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nicole_powers

nicole_powers

NEWSWIRE

I'm lost

JAN 19, 2009 06:00 AM

At SuicideGirls our mission is to challenge stereotypical ideas (both physical and philosophical) forced on us by society, to encourage free-thinking, and to champion an alternative spirit. In the pursuit of this goal, one of the most hotly debated topics on the Newswire has been that of religion, which is the source of some the most regimented and intransigent examples of human thought found today. We therefore sought the opinion of some highly advanced free-thinkers on the subject. Here, in a special report for SuicideGirls, R. Elisabeth Cornwell, PhD and J. Anderson Thomson, MD, who work alongside Richard Dawkins in support of his Foundation For Reason & Science, share their thoughts on the possible roots of religion from an evolutionary perspective.

The Evolution of Religion

R. Elisabeth Cornwell, PhD and J. Anderson Thomson, MD



The Human Niche

Humans, like all other living beings, are a product of four billion years of evolutionary processes. We have been shaped and pounded by the rhythms of our planet's geology and climate as well by the continual interplay among biological organisms. You exist because eons of your ancestors, from bacteria to primates, struggled and reproduced successfully. The genes that reside in each and every one of us are the ones that helped our ancestors not only to survive, but to out-reproduce their competitors. And as improbable as it might seem, you are here through the success of billions and billions of generations.

Every living species on the planet -- from cabbages to whales -- has gone through this process, and evolved to fit a particular niche. Our human niche just happens to have emphasized brains over brawn, which has given us language, creativity, curiosity, and the most complicated social system of any species. However, our incredibly powerful brain is locked in a continual battle between reason and ancestral fears. This conflict helps us understand why religion has held such a grip on humanity and why reason must still fight to be heard.

Our ability to solve complex cognitive problems evolved over our long, tenuous, evolutionary history. Many adaptations that squeezed through the sieve of environmental constraints have led up to more and more complex brains. This culminated in fine-tuned software for negotiating the competitive social hierarchies that have been a crucial aspect to primate, especially human, evolution. We humans evolved the uniquely complex communication system that is language, and it in turn drove the evolution of more and more complex social interactions.

Adaptations: Designs for Success

But we are getting ahead of ourselves: we need to consider a host of adaptations that have brought us to where we are today. Adaptations are the physical and behavioral characteristics that equip a species to survive in its own particular way. The human way being as unique and complex as it is, untangling concepts of culture, including religion, is not an easy undertaking and we are only in our infancy in exploring our evolutionary roots. One way to think about these peculiarly human adaptations is as a series of software and hardware upgrades, each dependent on the other.

A common fallacy hoisted up by creationists (including 'intelligent design' sophists) is that adaptations can't work until every part is finished and in place: they ask questions like, "What good is half an eye?" The biologist Richard Dawkins has devoted more than one book to answering questions of that kind. Darwin's theory of natural selection uncovered the mystery of how the tiniest of incremental adaptations over vast amounts of time could lead to the evolution of something as complex and sophisticated as an eye or language [*1]. The mutually supportive development of computer software and hardware echoes how adaptations have built up over time, but orders of magnitude faster. Your laptop is a supercomputer by yesterday's standards, which can dance circles around the giant computers of living memory. Through small incremental steps in both hardware and software, computing technology has advanced beyond the dreams of only a few generations ago (if you doubt this, watch an old rerun of Star Trek and wonder at the huge banks of on-board computers). Of course, the mutations and adaptations witnessed by the computing industry were actually designed by intelligent beings who had specific goals in mind. Biological adaptations, by contrast, were driven by the blind and often cruel hand of natural selection. Evolution has only one goal: successful replication.

In humans, the trajectory that took us from bacteria to fish to reptiles to mammals including primates has left an indelible mark. An interesting and fun read on our unique evolutionary pathway is Your Inner Fish by Neil Shubin. Shubin suggests that when we take a look at how our bodies are put together, an intelligent designer becomes ever more implausible -- there are too many flaws, too many 'patches' that don't quite work right, but good enough to squeak by. The mind is no different: we are a product of millions of tiny adaptations -- and with no one in charge to make certain they all run smoothly and correctly in conjunction -- we end up with all sorts of psychological hiccups. Religion is one of them.

