By BJ Bjornson
I've read about a few of these mechanisms and how they relate to religious belief, but Andy Thompson does a very good job here of putting together many of the biological and psychological mechanisms that religious belief exploits.
The talk is similar in many respects to this article in New Scientist. As Thompson says, and as the article more explicitly lays out, this stuff is hard-wired into the human brain, and atheists and agnostics can still fall into the same pattern of thinking quite easily.
"All humans possess the brain circuitry and that never goes away." Petrovich adds that even adults who describe themselves as atheists and agnostics are prone to supernatural thinking. Bering has seen this too. When one of his students carried out interviews with atheists, it became clear that they often tacitly attribute purpose to significant or traumatic moments in their lives, as if some agency were intervening to make it happen. "They don't completely exorcise the ghost of god - they just muzzle it," Bering says.
A pretty fascinating subject in any case.
Well we all know humanity depends upon having someone to blame to avoid personal accountability.
ReplyDeleteWhat I find interesting is how the religious do anything...including their rush to kill millions....in order to prevent their own death resulting with that one-on-one meeting with their paranormal judge awaiting at the Pearly Gates.
You'd think they'd be in a big hurry.