Is the idea of god innate?

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Originally Posted by andrewoberg

This is an interesting point. What kind of natural selection pressures led us to arrive at this point? What is the evolutionary advantage of such a high degree of abstract thought? And when our knowledge catches up, how will we be different than we are now?

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I would assume that it was largely due to sexual selection. Once you have a primitive form of language and culture through imitation, the ones best at imitating others and best at entertaining, problem-solving etc. become the leader of the social group, and higher status means higher chance to mate. The reason I think it's sexual selection is that brain size more than tripled within some 3 million years or so in human evolution. And if there is a runaway process with huge (even exponential) growth, the answer is very often sexual selection (i.e. the peacock's tail).

Another crucial factor is that once a certain threshhold was passed, our brains became inhabited by memes. Imagine them like a certain configuration of wiring and neuron activity (level of weightedness) in the brain that somehow convey 'meaning'. A meme is a unit of information, the foundation for culture. Gene is to evolution as meme is to culture so to speak. And because memes don't need to wait for the next generation but can spread through means of language, books or now radio and the internet, we have another runaway process: culture. Thus our knowledge grows exponentially.

This led to the fact that our knowledge actually 'did catch up'. We don't need myths anymore, we can give sound answers, or sketches of such answers, to most philosophical questions that philosophers have failed to answer for millennia.

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Originally Posted by Dodo25

And as a side note, some people, with some form of autism, actually do think about numbers in color.

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Not just people with autism, and not just numbers/ colours. Sounds can be associated with smell and/ or colour too. It's called synesthesia. My wife has it with colour and words. The artist Kandinsky had it.

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Originally Posted by Paulclem

Not just people with autism, and not just numbers/ colours. Sounds can be associated with smell and/ or colour too. It's called synesthesia. My wife has it with colour and words. The artist Kandinsky had it.

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I love Kandinsky. Hearing that he had that condition will put a new light on his work for me.:smile5:

I like this work by him, but not really the more abstract ones :)

http://www.wbsgallery.org.uk/wbsGall...serialNumber=2

Buddhists believe in nirvana, Hegelians & Marxists believe in 'destiny', Schopenhauer and Kant believe in a transcendental reality, Plato believed in his Forms, even Epicureans believed in Gods (who, amusingly, lived far away and didn't mess with humans ...).

These are all God in different guises, a belief in some kind of ultimate "true world'. Is there a strong culture, besides modern liberal capitalism at its most thoughtful, that has no belief in a 'true world' ideal?

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Originally Posted by mal4mac

(...) even Epicureans believed in Gods (who, amusingly, lived far away and didn't mess with humans ...).

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I think that was a forced move, not an actual belief of the Epicureans. Had they abandoned gods altogether, they would most likely have been persecuted. So they 'locked' them up into intermundium where they don't have any influence at all.

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Originally Posted by mal4mac

Buddhists believe in nirvana, Hegelians & Marxists believe in 'destiny', Schopenhauer and Kant believe in a transcendental reality, Plato believed in his Forms, even Epicureans believed in Gods (who, amusingly, lived far away and didn't mess with humans ...).

These are all God in different guises, a belief in some kind of ultimate "true world'. Is there a strong culture, besides modern liberal capitalism at its most thoughtful, that has no belief in a 'true world' ideal?

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Buddhists believe in nirvana,

Buddhists don't believe in Nirvana in the same way that you detail others. There is a path taught by The Buddha and other terachers since. Whilst an ordinary person can't know about nirvana at that point, if the teachings have proved to be consistent with what is taught, then a practitioner can infer Nirvana. The main purpose of posing Nirvana as the aim of Buddhists is to clarify the goal.

Also - God by another name is a huge asumption about what Buddhists believe. Buddhists don't believe in a God = creator/ all powerful being.

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Originally Posted by Paulclem

Buddhists believe in nirvana,

Buddhists don't believe in Nirvana in the same way that you detail others... Whilst an ordinary person can't know about nirvana at that point, if the teachings have proved to be consistent with what is taught, then a practitioner can infer Nirvana.