Tool Making: Goals and Process

Early in our hominid past, Homo hablis -- 'handy man' -- developed the ability to make tools. Such a skill required them to plan ahead, to learn from mistakes, as well as to learn from other individuals, perhaps in 'master-apprentice' relationships. Psychologically this might have been the seed from which grew our need to see purpose in not only man-made things but all things -- tools and weapons were made for a purpose, so why not stars and rivers too? Those hominids who became slightly more proficient at tool-making, planning and orienting toward goals would have been more successful, left more descendants -- and those successful individuals became our ancestors. Through tiny mutations, both physical and psychological, our ancestors became more adept at these skills. Adaptations necessary for advanced tool-making and use would have driven the psychological need to see purpose. Picking up a piece of flint, your ancestor would have needed the skill to determine if it possessed the qualities necessary to produce a cutting tool or spear head -- and that skill is the direct result of a purpose driven mind. We will get back to the critical importance of purpose in a moment.

Theory of Mind

The ability to build tools in order to achieve an end goal is only one adaptation that might have predisposed us to cultural and religious beliefs. After all, chimps are capable of making-tools, learning from other chimps, and employ goal-directed behavior. A significant adaptation that guided the course of human evolution has been our capacity to view the world through the eyes of another -- known as 'theory of mind'. This ability, which allows us to attribute mental states such as beliefs and desires to others, and intentions that differ from our own [*2], is so complex, it does not fully develop in children until around the age of four [*3]. While some scientists argue that our closest cousins, the chimpanzees, possess some abilities to perceive the intentions of others -- it is humans who have honed this ability to a fine art.

What does this have to do with religion? As our ancestors developed a sensitivity to the thoughts of others as an aid to second-guessing their outward and visible behavior, they would have started to see an intelligent creative force wherever they looked. An individual watching another chip away at a flint would attribute to him a purpose, similar to his own when he created a tool. So too would he assume that lightning, rain, the sun, the stars, the moon must have had some sort of purposeful creative force behind them. Here lie the very deepest roots of our religious beliefs.

Kinship

One of the most important contributions to evolutionary science was kin selection as proposed by William D. Hamilton [*4]. His theory, which was steeped in complex mathematical equations, was brought to life in Richard Dawkins' ground-breaking book The Selfish Gene. Hamilton proposed that, while passing on our genes directly to our offspring is one way of ensuring our reproductive success, helping those individuals who are closely related to us, even at our own expense, could also ensure the survival of our genes -- more specifically the genes for helping. Any social species where relatives are likely to live in the same troop, band, or flock, would have evolved adaptations to recognize kin, assess their relatedness, and assist those who were most related. This is probably why you are more likely to donate a kidney to your sister than to your third cousin.

While all animals that live in social groups may have varying strategies to recognize and reward kinship, humans are unique in that language has allowed the development of fictive kin. Shepherds have long manipulated the concept of fictive kin within their flocks. When spring arrives and lambing begins, both ewes and lambs die. If the ewe dies, the orphaned lamb will die too unless a ewe is found who will suckle her. However, it is not in the best interest of the ewe to suckle an unrelated lamb, so shepherds have learned that by skinning the ewe's dead offspring and placing it on the orphaned lamb the ewe could be fooled into thinking that the lamb was hers. In other words, she was manipulated into accepting fictive kin.

Kinship recognition in humans comes about in two ways. The primary method is extremely archaic. We simply recognize those individuals who eat with us, share the same sleeping quarters, and provide us with food and comfort as our kin. However, with the advent of language, definitions of kinship became more complex. All cultures throughout the world name and track kinship. As our ancestors formed larger and larger groups, keeping track of kin through verbal definitions of kinship became more and more important (this helps to explain ancestor worship). But this also opened the door to creating fictive kin -- that is, giving kin names to individuals who were not closely related. This would have been extremely useful for group cohesion, especially in times of war [*5].

With the onset of agriculture, land ownership, and accumulated wealth, our ancestors began to aggregate in large, permanent settlements. The birth of villages, towns and cities, brought together masses of unrelated individuals. As these settlements grew and expanded, tribal wars over territory would have been inevitable. In a small group where everyone was closely related, sacrificing one's life in defense of close kin would have benefitted one's own genes. However, in large groups where most people were not close kin, how could leaders convince warriors to die for people who were unrelated? Language acts like the lamb's skin and tricks our minds into attributing kinship where none exists by using kin terms such as 'brother', 'father', 'sister', and 'mother'[*6]. In order to keep a small nation together, fictive kin would have been essential. It is not without reason that even today the military strives to create a sense of 'brotherhood' among soldiers. While language would have provided the platform on which to construct fictive kin, it would have been ritualized ceremonies that solidified it. Next time you attend a baptism, note the ritualization of a child being accepted into 'God's family'.

