Katie Holmes got tired of Scientology?

[Deckerd]

Lloyd is a board treasure. Cherish him.

 

[thestrangequark]

It's called enthusiasm, buttheads.

 

[stj]

...The fact that there is an area of the brain that can be stimulated electrically (as in seizures) or pharmacologically resulting in religious experiences suggests that there is brain structure responsible for religiosity. For clarification, I'm using "religion" to refer to any supernatural irrational belief.

Yes, stimulation of parts of the brain, and insults to parts of the brain as well, can induce atypical states and experiences. But these states and experiences are not typical of all religions, nor do all people who experience these states and experiences interpret them as religious. The interpretation of these experiments as showing the biological (hence genetic) foundations of religion assume these are innately religious. But that is precisely what we should object to. Everyone dreams, but only the religious think they are dreaming prophetically. Hypnosis is an abnormal state but who interprets this as a religious experience? More to the point, why should they? The same question applies to the neuroscience experiments.

Your so-called clarification is really an equivocation. The Gambler's fallacy and the whole field of parapsychology, for instance, are widely held instances of irrational supernatural beliefs, but they most certainly are not religion. The supposed relevance of these experiments rests upon an equivocation as to the nature of religion. I know you personally didn't make this up.

There is an interplay, the cultural construct of a particular faith stimulating an innate ability to be faithful.

Well, the commitment to genetic determinism comes through clearly. But what really is this supposed ability to be faithful? To feel belief? To feel the (supposed) special religious states and experiences?To sincerely carry out the commandments of the religion? But we know perfectly well that many people do not feel belief, and when we observe the behavior of many (most?) of the people who profess tha they do, they certainly don't act like they really believe. Indeed one of the most important aspects of many religions is an obsessive concern with true belief. Certainly no religon can use the innate faithfulness of people to summon on command the supposed religious experiences. Young men on vision quests, nuns suffering through a "dark night of the soul," Zen Buddhists still seeking enlightenment after years of searching, all show us otherwise. As to obedience, sincerity is neither knowable nor required.

As to the question of common experiences, religions do have a lot in common. They all project human nature onto nature, they all promote the idea of something greater or more than mankind, they all promote ritual -- and mind you, I'm talking about all aspects of spirituality, not just religious faith. Human brains are wired to find patterns where there are none and attribute intelligence where there is none. Such pareidolia makes sense evolutionarily...

Many Eastern religions do not project human nature onto nature. Really, it is not obvious in what sense those Western religions that promote ideas of spirituality and reject the flesh are projecting human nature onto nature. I'm not sure it makes much sense to interpret the Dao as something greater or more than mankind, nor is it obvious that the pursuit of nirvana or satori is pursuing something greater than mankind. As for promoting ritual, are dinner parties and proms and graduation ceremonies thereby religious? Is obsessive-compulsive disorder akin to sainthood? What experiments stimulate ritual behavior that we can interpret as religious? Your moving the goalposts to "spirituality," not just religion isn't your personal ruse, either.

I think another fine bit of evidence for the brain-based nature of religion is the drug produced from the iboga root. The drug is taken as a rite of passage by a tribe in Africa and always produces the same profound experience in each individual who takes it: a three-step ordeal that involves experiencing all one's misdeeds from the perspective of those you have wronged.

If this is confirmed, it would be the first serious evidence for a biological basis for morality that I know of. Note that the definition of religion has expanded yet again, to include morality. The equation of religion and morality has a mountain of evidence against it, not least the fact that religions teach different moralities to different cultures. In these kinds of matters, it is incredibly hard not to communicate expectations, or imagine them to be confirmed.

...to give another analogy, take a look at sleep-paralysis. The symptoms are always the same: difficulty breathing, the feeling of weight on one's chest, inability to move anything but the eyes, and the sensation of a malevolent presence in the room.

Sleep paralysis is not a religious experience, nor is it always interpreted as one. The last part, the sensation of a malevolent presence is not universal (I didn't have it, for one.) Even more to the point, most religions do not incorporate this perfectly natural phenomenon into their beliefs, and frequently argue against it as superstition. It is not at all clear how this even bears on religion as a biological phenomenon, unless "religion" has expanded yet again to include all biological (genetic) basis for irrational beliefs!

Certainly Jesus or Zeus or Mohammed are not psychological phenomenon, and none of the specific ritual involved in the religions that worship them are either. The tendency towards ritual and belief, however, is.

Ritual and belief do not go hand in hand. Many religions are highly ritualistic, others, decidedly not. Again, the supposed biological (genetic) tendency towards belief is not a trait for which we can draw a pedigree. Every child who grew up, then jettisoned belief refutes the notion that belief is genetic.

Cargo Cults are a great example of this. They did not need a charismatic leader to develop, and they developed with extreme rapidity simply because people are innately wired to believe.

If people were innately wired to believe, then how could they disbelieve, merely because the Cargo didn't arrive today?

The Fantasy Prone Personality is a recognized personality type. These people tend to be either very religious, or very spiritual, and very likely to quickly adopt non-scientific beliefs (like chi or homeopathy). These people are simply on the higher end of the spectrum. Every bit of scientific evidence on the subject supports that stance that religion/spirituality is brain-based.

Then the rationalist personality must be on the disbelieving end of the spectrum, no? Except of course that given the enormous size of scientific knowledge and the limited resources available to most of us, most of the so-called rationalists are believing in authority every bit as much as the Fantasy Prone Personality. The supposed spectrum is an imaginary construct, decreed as an ad hoc assumption to save the hypothesis of biological (genetic) religion. Also, it's not at all clear that the fantasy prone personality is believing what he or she is told here, which was supposed to be the psychological foundation for "religion" before. Or was it the projection into nature of humanity? Like Chi? Like Crystals? The evolutionary psychology is rife with these confusions and self-contradictions.

The specifics aren't what's important, the motivations and experiences are, the ritual, the looking to a higher power, the projecting of intelligence onto nature, these are the commonalities, and the fact that pretty much every culture that has ever lived had some sort of religion is even more evidence that it is based in biology.

I deny that the commonalities exist. I know that you've read lots of evolutionary psychologists like Steven Pinker who've tried to tell you that the evil totalitarian hypothesis of the blank slate is an exploded superstition that underlies all opposition to the new evolutionary science. The equivocation about what religion is required for the pretense that there are such commonalities. A Quaker looking to the Light Within, a Theravadin looking for Nirvana and an ancient Roman sacrificing to the Gods are not expressing commonalities. Scientifically speaking, the Standard Social Science Model is the gold standard, and evolutionary psychology most definitely isn't.

But... "emotion is not rooted in human nature"?

My fault. That should have been "this emotion," meaning in context the specific emotion of religous belief/disbelief.

