Call it God; call it superstition; call it, as Atran does, “belief in hope beyond reason” — whatever you call it, there seems an inherent human drive to believe in something transcendent, unfathomable and otherworldly, something beyond the reach or understanding of science. “Why do we cross our fingers during turbulence, even the most atheistic among us?” asked Atran when we spoke at his Upper West Side pied-à-terre in January. Atran, who is 55, is an anthropologist at the National Center for Scientific Research in Paris, with joint appointments at the University of Michigan and the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York. His research interests include cognitive science and evolutionary biology, and sometimes he presents students with a wooden box that he pretends is an African relic. “If you have negative sentiments toward religion,” he tells them, “the box will destroy whatever you put inside it.” Many of his students say they doubt the existence of God, but in this demonstration they act as if they believe in something. Put your pencil into the magic box, he tells them, and the nonbelievers do so blithely. Put in your driver’s license, he says, and most do, but only after significant hesitation. And when he tells them to put in their hands, few will.

If they don’t believe in God, what exactly are they afraid of?
http://select.nytimes.com/preview/2007/03/04/magazine/1154667044060.html?pagewanted=1&adxnnlx=1198710316-MhJjps4Euv5SW9ugcR4beQ


How did humans come to believe in a higher power? That is the topic of this discussion.

Are human beings born with an innate sense of belief? Is the notion of belief a evolutionary byproduct? Do we, as humans, need to believe in the supernatural? Was it fear that led to early man to believe in higher powers? These questions point out the differences of opinion in how and when the belief in a supernatural entity came into being.

Lost in the hullabaloo over the neo-atheists is a quieter and potentially more illuminating debate. It is taking place not between science and religion but within science itself, specifically among the scientists studying the evolution of religion. These scholars tend to agree on one point: that religious belief is an outgrowth of brain architecture that evolved during early human history. What they disagree about is why a tendency to believe evolved, whether it was because belief itself was adaptive or because it was just an evolutionary byproduct, a mere consequence of some other adaptation in the evolution of the human brain.

Are human beings primed for belief? Were we born with an innate sense of belief in God(s)? Is it a cognitive tool? Is it a possible by-product of?

Agent detection evolved because assuming the presence of an agent — which is jargon for any creature with volitional, independent behavior — is more adaptive than assuming its absence. If you are a caveman on the savannah, you are better off presuming that the motion you detect out of the corner of your eye is an agent and something to run from, even if you are wrong. If it turns out to have been just the rustling of leaves, you are still alive; if what you took to be leaves rustling was really a hyena about to pounce, you are dead.

A classic experiment from the 1940s by the psychologists Fritz Heider and Marianne Simmel suggested that imputing agency is so automatic that people may do it even for geometric shapes. For the experiment, subjects watched a film of triangles and circles moving around. When asked what they had been watching, the subjects used words like “chase” and “capture.” They did not just see the random movement of shapes on a screen; they saw pursuit, planning, escape.

So if there is motion just out of our line of sight, we presume it is caused by an agent, an animal or person with the ability to move independently. This usually operates in one direction only; lots of people mistake a rock for a bear, but almost no one mistakes a bear for a rock.

Does this mean "our brains are primed for it, ready to presume the presence of agents even when such presence confounds logic? (http://select.nytimes.com/preview/2007/03/04/magazine/1154667044060.html?pagewanted=4&adxnnlx=1198710316-MhJjps4Euv5SW9ugcR4beQ)"

The article linked in this thread provides some interesting insights into the evolution of belief.

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Note, this thread is to discuss how humans came to believe in the supernatural and God(s) or the evolution of belief, not whether they (deities) exist or not. If you wish to discuss whether God exists or not, please do so in the Religion forum.

I mistook a bear for a tree stump, once - but was somehow drawn to stare at that tree stump. I don't believe that people never mistake bears for rocks, deer for tree branches, alligators for logs, etc.

On the other hand, it's a truism of hiking in rattler country that you will sometimes mistake a grasshopper wing-rattle for a rattlesnake, but never the other way around.

I don't see the necessary connection between these ascriptions of agency and gods, or anything else supernatural. We are, and have been for many hundreds of thousands of years, surrounded by natural agencies of great complexity and consequence. There's nothing necessarily supernatural about fate, karma, luck, monsters, dangerous predators, the character or spirit of a place (say a spring), etc.

These people underestimate the natural world that we and our evolutionary ancestors have lived in, I think.

Not that this natural tendency to be alert for agency and pattern cannot be bent to gods, etc, - just that it's not necessary. And from the pattern of theistic belief that we observe, one might call it a degradation or convenient simplification fitted to town and agricultural life, a relatively barren environment leading (as is common in sensory deprivation) to hallucination and baroque dreams.

The benefits of a properly guided god concept are obvious for agricultural peoples, who must often delay gratification and forswear immediate personal reward for months, even years, for the unspecified good of the community as a whole.

How did humans come to believe in a higher power? That is the topic of this discussion. Are human beings born with an innate sense of belief? Is the notion of belief a evolutionary byproduct?Jung says yes. He identified a whole portfolio of "archetypes," which are beliefs, rituals, motifs, images, dreams, stories, etc. that occur in nearly all cultures in nearly all eras.

Some of them make so much evolutionary sense that we don't even question them. People instinctively flee if a large animal approaches that has both eyes on the front of his head, but not if they're on the side. They do this when they're much too young to have been taught that eye placement is the key difference between predators and the herbivores they prey on. This comes in handy when you're a baby caveman wandering in the primeval forest, but isn't much help when you're trying to enjoy a day at the zoo. Movie producers take advantage of this and build fantasy creatures custom-designed to invoke our fear instinct.