The Conflict Between Archaic Minds and Reason

Very late in our journey to modern humans, we evolved the ability to think abstractly. We could not write this article without the ability to abstract and reason, and you could not comprehend it without these abilities either. To think in such a fashion is apparently unique to humans, and even then not everyone is able. Pre-adolescent children simply do not have the brain configuration to do so. The brain configuration of a pre-adolescent child is far different from the one she will possess as an adult. It takes about 12 years or so for the frontal lobes to develop fully after reaching puberty [*7]. Our frontal lobes are key to social behavior, abstract thinking, planning and solving complex problems. Humans have evolved the most elaborate set of frontal lobes on the planet -- it is our evolutionary niche.

But highly developed frontal lobes came late into the game, and they have to compete with the archaic brain that was the engine behind our evolutionary success. Just as Shubin argues that our bodies are more like bits and bobs from a rummage sale that have been shoe-horned together and sort of work...the brain too is made up of parts that are often in conflict because they have different jobs and priorities.

Let's call our frontal lobes the 'smart-self' and the more archaic part of our brain the 'primal-self'. Our smart-selves know that over-eating and under-exercising is bad for us, leading to heart disease, diabetes, and a shorter life-span. But our primal-selves are still primed for the risk of starvation, thus it simply cannot understand why the smart-self would deny you a nice Big Mac with a large order of fries and a chocolate shake. It throws fits as you drive by those Golden Arches, and causes your brain to send messages that scream 'STOP or we could die!’. The smart-brain is just not designed to prevent the primal brain from taking over because the abundance of food most of us are surrounded by is a fairly new development in human history. Perhaps given another few thousand years, those individuals with the will-power to resist all that tasty fat, protein, sugar and salt will out-reproduce those that don't.

The point is, that there is an instant conflict between what we know is good for us and what we feel we want -- and we often fall victim to our more primal needs even when we know they are harmful.

Religion As The Ultimate Big Mac

Religion's success is undeniable. It is in every culture, and in every corner of the world. We spend billions and billions of dollars on building monuments to it, supporting it, and of course proselytizing on behalf of our own favored brand of it. Individuals give up sex and eschew family and friends for religion. Beyond that, we sacrifice time and effort to its rituals, and indoctrinate our children and grandchildren to do the same. We are even willing to kill for it.

Modern science, particularly modern biology, has given us the freedom to shuck off the idea that our existence and the existence of the universe requires an intelligent being. In fact, as Richard Dawkins pointed out in The God Delusion, invoking an intelligent being doesn't explain anything -- it just pushes the question back to 'Who designed the designer?' Despite the illogic of believing that some great being in the heavens, capable of creating not only the laws of physics, the principles of evolution, and the vastness of time also cares a great deal about whether or not you use your left hand to clean up after defecating, eat a cracker while sinless, or not mix cheese with chicken, we still seem to sup it up like mother's milk.

The reason religion is so successful is that it taps into our primal-brains in much the same way that a Big Mac does -- only more so. Religion gained its foothold by hijacking the need to give purpose at a time when humans had only their imagination -- as opposed to the evidence and reason that we have today -- to fathom their world. Spirits and demons were the explanation for illnesses that we now know are caused by bacterial diseases and genetic disorders. The whims of the gods were why earthquakes, volcanos, floods and droughts occurred. Our ancestors were driven to sacrifice everything from goats to one another to satisfy those gods.

Along with the need to attribute purpose, our faculty to intuit the intent of others spills over into a predilection for determining the intentions of gods and goddesses (or spirits, demons, and angels). Of course the major problem has been that we can never quite agree among ourselves about god's intentions, which often ends in unfortunate violent discussions. Our evolved proclivity for aggression feeds into that as well. We justify our prejudices, hatred, murders, and war by attributing our own biases to a god. As long as we kill in god's name, we are doing good.

