonian physics had to be redefined a bit when we got into zero gravity. Evolution doesn't have an "intelligent designer", but nothing evolves without a reason. We can't find reasons if we just discount possibilities out of hand. (Your article dealing with the brain didn't mention flukes taking over so you can be calm while being eaten by a larger version of the housecat.)

[Hogeye]

I'm with Darrel on this; there may well be an evolved proclivity for intellectual curiousity, or a drive for a lessening of cognitive dissonance, but that faculty/hard-wiring, for any given individual, may be expressed by either scientific or supernatural explanations.

As Dawkins points out, some propensity being hard-wired does not imply that it is currently beneficial, nor that we as individuals should not buck that proclivity. One explanation for people's love of Big Brother (the State) is that, humans living 99% of their existence in "inbred superfamilies" (hunter-gatherer groups), they are hardwired for group espris de corps and to obey rulers. Thus modern politicians and modern States exploit this "instinct" evolved from hunter-gatherer times.

[Dardedar]

This quote fits well in this thread:

***
"As with the misuse of bug poison, the injection of religious propaganda into an otherwise normal human being infects the mind and sickens the system, quashing natural curiosity, discouraging healthy skepticism and spreading the plagues of nonsense and hate.[9]
These godly germs may actually have a neural basis. Researchers at the University of California, San Diego, have recently discovered that patients with an unusual form of epilepsy report intense religious experiences as part of their attacks. They also indicate being preoccupied with mystical thoughts between seizures. This has led scientists to suggest that certain regions of the temporal lobe may be hard-wired to conjure up religious ideas.[10]

[9]see Dawkins, Richard, "Viruses of the Mind," Free Inquiry, Summer 1993, pp. 34-41
[10] "Brain Area Tied to Religion--Spiritual thoughts may be hard-wired by a 'God module,' " Hotz, Robert Lee, The Los Angeles Times, in The Arizona Republic, 29 October, 1997, sec. A, p. 11

[Savonarola]

Researchers at the University of California, San Diego, have recently discovered that patients with an unusual form of epilepsy report intense religious experiences as part of their attacks. They also indicate being preoccupied with mystical thoughts between seizures. This has led scientists to suggest that certain regions of the temporal lobe may be hard-wired to conjure up religious ideas.

And now to twist the words a bit (okay, quite a bit) for my weekly semi-humorous, non-PC comment:
"Researchers at UCSD have recently documented a correlation of religious 'experiences' with neurological disfunction..."

[Barbara Fitzpatrick]

Savonarola - how very Karl Rovian of you.

On the flip side, I have a friend who had brain surgury early last year. Since then she's been rather upset because she no longer feels that sense of "being one with god" she used to have when attending church. So very possibly a hard-wired in "opiate of the masses", but the wiring can be severed.

[Doug]

Savonarola - how very Karl Rovian of you.

On the flip side, I have a friend who had brain surgury early last year. Since then she's been rather upset because she no longer feels that sense of "being one with god" she used to have when attending church. So very possibly a hard-wired in "opiate of the masses", but the wiring can be severed.

DOUG
Fix your brain and you lose religion? I believe it.

Of course, we probably have already heard of Dr. Persinger's "God Machine"? He's at Laurentian University in Ontario, Canada. He invented a device that bombards the brain with electromagnetic waves in a certain spot, and this induces a religious experience. I tell my classes about this and they are stunned, usually.

[Dardedar]

Of course, we probably have already heard of Dr. Persinger's "God Machine"?

DAR
I read something recently debunking some of his claims. Some people tried to replicate his findings and got different answers or at least found that his assumptions weren't justified. I'll see if I can find it.

D.