Others don't make any sense. Why does almost every culture have a legend about a city that vanished under the ocean, a flood that covered the entire planet, or a dead human or other creature that returned to life?

Perhaps at one time our ancestors lived in conditions we can't imagine, and those were actually survival traits. Only people who had those hard-wired synapses survived to breed. Or perhaps it was an accident due to a genetic bottleneck like Lucy. But those are archetypes: Instinctive beliefs. They are strong, in many cases stronger than things we learn from teaching or experience, because they "feel" true.

A religion is a collection of archetypes, embellished with stories that weave them together into something that seems coherent.Do we, as humans, need to believe in the supernatural? Was it fear that led to early man to believe in higher powers?Perhaps this was once true. As I said, the evolutionary origin of archetypes which we now can't understand is difficult to postulate. But like many instincts, they now work against us. The best example is our pack-social instinct. We're programmed to be comfortable living in small extended-family groups of hunter-gatherers who have known each other since birth and trust and care for each other instinctively. This instinct is now a liability as we live in cities surrounded by total strangers, and our tribalism continually threatens to destroy civilization.

Belief in the supernatural similarly holds us back. Science is the thesis that the natural universe is a closed system, a thesis that has been successfully peer-reviewed for half a millennium. Our atavistic hunch that there's something more out there works against the advancement of science, with today's America as a prime example.

Others don't make any sense. Why does almost every culture have a legend about a city that vanished under the ocean, a flood that covered the entire planet, There seems to be some archeological evidence that an event of this nature (much more local though) happened about 7500 years ago. Specifically, the Black Sea had been a fresh water lake much below sea level. At this time the Bosporus broke open and the Lake quickly rose because of the Mediterranean water rushing in. Thiis lead to flood stories among all the cultures of people around the Black sea.

Are human beings born with an innate sense of belief? NO

Is the notion of belief a evolutionary byproduct? NO

Do we, as humans, need to believe in the supernatural? NO

Was it fear that led to early man to believe in higher powers? Perhaps

These questions point out the differences of opinion in how and when the belief in a supernatural entity came into being.

What if there are supernatural entities roaming the galaxy. From science we know that Drake equation is a possibility....

What if there are supernatural entities roaming the galaxy. From science we know that Drake equation is a possibility....

Isn't the Drake equation an estimate of the existence of intelligent life outside the earth (not supernatural)?

Isn't the Drake equation an estimate of the existence of intelligent life outside the earth (not supernatural)?

An intelligent life that is only 10,000 years advanced in science and technology will look like supernaturals to us. Imagine a million years advanced...and the universe is a lot older...

i wish to prove my undimness by laying waste to the postage here
give me the green light, bells

My take is that it's related to (innate) survival behaviour, and the associated "agency detection", and with our group nature. At least those three.

We assign something to group knowledge and observation that gives it "more" meaning.
Individuals are usually selected because of their abilities at the above--because they're better observers, or hunters, or whatever useful function. So they're assigned more status (leadership, say in a hunt). This is extended to the notion of an "ultimate" agency, or an observer with "infinite" power.

This links to animism, the spirit world (rivers, winds, volcanoes, etc), and an agency we can't "see", or some unknowable character. That's what I reckon, anyways.

Plus it's only been ~30,000 years since we started down the path to "civilisation" and organised thought (doctrine). Barely a blink, in brain evolution terms, so we're still stuck with an animist POV, despite all our "progress".

This:

“ Agent detection evolved because assuming the presence of an agent — which is jargon for any creature with volitional, independent behavior — is more adaptive than assuming its absence. If you are a caveman on the savannah, you are better off presuming that the motion you detect out of the corner of your eye is an agent and something to run from, even if you are wrong. If it turns out to have been just the rustling of leaves, you are still alive; if what you took to be leaves rustling was really a hyena about to pounce, you are dead.

A classic experiment from the 1940s by the psychologists Fritz Heider and Marianne Simmel suggested that imputing agency is so automatic that people may do it even for geometric shapes. For the experiment, subjects watched a film of triangles and circles moving around. When asked what they had been watching, the subjects used words like “chase” and “capture.” They did not just see the random movement of shapes on a screen; they saw pursuit, planning, escape.

So if there is motion just out of our line of sight, we presume it is caused by an agent, an animal or person with the ability to move independently. This usually operates in one direction only; lots of people mistake a rock for a bear, but almost no one mistakes a bear for a rock. ”

Yes. It's been clear to me for a long time that the evolution of behaviors in an environment where our primary weapons were our imagination and foresight, easily explains the development of more organized superstitions.

We're still guessing that that rustling in the bush is a lion despite all evidence to the contrary.

Despite someone (an individual) uncovering some big ideas (by thinking about them, and doing some experiments with others) about how the world behaves starting in 1905, we still haven't uncovered the "agency" at the heart of the most basic interactions going on around us constantly (gravity and wave "collapse"). We used to explain things like waves in the ocean as the actions of some spirit, or animation (virial coefficient?), that "made it so", and wind was a similar notion for a fair while.

It's harder to say what effect his insights had on materials and fabrication techniques, because we keep improving our ability to manipulate matter at smaller and smaller scales, regardless of what explanations we have, and finding more accurate ways to measure things. We're about "there", but we haven't figured out how to read the street signs yet.
Then again, there's something about entanglement; we can use it, but not "observe" it. Light must get entangled naturally, too, somewhere out there. A wave function that can split up into entangled copies of itself, where each has exactly half the information of the original.
The way observing such a state makes it real, or it isn't real unless it collapses. And density of states, that's useful, but no-one "understands" why.

I'm making an observation here, as well. For what it's worth.

/eek

i am practically salivating

Just don't drool, ok?