Our primal-brains that keep track of kin can be easily hijacked through language and rituals, which is why religion uses terms such as 'god the father', 'Mary the mother of heaven', 'brother', and 'sister'. Rituals reinforce fictitious kin through feasts, worship, and ceremonies such as marriages and funerals. Despite our smart-brains being able to recognize the difference between real kin and not, those ties created within religious organizations bind tightly. Leaving the faith one was born into would certainly have led our ancestors to being shunned if not worse. In Islam, the punishment for apostasy is death. And in Western cultures, it is not uncommon to hear of individuals whose families and friends have turned their backs because they have disavowed their religious beliefs.

The fear of losing family and friends is a powerful force for keeping people in tow. It is far easier to ignore the evidence that there is no god than to give up the love and friendship of a community. Our survival depends much more on being part of a community, even in today's modern world, than on abandoning religion. Psychological studies strongly suggest that our social network, that is family and friends, are essential to personal happiness. For our ancestors it was more than that, it was necessary for our very survival itself. Exclusion would have meant death, and our primal-brains have not forgotten. We did not evolve to be solitary creatures, nor to be independent of social support. Religion has, for better or worse, always offered a ready social network, an entire (fictive) extended family. Our primal brains are designed to not only strive to maintain close family and social relationships, but when coupled with the attribution of our own primal fears to the mind of god along with our tendency for aggression, we are more than willing to commit the most heinous acts to protect our fictive kin and beliefs.

Of course there are other factors that contribute to this tangled web, such as the desire for power, land, wealth, and, where men are concerned, access to females for reproduction. All of these extant drives ingrained in the human psyche have also been justified through religion. No matter how terrible the deed, by attributing to god our own fears and hatreds -- anything could be justified. Religion and gods were extremely useful to the ruthless and power-hungry.

The Battle For Reason

Our archaic brains, which served us so well during our evolutionary past, now threaten our very existence. While our smart-brains have given us modern technology and science and the privilege of understanding not only ourselves but our universe, our primal brains are stuck in the stone-age. Reason must always fight our tendencies to give way to superstitions and fears. This is especially true when we have the capability to destroy not only ourselves, but our planet.

Much of the world's population still believe in a god forged out of the fears of a desert people and, worse, fully believe not only that their view of god and his wishes are right, but that those who disagree must be converted or face eternal torment (sometimes even offering some help to get there). The primal fears instilled by religious fever act as impenetrable walls to reason. According to a recent Gallup poll, 66% of the US population agrees strongly with the statement 'God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years'. Given the overwhelming amount of scientific evidence to the contrary, such obstinate belief should frighten any reasonable thinking person. It also is testimony to the wealthy and powerful religious organizations who spend billions of dollars on public relations, creating controversies where none exist and spewing lies about the evidence for evolution [*8]. But none of this would be possible without our brains being ready and available to take in the message they are delivering. It is easy enough for atheists and humanists to chuckle at the credulity of believers, but we do so at our own peril.

Religion needs to be taken seriously. Understanding its roots, how it can seize command of our psychology and take control of our culture, may well be one of the most important endeavors we pursue. For even with all our grand technology, modern medical advances, and volumes of knowledge, if we do not stop our archaic past from overriding our modern reason we are surely doomed.


For further information on this on this topic:

We Few, We Happy Few, We Band of Brothers (parts 1-3) -- J. Anderson Thomson

Why They Kill -- J. Anderson Thomson

Why We Believe In Gods -- J. Anderson Thomson

Religion Explained by Pascal Boyer

Kluge: The Haphazard Construction of the Human Mind by Gary Marcus

Please visit RichardDawkins.net for more discussions, articles, and videos concerning religion in the modern world.


Notes:

*1. For more on this matter read Richard Dawkins' Climbing Mount Improbable.

*2. Premack, D. G & Woodruff, G. (1978). Does the chimpanzee have a theory of mind? Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 1, 515-526.

*3. Lewis C & Osborne A. (1990). Three-year-olds' problems with false belief: conceptual deficit or linguistic artifact? Child Development 61(5):1514-9.

*4. Hamilton, W.D. (1964). The genetical evolution of social behaviour I and II -- Journal of Theoretical Biology 7: 1-16 and 17-52.

*5. Thomson, J.A. (2007). We Few, We Happy Few, We Band of Brothers -- AAI 2007 conference in Washington, D.C.