Also - God by another name is a huge asumption about what Buddhists believe. Buddhists don't believe in a God = creator/ all powerful being.

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I wasn't quite as clear as i might have been. Buddhists believe in a "true world" in exactly the same way as Christians believe in a "true world". In Buddhists case their "true world" is Nirvana, whereas the Christians' "true world" is God. You cannot infer Nirvana from any scientific process, you can only take a "leap of faith", exactly as Christians leap into a belief in the Trinity.

There is no rational reason, and (I would argue) no human reason for making such a leap, so why take such a chance?! If you put a blindfold on me, took me to some random place and told me to leap I'd say, "I'd rather not bother thank you".

"The Death of God and the Meaning of Life" by Julian Young is the origin of my "true world" designation, which is quite handy for attacking all unfounded beliefs. He uses it to show how a meaning of life might be determined without any true world belief, using the work of late Nietzsche, late Heidegger, Foucault and several others.

As Nirvana is attained after death or in mental state ("enlightenment") that anyone could pretend to have, then Nirvana is compatible with *anything* - as is God, Valhalla, a perfect state at the end of time, or any other "true world".

Why believe in such things?

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Originally Posted by Dodo25

I think that was a forced move, not an actual belief of the Epicureans...

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Where is your evidence for this? Just because Epicureans had, or held to, some very good ideas doesn't mean they couldn't take a "leap of faith" into some daft ideas as well.

The dogmatic school of the ancient world were dogmatic because they held to the "scripture" laid down by their founder. As Epicurus mentioned the distant Gods, Epicureans *certainly* believed in them, due to their faith in the scriptures. Otherwise, they weren't Epicureans. If they accepted some Epicurean ideas, 'cause they seemed natural, but did not accept other ideas, then they were Skeptics, not Epicureans.

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Originally Posted by mal4mac

Where is your evidence for this? Just because Epicureans had, or held to, some very good ideas doesn't mean they couldn't take a "leap of faith" into some daft ideas as well.

The dogmatic school of the ancient world were dogmatic because they held to the "scripture" laid down by their founder. As Epicurus mentioned the distant Gods, Epicureans *certainly* believed in them, due to their faith in the scriptures. Otherwise, they weren't Epicureans. If they accepted some Epicurean ideas, 'cause they seemed natural, but did not accept other ideas, then they were Skeptics, not Epicureans.

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I only said 'I believe', it wasn't a factual claim. All I'm saying is that there are very good reasons for it, so you can't just assume they dogmatically believed everything in their 'scripture'. Epicurus wasn't regarded as a prophet, so people would at least adopt a certain degree of skepticism. And if they didn't, it still doesn't tell us about the writer of these sriptures himself.

Socrates was executed for his views, this definitely showed that one should be careful at that time.

The reason why I think that the Gods were a 'forced move' is that they have no relevancy whatsoever in Epicurean physics. According to Epicureanism, everything consists of atoms and acts as determined by the laws of nature. Even gods consist of atoms, and they are locked away somewhere where they don't influence anything. The 'soul' itself consists of atoms, so there really isn't any reason to assume they 'needed' the gods.

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Originally Posted by mal4mac

I wasn't quite as clear as i might have been. Buddhists believe in a "true world" in exactly the same way as Christians believe in a "true world". In Buddhists case their "true world" is Nirvana, whereas the Christians' "true world" is God. You cannot infer Nirvana from any scientific process, you can only take a "leap of faith", exactly as Christians leap into a belief in the Trinity.

There is no rational reason, and (I would argue) no human reason for making such a leap, so why take such a chance?! If you put a blindfold on me, took me to some random place and told me to leap I'd say, "I'd rather not bother thank you".

"The Death of God and the Meaning of Life" by Julian Young is the origin of my "true world" designation, which is quite handy for attacking all unfounded beliefs. He uses it to show how a meaning of life might be determined without any true world belief, using the work of late Nietzsche, late Heidegger, Foucault and several others.