As to the innateness of language, everything but one you say is correct. The one is not even explicitly stated, but implied. Since you compare the capacity for "religion" to the capacity for language, acknowledging that there are wide variations in individuals (and, given genetics, races,) then you imply that different individuals and races have different capacities for language. Presumably the upper intelligence brackets have a fundamentally different genetic capacity for language than the lower, not just differences in learning. I still say that, barring developmental disorders, the language capacity of individuals and races is more or less the same, with only trivial differences. If you examine the grammars of so-called primitive peoples, they are just as complex as the grammars of so-called advanced peoples. The grammar of a college professor is not more complex than the grammar of a ghetto male.

As to the rest about language, religion simply does not present itself in the same way. There are no kinds of brain damage that change religious belief in specific ways in which brain damage will change language performance. There is no critical period in which failure to expose a child to religious teaching will impair their ability to be religious. No child will grow up to convert languages because they had a psychological experience validating Spanish over English. The analogy to language destroys your case, not supports it. In my view of course.

Again, I also have issues with evolutionary psychology as a field, and again, I noted neuroscientific evidence and psychological evidence.

Evolutionary psychologists like Steven Pinker and the whole motley crew love to cite neuroscience and psychological experiments. Despite your conscious reservations, every argument you have advanced comes from the evolutionary psychologists, using their assumptions unreservedly. Whenever you read these, most important I think, is to look to see how they use "religion." I believe you'll find all their work is vitiated by their equivocations.

On the other hand, if you remove the quotes from "believe", it should certainly be human nature to believe almost anything an older person tells you, because the store of survival knowledge of a tribe is contained in the adults, and the children need to absorb it rapidly.

Yes, this is why when adults tell their fourteen year olds that dressing badly will make a bad impression, they listen.

 

[thestrangequark]

...The fact that there is an area of the brain that can be stimulated electrically (as in seizures) or pharmacologically resulting in religious experiences suggests that there is brain structure responsible for religiosity. For clarification, I'm using "religion" to refer to any supernatural irrational belief.

Yes, stimulation of parts of the brain, and insults to parts of the brain as well, can induce atypical states and experiences. But these states and experiences are not typical of all religions, nor do all people who experience these states and experiences interpret them as religious. The interpretation of these experiments as showing the biological (hence genetic) foundations of religion assume these are innately religious. But that is precisely what we should object to. Everyone dreams, but only the religious think they are dreaming prophetically. Hypnosis is an abnormal state but who interprets this as a religious experience? More to the point, why should they? The same question applies to the neuroscience experiments.

I think perhaps you are misunderstanding what I mean. I agree that most often it is only the religious who will interpret these abnormal states as religious experiences, though I suspect that being religious is not necessary to do so, as for many people such experiences have been precisely the trigger that turns them towards religion (or other forms of spirituality).

Your so-called clarification is really an equivocation. The Gambler's fallacy and the whole field of parapsychology, for instance, are widely held instances of irrational supernatural beliefs, but they most certainly are not religion. The supposed relevance of these experiments rests upon an equivocation as to the nature of religion. I know you personally didn't make this up.

No, they are not the same thing. I was unclear, and you are correct that I did make an equivocation. However, you still don't understand the meaning of that equivocation: the psychological phenomenon responsible for both is the same, even if the details vary. Just like the psychological phenomenon behind language acquisition is the same, though people learn different languages.

There is an interplay, the cultural construct of a particular faith stimulating an innate ability to be faithful.

Well, the commitment to genetic determinism comes through clearly.

Happy straw man building! Genetics play a very important role in our development, as does environment. The nature versus nurture debate hasn't been a debate for decades, we are the product of both.

But what really is this supposed ability to be faithful? To feel belief? To feel the (supposed) special religious states and experiences?To sincerely carry out the commandments of the religion? But we know perfectly well that many people do not feel belief, and when we observe the behavior of many (most?) of the people who profess tha they do, they certainly don't act like they really believe. Indeed one of the most important aspects of many religions is an obsessive concern with true belief.

These are all very interesting and valid questions. It is quite possible that everyone experiences belief differently, sort of like the child's classic philosophical question of whether what I experience as red is the same thing that you experience as red. At least with current technology there is no way to answer that.
I don't think that comparing a person's adherence to the tenets of their faith is a good way to judge whether or not they believe, though; I believe that eating cookies is bad for me, yet I still sometimes do it. Often the bizarre rules and rites of religion (the part that is a social/political construct, go directly against our instincts, masturbation being a fine example. I'm sure there are devout Catholics who masturbate, and then feel guilty as sin afterwards.
But just because we don't yet understand something perfectly doesn't mean it's not a real phenomenon, and just because you haven't experienced something doesn't mean that others don't.

Certainly no religon can use the innate faithfulness of people to summon on command the supposed religious experiences.

Yes they can and they do all the time. And all the ritual aides them.

Young men on vision quests, nuns suffering through a "dark night of the soul," Zen Buddhists still seeking enlightenment after years of searching, all show us otherwise.

They don't show us anything but the battle between rationality and faith happening in these individuals' heads. I'll speak more to this later when I talk about cognitive dissonance.

As to obedience, sincerity is neither knowable nor required.

Exactly. Because our faith in our elders is very possibly built in! This is evidence for the case being made by evolutionary psychologists, not against it.

Many Eastern religions do not project human nature onto nature. Really, it is not obvious in what sense those Western religions that promote ideas of spirituality and reject the flesh are projecting human nature onto nature.

By this I mean that religions attribute intent where there is none, design and intelligence where their is none.

I'm not sure it makes much sense to interpret the Dao as something greater or more than mankind, nor is it obvious that the pursuit of nirvana or satori is pursuing something greater than mankind.

Hence the debate about whether these are more philosophies than religions.

As for promoting ritual, are dinner parties and proms and graduation ceremonies thereby religious?

This is a stupid question, clearly I am talking about religious ritual.

Is obsessive-compulsive disorder akin to sainthood?

Actually, you've twisted it around to try to make a sarcastic joke, but patients with OCD are often extremely religious and express their obsessions and compulsions through religion. OCD is that ritualistic, superstitious part of the brain going out of whack. OCD is evidence for my case, not against it!

What experiments stimulate ritual behavior that we can interpret as religious? Your moving the goalposts to "spirituality," not just religion isn't your personal ruse, either.

It's not moving the goalposts, it's finding a single root cause for two seemingly different phenomena (though they're obviously linked if one actually thinks about it). Religion, spirituality, belief in magic and supernatural are all products of the same, brain-based psychological phenomenon. Just like chicken pox, cold sores, and genital herpes are different manifestations of the same virus.

If this is confirmed, it would be the first serious evidence for a biological basis for morality that I know of.

It is confirmed. Actually, there was very recently a BBC report on it. Their science reporting is hit and miss, but they've got the basics down. Note that they refer to the drug as ibogaine, and I referred to it as iboga, which is the term used for it in the documentary I mentioned in my previous post.

Note that the definition of religion has expanded yet again, to include morality.

Um, not really. The tribe takes it as part of a religious ritual. Part of the hallucination does include a forced contemplation of morality, but you're making an unwarranted extrapolation.

