What is the Most Basic Explanation for Religious Behavior?

[T.G.G. Moogly]

When I was younger I would say one cause for religious behavior was simply that people believed in gods or supernatural, magical things. The other cause for religious behavior was that people simply wished to belong to a community which conferred a survival advantage in some way. Those were the two most basic explanations in my experience.

Wishing to survive is certainly understandable, and if I were forced to choose between practicing religious behavior or being killed I'd certainly pretend to believe that this stuff was real enough, all things being equal. But that would not make me a believer, only an actor, but would still explain my religious behavior to an otherwise uninformed observer. I would still think this stuff was hokey and irrational, but I'd tow the party line, even fight for the group against other groups to defend the group I believed was best for my survival.

But if I really believed this stuff was real that would constitute a very different reason for engaging in religious behavior, and to me that difference would have to be internal, something physical, biological. In short, my brain would be different.

And that's where I am today, I live with the knowledge that I cannot bring myself to believe any religious claims because my brain is different. I've observed enough behavior in humans to feel very strongly about this conclusion. I want to understand how it is different but for now I'm intellectually satisfied with my conclusion.

Do you think I am correct in coming to this conclusion?

 

[Tom Sawyer]

I think that, most generally, it comes down to attempts to make sense of the universe. We understand people and how we interact with each other and what motivates us to do the things that we do. It's an easy task to then extend those thought processes to inanimate objects and events and work off of the assumption that they operate the same way.

When Frank pisses off Bob, Bob hits him over the head with an axe. Therefore, when a deluge of water comes out of the sky and drowns Ed, it's not a huge leap to assume that Ed had pissed off someone up in the sky. If you give Frank some of your surplus food and women, there's a greater chance that he stays happy and doesn't hit you over the head with his axe as well. Therefore, it's not a huge leap to assume that if you make some offerings to the guy up in the sky, he'll stay happy and not drown you as well.

 

[Rayschism]

People want to feel important, special and part of something that is bigger than them, and religion can capitalize on those feelings.

Because when you're part of a higher power, then you are a higher power, and being special means you can't do anything wrong.

 

[bilby]

Children mimic the adults they trust; And they trust the adults who they encounter the most often - usually their parents, and perhaps some schoolteachers and extended family members.

If Ma and Pa go to church every Sunday, pray each night before bed (and/or insist that their kids do), then that's how things are done, and doing otherwise is 'wrong'.

The same thing applies to trivial stuff - whether or not they keep the butter in the fridge; which way they hang the toilet rolls; what condiments (if any) they use with any given food; How they dress; any number of customs, manners, rituals and routines.

By the time children are old enough to actually reason about these behaviours, the habits are already hard to break, and won't be broken without some effort and some external influence to do so - which might simply be peer pressure leading to a shift from doing what the parents do, to doing what the cool kids do, with no particularly rational basis for the new behavours any more than there was for the old.

Thinking is hard. Many people simply never bother to do it - after all, someone else will generally do it for you.

 

[Cycad]

Fear of death.

 

[Juma]

The lure of Magical thinking

 

[sinkorswim]

The effectiveness of pervasive and subtle conditioning from birth.

Sent from my SM-T550 using Tapatalk

 

[Eldarion Lathria]

Everybody else does it, so I must too.

Eldarion Lathria

 

[rousseau]

It's a combination of things:

1) First, people wanted to understand the world they lived in in lieu of real scientific understanding, in a pre-scientific world
2) Various religions became almost universally accepted throughout history, because to most adherents they're an easy to understand answer, and socially advantageous to follow
3) Nowadays that religious social pressure causes a bit of stagnancy to religions, it's still passed through generations, and it's still a nice answer for many people

It's easy to forget that it's only been in the last few hundred years that anyone knew pretty much anything about how the world worked. The Origin of Species wasn't published until 1859, and the theory of evolution even today isn't widely accepted. And so it wasn't until the past little while that there was even much of a mechanism of undermining religion.

Thing is, though, usually once people realize the truth of something they accept it, and are adamant about passing that truth on, so over time religion should become thinner and thinner, and even those people who would have been willing adherents will be forced to see the truth.

 

[DBT]

''What is the Most Basic Explanation for Religious Behavior?''

Fear and Hope. Which builds a foundation for Faith.

 

[Will Wiley]

Best trick question for a while

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

Best trick question for a while

I'm confused by your response.

I've thought of all the responses so far and can't say I disagree with any of them. I realize, however, that there was a time in my life when I actually did believe in impossible things like magic and religious claims. These beliefs would make me pretend that those impossible things were real. But I cannot do that anymore so something is different.

My answer is that that difference must be physical and in the brain and I'd like to be able to quantify it somehow. When a kid goes from knowing that santa or the tooth fairy are real to knowing that santa and the tooth fairy are pretend something physical has changed in that kid's brain.

