What is the Most Basic Explanation for Religious Behavior?

[iolo]

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.

I think that religious survivals are easily explained - what is interesting is changes. I think that, outside a thinking minority, they occur in response to impressive behaviour, like the courageous martyrdoms of Christians in Rome compared with the collapsing pagan pomposity, or, on a lower level, the courage of pacifists in the First War compared with the servile obedience of the 'heroes', with very bad effects on religious belief generally, particularly Nonconformist, thinking ones. As beliefs turn bad (Stalinism, for instance, destroying communism), people switch off. Buddhism is doing well at the moment because (till they started to show themselves up in Sri Lanka and Burma) Buddhists tended to behave better. Bliar and his dogs have done terrible things for the Labour Party in the UK, to dreadful effect, Brexit, for instance - while priests mucking about with children is digging a huge hole under RC superstition nearly everywhere.

 

[TSwizzle]

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?

Isn't it more like that you have matured ? Or you had an epiphany ?

 

[abaddon]

Isn't it more like that you have matured ? Or you had an epiphany ?

Yeah but it sounds more sciencey to include "brain" in there somewhere when discussing some changed values.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

Isn't it more like that you have matured ? Or you had an epiphany ?

Yeah but it sounds more sciencey to include "brain" in there somewhere when discussing some changed values.

Right. There has to be a physical quantifiable difference, same as any other characteristic(s) that distinguishes among people. Why would an inclination to be religious not have a physical basis same as any other characteristic or behavior? And to me it makes sense to say it's something in the brain.

 

[TSwizzle]

Yeah but it sounds more sciencey to include "brain" in there somewhere when discussing some changed values.

Right. There has to be a physical quantifiable difference, same as any other characteristic(s) that distinguishes among people. Why would an inclination to be religious not have a physical basis same as any other characteristic or behavior? And to me it makes sense to say it's something in the brain.

Fair enough. You could probably put it down to a chemical change in the brain somewhere.