The equation of religion and morality has a mountain of evidence against it, not least the fact that religions teach different moralities to different cultures. In these kinds of matters, it is incredibly hard not to communicate expectations, or imagine them to be confirmed.

I never said otherwise, and agree entirely. As someone who considers herself both atheist and moral, I certainly know that one does not need religion to be good. This point is irrelevant.

Sleep paralysis is not a religious experience, nor is it always interpreted as one.

I never said it was, I said it was an analogy.

The last part, the sensation of a malevolent presence is not universal (I didn't have it, for one.)

This was my mistake. I was getting tired when I got to sleep paralysis. I meant specifically hypnogogia, a hallucination that accompanies sleep paralysis. I apologize for not using the correct term.

Even more to the point, most religions do not incorporate this perfectly natural phenomenon into their beliefs, and frequently argue against it as superstition. It is not at all clear how this even bears on religion as a biological phenomenon, unless "religion" has expanded yet again to include all biological (genetic) basis for irrational beliefs!

That's because they are based in the same biological phenomenon!

Ritual and belief do not go hand in hand. Many religions are highly ritualistic, others, decidedly not. Again, the supposed biological (genetic) tendency towards belief is not a trait for which we can draw a pedigree. Every child who grew up, then jettisoned belief refutes the notion that belief is genetic.

No they don't. Here's another analogy: Optical illusions. There is a part of your brain that fills in missing links in the data perceived by your eyes (and there is a lot missing). Because our brains are so good at constructing complete pictures from incomplete data, we do it even with the data doesn't fit with reality, hence optical illusions. The image building function of our brains says one thing, and the rational, reality-checking part of our brains says another. This phenomenon is called cognitive dissonance. Cognitive dissonance can also happen with religion, which is why people have crises of faith (like the nun's and monks you mentioned before). The spiritual/religious function of their brains (and yes, it is the same function) says one thing, and the rational part of their brains say another. The kids who grew up to reject faith? Their rationality won.

If people were innately wired to believe, then how could they disbelieve, merely because the Cargo didn't arrive today?

See my previous paragraph.

Then the rationalist personality must be on the disbelieving end of the spectrum, no? Except of course that given the enormous size of scientific knowledge and the limited resources available to most of us, most of the so-called rationalists are believing in authority every bit as much as the Fantasy Prone Personality.

This is a classic believer's argument, actually. I'll quote Tim Minchin:

Science adjusts its views based on what is observed. Faith is the denial of observation so that belief can be preserved.

It is a very different thing to comprehend that and accept scientific observations, even if one has not made those observations oneself, than to accept faith in religion which directly contradicts rationality based on "The Bible tells me so." Seriously, I've never heard so many believer's arguments coming from the mouth of a supposed nonbeliever.

The supposed spectrum is an imaginary construct, decreed as an ad hoc assumption to save the hypothesis of biological (genetic) religion. Also, it's not at all clear that the fantasy prone personality is believing what he or she is told here, which was supposed to be the psychological foundation for "religion" before. Or was it the projection into nature of humanity? Like Chi? Like Crystals? The evolutionary psychology is rife with these confusions and self-contradictions.

You're the only one confuse here. I made my opinion of evolutionary psychology clear twice, and qualified any evolutionary theory as such.

I deny that the commonalities exist.

And now I get to use one of my favorite quotations ever! Neil Degrasse Tyson: "The great thing about facts is that you don't have to believe in them for them to be true." You keep on denying.

I know that you've read lots of evolutionary psychologists like Steven Pinker who've tried to tell you that the evil totalitarian hypothesis of the blank slate is an exploded superstition that underlies all opposition to the new evolutionary science. The equivocation about what religion is required for the pretense that there are such commonalities. A Quaker looking to the Light Within, a Theravadin looking for Nirvana and an ancient Roman sacrificing to the Gods are not expressing commonalities. Scientifically speaking, the Standard Social Science Model is the gold standard, and evolutionary psychology most definitely isn't.

And also studied the work of other neuroscientists and psychologists, and did research and experimentation myself, and, as I intend to do a doctorate in the field I continue my education on my own by reading neurosci blogs, and peer-reviewed journals when I have access. I will not pretend to have the kind of knowledge as someone with a phd and decades of study in the field under my wing, but I do know this subject well. Well enough to say that the tabla rasa theory of the human mind is as outdated and looked upon with the same regard as the idea that maggots spring spontaneously from garbage. It is a ridiculous pre-scientific notion, and there is absolutely no evidence to support it. Our brains are the product of nature and nurture, not one or the other.

My fault. That should have been "this emotion," meaning in context the specific emotion of religous belief/disbelief.

Okay...I thought that was a pretty crazy assertion!

As to the innateness of language, everything but one you say is correct. The one is not even explicitly stated, but implied. Since you compare the capacity for "religion" to the capacity for language, acknowledging that there are wide variations in individuals (and, given genetics, races,) then you imply that different individuals and races have different capacities for language. Presumably the upper intelligence brackets have a fundamentally different genetic capacity for language than the lower, not just differences in learning. I still say that, barring developmental disorders, the language capacity of individuals and races is more or less the same, with only trivial differences. If you examine the grammars of so-called primitive peoples, they are just as complex as the grammars of so-called advanced peoples. The grammar of a college professor is not more complex than the grammar of a ghetto male.

I don't disagree with any of this and if you somehow got that implication from my post I can't see how. In fact, I recall one of my earliest debates on this board was calling out some poster on his discrediting of Ebonics as "stupid-sounding," and "ungrammatical." (Ebonics of course has a perfectly sound grammar-structure that is similar to those of many West African languages...basically it is English words plugged into African grammar). I really don't see that you could have gotten that idea from my post.
ETA: This isn't to say that there is not some variance in individual skill to learn language, but it's not extreme. Have you never met someone who just had a fabulous vocabulary? Or a polyglot who just had a knack for learning new languages? Individual aptitude varies, this is not a value-judgement but a fact. I taught general ed and special ed, and saw this every day. I also know that language, as something that is partly innate and partly learned, can be taught. Why would some people have better math capabilities, or artistic abilities than others, but not language abilities?

As to the rest about language, religion simply does not present itself in the same way. There are no kinds of brain damage that change religious belief in specific ways in which brain damage will change language performance.

Sure there are. People's level of faith often changes after head trauma. This is, as everything else, a product of both the physical brain and the environment.

There is no critical period in which failure to expose a child to religious teaching will impair their ability to be religious.

How many people do you know who were raised atheist later converted? I'm not saying you're wrong, but there's no way for you to know that.

No child will grow up to convert languages because they had a psychological experience validating Spanish over English. The analogy to language destroys your case, not supports it. In my view of course.

Because you don't understand the analogy, not because the analogy fails.

Again, I also have issues with evolutionary psychology as a field, and again, I noted neuroscientific evidence and psychological evidence.

