Why do people stay religious?
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Anonymous
Their lack of contextual sophistication and the assumptions reflected in their statements, such as that "religious people" ALL believe in biblical inerrancy, practice evangelism, go to church, etc. |
Anonymous
How’s about when you find one of those here you point them out? Cause until then I call BS. |
Anonymous
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They are stupid, in a cult or insecure.
Religion is indoctrination ie a cult always has been a grift/scam |
Anonymous
I'm sure there is an atheist sub-Reddit. The religious discussions are better on Reddit, anyway. |
Anonymous
And churches in those countries are all rapidly losing members as the earlier generations die off. That wouldn't be happening if humans were "hardwired" to "seek out divinity." People are hardwired to seek explanations for their surroundings. When people weren't educated, that meant turning to religion. Religion was culturally engrained at that point, but without that original driver, people have naturally moved away. And will continue to do so. |
Anonymous
I’m the poster who referred to hard wiring. Despite purporting to disagree with me, the bolded is precisely my point. I know you look down on both the uneducated and the religious, but you will (I hope!) concede our humanity. |
Anonymous
That isn't the same as "seeking divinity." And modern, educated societies demonstrate that. As education has increased, people have turned to religion less. That's why some of the more fundamentalist sects are hostile to science. |
Anonymous
To suggest (as you said) that being “hardwired” to “turn[] to religion” “isn’t the same as ‘seeking divinity’” is so hard to make sense of that I think (no offense) you’re just kind of backed into a corner and saying stuff. It’s the rare religion that doesn’t contemplate a divinity. In any event, I can tell that you’re someone who takes a certain degree of pride in intellectual sophistication, so I’ll offer this: I’m not sure if you’re familiar with what geneticists call single nucleotide polymorphisms, but, if not, they’re basically places in common genes where a nucleotide—that is, the molecule that builds the DNA of a particular gene (you may remember “T”, “A”, “G”, and “C” from high school biology)— is replaced with a different nucleotide. Scientists have identified a number of SNPs (primarily relating to genes that affect dopamine and serotonin) that anre associated with increases in religious behaviors. (I believe there is also at least one non-SNP polymorphism that is similar, but I don’t have a good enough handle on genetics to know how that works.) Now I’m certainly not saying that these polymorphisms are the *cause* of religion—rather, I’m saying that there are modest though recurring signs of a genetic mechanism underlying religion, sort of like genetic smoke to a fire of an actual cause of religiosity. But when you combine that fact with the fact that religion is just really, really common, it really just beggars belief to say that the practice is nothing more than the backward superstitions of people who aren’t as smart as sururbanite Washingtonians. |
Anonymous
As you yourself admit "I don’t have a good enough handle on genetics to know how that works", so please don't try here. There are entire books dedicated to explaining the complex dynamics of genetics and behavior. Humans are not hard-wired to seek out divinity. We do see faces in clouds, inanimate objects, or other random patterns and it is called pareidolia. It is a common psychological occurrence and a type of apophenia, which is the tendency to find meaningful connections between unrelated things. Neuroscientists suggest that pareidolia is not a late cognitive reinterpretation, but a relatively early process involving the same part of the brain that we use for recognizing real faces. |
Anonymous
That’s a neat fact, and I’m not disputing it, but if it is your position that no scientific research posits a connection between genetic polymorphism and religiosity, you’re simply wrong on the facts. A quick search on PubMed for DRD2 will yield a 2009 study in like 30 seconds. And the relationship between VMAT2 and religiosity is so widely discussed (albeit controversial) that it’s on Wikipedia. While I agree that these studies don’t establish a biological basis for reality, the notion that they can all be casually dismissed as utterly without foundation is just anti-science. You might not like religion, and you might think it’s beneath you, but the better read of the evidence is that it’s not a fluke. I’m not really in the business of telling atheists how to pick their fights, but a more satisfying response would be to suggest that it’s an evolutionary mechanism for promoting social cohesion. Of course, that would run you headlong into the follow-on conclusion that its pursuit is hard-wired into us like an urge to eat, sleep, and procreate. All that said, I’m glad you’re wrestling with this stuff. I hope your mind (and heart) are open. |
Anonymous
You make a lot of unsupported conclusions and are misconstruing information to support your preconceived narrative. Even Hamer has been heavily criticized, as Zimmer said, "A Gene That Accounts for Less Than One Percent of the Variance Found in Scores on Psychological Questionnaires Designed to Measure a Factor Called Self-Transcendence, Which Can Signify Everything from Belonging to the Green Party to Believing in ESP, According to One Unpublished, Unreplicated Study." There are arguments to how beliefs and culture intermix to promote social cohesion and their linkages with genetics (as I said earlier, entire books on these topics), but it doesn't prove that a divinity is real or that we are hard-wired to seek out one. |