I have a close family member who became very religious when she began having psychotic episodes. When those psychotic episodes began to diminish so did her religious behavior and claims. This tells me something physical was changing in the brain, more than simply collecting and storing information from experiences, at least initially.

 

[ideologyhunter]

I've had several close relatives who expressed what I think of as mooshy Christianity (a combination of loosey-goosey and mushy.) That is, they have all the platitudes; they were won over by a media personality like Billy Graham of Kathryn Kuhlman, and it was simply a feel-good experience. Didn't take a lot of thought or commitment. Didn't require Bible reading. They clung to sound bites that their media heroes would give them. In one case, it was a crush on the local pastor. Complete disconnect (and most likely, lack of awareness) with/of the Biblical crudities, contradictions, absurdities, atrocities that freethinkers like me live for. Religion made them feel good and fed their idealistic side. They were, in a cliched but true sense, Good People. But I think they were GP's irrespective of religion.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

I've had several close relatives who expressed what I think of as mooshy Christianity (a combination of loosey-goosey and mushy.) That is, they have all the platitudes; they were won over by a media personality like Billy Graham of Kathryn Kuhlman, and it was simply a feel-good experience. Didn't take a lot of thought or commitment. Didn't require Bible reading. They clung to sound bites that their media heroes would give them. In one case, it was a crush on the local pastor. Complete disconnect (and most likely, lack of awareness) with/of the Biblical crudities, contradictions, absurdities, atrocities that freethinkers like me live for. Religion made them feel good and fed their idealistic side. They were, in a cliched but true sense, Good People. But I think they were GP's irrespective of religion.

The type that sees a flower or a baby or a sunset and states, "Look at that, there must be a god." But they don't say the same thing when a kid gets blown to bits with a pipe bomb, or starves to death, or dies of cancer at two years.

 

[Underseer]

When I was younger I would say one cause for religious behavior was simply that people believed in gods or supernatural, magical things. The other cause for religious behavior was that people simply wished to belong to a community which conferred a survival advantage in some way. Those were the two most basic explanations in my experience.

Wishing to survive is certainly understandable, and if I were forced to choose between practicing religious behavior or being killed I'd certainly pretend to believe that this stuff was real enough, all things being equal. But that would not make me a believer, only an actor, but would still explain my religious behavior to an otherwise uninformed observer. I would still think this stuff was hokey and irrational, but I'd tow the party line, even fight for the group against other groups to defend the group I believed was best for my survival.

But if I really believed this stuff was real that would constitute a very different reason for engaging in religious behavior, and to me that difference would have to be internal, something physical, biological. In short, my brain would be different.

And that's where I am today, I live with the knowledge that I cannot bring myself to believe any religious claims because my brain is different. I've observed enough behavior in humans to feel very strongly about this conclusion. I want to understand how it is different but for now I'm intellectually satisfied with my conclusion.

Do you think I am correct in coming to this conclusion?

Why the hell are you wasting time and energy on speculation on this topic when there is actual science being done?

Example:


If you're curious, stop speculating and hit Google to see what research has been done on this topic!

 

[iolo]

When I was younger I would say one cause for religious behavior was simply that people believed in gods or supernatural, magical things. The other cause for religious behavior was that people simply wished to belong to a community which conferred a survival advantage in some way. Those were the two most basic explanations in my experience.

Wishing to survive is certainly understandable, and if I were forced to choose between practicing religious behavior or being killed I'd certainly pretend to believe that this stuff was real enough, all things being equal. But that would not make me a believer, only an actor, but would still explain my religious behavior to an otherwise uninformed observer. I would still think this stuff was hokey and irrational, but I'd tow the party line, even fight for the group against other groups to defend the group I believed was best for my survival.

But if I really believed this stuff was real that would constitute a very different reason for engaging in religious behavior, and to me that difference would have to be internal, something physical, biological. In short, my brain would be different.

And that's where I am today, I live with the knowledge that I cannot bring myself to believe any religious claims because my brain is different. I've observed enough behavior in humans to feel very strongly about this conclusion. I want to understand how it is different but for now I'm intellectually satisfied with my conclusion.

Do you think I am correct in coming to this conclusion?

I'd say it depended very much on the position of a particular religion in a particular society, but that, in general, it is a matter of group solidarity and habit, and, in America, India and the like, of simple commercial advantage.

 

[Jobar]

Underseer, thanks very much for linking to that video. It brings together many different lines of research in a wonderfully clear manner.

 

[braces_for_impact]

I think a misplaced theory of mind has a lot to do with it as well. It comes to us so easily and naturally to imbue intent to objects and/or circumstances.