Evolutionary psychologists like Steven Pinker and the whole motley crew love to cite neuroscience and psychological experiments. Despite your conscious reservations, every argument you have advanced comes from the evolutionary psychologists, using their assumptions unreservedly. Whenever you read these, most important I think, is to look to see how they use "religion." I believe you'll find all their work is vitiated by their equivocations.

No, the supports I gave for possible reasons why religion may have evolved are evolutionary psychology theories and labeled as such, other arguments for a brain-basis of religiosity are not based in evolutionary psychology. For example, much of the evidence I cited I first learned from lectures, writings, and (later on) podcasts from Doctor Steven Novella, a neuroscientist and skeptic who is very critical of evolutionary psychology. I am not pulling from a single source, but from years of education and experience in the field, reading and working with professionals of different views and opinions.

Lastly, I just want to say I appreciate having a civil and interesting debate with you. Most people just devolve to petty name-calling. This has been a fun discussion for me so far, and I hope it has for you too.

 

[gturner]

On the other hand, if you remove the quotes from "believe", it should certainly be human nature to believe almost anything an older person tells you, because the store of survival knowledge of a tribe is contained in the adults, and the children need to absorb it rapidly.

Yes, this is why when adults tell their fourteen year olds that dressing badly will make a bad impression, they listen.

That's the rebellious phase where the children are trying assert an adult identity, having already learned almost everything their elders believe about the world. In four more years the kids will be virtually indistinguishable from the previous generation, and could not be confused with people who grew up in a completely different, unrelated culture. That's why I'm certain my 14-year old neighbor is not Nigerian, Chinese, Sri Lankan, or Ancient Greek, Roman, or Persian, much less a paleolithic mammoth hunter.

 

[bbailey861]

I am pleased they settled quickly. Now, perhaps this story can just go away.

Oh, no no no. There will be months of speculation, followed by more talking heads, followed by more speculation and possibly a tell all book by someone who knew a cousin who had a friend who's Uncle's Brother's Cousin's former roommate once met their maid's sister over coffee.

Oh yes, I fully expect this - just not looking forward to it.

I am pleased they settled quickly. Now, perhaps this story can just go away.

Why, does it go on your nerves?

No, not on my nerves. I just think the whole thing is a waste of time. I understand stories need to be covered - I am just against the proverbial 'flogging a dead horse'. See above.

I love that drawing of Picard, Chemahkuu.

 

[thestrangequark]

Why, does it go on your nerves?

No, not on my nerves. I just think the whole thing is a waste of time. I understand stories need to be covered - I am just against the proverbial 'flogging a dead horse'. See above.

For me, this is actually the very first time I've found myself even remotely interested in a celebrity gossip story. I find the cultiness very fascinating.

 

[thestrangequark]

On second thought, stj your clarification about emotion being based in human nature means your stance makes even less sense. How is it that the religious emotions are not rooted in human nature but other emotions are? That doesn't make any sense at all. What makes religion so special?

 

[gturner]

^Religion acts differently because it's induced by the Go'uld symbiote as a form of control.

 

[Haggis and tatties]

I'm sure L Ron Hubbard was in fact a evil Gene Roddenbery from a evil mirror universe. lol

Thank god we got the good Roddenberry and were not brainwashed in such a manner.........right i'm off to bed(Sign's out of Trekbbs, closes down Star Trek online, Slips into his Trek Jimjams, saves his page in the latest Trek book with his one of his many many many Trek bookmarks, sets his Trek alarm clock, switches off his Trek bedside light and pulls up the Trek covers. LOL

 

[stj]

On second thought, stj your clarification about emotion being based in human nature means your stance makes even less sense. How is it that the religious emotions are not rooted in human nature but other emotions are? That doesn't make any sense at all. What makes religion so special?

You keep using a meaningless "definition" of religion which keeps misleading you. There are no specific religious emotions. There are only the same old emotions felt by people, evoked in response to religious institutions. They have their biological roots in evolutionary. Supposedly "spiritual" exaltation is essentially the same emotion as that induced by music, which is why music is used in many religions. When the music evokes the emotion, the religous define it as religious or spiritual. There is no genetic neurological structure for spirituality.

In a similar vein, when a Christian mystic has an experience, the experience is not specifically religious, but is interpreted as religious. Fasting or fever could (and have) induced the same experience. But the failure to successfully repeat the experience is not a conflict between the rational and religous parts of the brain! That's like saying the inability to sneeze on command is a conflict between the rational and spasmodic parts of the brain.

Your observation that religious conformity springs from belief seems incredibly naive to me. Religious conformity, like all conformity, is imposed by social pressures, sometimes quite forceful governmental pressures.

On the other hand, belief really is an individual psychological phenomenon. A person upholds a scientific rationalist view because, emotionally, he or she feels the emotion. That emotion is not commanded by the dispassionate reason. The neurological capacity for that feeling of belief is the same emotion felt by the religious. Religious people do like to point this out because they feel that people's emotions cannot be privileged. The problem with their argument is that the emotional feeling of belief is not the issue.

The issues here are factual. The data on religion come from anthropology, history, geography, economics, political science, comparative theology and comparative philosophy. You seem to be unfamiliar with these fields. I wish I could claim a wide training in all of them, but I too have spent years introducing myself to them. And the facts say that the notion of religion you have been using is so broad as to be meaningless.

Without a sensible idea of what religion is, a hodge-podge of traits is asserted without foundation to constitute a commonality. Then experiments and studies try to show what neurological structures explain these imaginary commonalities. And these of course are hereditary. It's not quite as crazy as parapsychology, because at least the traits actually exist, even if they don't constitute a single phenomenon. But it's not good science.

The only way to progress is to learn more facts.

Thank you for you courtesy. Good luck.

 

[thestrangequark]

On second thought, stj your clarification about emotion being based in human nature means your stance makes even less sense. How is it that the religious emotions are not rooted in human nature but other emotions are? That doesn't make any sense at all. What makes religion so special?

You keep using a meaningless "definition" of religion which keeps misleading you. There are no specific religious emotions.

You keep assuming that just because you haven't experienced something yourself it can't happen. You keep stating something as fact that a) you cannot possibly know for certain and b) is contradictory to the scientific evidence.

There are only the same old emotions felt by people, evoked in response to religious institutions. They have their biological roots in evolutionary. Supposedly "spiritual" exaltation is essentially the same emotion as that induced by music, which is why music is used in many religions. When the music evokes the emotion, the religous define it as religious or spiritual. There is no genetic neurological structure for spirituality.

Yes, there is. All the evidence points to there being a biological basis for spirituality. I've given evidence from actual current neurological and psychological studies to support this claim, not just general evolutionary psychology theory. Where is your evidence that it is not brain-based. And, if not brain-based. What is it? If not from our brains than from where does it come?

In a similar vein, when a Christian mystic has an experience, the experience is not specifically religious, but is interpreted as religious. Fasting or fever could (and have) induced the same experience. But the failure to successfully repeat the experience is not a conflict between the rational and religous parts of the brain! That's like saying the inability to sneeze on command is a conflict between the rational and spasmodic parts of the brain.