*6. For example, in English the word 'King' is thought to be derived from the Old English word cynn, which means family or race.

*7. For more on this matter read Barbara Strauch's The Primal Teen: What the New Discoveries about the Teenage Brain Tell Us about Our Kids.

*8. Forrest, B & Gross, P (2004). Creationism's Trojan Horse: The wedge of intelligent design.


R. Elisabeth Cornwell is an Assistant Professor of Research at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs. Her research includes work in the area of hormones, pheromones, and sexual selection in humans. Her most recent paper can be found in Animal Behavior, regarding evidence in support of various theories of mate selection in humans. Most recently her work has involved differences between theist and atheists on a variety of psychological profiles.

J. Anderson (Andy) Thomson received his B.A. from Duke University and his M.D. from the University of Virginia. His academic publications address PTSD, suicide terrorism, narcissistic personality disorder, religious identity, religious belief, and evolutionary theories of depression. He has done international conflict resolution work in Latvia, Estonia, Turkey, the Republic of Georgia, South Ossetia, and Kuwait. Currently he is a staff psychiatrist at the University of Virginia Counseling and Psychological Services, and at the University's Institute of Law, Psychiatry, and Public Policy. He maintains a private practice in adult general psychiatry and forensic psychiatry, and is a trustee with the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science.

SuicideGirls would like to thank Richard Dawkins for facilitating this article.

Quirky

Quirky

Birmingham, AL
October 2005

JAN 19, 2009 07:45 AM

Agh. Atheists are still hung up on this shit?

fickleone

fickleone

United Kingdom
January 2009

JAN 19, 2009 08:12 AM

All the rational people need to start fucking more.

Elichrusos

Elichrusos

I'm lost
October 2007

JAN 19, 2009 08:39 AM

Quirky said:
Agh. Atheists are still hung up on this shit?



I remember, once upon a time, you made insightful comments that contributed to the discussion. Was that just an unusual week? Could we have that back, or could you at least pretend you've not reverted to the age of seven?

Faith is irrational concept, and one that has not, does not provide a net benefit to our world. By it's very nature it encourages irrational behaviours. Go back to playing with your hammer and mumbling to yourself about potions.

CoyoteMike

CoyoteMike

Iowa City, IA
May 2006

JAN 19, 2009 08:56 AM

fickleone said:
All the rational people need to start fucking more.



I don't think we can keep up with that conservative christian family that has shot 18 babies out of one vagina.

Quirky

Quirky

Birmingham, AL
October 2005

JAN 19, 2009 09:06 AM

I understand that a lot of people feel that the Big Three are wrong for the world. They have perpetuated the grandest slayings and regressive social changes to be in history books. They offer chastity versus promiscuity, poverty versus wealth, falsehood versus truth, etc. I'm with yawl on that. The worldview of people who are raised in Judeo-Christian societies are taught that killing and sex and all the fun stuff is wrong, yet see their elders committing all these sins. I know and realize that there is plenty of hypocrisy there.

So, to that analysis's credit, I am not a Maronite anymore. Stopped when I was 7. At 22 I became an Asatruar. That's Norse Neopagan reconstructionism, if you wanted to know. This does not mean I believe that the universe was created by fire and ice resulting in a cosmic space cow and a hermaphroditic rime giant from which all the gods were born from. No I accept the Big Bang Theory as more credible, obviously.

The idea that thunderstorms are meteorological in process, formation, and action is something I accept, alongside the ancestral idea that it is Thor whipping up a massive storm with which to test humanity's hardiness and strike down sinners with thunderbolts. The two ideas can exist at the time in the same mind and not conflict, as long as one knows the difference between fact and belief.

The God-head that I believe in is aspect-oriented. Many different aspects of humanity and nature intertwined like a tapestry, but representing the perspective of humanity in the world. The human condition, amirite?

Now, one could argue that Asatru is a barbaric heathen cult, and they'd be right. Killing and sex and revenge and drinking alcohol and eating animals are all condoned activities by Asatruar. However, this does not mean there is a dogma. Heavens, no! You don't have to conform even the slightest bit to believe in something, nor do you even have to believe in something to be religious or spiritual.