As Nirvana is attained after death or in mental state ("enlightenment") that anyone could pretend to have, then Nirvana is compatible with *anything* - as is God, Valhalla, a perfect state at the end of time, or any other "true world".

Why believe in such things?
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In Buddhists case their "true world" is Nirvana, whereas the Christians' "true world" is God. You cannot infer Nirvana from any scientific process, you can only take a "leap of faith",

This is incorrect. It is quite feasable for an astronomer to infer the existence of a planet with the effects it has on the fields (? - I;m no physicist) around it. (I might be talking about Red Shift) in anticipation of its discovery. A similar logic is employed in Buddism with the exortation to find out fo yourself. In this sense it scientific - though on a subjctive/ experiential level. There is no leap of faith, but an informed faith which is different.

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Originally Posted by mal4mac

I wasn't quite as clear as i might have been. Buddhists believe in a "true world" in exactly the same way as Christians believe in a "true world". In Buddhists case their "true world" is Nirvana, whereas the Christians' "true world" is God. You cannot infer Nirvana from any scientific process, you can only take a "leap of faith", exactly as Christians leap into a belief in the Trinity.

There is no rational reason, and (I would argue) no human reason for making such a leap, so why take such a chance?! If you put a blindfold on me, took me to some random place and told me to leap I'd say, "I'd rather not bother thank you".

.

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From the brief reviews I've read of the book, Young talks about European Buddhism - which I am unsure of, so I can't comment.

There is no rational reason, and (I would argue) no human reason for making such a leap, so why take such a chance?! If you put a blindfold on me, took me to some random place and told me to leap I'd say, "I'd rather not bother thank you".

This an incorrect analogy. The Buddha's path is fully described, and a guide is recommended for the serious practitioner. There are no such cliffs.

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Originally Posted by mal4mac

As Nirvana is attained after death or in mental state ("enlightenment") that anyone could pretend to have, then Nirvana is compatible with *anything* - as is God, Valhalla, a perfect state at the end of time, or any other "true world".

Why believe in such things?
.

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You're right - anyone could pretend to be Enlightened, and they do unfortunately. That is why practitioners - (not believers) - are informed in the teachings to test the teacher. The Buddha's advice was to be a lamp to yourself.

You're also right to question why beleve in such things? The only person who can answer that is the practitioner having followed the instructions. The teachings are a guidebook to the path.

I personally believe that religion and the "innate sense of God" are not always one and the same.

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Originally Posted by Paulclem

You're right - anyone could pretend to be Enlightened, and they do unfortunately. That is why practitioners - (not believers) - are informed in the teachings to test the teacher.

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But the "testing" could mean a lifetime (or more :) ) spent doing meditation & the practices. If you, as many do, find thse practices, extremely tedious, are you prepared to face a lifetime of boredom in the slim chance that Buddhism might be right?

So the teachers capture the students (and their money!) for a lifetime. And even the highest teachers, those giving the highest meditation classes, might be unenlightened, they may even write books praised universally as "the best" and still give up Buddhism (read Paul Williams "The Unexpected Way").

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Originally Posted by Paulclem

The Buddha's path is fully described, and a guide is recommended for the serious practitioner. There are no such cliffs.

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Would that be for Buddhist, now Catholic, Paul Williams' guide to Mahayana Buddhism? Or the works of alcoholic and dangerous driver Chogyam Trungpa? Or Ricard, a former scientist who now belives in reincarnation on hearsay evidence that Randi would laugh out of court? I could go on, the internet is a godsend :) for finding flaws in these characters who pretend to be Enlightened.

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Originally Posted by Paulclem

There are no such cliffs.

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Perhaps a slow descent into quicksand is a better analogy?

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Originally Posted by mal4mac

...Or Ricard, a former scientist who now belives in reincarnation on hearsay evidence that Randi would laugh out of court?...

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Randi a judge now? No wonder he retired.