Now that is a false analogy. Cognitive dissonance is an observable and testable phenomenon, and it does happen when people attempt to reconcile religious beliefs with reality. The analogy I made to the cognitive dissonance that results in optical illusions is valid, because it involves the complex processes by which our brains construct our experience of our environment, just as religious belief and rational thought are both complex processes by which our brains construct our experience of our environment. A sneeze is a sneeze. Logical fallacy=false analogy.

Your observation that religious conformity springs from belief seems incredibly naive to me. Religious conformity, like all conformity, is imposed by social pressures, sometimes quite forceful governmental pressures.

And your refusal to accept that human minds are the product of both nature and nurture seems naive to me. I am not denying the social construct of religion, the social pressures, the political pressures. These are all very real and vary from culture to culture. But like everything else we do, they have a foundation in our biology. Sometimes that foundation is very deep and hard to see, but it's there. Think of the different aspects of religion: mythology, ritual, faith. Story-telling, habit, and social behavior (eg loyalty to one's own, distrust of the "other," trust in authority etc) are all built into human nature. We don't have to look to evolutionary psychology theory to see examples of any of this, we can find it in current and sound modern psychological and neurological experiments. When these built-in tendencies, the nature, interact with the social construct of specific religions, the nurture, individuals develop religiosity. It's not that hard to grasp, why are you so against the idea the biology has a role in this?

On the other hand, belief really is an individual psychological phenomenon. A person upholds a scientific rationalist view because, emotionally, he or she feels the emotion. That emotion is not commanded by the dispassionate reason. The neurological capacity for that feeling of belief is the same emotion felt by the religious. Religious people do like to point this out because they feel that people's emotions cannot be privileged. The problem with their argument is that the emotional feeling of belief is not the issue.

You say that people's emotions cannot be privileged, and you accept that emotion is a part of human nature, but you specifically stated "this emotion," religious emotion, is not a part of human nature. You are the one who is privileging certain emotions. Rationalism can cause cognitive dissonance just as religion can, granted. I mean, look at the Standard Model...if anything is going to cause a rational mind to experience cognitive dissonance it is that! I also grant that rationalism can involve emotion: There is the awe of discovery and wonder at the universe that is often compared to religion (this, of course, is why many people mistakenly think Einstein believed in God even though he stated directly that he did not...his use of religion as a metaphor), there is the enthusiasm for learning something new, and the sadness of finding that observation does not confirm one's ideas or beliefs. But therein is the difference: once the rational mind recognizes that reality is inconsistent with its beliefs, it changes the beliefs, religion, on the other hand, denies the reality.

The issues here are factual. The data on religion come from anthropology, history, geography, economics, political science, comparative theology and comparative philosophy. You seem to be unfamiliar with these fields.

I am not unfamiliar with these fields. You do know that politics has a brain-based component too, right? Though you'll probably deny that as well.

I wish I could claim a wide training in all of them, but I too have spent years introducing myself to them. And the facts say that the notion of religion you have been using is so broad as to be meaningless.

Which facts? Name one. Here are some facts that support the notion that religion is brain-based:
-Religious experiences can be explained neurologically.
-Specific drugs can cause general religious experiences.
-Specific drugs can cause specific religious experiences.
-Specific disorders of the brain cause hyper-religiosity in many cases, some of these disorders are OCD, schizophrenia, epilepsy, and bipolar disorder.
-Similarly, there is a strong negative correlation between certain psychological disorders and religiosity, especially notable are Asperger's Syndrome and autism.
-Aspects of religion like ritual, trust in authority, etc, are demonstrably brain-based.
-Brain function has been shown to correlate with types of belief. Although I don't know of any studies showing this with religious belief, it has been shown with political beliefs, here is an abstract from an article published in Nature Neuroscience, for example:

Political scientists and psychologists have noted that, on average, conservatives show more structured and persistent cognitive styles, whereas liberals are more responsive to informational complexity, ambiguity and novelty. We tested the hypothesis that these profiles relate to differences in general neurocognitive functioning using event-related potentials, and found that greater liberalism was associated with stronger conflict-related anterior cingulate activity, suggesting greater neurocognitive sensitivity to cues for altering a habitual response pattern.

You said we can't privilege emotion. If there is a brain basis for political belief than why not for religious belief?
ETA: Link to study: http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/v10/n10/full/nn1979.html
-Trauma to the brain can cause an individual to become more or less religious

Without a sensible idea of what religion is, a hodge-podge of traits is asserted without foundation to constitute a commonality.

I've told you how I define the aspect of religion that is brain-based, and it is completely sensible.

Then experiments and studies try to show what neurological structures explain these imaginary commonalities. And these of course are hereditary. It's not quite as crazy as parapsychology, because at least the traits actually exist, even if they don't constitute a single phenomenon. But it's not good science.

How do you know? You don't seem to know much about neurology or psychology. You've claimed that I know nothing about a string of fields, and am therefore unqualified to make claims about the fields in which I do have knowledge and experience. Then, you claim that because you have knowledge of other fields, you can make claims about neurology and psychology. I doesn't work like that.

The only way to progress is to learn more facts.

Indeed, but it seems that, in regards to this debate, you are the one in deficit of facts. You've argued ideas directly contradictory to scientific consensus, based upon a theory that hasn't been taken seriously for over a century. I would recommend starting here. I mentioned Dr. Steven Novella previously, I think. He is a practicing neurologist, lecturer, and president of the New England Skeptical Society. He does not think particularly highly of evolutionary psychology. He does agree that the evidence shows a that religion is based in psychological phenomena.

Thank you for you courtesy. Good luck.

Same to you.

 

[stj]

You keep assuming that just because you haven't experienced something yourself it can't happen. You keep stating something as fact that a) you cannot possibly know for certain and b) is contradictory to the scientific evidence.

But I have had emotional states and experiences that are involved in some religious activities. If I'm assuming anything, it's that you do have some knowledge of real religion as it is found in life. I also have some knowledge of the neuroscience experiments you talk about, such as the one about the supposed difference between liberal and conservative brains.

The greater receptivity to complexity, ambiguity and novelty are personality traits, not politics. They add up to greater flexibility. There are many conservatives who are quite flexible and many liberals who are not, but in neither case is flexibility forbidden by their political principles! Acitivity in the anterior cingulate contributes to this kind of flexibility? Good to know, another fact to fit into the ever-growing body of knowledge. Is it relevant to understanding politics? Doubtful. Similarly to many of the studies and experiments on "religion."

Where is your evidence that it is not brain-based. And, if not brain-based. What is it? If not from our brains than from where does it come?

Why, religions are specific cultural institutions that emerge from the interactions in time and space of the members of the culture. Like all cultural institutions, the members feel their individual emotions in response to the emergent institution confronting them. Those emotions themselves are carried out by their brains, so obviously in that sense they are brain-based. But there are no specifically religious emotions that cause individuals to create "religion," as the individual ionic properties of sodium and chlorine create a salt crystal.

