Is religion biologically ingrained?

[an anarchist]

Is religion biologically ingrained in the human brain? Is that a reason why many are religious/spiritual?

Does my question make sense?

Like, what if spiritual homo sapiens had survival advantages such as emotional comfort?

 

[an anarchist]

Note: I have this in Science and Religion!

:^]

 

[Daemon Sophic]

Is religion biologically ingrained in the human brain? Is that a reason why many are religious/spiritual?

Does my question make sense?

Like, what if spiritual homo sapiens had survival advantages such as emotional comfort?

No to religion. However, I think that what is biologically ingrained is a desire to find answers to how things work around us.
The scientific method of inquiry has a long list been found to be the best way to get those answers.

However, for untold millennia prior to the last hundred years, the more difficult questions have been answered with wild theories and make-believe. Then these “answers” have been accepted as our best solutions.
Then these so-called best solutions have been indoctrinated into the general population, as well as on the individual, family, and community level (often with the force of law/lethality); with each new generation being told that these fanciful make-believe stories (i.e. religion) were the real answers to our questions.

 

[Quintessence]

Sort of.

A word of caution - while it can be interesting to explore interdisciplinary or cross-disciplinary approaches to topics, in doing so one risks forcing square pegs into round holes, so to speak. The sciences are just bad at the study of sociocultural phenomena like religion. There are insights to be gained from it, but be very cautious overstating their relevance or importance. Not everything needs to have (or should have) a biological (or more broadly, scientific) explanation.

From my view, as someone with a hard science background and who is also deeply religious, I'd forward the following observations. It is well-established that human cultural development occurs within the context of the broader ecological environment the human species finds itself in. The relationship that humans have with the other-than-human world is the root of religion. Awareness of and attentiveness to the other-than-human world was essential for survival. This is what "shamans" did in early human cultures - they were the intermediaries and interpretors between the other-than-human world and everybody else. Animism in particular - the "original religion" if we want to view it that way - was all about negotiating and navigating relationships with other-than-human powers that are fundamentally greater than ourselves. Today we'd use words like "god" for such powers, but it is important to not misconstrue animistic "god-concepts" as necessarily supernaturalistic. No, it really was more about getting to know the land and its occupants to respect them for one's own survival needs.

 

[ratiocinator]

Is religion biologically ingrained in the human brain?

Possibly, in a way.

Agent detection - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

I believe I first recommended Scott Atran's In Gods We Trust: The Evolutionary Landscape of Religion a little over sixteen years ago.

​

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

Is religion biologically ingrained in the human brain? Is that a reason why many are religious/spiritual?

Does my question make sense?

Like, what if spiritual homo sapiens had survival advantages such as emotional comfort?

We seem to be hardwired for a couple of relevant things:

- our judgment tends more to false positives than false negatives.

- we have an overactive tendency to attribute things to agency.

Take those two things together and you get most of the way to full-fledged religion. Add in ritual and we're like 90% there.

 

[an anarchist]

I believe I first recommended Scott Atran's In Gods We Trust: The Evolutionary Landscape of Religion a little over sixteen years ago.

​

Will definitely be giving it a read. Found it on thriftbooks

 

[cladking]

I've become a proponent of religion on an individual basis. Some religions may be bad for some people and no religion is best for some but most people are helped mentally and spiritually by religion.

I believe all religions have arisen through understanding and misunderstanding of natural science. In other words our species once had a different means of performing science that was highly effective. Rather than experiment they used a mathematical sort of logic just like animals. Human speech was so complex that one generation could build more science on the basis of the science of previous generations. When this failed religions sprang up on the ruins of ancient science. This is why many religions resonate with many individuals. Our brains are still wired like ancient brains but we now have a new operating system.

So, in a sense, we are wired for religion. Religions primarily concern cause and effect and we innately know that for every action there's an equal and opposite reaction. We know on some level reality is far more complex than can be found in any science text or will ever appear in a science text. Why wouldn't many highly rational and reasonable people organize their lives or thinking around religious precepts?

 

[ratiocinator]

I believe all religions have arisen through understanding and misunderstanding of natural science. In other words our species once had a different means of performing science that was highly effective. Rather than experiment they used a mathematical sort of logic just like animals. Human speech was so complex that one generation could build more science on the basis of the science of previous generations. When this failed religions sprang up on the ruins of ancient science. This is why many religions resonate with many individuals. Our brains are still wired like ancient brains but we now have a new operating system.

That's nice for you. Any evidence?

 

[Colt]

Is religion biologically ingrained in the human brain? Is that a reason why many are religious/spiritual?

Does my question make sense?

Like, what if spiritual homo sapiens had survival advantages such as emotional comfort?

Yes, by design religion begins or is stimulated as a biological, fear based response to mans environment. IMOP

"Evolutionary religion is the mother of the science, art, and philosophy which elevated man to the level of receptivity to revealed religion, including the bestowal of Adjusters and the coming of the Spirit of Truth. The evolutionary picture of human existence begins and ends with religion, albeit very different qualities of religion, one evolutional and biological, the other revelational and periodical. And so, while religion is normal and natural to man, it is also optional. Man does not have to be religious against his will." UB 1955

 

[cladking]

That's nice for you. Any evidence?

