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What is the Psychology/Mechanics of Religious Belief?

blü 2

Veteran Member
Premium Member
I find it sad that most atheists see nothing in theism but superstition and wishful thinking. And then just blindly presume these to be 'bad'. It shows a lot of arrogance and narrow-mindedness on the atheist's part. And seems to do nothing more for them than stroke their egos.
If people act with decency, respect and inclusion towards others, I don't think it matters whether they're religious or not. Some of my close friends and some of my favorite relatives are believers.

But on the debate boards, I think it's fair to point out the impediments to supernatural beliefs being true in the sense of accurately reflecting objective reality.
 

firedragon

Veteran Member
But with believers, there seems to be a lot of bias that comes along with their beliefs. Also, for a lot of believers (perhaps even most of them?), I have observed that there is a lot of emotion involved. And along with that, there is an unreasonableness and an unwillingness to objectively examine or question their beliefs. Plus, it's something that I try to stay away from with family and friends.

This is exactly what believers think. Maybe excluding your last sentence which is not a very good generalisation in my opinion.
 

David Davidovich

Well-Known Member
I think in many cases, God is the ideal parent. The entity to emulate, learn from, identify with, to seek protection from. We find our real parents imperfect, our relationships imperfect, our life imperfect. There is the perfect life promised to us by the Abrahamic God at least.

Religion provides a way to make the ideal real to us.

Not all Gods are "perfect" but I suspect they still have some aspects of ideal attributes we look up to, admire. They are role models or sometimes adversaries in the narratives we create about our life and life in general.

Great answer, Nakosis. Because what you're saying seems to ring true because I have also observed with believers the whole thing about an ideal parent. Also, this seems to account for why so many believers get very defense about this "ideal parent." I mean, one could get some serious backlash from a believer concerning someone they've never met before, but whom they have only read information about.
 

David Davidovich

Well-Known Member
It seems as though people gravitate towards things that provide them with a sense of belonging and purpose. The structure of religion offers guidelines for how to operate on a daily basis. I think this is part of why we see many people recovering from addiction turn towards religion. My own brother relapsed on multiple occasions after being released from detox programs because he was unable to maintain consistency day to day without the structure of a program. Faith and religion provide him with a foundation to fall back on when things get tough.

I agree with this part of your post...

It seems to reduce the need for personal accountability however. Why evaluate your own behavior and take steps to change when you can leave it up to God?

However, I can't say that I agree with the last two sentences of your post.
 

PureX

Veteran Member
If people act with decency, respect and inclusion towards others, I don't think it matters whether they're religious or not. Some of my close friends and some of my favorite relatives are believers.

But on the debate boards, I think it's fair to point out the impediments to supernatural beliefs being true in the sense of accurately reflecting objective reality.
The problem is that your "objective reality" is just materialism by another name, and it does not reflect the full complexity and mystery of existence as we experience it. So the flaw you're trying to point out is really just the splinter in your own eye. But because you are a "true believer" in that splinter being the truth, you cannot understand any of what I'm saying. So what are the rest of us to do?
 

wellwisher

Well-Known Member
Hello. I'm new to this forum and I hope that this topic is in the correct forum. But I have a question particularly for nonbelievers, however, by no means it is a challenge question. Also, believers are free to post in this topic too.

So, what I would like to ask particularly to nonbelievers is: What is your view on the psychology/mechanics of religious belief and what exactly do you think that believers in God are technically believing in in regard to their desire, their love, their adherence to what they believe is God?

And the reason why I ask is because there are various versions of Christianity, which have contradictory and conflicting policies and doctrines, but yet, within these various versions of Christianity, there are people who are sincere and very serious about worshipping God and having a relationship with God. However, for the most part, the people in these various versions of Christianity believe that their way or interpretation of believing and worshipping God is correct while often times believing that Christianity outside of their version of Christianity is incorrect.

And to expound upon these ideas, it seems as if in reality, belief and devotion to God (for many) is believing in the highest principles in your mind that make you feel safe and hopeful about life, along with the highest principles in your mind that produce community and caring and good deeds for others and with others. And of course, this would be in contrast to the darkness and the hopelessness that exists in our world.

So, does anyone have any thoughts about this?

In Genesis, the story begins with creation happening in a natural way; divine will, leading to life and paradise. The story changes tone, from awe to disappointment, when Adam and Eve use their willpower and choice to eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. This causes death to come into the world. The rest of Genesis and even the Bible talks about a world that is more stressful and deadly, as human learn to become more and more unnatural, based on their subjective laws of good and evil behavior; doctrines of man, that try to replace natural instinct; will of God. God, via the prophets tries to intercede but the humans are not listening in whole but only in part.

The Bible and Genesis sets the contrast between natural human and artificial human. Natural human does not need to be taught, since their DNA based instincts are preprogrammed to be attuned to nature. The wolf does not need public school or divided political education to survive and maintain their status as an apex predator. This is all innate to each member; inherent in their brain's natural operating system. The integration of this self propelled internal based consciousness and nature is called paradise. Knowledge good and evil, on the other hand, is hot inherent to each of us, but rarer is learned from outside; culture, and is often subjective and unnatural, thereby breaking away from the natural world. Racism is not instinctive, but is learn behavior; outside based, based on subjective rules of good and evil. The natural man does not have this written in their DNA coding. The unnatural man often does.