I am not denying the social construct of religion, the social pressures, the political pressures. These are all very real and vary from culture to culture. But like everything else we do, they have a foundation in our biology. Sometimes that foundation is very deep and hard to see, but it's there. Think of the different aspects of religion: mythology, ritual, faith. Story-telling, habit, and social behavior (eg loyalty to one's own, distrust of the "other," trust in authority etc) are all built into human nature.

I'm surprised you haven't mentioned the studies of the role of oxytocin in social bonding and its seemingly contradictory role in distrust of the "other." Of course this biological functinon of the brain (and the genes encoding it) play a role in religious bonding. And in bonding in families and in bonding in the military and in bonding in peer groups.

The neuroscience studies you think confirm that religion is a biological function of individual brains apply to far more than religion. Of course you have simultaneously omitted different aspects of religion, religion as medicine. And this in a thread about Scientology, which is crucially based on offering crank psychotherapy! And don't forget dietary health regimes either! There is religion as a straightforward political system, where clergymen read government directives and attendance is compulsory (but some religion leads to conscientious objection.) There is religion as redistribution of food by offerings of sacrificial animals and there is religion that counsels renunciation of material goods.

The same brain-functions? The insistence that personality as determined by the brain alone has anything very relevant to contribute to a study of religion seems a trifle mad.

You say that people's emotions cannot be privileged, and you accept that emotion is a part of human nature, but you specifically stated "this emotion," religious emotion, is not a part of human nature. You are the one who is privileging certain emotions.

No, I said that religious people focus on the feelings of belief in authority common to both rationalist and religious because they cannot see that one is privileged over the over. What I say, is that there is no specifically religious emotion at all. Nor are there any neuroscience studies showing this. I know enough about them to know that!

But therein is the difference: once the rational mind recognizes that reality is inconsistent with its beliefs, it changes the beliefs, religion, on the other hand, denies the reality.

This is much closer to the truth of course. Woe to us all, reality is never wholly consistent with out beliefs.

Which facts? Name one. Here are some facts that support the notion that religion is brain-based:
-Religious experiences can be explained neurologically.
-Specific drugs can cause general religious experiences.
-Specific drugs can cause specific religious experiences.
-Specific disorders of the brain cause hyper-religiosity in many cases, some of these disorders are OCD, schizophrenia, epilepsy, and bipolar disorder.
-Similarly, there is a strong negative correlation between certain psychological disorders and religiosity, especially notable are Asperger's Syndrome and autism.
-Aspects of religion like ritual, trust in authority, etc, are demonstrably brain-based.
-Brain function has been shown to correlate with types of belief. Although I don't know of any studies showing this with religious belief, it has been shown with political beliefs, here is an abstract from an article published in Nature Neuroscience, for example: You said we can't privilege emotion. If there is a brain basis for political belief than why not for religious belief?
ETA: Link to study: http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/v10/n10/full/nn1979.html
-Trauma to the brain can cause an individual to become more or less religious

Some experiences that are arbitrarily deemed religious but are merely human can be explained neurologically. No abnormal state or experience is common to all religions.

Specific drugs causing general religious experiences is incorrect because there are no general religious experiences that aren't general human experiences.

Specific drugs causing specific religious experiences would be solid evidence but extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

By Occam's razor, hyperreligiosity in "many" cases expresses the interaction of mental illness and learned religious ideas.

As for negative correlation between ASD and religiosity, the obstacles to social interaction posed by these disorders means that acquisition of a social behavior like religion is impaired, as is expression of what is acquired.

Beliefs discussed above.

Trauma, like mental disorders, are still expressed by individuals using the ideas they have learned. Some trauma victims will use religion, others won't. There is no specific trauma to the brain that will cause a particular kind of behavior labeled "religious" in the same way that trauma to a specific part of the brain will cause a specific language deficit.

Indeed, but it seems that, in regards to this debate, you are the one in deficit of facts. You've argued ideas directly contradictory to scientific consensus, based upon a theory that hasn't been taken seriously for over a century. .

We are not both scholars, so footnoting is irrelevant.
But one very relevant fact is that religion is inextricably bound up with medicine. What does any of this folderol have to do with "religion" as medicine? And another fact, a very obvious one, is that religion cannot be simply defined as irrationality or every gambler falling for the gambler's fallacy is practicing "religion."

As to the supposed consensus views of science, there is no consensus. John Locke's tabula rasa, by the way, was not prescientific in the way I think you mean. The idea that faculties are inborn however was. Locke's ideas were a first step forward.

In any event, the Standard Social Science Model does not actually adhere to Steven Pinker's straw man version. It does hold that there are no empirical grounds for thinking that human nature as such tells us much about the institution of religion as it is found in such enormous variety, from cultures in which we must strain to find any "relgion," to the modern day. It also holds that biological differences in individuals are not a viable causal candidate to explain the differences in religious observances (and the lack of them.)

There are no reliable neuroscience experiments that call these very simply propositions into question.

 

[thestrangequark]

You keep assuming that just because you haven't experienced something yourself it can't happen. You keep stating something as fact that a) you cannot possibly know for certain and b) is contradictory to the scientific evidence.

But I have had emotional states and experiences that are involved in some religious activities. If I'm assuming anything, it's that you do have some knowledge of real religion as it is found in life. I also have some knowledge of the neuroscience experiments you talk about, such as the one about the supposed difference between liberal and conservative brains.

The greater receptivity to complexity, ambiguity and novelty are personality traits, not politics. They add up to greater flexibility.

Exactly! And the personality traits that add up to religiosity make one more likely to be religious! That is the brain-basis. That is the psychological phenomenon.[/quote]There are many conservatives who are quite flexible and many liberals who are not, but in neither case is flexibility forbidden by their political principles! Acitivity in the anterior cingulate contributes to this kind of flexibility? Good to know, another fact to fit into the ever-growing body of knowledge. Is it relevant to understanding politics? Doubtful. Similarly to many of the studies and experiments on "religion."[/quote]You acknowledge the science yet dismiss the implications. It simply does not follow.
You say you've experienced emotional states involved in religion. Have you ever experienced the presence of god? Have you ever been filled with the devine spirit? Have you ever achieved Nirvana? If not, then how can you say that these are not distinct experiences from wonder, awe, or peace or whatever other emotions you have personally experienced?

Where is your evidence that it is not brain-based. And, if not brain-based. What is it? If not from our brains than from where does it come?

Why, religions are specific cultural institutions that emerge from the interactions in time and space of the members of the culture. Like all cultural institutions, the members feel their individual emotions in response to the emergent institution confronting them. Those emotions themselves are carried out by their brains, so obviously in that sense they are brain-based. But there are no specifically religious emotions that cause individuals to create "religion," as the individual ionic properties of sodium and chlorine create a salt crystal.