I think I have an inkling where you're coming from joedad. I remember when I was a Christian believer, and when I believed in all sorts of nonsense things that I no longer believe. Aliens visiting our planet, the Bermuda Triangle, Ghosts and Demons and Angels and so many other things. In one way I remember that fuzzy thinking, and the trains of thought and emotions and ignorance that produced them. In another way it's very hard for me to connect to that person that I used to be.

I can almost remember the moment my mind "clicked". I had been led to the Secular Web by an article about Jesus Mythecism. I ended up reading a series of articles about critical thinking. It actually may have taken a bit longer, but when I fired up my old 700mhz computer that day I was a Christian, and by the time I had closed down my dial up connection I was an atheist.

Those articles. They made so much sense. They had concrete examples, and detailed explanations showing why and how these rules worked to help us form more informed opinions about subjects and to think clearly by learning how to spot and ultimately reject logical fallacies. Although I had never before encountered critical thought I devoured this stuff, and it seemed so damn self evidently true. There wasn't any nagging doubts or weird, walled off exceptions or speculation. I could immediately see the value of applying these techniques to my every day experience, even my religion and then - oops! - I was an atheist. I had to be, because if I wasn't then I had to admit that I really was only selectively applying the rules of critical thinking to certain areas of my life, and frankly, that didn't make sense. Even while I found myself agreeing with ideas that made me uncomfortable, I also found those ideas mentally satisfying. I felt like a guy that was hungry his whole life, and had nothing to eat but gruel, and suddenly found himself in front of a cornucopia of delicious food.

I went back to my religious friends and colleagues and life, and as I discussed these things, I watched in amazement as I started to spot these logical fallacies EVERYWHERE.

Doubtless others have read the same words I did; experienced the same things I did, and for some reason or another it did not make the same impact it did with me. So my newer self cannot connect well with my older self, and my older self cannot fathom what it's like to know what I now know. It was really an amazing experience. It did feel like some kind of physical change happened inside my brain. I've always likened it to the novel Flowers for Algernon.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

I think a misplaced theory of mind has a lot to do with it as well. It comes to us so easily and naturally to imbue intent to objects and/or circumstances.

I think I have an inkling where you're coming from joedad. I remember when I was a Christian believer, and when I believed in all sorts of nonsense things that I no longer believe. Aliens visiting our planet, the Bermuda Triangle, Ghosts and Demons and Angels and so many other things. In one way I remember that fuzzy thinking, and the trains of thought and emotions and ignorance that produced them. In another way it's very hard for me to connect to that person that I used to be.

I can almost remember the moment my mind "clicked". I had been led to the Secular Web by an article about Jesus Mythecism. I ended up reading a series of articles about critical thinking. It actually may have taken a bit longer, but when I fired up my old 700mhz computer that day I was a Christian, and by the time I had closed down my dial up connection I was an atheist.

Those articles. They made so much sense. They had concrete examples, and detailed explanations showing why and how these rules worked to help us form more informed opinions about subjects and to think clearly by learning how to spot and ultimately reject logical fallacies. Although I had never before encountered critical thought I devoured this stuff, and it seemed so damn self evidently true. There wasn't any nagging doubts or weird, walled off exceptions or speculation. I could immediately see the value of applying these techniques to my every day experience, even my religion and then - oops! - I was an atheist. I had to be, because if I wasn't then I had to admit that I really was only selectively applying the rules of critical thinking to certain areas of my life, and frankly, that didn't make sense. Even while I found myself agreeing with ideas that made me uncomfortable, I also found those ideas mentally satisfying. I felt like a guy that was hungry his whole life, and had nothing to eat but gruel, and suddenly found himself in front of a cornucopia of delicious food.

I went back to my religious friends and colleagues and life, and as I discussed these things, I watched in amazement as I started to spot these logical fallacies EVERYWHERE.

Doubtless others have read the same words I did; experienced the same things I did, and for some reason or another it did not make the same impact it did with me. So my newer self cannot connect well with my older self, and my older self cannot fathom what it's like to know what I now know. It was really an amazing experience. It did feel like some kind of physical change happened inside my brain. I've always likened it to the novel Flowers for Algernon.

It's exactly that way.

I have watched underseer's video and perhaps I'm being a bit anal looking for something more specific, something local in the brain that can be quantified. I'm literally just curious as to how the hell my brain can be the way it is and a sibling's can be all gushy about an alleged space zombie from a time of great ignorance. Mine changed, their's did not. I know natural selection continues to work, to serve up new recipes for survival, but essentially I've been able to de-emotionalize my life to a large degree when someone else hasn't even a clue about what is driving his or her decision making. Structurally, our brains must be quantifiably different, same as people are different on the outside.

 

[Thomas II]