My point is, that the smart brain (the Dr.'s Frontal Lobes above) can control belief and that belief isn't contained only in the primal brain, as long as one can see things objectively. Simply saying "The winds howl from Fenrir's bloodlust!," is ignorant! However, maintaining that the wind is howling because pressure waves propagate through the air at such high wind pressures, as well as quoting the folkmyth, a mutual understanding can be struck between the primal and smart brain.

Perhaps there is a middle brain? Surely there is a grey area between darkness and enlightenment. wink

shad_0

shad_0

United Kingdom
June 2008

JAN 19, 2009 09:07 AM

Coyotemike said:

fickleone said:
All the rational people need to start fucking more.



I don't think we can keep up with that conservative christian family that has shot 18 babies out of one vagina.



haha

fickleone

fickleone

United Kingdom
January 2009

JAN 19, 2009 09:17 AM

Coyotemike said:

fickleone said:
All the rational people need to start fucking more.



I don't think we can keep up with that conservative christian family that has shot 18 babies out of one vagina.



If it means more fucking surely it's worth a shot?

For the sake of (rational) humanity show a little enthusiasm!

CoyoteMike

CoyoteMike

Iowa City, IA
May 2006

JAN 19, 2009 09:18 AM

fickleone said:

Coyotemike said:

fickleone said:
All the rational people need to start fucking more.



I don't think we can keep up with that conservative christian family that has shot 18 babies out of one vagina.



If it means more fucking surely it's worth a shot?

Show a little enthusiasm!



Yes, but aren't rational people more likely to be using a form of effective birth control? We did this to ourselves frown

fickleone

fickleone

United Kingdom
January 2009

JAN 19, 2009 09:30 AM

Coyotemike said:

fickleone said:

Coyotemike said:

fickleone said:
All the rational people need to start fucking more.



I don't think we can keep up with that conservative christian family that has shot 18 babies out of one vagina.



If it means more fucking surely it's worth a shot?

Show a little enthusiasm!



Yes, but aren't rational people more likely to be using a form of effective birth control? We did this to ourselves frown



Sensible rational people yes...

Maybe the best we can hope for is a rational yet frivolous future.

Ticktockman

Ticktockman

Durham, NC
April 2006

JAN 19, 2009 11:29 AM

I definitely recommend Neil Shubin's book, mentioned in the article. Got hiccups? Blame them on the tadpole.

-TTm

Gringo

Gringo

Spokane, WA
May 2006

JAN 19, 2009 11:40 AM

fickleone said:

Coyotemike said:

fickleone said:

Coyotemike said:

fickleone said:
All the rational people need to start fucking more.



I don't think we can keep up with that conservative christian family that has shot 18 babies out of one vagina.



If it means more fucking surely it's worth a shot?

Show a little enthusiasm!



Yes, but aren't rational people more likely to be using a form of effective birth control? We did this to ourselves frown



Sensible rational people yes...

Maybe the best we can hope for is a rational yet frivolous future.


Or, watch the movie "Idiocracy" for another possible outcome.

Accuser

Accuser

Dana Point, CA
October 2006

JAN 19, 2009 11:41 AM

Quirky said:
Agh. Atheists are still hung up on this shit?



People still make decisions that affect others based on it? Then yes, we're still hung up on it.

It isn't just the big three.

I had a lot more written here, but you've heard it all before so why bother?

fickleone said:
All the rational people need to start fucking more.



I volunteer.*

*But no kids. I'm hedging my bets on this planet.

In all seriousness, a couple of the smartest people I've ever met just had their second kid. One of my first thoughts was, "It's so nice to see intelligent people breeding."

Kudos to everyone who made this article happen. But coming from the local rabid atheist, I guess at least that much was expected.

merganser86

merganser86

Kansas City, MO
February 2005

JAN 19, 2009 11:56 AM

...well, I would have left another comment, but Quirky said my piece for me.

merganser86

merganser86

Kansas City, MO
February 2005

JAN 19, 2009 11:59 AM

Gringo: Please don't bring "Idiocracy" into this. I'm sorry, but the scenario described in that movie exists only to make "smart, rational people" (which is apparently anyone who watches it, because nobody has ever seen it and said "Oh lordy, I'm one of the stupid ones") feel superior. It has no actual basis in reality.

jsparks125

jsparks125

Olympia, WA
November 2006

JAN 19, 2009 12:01 PM

I will preface my response to this by saying that I enjoy reading Dawkins' writings and admire the work he has done in biology. I have never heard of the two writers of this article, R. Elisabeth Cornwell and J. Anderson Thomson, but I commend them for their work as well. Mostly I am excited to see SuicideGirls pushing the envelope on this one.