Again, how can you know there are no specifically religious emotions? You state this as fact but again provide no evidence with which to support it, whereas I have provided plenty of evidence that contradicts it.

I'm surprised you haven't mentioned the studies of the role of oxytocin in social bonding and its seemingly contradictory role in distrust of the "other." Of course this biological functinon of the brain (and the genes encoding it) play a role in religious bonding. And in bonding in families and in bonding in the military and in bonding in peer groups.

The neuroscience studies you think confirm that religion is a biological function of individual brains apply to far more than religion. Of course you have simultaneously omitted different aspects of religion, religion as medicine. And this in a thread about Scientology, which is crucially based on offering crank psychotherapy!

I haven't omitted anything out of avoidance, there is just a hell of a lot to this topic, and no way to hit it all in one post. My first response to you had to be broken into two pieces, after all! So, what about religion as medicine do you want to discuss?

And don't forget dietary health regimes either! There is religion as a straightforward political system, where clergymen read government directives and attendance is compulsory (but some religion leads to conscientious objection.) There is religion as redistribution of food by offerings of sacrificial animals and there is religion that counsels renunciation of material goods.

Indeed, these are the socio-political aspects of religion which I have already acknowledged. You're creating a false dichotomy; religion is both a psychological phenomenon and a socio-political institution, the two are not mutually exclusive, but rather inform and encourage one another. Nothing about our minds and societies is that simple. Nothing is so black and white. It is all a complex interaction of biology and environmental influence.

The same brain-functions? The insistence that personality as determined by the brain alone has anything very relevant to contribute to a study of religion seems a trifle mad.

Wait. What? Isn't the philosophical question of the nature of the brain one of the central foundations of religion? Isn't it one of the defining factors of the vast majority of religions and spiritual philosophies, that there is a soul? A "ghost in the machine"? As opposed to the scientific materialist view that the mind is caused by the brain? How on earth can the nature of the human mind be irrelevant to a discussion of the nature of religion? That is more than a trifle mad!

No, I said that religious people focus on the feelings of belief in authority common to both rationalist and religious because they cannot see that one is privileged over the over. What I say, is that there is no specifically religious emotion at all. Nor are there any neuroscience studies showing this. I know enough about them to know that!

This is much closer to the truth of course. Woe to us all, reality is never wholly consistent with out beliefs.

Which facts? Name one. Here are some facts that support the notion that religion is brain-based:
-Religious experiences can be explained neurologically.
-Specific drugs can cause general religious experiences.
-Specific drugs can cause specific religious experiences.
-Specific disorders of the brain cause hyper-religiosity in many cases, some of these disorders are OCD, schizophrenia, epilepsy, and bipolar disorder.
-Similarly, there is a strong negative correlation between certain psychological disorders and religiosity, especially notable are Asperger's Syndrome and autism.
-Aspects of religion like ritual, trust in authority, etc, are demonstrably brain-based.
-Brain function has been shown to correlate with types of belief. Although I don't know of any studies showing this with religious belief, it has been shown with political beliefs, here is an abstract from an article published in Nature Neuroscience, for example: You said we can't privilege emotion. If there is a brain basis for political belief than why not for religious belief?
ETA: Link to study: http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/v10/n10/full/nn1979.html
-Trauma to the brain can cause an individual to become more or less religious

Some experiences that are arbitrarily deemed religious but are merely human can be explained neurologically. No abnormal state or experience is common to all religions.

Agreed, but your statement is reversing cause and effect. I am not claiming that the religion is the cause of the abnormal states, but that the normal states that the abnormal states teach us about (by magnifying or minimizing the effects) are the cause of the religion.

Specific drugs causing general religious experiences is incorrect because there are no general religious experiences that aren't general human experiences.

I should have worded that better. Specific drugs can cause experiences which are perceived as being religious, i.e., a drug which inhibits the function of the brain in such a way that one's sense of self and other is disrupted, results in the feeling of being at one with the universe, leaving one's body, etc. These sensations are then interpreted by the individual through their unique cultural lens, which usually includes some form of religion or spirituality. Are the specific religious or spiritual ideas psychological phenomena? No, they are learned. The experience is a psychological phenomenon, and is one of the foundations of religiosity.

Specific drugs causing specific religious experiences would be solid evidence but extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

Agreed. All the evidence on iboga so far is pretty extraordinary, too.

By Occam's razor, hyperreligiosity in "many" cases expresses the interaction of mental illness and learned religious ideas.

Agreed. And is mental illness often not just "normal" human psychology gone taken to the extreme? Any good psychologist realizes that the definition of mental illness is somewhat relative, because pretty much everyone experiences occasional disordered thinking. Everyone obsesses. Everyone indulges in rituals and routines. Everyone sees patterns where there are none. Everyone gets sad and then happy again. Mental illness is when things go too far, when the sadness becomes depression and the happiness mania, when the rituals and routines become so extreme an individual cannot function in society, when the pattern-seeking becomes paranoia. Hyper-religiosity is the extreme of religiosity, which is part of normal human psychology.

As for negative correlation between ASD and religiosity, the obstacles to social interaction posed by these disorders means that acquisition of a social behavior like religion is impaired, as is expression of what is acquired.

We are talking about people specifically with Asperger's Syndrome and High-functioning autism. These people tend to have perfectly good verbal skills. They also tend to be of above-average intelligence. They can tell you whether or not they believe in god. The particular study I am thinking of does fail to note the correlation between high IQ and atheism, though, meaning that this could be a correlation/causation fallacy -- it could be that people who have Asperger's tend not to be religious because they tend to be smarter than people who don't have Asperger's.

Trauma, like mental disorders, are still expressed by individuals using the ideas they have learned. Some trauma victims will use religion, others won't. There is no specific trauma to the brain that will cause a particular kind of behavior labeled "religious" in the same way that trauma to a specific part of the brain will cause a specific language deficit.

Actually, you're wrong about that. There is no specific part of the brain to which trauma will cause a specific language deficit either. That doesn't mean language is not brain-based. The idea that there are specific spots of the brain responsible for specific things like math, language, artistic talent, or religion is sort of a pop-culture understanding of brain-science, and is perpetuated by scientists using that sort of language to explain the brain. I'm afraid I am guilty of it too. It is because it is easier to explain brain function that way, because it's sort of accurate. There is a part of the brain that when stimulated causes people to feel they are in the presence of god, and it interacts with a whole bunch of other parts of the brain. Religion is brain-based and aspects of it concentrated in different areas, but you could never do a religonectomy and remove the religion center.

Indeed, but it seems that, in regards to this debate, you are the one in deficit of facts. You've argued ideas directly contradictory to scientific consensus, based upon a theory that hasn't been taken seriously for over a century. .

We are not both scholars, so footnoting is irrelevant.
But one very relevant fact is that religion is inextricably bound up with medicine. What does any of this folderol have to do with "religion" as medicine?

Why do you keep bringing up religion as medicine? What point are you trying to make?