In the story of Adam and Eve eating of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, God first warns them from their outside, not to eat. While Satan, from the outside, coaxes them, to eat. This shows the divergence from natural was based on externally learned knowledge of good and evil. Before that time, Adam and Eve were free to follow their instincts and make any choice possible in paradise, since all these choices were processed internally,integated with nature, via the main frame parts of their brains. Like the wolf all was good since it was innate to them. But once outside influence enters the picture, paradise goes to crap.

The faithful in all religions try to live their lives based on ancient teachings of natural human, primarily because the ancients could better differentiate natural man from artificial man. The division today is far more extreme than when this change in humans started to occur. The mass mind is harder to escape.

The atheists only believe in knowledge taught from the outside, such as science; seeing is believing. The will memorize the consensus of temporal learned thinking, and use that as an absolute. The philosophy of science is suspicious of internal learning to where this philosophy factors this out. But the religious who have experienced their own divine inner voice, are not convinced by the external dogma of the consensus, since it often defines unnatural as natural, based on manipulated fake news external consensus.

Faith is the belief in things not seen. This means the data is not externally materialized so it is easy to see; from the outside. Faith is is based on internal intuitions, feelings and thoughts that only the individual can perceive in the quiet of their minds. This was how natural man went about life, before spoken language was developed. Language, at one time was too crude to express elaborate ideas, that could be experienced by the individual, internally. When the first computer was first thought of, it would have freaked out those who depend on external seeing is believing, since there was no precedent or box to see. Those who trusted their inner voice and who could see the computer in its essence, became the one's who led the externalists who have to see to believe. Now they can pretend they know better.
 

blü 2

Veteran Member
Premium Member
The problem is that your "objective reality" is just materialism by another name
Indeed. I'm a card-carrying materialist, but only after careful consideration and some experience of the supernatural option.
and it does not reflect the full complexity and mystery of existence as we experience it.
My own view is that the answer to everything about humans and how they think and act is to be found in materialism ─ not least because there's no credible alternative.
So the flaw you're trying to point out is really just the splinter in your own eye.
I could reply in the same coin and say you can't tell what's real from what's imaginary.

If God is real, why is there no definition of God appropriate to a being with objective existence, such that if we found a real suspect we could determine whether it was God or not?
 

KWED

Scratching head, scratching knee
Right which means it serves an evolutionary advantage and probably isn't going away anytime.soon. so we may as well embrace our inherent religiousity and use it to our benefit.
Kinda like a spiritual appendix? Harmless but useless in most people, most of the time but occasionally dangerous and even deadly. We'd all be better off it it was removed early on as a matter of course, but this would be somewhat impractical.

Yes, I would tend to agree with you there.
 

PureX

Veteran Member
If God is real, why is there no definition of God appropriate to a being with objective existence, such that if we found a real suspect we could determine whether it was God or not?
God is not a physical phenomena. God is a metaphysical phenomena. Being a philosophical materialist, you cannot allow for the validity of this realm of existence. And that's the abject failure of materialism as a philosophical paradigm.
 

Sheldon

Veteran Member
God is not a physical phenomena. God is a metaphysical phenomena.

And you know this how exactly, only a bare subjective claim might as well be claiming you're King Arthur.

Being a philosophical materialist, you cannot allow for the validity of this realm of existence.

The absence of any pretence of evidence is why atheists disbelieve it more like.

And that's the abject failure of materialism as a philosophical paradigm.

Projection.
 

blü 2

Veteran Member
Premium Member
God is not a physical phenomena. God is a metaphysical phenomena. Being a philosophical materialist, you cannot allow for the validity of this realm of existence. And that's the abject failure of materialism as a philosophical paradigm.
I'm happy for you to give me, or refer me to, any satisfactory demonstration that "metaphysical phenomena" of this supernatural kind occur outside of the individual's brain ie have objective existence, are real.

I don't know of any.
 

David Davidovich

Well-Known Member
Humans, like most animals, are very prone to superstitious thinking.
Which is to say, they have a tendency to engage in cognition errors like the false positive. They also have a tendency to infuse agency in seemingly random events. These are survival mechanisms from back in the day when being hunted down by dangerous predators was a very real and very daily concern.

The classic example being a sound coming from the bushes. Is it just the wind? Or a dangerous predator sneaking up on you?

If you assume it is a predator and run - then you live in case it IS a dangerous predator. If it isn't a dangerous predator out to get you, then you have just engaged in a type 2 cognition error: the false positive.

If you don't assume it is a predator and it turns out to be one, then you are lunch.

This tendency of infusing agency in seemingly random events + being prone to cognition errors, seems to be the root cause of superstitious beliefs. Which includes religion.

We see this behavior of cognition errors even in pigeons.



Well, the root cause of the tendency of superstition is explained above.
Obviously, the fill in the rest of the details, a whole bunch of other stuff comes into it as well. Like culture and environmental factors. For example, people living on plateau's like Tibet -far far away from any sea- will likely not be concerned with sea-gods like Poseidon.



I would expect people to come up with all kinds of different beliefs and variations of those different beliefs. The root cause of all of them is the same (explained above). The actual content is cultural, environmental and left over to the imagination of the people themselves to "fill in the blanks" to feed their own superstition.

And that is consistent with what we see in the world. Thousands of gods. Very very different gods. Most, if not all, with their own creation myths and peculiarities.

If religions are made up and a result of superstitious thinking, then that is exactly what I would expect.

I liked your post, however, I didn't realize that other animals were prone to superstitious thinking. Also, I looked up information about the pigeon and got a lot of results for it, however, I didn't want to take the time to read those studies. However, do you know of any other studies with other animals? And if so, could you elaborate on that a little?
 
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