My fear has always been that there is not enough room in an article on a medium such as this to make a fair and worthwhile argument on this subject. My belief is that a series of articles on this subject that build upon themselves would be a much more effective way to broach the material to the SG community. Unfortunately, this philosophy also applies to any response I can give; there is only so much meaningful detail I can fit in a single comment. What I can understand is that an article like this is trying to spark conversation and interest amongst people without deluging them with more than they can handle. If it sparks their interest then they will seek out more material on the subject. Of course, that still faces the challenge of how to inspire people who otherwise would not have read a book on the subject to then pick up those books. It is not an easy question to answer and I am getting a little off subject so I will digress and get to my point.

I am unimpressed by the approach and understanding of psychology taken by many of the atheist writers and researchers today. The fallacy of culture as a superorganic, free-floating entity that anthropologists such as Alfred Kroeber put forth is still far too prevalent in the writings of people who honestly should have learned better by now. Steven Pinker says about Kroeber in The Blank Slate, "'Heredity,' he wrote, 'cannot be allowed to have acted any part in history.'...culture, he wrote, is superorganic-it floats in its own universe, free of the flesh and blood of actual men and women...the autonomy of culture from individual minds." This type of thinking is extremely prevalent amongst many people (and the astute and knowledgeable reader will understand why by drawing the analogy between this type of belief and religious beliefs). However, that concept does not hold up to evidence and religion, much like the cultures of which it is a part, is in fact not a superorganic and free-floating entity that imprints itself on unsuspecting humans. I am honestly surprised to see Pascal Boyer's book Religion Explained in the list of suggested reading because my impression of that book (it has been a little while since I read it) was that Boyer understood that the reasons people believe in religion are not because it is impressed upon them but because they have a series of innate, psychological faculties that coalesce into religious belief. As well, Boyer makes a great argument about the disconnect between our "higher mind" and our subconscious that I believe actually contradicts much of the point of this article. Again, take my words on this with a grain of salt since it has been a couple years since I read Boyer's book.

Inquisitive readers of this article and my comment should definitely pick up Religion Explained as it is a very good read and makes a considerably well thought out argument. While he does not tackle religion quite as head-on as Dawkins or Boyer or others like them, Steven Pinker's research in psychology and his writings are a must read as well. Certainly pick up a copy of The Blank Slate and while reading it try to understand why his arguments about how our brains actually work are relevant to and contradict much of the point of this article. Mostly I would implore the readers of this to read every book about this subject that they can acquire and have the time to read. That means not just the ones that affirm your position on the subject. For example, read The God Delusion by Dawkins and then turn right around and read The Dawkins Delusion? by McGrath and weigh the arguments in both against not just each other but objectively in light of the evidence. Take the scientific approach to discovering and understanding these ideas.

Quirky

Quirky

Birmingham, AL
October 2005

JAN 19, 2009 12:10 PM

merganser86 said:
...well, I would have left another comment, but Quirky said my piece for me.



I did? I was just speaking from the heart.

jsparks125

jsparks125

Olympia, WA
November 2006

JAN 19, 2009 12:12 PM

Just as an addendum, one of the best parts of the arguments about the disconnect between our rational minds and our subconscious given by both Boyer and Pinker is that they allow us to understand how people who believe in things that might be objectively irrational (such as God and religion) can actually be extremely intelligent. It allows us to see that religious people are not stupid simply because they are religious and that is an important point for people to keep in mind when they enter discussions about religion.

Accuser

Accuser

Dana Point, CA
October 2006

JAN 19, 2009 12:14 PM

nicole_powers said:
In fact, as Richard Dawkins pointed out in The God Delusion, invoking an intelligent being doesn't explain anything -- it just pushes the question back to 'Who designed the designer?'



I've thought on this point a lot, lately, and I think another way to phrase it so as to make the argument more clear is to explain how attributing something to God does absolutely nothing to explain the mechanism of the thing. That doesn't tell us how or why it works, just that it does. In that sense, it's really not an answer - we can't draw any additional knowledge from it. We can't make any, "Oh, well if that's the case, then _____" statements (a.k.a. predictions) if the answer is just "God".

nicole_powers

nicole_powers

NEWSWIRE

I'm lost

JAN 19, 2009 12:17 PM

jsparks125 said:
My fear has always been that there is not enough room in an article on a medium such as this to make a fair and worthwhile argument on this subject. My belief is that a series of articles on this subject that build upon themselves would be a much more effective way to broach the material to the SG community.