And another fact, a very obvious one, is that religion cannot be simply defined as irrationality or every gambler falling for the gambler's fallacy is practicing "religion."

Uh...I never said it was...
There are different kinds of irrationality. All of these are natural psychological phenomena, and some of them contribute to religiosity.

As to the supposed consensus views of science, there is no consensus. John Locke's tabula rasa, by the way, was not prescientific in the way I think you mean. The idea that faculties are inborn however was. Locke's ideas were a first step forward.

I agree with that. That doesn't make them any less wrong.

In any event, the Standard Social Science Model

Sorry, when I said "Standard Model" and referred to it as a cause of cognitive dissonance in the rational mind, I was referring to particle physics, not psychology. I really should have clarified that!

does not actually adhere to Steven Pinker's straw man version.

Your dislike of Pinker is evident, which is why I stopped using any of his arguments as supports for my own in my last post.

It does hold that there are no empirical grounds for thinking that human nature as such tells us much about the institution of religion as it is found in such enormous variety, from cultures in which we must strain to find any "relgion," to the modern day. It also holds that biological differences in individuals are not a viable causal candidate to explain the differences in religious observances (and the lack of them.)

This is what really gets me: you are citing the Standard Social Science model as more solid evidence than neurological science. I originally intended to major in social psychology, but I switched, and here's why: Social psychology has a ton of interesting theories, and we can learn a lot from it, but it is extremely difficult to test, because doing so is inhumane. By the very nature of what is being studied, experiments in social psychology are artificial. There are some good early studies, like Milgram's, but no one is going to be doing that today. Social psychology is fascinating, but it provides very little in the way of facts. It is a soft science. Neuroscience is solid. It is testable.

You dismiss evolutionary psychology, and yet accept other social sciences? That just doesn't seem that well thought-through.[/quote]

There are no reliable neuroscience experiments that call these very simply propositions into question.[/QUOTE]Just 'cause you say it doesn't make it so! There are reliable experiments, I've discussed but a few. Do a little research into neurology and you can read them.

Finally, just once more, as it is often hard to interpret someone's intent through this medium, I'd like to say that I am enjoying this conversation, and find your arguments to be for the most part thought-provoking and interesting. I hope you feel the same.

 

[stj]

Getting back to human evolution, breeding smart people with smart people because of the cultural and business environment almost certainly produced some of the unique traits of the Ashkenazi Jews, including genetic defects, and did it very rapidly.



http://youngmanhattanite.com/Ashken...Jews Became Smart (2008).pdfIQ.jbiosocsci.pdf

This is a fine example of what kind of nonsense all these unexamined presumptions lead to. Finally remembered where I'd seen a handy rebuttal.

http://www.ncas.rutgers.edu/sites/fasn/files/How Jews Became Smart (2008).pdf

 

[gturner]

^ I don't find that rebuttal very compelling. Jews are smart because of religious tradition and random bottlenecks?

 

[thestrangequark]

Just because we seem to be heading in a dangerous direction, I want to give a little input on so-called "race-realism" which is a legitimate concern that stj has alluded to. "Race realists" are racists who manipulate science to try to prove that some ethnicities are inherently more intelligent than others. stj, I suspect a lot of what is off-putting to you about the notion of a biological base for religion is the implication that this means there is a genetic base for intelligence and other human qualities, and that this would then provide scientific basis for racism. There is definitely a history of people manipulating science, or extrapolating neurological, psychological, and genetic sciences to areas that are inappropriate (scientifically) or too complex. It is easy to see how, without thinking about it carefully, the implications of biology-based psychology could be seen as a slippery-slope to science-backed racism, but anyone who would use the science in such a matter is not only morally questionable, but oversimplifying and misrepresenting a very complex issue. Let's look at intelligence:

Intelligence, like all aspects of human psychology has a basis in genetics. This is a fact, but not an unqualified one. This does not mean that the intelligence of an individual is determined entirely by his or her genes. It means that a level of potential is determined thusly. Human brains are incredibly complex and from the moment they begin to develop in the womb, environmental factors like nutrition, stress, drugs and alcohol consumed by the mother, etc, work to shape them. After we are born they continue to be shaped by their environments, as billions of neurons are pruned in the first year, and others build and strengthen connections. The brains are shaped by stimulation, experience, interaction with the environment, and internal, active thought, by the choices we make, the foods we eat, illnesses we contract, and drugs we consume. Everything about our brains has a basis in our genetics and our environments refine them to make them what they become as we mature; as I said before, we are the product of nature and nurture.

"Race realists" fail tremendously in three areas (well, four, if one includes human decency):
1. They do not recognize the complexity of the interaction between nature and nurture in the development of intelligence, putting more emphasis on nature than is deserved.
2. They do not recognize the undeniable fact that -- and I'm bolding this because it's something people don't seem to realize, especially when it comes to evolutionary psychology (you see this in a lot of the studies about differences between genders) --there is more variance between individuals than there is between groups.
3. They do not recognize that we don't even have a functioning definition of what intelligence is. IQ tests can tell us some information, but their quality varies, is debatable, and the information they give us is too specific. The most recent longitudinal studies have proved that IQ, as measured by tests, changes as we age...hell, any reasonably self-aware person can tell you it can change from day to day or hour to hour! Intelligence is not actually a reliably measurable thing.

And of course, there is the issue of whether these genetic qualities are equivalent to worth; I've known some wonderful people who are not that bright, and some real useless shits who were geniuses.

Citing the brain-basis of human qualities like religiosity, creativity, intelligence, agression, insanity, or even free will does not mean surrendering to determinism, or supporting racism or genetic castes, or making quality judgements about individuals, it means nothing more than acknowledging that genetics play a role in how our brains develop.

We are still only just beginning to understand our own minds, and the more we learn about genetics, psychology, and neurology, and how they interact, the more we will be confronted with uncomfortable, frightening, and potentially dangerous truths about how our minds work, about the nature of free will, and about our own potential. It will do no good to brush evidence under the rug because it makes us nervous or because it threatens our preconceptions. The only people who will benefit from that are the racists who would try to manipulate the science to their own pathetic ideologies.

 

[JarodRussell]

Wow, this thread has developed into something entirely different.

 

[gturner]

Just because we seem to be heading in a dangerous direction, I want to give a little input on so-called "race-realism" which is a legitimate concern that stj has alluded to. "Race realists" are racists who manipulate science to try to prove that some ethnicities are inherently more intelligent than others. stj, I suspect a lot of what is off-putting to you about the notion of a biological base for religion is the implication that this means there is a genetic base for intelligence and other human qualities, and that this would then provide scientific basis for racism.

But there are clear genetic differences in the intelligence of races. Vulcans, Romulans, and Baku are inherently more intelligent than Klingons or Hirogen. Pakleds are notoriously unintelligent, and it's amazing they can even manage to turn on a valve on an oxygen bottle (lefty loosey).

 

[thestrangequark]

Wow, this thread has developed into something entirely different.

And far more interesting.