Nothing but evidence but most isn't appropriate in this thread.

Ancient Reality

Animals engage in highly complex behavior. Termites have agriculture and air conditioned cities. I propose they didn't invent these through observation and experiment but rather they used observation and logic. Logic is the basis of all things and reality itself. "Humans" invented writing in 3200 BC but recorded history didn't start until 2000 BC. I propose they recorded history between 3200 and 2000 BC in a language that can not be translated because it obeys the laws of science and logic just like a bee's waggle dance. .

 

[JDMS]

We seem to be hardwired for a couple of relevant things:

- our judgment tends more to false positives than false negatives.

- we have an overactive tendency to attribute things to agency.

Take those two things together and you get most of the way to full-fledged religion. Add in ritual and we're like 90% there.

Not to mention ritualistic behaviors have been observed in higher order animals. So it's not a difficult stretch to see how religion forms in human society.

 

[ratiocinator]

Animals engage in highly complex behavior.

Relatively and to differing degrees. This is not a mystery.

Termites have agriculture and air conditioned cities. I propose they didn't invent these through observation and experiment but rather they used observation and logic.

Except they show no evidence at all of being able to tackle logical problems - none of the adaptability one would expect. Their group behaviour is like fixed instinct, not logical thinkers.

"Humans" invented writing in 3200 BC but recorded history didn't start until 2000 BC. I propose they recorded history between 3200 and 2000 BC in a language that can not be translated because it obeys the laws of science and logic...

Don't know where you're getting your information from, even before we get to your wild, unevidenced speculation.

More complete writing systems were preceded by proto-writing. Early examples are the Jiahu symbols (c. 6600 BCE), Vinča signs (c. 5300 BCE), early Indus script (c. 3500 BCE) and Nsibidi script (c. before 500 CE). There is disagreement concerning exactly when prehistory becomes history, and when proto-writing became "true writing".[2] However, invention of the first writing systems is roughly contemporary with the beginning of the Bronze Age in the late Neolithic of the late 4th millennium BCE. The Sumerian archaic cuneiform script and the Egyptian hieroglyphs are generally considered the earliest writing systems, both emerging out of their ancestral proto-literate symbol systems from 3400 to 3200 BCE with earliest coherent texts from about 2600 BCE. ​

...​

The earliest chronologies date back to the earliest civilizations of Early Dynastic Period of Egypt, Mesopotamia and the Sumerians,[3] which emerged independently of each other from roughly 3500 BCE.​

-- Recorded history​

 

[Jimmy]

Is religion biologically ingrained in the human brain? Is that a reason why many are religious/spiritual?

Does my question make sense?

Like, what if spiritual homo sapiens had survival advantages such as emotional comfort?

I think there’s a depp seeded desire to want to know how we got here, how it will all end and if we’ll come back.

 

[Revoltingest]

Brain is biology.
It's for thought that enables survival.
Religion is one of the emergent properties.
Like prejudice, government, & crime.
(Atheism is rarer emergent property.
Libertarianism is the rarest of all.)

 

[Apostle John]

Don't know where you're getting your information from, even before we get to your wild, unevidenced speculation.

More complete writing systems were preceded by proto-writing. Early examples are the Jiahu symbols (c. 6600 BCE), Vinča signs (c. 5300 BCE), early Indus script (c. 3500 BCE) and Nsibidi script (c. before 500 CE). There is disagreement concerning exactly when prehistory becomes history, and when proto-writing became "true writing".[2] However, invention of the first writing systems is roughly contemporary with the beginning of the Bronze Age in the late Neolithic of the late 4th millennium BCE. The Sumerian archaic cuneiform script and the Egyptian hieroglyphs are generally considered the earliest writing systems, both emerging out of their ancestral proto-literate symbol systems from 3400 to 3200 BCE with earliest coherent texts from about 2600 BCE. ​

...​

The earliest chronologies date back to the earliest civilizations of Early Dynastic Period of Egypt, Mesopotamia and the Sumerians,[3] which emerged independently of each other from roughly 3500 BCE.​

-- Recorded history​

How old do you guess homo sapians are?

 

[cladking]

. Their group behaviour is like fixed instinct, not logical thinkers.

So I'm to believe a group of termites sat down one day and agreed hunting and gathering was too labor intensive so they decided to instinctively farm.

3400 to 3200 BCE with earliest coherent texts from about 2600 BCE.

None of these texts are what would be called "history". Indeed, most of these texts are believed to be incantation. Exactly why anyone would consider incantation to be "coherent" is way beyond me.

The earliest chronologies date back to the earliest civilizations of Early Dynastic Period of Egypt,

Nonsense. The earliest Egyptian "chronology" dates to the 19th century BC and is a fantastic collection of kings who ruled for millennia and other such nonsense. It is "believed" to be a rendition of something from about eight centuries earlier. History STARTS in the 20th century BC but much of the early writing was done by what are widely considered sun addled bumpkins writing the impossible. We pick and choose what to believe.

 

[an anarchist]

How old do you guess homo sapians are?

Ooo. Curious

How old do you guess homo sapiens are?

 

[cladking]

Ooo. Curious

How old do you guess homo sapiens are?

I believe the "tower of babel" in 2000 BC was a speciation event, so 4000 years.