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Religious representations are sustained by a whole variety of different systems

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Do people know what their religious concepts are? This may seem an absurd question, but it is in fact an important question in the psychology of religion, whose true answer is probably in the negative.

Why Is Religion Natural?

Richard Evans Lee
June 24, 2004 •
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"Recent findings in psychology, anthropology, and neuroscience offer a more empirical approach, focused on the mental machinery activated in acquiring and representing religious concepts.........To sum up, we can explain human sensitivity to particular kinds of supernatural concepts as a by-product of the way human minds operate in ordinary, non-religious contexts. Because our assumptions about fundamental categories like person, artifact, animal, etc., are so entrenched, violations of these assumptions create salient and memorable concepts. " I guess I don't really understand the author's line of reason here; to me it seems like religion is more of a social convention than it is a biological or neurological pre-determined behavior. If religious tendancies were based in biology or neurology, wouldn't it make sense statistically that people who were raised "in a box" away from any society or any other people who had been exposed to religion or religious concepts would tend to reach a belief about "supernatural" things that incorporates their own "religious" ideas? What studies were used in this unbiased editorial that could provide such evidence? Doesn't this also imply that people could be bred for religious beliefs, if somehow their brains were predisposed to religion? Surely there would be some deviation in the genetics of this characteristic that might cause some people to exhibit different tendancies towards religion, thus possibly granting that "natural selection" might change/enhance these characteristics much like the selective breeding of dogs? "To some extent, the situation is similar to domains where science has clearly demonstrated the limits or falsity of our common intuitions. We now know that solid objects are largely made up of empty space, that our minds are only billions of neurons firing in ordered ways, that some physical processes can go backwards in time, that species do not have an eternal essence, that gravitation is a curvature of space-time." There is a problem here; the author is basing information for this article on a presupposition that science can prove things absolutely. For example, "clearly demonstrated" really means "statistically probable". There are no absolutes in science, only statistical probabilities. This is something that does not get enough coverage when dealing with science; once scientists agree that a theory is proven, the general public takes this as gospel. There is a large difference: in order to prove an absolute, you would have to define what is not possible. To my knowledge humans cannot yet do this. Don't get me wrong on this - science is very useful, and it's probabilities prove very useful to humans. But you must remember that scientic laws are based on the outcome probability of observed experiments; a lot of the time the probability is very high, but we can not forget about that percentage, no matter how small it looks, that there could be another outcome. I don't think there are any scientists who can prove this otherwise, though many would argue whole heartedly about it. These are the SAME types of scientists who had VERY GOOD reason to believe that the Earth was flat a long time ago - and held that belief until it was proven otherwise. Now that seems like a silly comparison, but when you think about the complexity of what scientists today study, quantum physics, biology, etc., you have to keep in mind that our understanding of these things could fundementally change at the next revolutionary breakthrough, just like they did when Columbus didn't sail off the side of the Earth. There could be a time in the future where scientists decide that the earth is not round - we can't prove that there aren't possibilities that we don't yet know of. "In a sense, the cognitive study of religion ends up justifying a common intuition, best expressed by Jonathan Swift's dictum that "you do not reason a man out of something he was not reasoned into." I don't know how there could any "common intuition" other than instinct. To me common intuition sounds like a similar phrase "common sense". Common sense is nothing without an ability to learn and a stimulus to teach. There's nothing predisposed in your biology or neurology that gives you a "base set of cognative reasoning". How would "common intuition" differ? My complete digestion system including my mouth works fine, but If I've never eaten or drank before, never seen food or beverage in a form other than what goes into my feeding tube, I've never seen anybody eat or drink anything, I've never been told about eating or drinking, I've always been nourished directly into my stomach thru a tube, and I have never tasted anything, will I know what to do with a glass of water when I'm thirsty? Most of us wouldn't even think twice about this - it's almost below common sense. A baby doesn't know that a bottle of water will quench it's thirst until it experiences it, until it learns. Cheers, D

Posted by: Dan | June 25, 2004 6:05 PM

How do you feel?

Feel free to share your feelings about Religious representations are sustained by a whole variety of different systems. Please stick to the theme of the entry. Disagreement is fine. Homophobia, racism, and kindred expressions of hatred will be deleted. This site is one of my hobbies. I genuinely enjoy hearing from people and hate moderating or killing comments. Forthright disagreement is fine as long as it is civil.
My thanks,
Richard

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