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From: mmm@weitek.UUCP (Mark Thorson)
Newsgroups: net.religion
Subject: Evolving Religions
Message-ID: <242@weitek.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 1-Aug-85 17:03:10 EDT
Article-I.D.: weitek.242
Posted: Thu Aug  1 17:03:10 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 3-Aug-85 08:43:19 EDT
Organization: Weitek Corp. Sunnyvale Ca.
Lines: 33
Keywords: evolution religion sociobiology

An earlier discussion about the evolution of religious beliefs made
an analogy between the history of religion and Darwinian evolution
-- the point being that one could interpret the history of religion
as a process of adaptation to social neccessity.

I am interested in a tighter form of the analogy:  is religion itself
an adaption of the human species?  If people were raised in total isolation
from culture, would they form a belief in God?  Is there a piece of brain
tissue with the function of promoting such belief?

As an aetheist, I've always found it remarkable how many people believe
in God.  I consider the total lack of physical evidence for the super-
natural to be an overwhelming argument against belief in an all-
powerful, omnipresent, omniscient being.  I think a system that included
a supreme being, billions of ghost-like "souls", and perhaps some angels,
demons, etc would have to have SOME physical manifestation.

So why do so many people believe in such things?  Instead of atheism being
the default belief system among human societies, theism is.  Atheism
is in fact rather rare.

I perceive two possibilities:

1.  God, heaven, hell, etc exist and it just happens to be part of their
    nature that they are undetectable, immeasurable, can't get there from
    here, etc.

2.  They don't exist, but the belief in their existance has survival value
    so the human brain is organized for belief rather than non-belief.

Sociobiologically yours,

Mark Thorson (...!cae780!weitek!mmm)