Belief in Religion

[Essence]

1) Evolution has not motive (your sentence appears to imply it does)
2) Evolution includes changes that do not affect or negatively affect survival.

1) I never said or implied that it does.
2) Wrong.  Mutation includes changes that do not affect or negatively affect survival.  Evolution is the process by which those irrelevant or negative mutations are eliminated over time and by which positive mutations accumulate. If a trait is possessed by a majority of a species, it can be safely assumed that the trait has been through the crucible of evolution and is a mutation that is beneficial rather than irrelevant or negative.

[OldTrees]

1) Evolution has not motive (your sentence appears to imply it does)
2) Evolution includes changes that do not affect or negatively affect survival.

1) I never said or implied that it does.
2) Wrong.  Mutation includes changes that do not affect or negatively affect survival.  Evolution is the process by which those irrelevant or negative mutations are eliminated over time and by which positive mutations accumulate. If a trait is possessed by a majority of a species, it can be safely assumed that the trait has been through the crucible of evolution and is a mutation that is beneficial rather than irrelevant or negative.

You are ignoring the other 3 evolutionary forces and only looking at Natural Selection. Genetic Drift, Gene Flow and Mutation all can create positive, neutral or negative changes. Change in allele frequency in a population over generations caused by any of the 4 evolutionary forces is defined as Evolution. In fact Genetic Drift has been shown to have a much larger impact on genomes than Natural Selection.

[Essence]

You're confusing the cause of genetic change, which is irrelevant, with the process by which those changes are promoted (if they are beneficial) or not (if they are not).  If you want to get technical, we can start talking about epimutation and genetic recombination, but they're actually irrelevant as well.

The relevant information has already been posted: if a trait exists among an entire species (assuming the species is large enough to form a decent statistical sample size), it has already been selected for. All of your externalities do not apply when looking at an entire population, especially one as widespread as humankind.  Doubly so when the trait in question is clearly old enough that it's not the result of some fresh bit of genetic drift.


tl;dr: Quit talking about events on the scale of the individual genome. Start talking about events on the scale of all of humanity.

Back to the question at hand: from an evolutionary standpoint, why do we believe in God?

[maverixk]

tl;dr: Quit talking about events on the scale of the individual genome. Start talking about events on the scale of all of humanity.

Back to the question at hand: from an evolutionary standpoint, why do we believe in God?

However, all it takes is one human believing in something and the rest of humanity can come to believe in it. I realize that one human probably wouldn't be enough, but say a few gain this mutation, or whatever you want to call it and start to believe in something, that could be enough. Humans tend to follow others.

I could give a couple psychological reasons.
1) Raised to believe from childhood. A very common cause.
2)One finds happiness and/or relief from guilt/pain.
3)They believe that they have witnessed a miracle that they have been led by others or themselves to believe that it was an act of God.

Unrelated 4)They have seen/heard/other senses irreputable evidence for God. Probably the most unlikely statistically speaking.

[OldTrees]

I already answered that after I corrected you about the Evolutionary forces which I recited from my Evolution college class. Note: Since evolution is measured at the population level, evolutionary forces must impact the allele frequency of the population.

Humans have the ability to guess at future events. Humans use the ability to hold beliefs about the world to use this ability. Since this consequence had a mostly positive impact on relative reproductive success, this trait was likely to reach fixation (aka be universal in the population).

Also Beliefs in general can behave very similar to contagious infections (infections can increase, decrease or have no effect on survival of the host) [See Memes]

Did you fully understand genetic drift?
"Genetic drift or allelic drift is the change in the frequency of a gene variant (allele) in a population due to random sampling." (wiki) Genetic Drift can take a short time (disasters) or a long time (random mating)

Side note: Evolutionary forces always are in reference to the population level. The evolutionary force of Mutation is not referring to a single mutation or mutations in one individual. Rather it is talking about the total set of mutations that enter each generation.

[Essence]

However, all it takes is one human believing in something and the rest of humanity can come to believe in it. I realize that one human probably wouldn't be enough, but say a few gain this mutation, or whatever you want to call it and start to believe in something, that could be enough. Humans tend to follow others.

Yes, but why is that?

Why do we have this part of our brain that is so willing to assign a supernatural cause to events, such that when we hear about such a supernatural cause from another person, we're inclined to believe it?


And OT, we're wandering too far away from the original point of contention, which was this:

2) Evolution includes changes that do not affect or negatively affect survival.

Let me reword my argument in terms that might make it clearer: while changes that do not affect and/or actually negatively affect survival certainly occur, only those changes that actually promote survival continue to exist after several hundred generations have gone by since the change first entered the population.  As such, since we can validate that religion exists in all subspecies of humanity and thus that it's been a part of our being for at least as long as we've been wandering across continents, we can safely assume that it was positive in its effect on our survival.

[OldTrees]

And OT, we're wandering too far away from the original point of contention, which was this:

2) Evolution includes changes that do not affect or negatively affect survival.

Let me reword my argument in terms that might make it clearer: while changes that do not affect and/or actually negatively affect survival certainly occur, only those changes that actually promote survival continue to exist after several hundred generations have gone by since the change first entered the population.

Genetic Drift (random mating) can interfere with Natural Selection
That is usually true for negative traits. However like with rolling a loaded die, it might never occur.
Neutral traits on the other hand (hair color) can still persist. (rolling an unloaded die)
Likewise any trait that achieves fixation will persist until replaced by another trait or traits that emerges through Mutation.

As such, since we can validate that religion has been a part of the human experience for several hundred generations, we can safely assume that it was positive in it's effect on our survival.

However we should not eliminate the possibility of it being a neutral or negative trait. Investigating the most likely possibility is wisest however we must remember potential sources of error like this.