Thank you for your comment. A second article is already in the works, and is scheduled to hit the Newswire on Monday Feb 16th!

Accuser

Accuser

Dana Point, CA
October 2006

JAN 19, 2009 12:28 PM

jsparks125 said:
Just as an addendum, one of the best parts of the arguments about the disconnect between our rational minds and our subconscious given by both Boyer and Pinker is that they allow us to understand how people who believe in things that might be objectively irrational (such as God and religion) can actually be extremely intelligent. It allows us to see that religious people are not stupid simply because they are religious and that is an important point for people to keep in mind when they enter discussions about religion.



Absolutely. Look at someone like Thomas Aquinas or, hell, Thomas Jefferson. I don't know that anyone seriously makes the case that all religious people are stupid. It's an irrational belief. We all have irrational beliefs. How significant those beliefs are and how much they affect other people, however, is what makes religion unique.

Nokturn

Nokturn

United Kingdom
April 2006

JAN 19, 2009 01:35 PM

This reminds me of that curious 'God probably doesn't exist' bus ad campaign in the UK recently, which Dawkins seemed to be supporting in order to proclaim that he was actually an agnostic rather than an athiest.

I didn't get the point of all that, and I don't get the point of God-bashing either.
I mean, I don't believe in unicorns because there's no scientific basis to support their existence either, but if other people want to believe in unicorns, I don't really give a shit. Not enough to fund ads on buses anyway.

Mr.Dawkins would be serving society better if he used his undoubted intellegence to make some scientific breakthroughs instead; perhaps find some definitive proof for how the big bang happened or something, that'd serve his purposes too,

(And admittedly I didn't read this whole piece; it was way too long and boring, and I had fun things to so, sorry)

merganser86

merganser86

Kansas City, MO
February 2005

JAN 19, 2009 01:38 PM

Quirky said:

merganser86 said:
...well, I would have left another comment, but Quirky said my piece for me.



I did? I was just speaking from the heart.



I am a fellow asatruar, with basically the same outlook on reconciling science and faith as you expressed. So... Yeah, pretty much all the points I was going to make as well.

Odradek

Odradek

Buffalo, NY
September 2007

JAN 19, 2009 02:03 PM

The tactics employed by contemporary atheists concern me, largely as they are borne out of a rhetoric of victimization. The present-day atheist casts him/herself as a minority voice, poorly treated by a backward culture of believers in intelligent design. It is comparable to the way the religious right has appropriated the language of the left (feminism, multiculturalism, etc) in order to cast their lot as deprived victims, incapable of praying in school or wrongly subjected to the opinions of liberal professors. This rhetorical strategy works, too, as can be evidenced by the successes of intelligent design flunkies in Kansas and the rightwing's ongoing campaign against the university tenure system (see Ward Churchill, for example).

Now, I personally have no stake in religion. But I also do not believe as Harris, Hitchens, Dawkins et al, do, that religion is the sole cause of the world's problems. This is simplification that deserves to be challenged and questioned. While I, like many, love to see a Ted Haggard outed as a meth-addict self-hating homophobe, the attack on the big three these days is largely aimed at the big one -- Islam.

The atheist today has more in common with the evangelical than he or she may think -- they both are being used to justify and apologize for imperialism against the Muslim world. Harris and Hitchens are perhaps better examples of this than Dawkins. Harris for his absurd torture apologism, though the Hitch has recanted somewhat given his self-congratulatory water boarding experience.

There's my two cents. Peace.

jsparks125

jsparks125

Olympia, WA
November 2006

JAN 19, 2009 02:13 PM

nicole_powers said:
Thank you for your comment. A second article is already in the works, and is scheduled to hit the Newswire on Monday Feb 16th!



Great, I look forward to reading it. This article seemed to be a bit self-contained though; is the next one by the same writers and is it an attempt to build upon the points put forth in this one? Of course, I realize you said that it is in the works so I am sure you cannot fully answer any specific questions about it.

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