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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Maybe because they like it.  It feels good.  Most everyone else they know does it.

Do they really believe?  I doubt it.  I can see why people believed it 2,000 years ago, but how can anyone these days possibly believe that long ago, a guy who was actually God, had a mother who was a virgin.  He was later died by hanging on a cross, then came back to life and ultimately went up to the sky (heaven) to live with his father (God) and if you believe that, you’ll get to live forever just like him.   If you don’t, then you’ll burn forever, instead.

It’s a story, obviously.

There’s a great new 15 min video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KrdgVM0WGKg  on “Why intelligent people are leaving religion”. You can play it at high speed.

Here’s how it starts: “It’s becoming more common now.  You meet people who followed every rule and custom and they tell you ‘I don’t really believe anymore.’   They’re not angry about it.  They just tell you:  ‘I just left.’ Many are well read and curious people. People who ask questions.  People who listen carefully to the answers.”  
[/quote]

I stay religious because I think it’s true. A few points:

1. I do not the modern quasi-consensus that “science” is sufficient to explain the nature of reality. Scientists tend to be really smart, so much so that most of the population is incapable of joining their ranks and understanding the things that they understand. If human intelligence is a continuum (and it is) and if only some people are smart enough to understand the stuff that as a global community currently understand, wouldn’t it follow that there are some truths that lie beyond the aptitude of our best and brightest? Assuming to the contrary is an exercise in faith.

2. Much of religion feels absurd, but that is a side effect. The world it purports to explain is absurd. We wake up here and depart, never to return without any way of testing what (if anything) lies beyond.

3. Humans appear hardwired to seek out a divinity, food, water, sex, and sleep. Four of those things are exist beyond dispute.

4. Most of the world sensibly assumed that, just as most things are made by multiple people, so too were we made by multiple gods. Virtually the only countervailing hypothesis was Abrahamic monotheism. Call it luck if you will, but that other hypothesis branched out from one held by a loose confederation of tribes in the ancient near east into a millennia-enduring global religious force to be reckoned with.

I think Christianity is true, and I actually, really believe it. [/quote]

Obviously people aren't "hardwired to seek out a divinity." Educated people don't. The vast majority of people who are religious were brainwashed at a young age- they didn't seek it out. And education significantly increases the chance that someone will drop their religion later in life.[/quote]
Then why are you here? Why do you care so  much? What is missing from your life that you have to come.to DCUM and call people uneducated? [/quote]

The pp claimed that "Humans appear hardwired to seek out a divinity, food, water, sex, and sleep." That's obviously absurd.[/quote]

I am unsure how it’s even false, much less absurd[/quote]

Because educated societies and individuals certainly don't "seek out divinity."[/quote]

Which societies in history existed without a belief in a “divinity”? [/quote]

Look around at educated, western civilizations today.[/quote]

Um, they all include a faith tradition. [/quote]

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."

[b]People are hardwired to seek explanations for their surroundings. When people weren't educated, that meant turning to religion.[/b] Religion was culturally engrained at that point, but without that original driver, people have naturally moved away. And will continue to do so.[/quote]

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. [/quote]

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.[/quote]

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. [/quote]

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.[/quote]

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