Additionally you might want to compare Beliefs to contagious infections. They seem to spread,reproduce and evolve in a similar manner.

[IceySammy]

My view is that religion is mainly there to make people feel like even though they mess up their lives etc that in some weird way their life had some meaning, its more there as a crutch for people that aren't (in some terms) stronge enough to live just to live.

Counterexample: I know many people who find their meaning in helping other people, not in their religion.  Some of these are very religious people.  But invariably these people also have a great deal of personal strength.

Religion in some ways is bad as it has been the thing for 2,000 years that has caused countless wars and arguements, is has been used by most to keep everyone else under control and to promote fear that if you do something they deem wrong you go to "hell".

Religion doesn't kill people, people kill people.  There have been as many wars that were driven by monarchical greed - pretty much all of Rome's conquest, for example.  People will always find reasons to kill.

I find the best way to help people is to stop trying to constantly help them as that means they never learn how to help themselves, help alittle but to constantly help is to weaken them so they never learn. It's basically like over parenting a child is how you could put it, you look after it and are meant to help it learn but picking it up too much when it gets hurt means the child never learns how to pick themselves up and deal with things on their own. A person always has inner strength but some seem to choose to ignore that and rely on something or someone else to keep them going and to keep them strong. With some people who believe too heavily in religion you take that away and they will crumble and become useless to everyone including themselves, but there are some that still have their own inner strength and don't rely on their religion to live and keep going. There have and always will be some and some, its just a shame the majourity of people now that believe in religion heavily are the ones that use it as a crutch.

That is true people are the ones that kill other people, but religion influences the actions of people a great deal. For instance a long time ago I believe it was chirstians came up with "kill a jew have all sins forgotten" they told people to kill other people to have their sins removed or they would suffer a enternity of "paying for their sins in hell". Religion started people killing other innocent people by bending the bible to their will to influence people, also the witch burnings, chirstians feared the pagan belief though it caused them no harm so they spread that anyone that believed in that was following the devil and was called a witch and had to be killed before they killed everyone else or tricked them into following satan. Also if you look at Ireland, look what happened to them thanks to religion, they killed their own brothers and other family members if they believed in anything slightly different. Religion may be a good thing in some cases but that doesn't excuse the things its caused, the wars, the deaths and even the separating of countries and families. But yes the people are to blame as well but some people are like sheep and are easily swayed and herded to do anothers bidding and in some cases religion has been that wolf in sheeps clothing and the one herding people to do its bidding even at the costs of the peoples lives.

But as I said, that is just my opinion now if you excuse me I'm off to continue playing the game and watching Warehouse 13. Have fun everyone

[johannhowitzer]

I find the best way to help people is to stop trying to constantly help them as that means they never learn how to help themselves, help alittle but to constantly help is to weaken them so they never learn.

Translation: feed the homeless, but also train them to work.  This is what the charities I've worked with do.

Religion started people killing other innocent people by bending the bible to their will to influence people,

Bolded the important part.  As long as there is belief of any kind in the world, people will find ways to twist it to their whims.

[IceySammy]

I find the best way to help people is to stop trying to constantly help them as that means they never learn how to help themselves, help alittle but to constantly help is to weaken them so they never learn.

Translation: feed the homeless, but also train them to work.  This is what the charities I've worked with do.

Religion started people killing other innocent people by bending the bible to their will to influence people,

Bolded the important part.  As long as there is belief of any kind in the world, people will find ways to twist it to their whims.

Exactly, it's a shame it happens though as it just leads the world in a giant circle really. Maybe one day it'll stop but somehow I serioulsy doubt that, people haven't changed yet and they've had more than enough time to start showing signs of changing how they do things. I've been thinking there is only one religion that I know of and have heard of that doesn't try to twist things to their whims, buddhism (I believe that's the right spelling anyways). They are only focused on themselves and just try improving themselves by trying to reach enlightenment. So they except everyone else and every religion, they also go by if someone attacks you more than once it's perfectly fine to defend yourself against them. So far they seem to be the only religion left that isn't corrupted or altered to fit someone elses plans.
But there is the point that yes you can focus on your goals but people find it socially unacceptable to only focus on yourself in this day and age as most seem to dub it "anti-social" or selfish to do so. To put it bluntly I guess would be to say people now a days need to grow up and learn to be more accepting of how other people are as no one is the same on this planet and they never will be (hopefully, imagine how mind numbingly dull that would be if everyone were the same), though this happening is so unlikely it's not even worth hoping for now.
Thank you johannhowitzer for the very interesting views and your own explanations

[Scaredgirl]

Religion started people killing other innocent people by bending the bible to their will to influence people,

Bolded the important part.  As long as there is belief of any kind in the world, people will find ways to twist it to their whims.

Yes, but you very rarely see people fly planes into building in the name of science.

Religion can be dangerous because it removes the responsibility of an individual. Any horrible act can easily be justified if it is seen as "the will of God". You cannot do the same thing with science because science is based on logic and logic tells us not to do crazy things.

This is related to that silly saying "guns don't kill people, people kill people". Sure, that is true in some sense, but guns just make killing so much easier, and if you got rid of all the guns, the number of murders would plummet because kitchen knife just isn't as effective. It's the same thing with religions. Sure there are other ways to get people do crazy stuff, but none of them as powerful as religion.

[Essence]

Yes, but you very rarely see people fly planes into building in the name of science.

SG, allow me to introduce you to Nazi Germany.  Eugenics was considered the cutting edge of science at the time.

People will use whatever tools are popular at the time to validate whatever atrocities they want to commit; religion just happens to have been popular for longer, so it has a larger list of atrocities to it's name.