Thoughts on Atheism

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Originally Posted by Noisms

I don't think that really accounts for it, given that religion's earliest stages of development weren't about "a big guy" - it was mostly to do with totem spirits and ancestor worship, in other words group-unifying mechanisms. Religion has all kinds of psycho-social benefits for humans, but I don't think that fulfilling the need to fear a big bad something-or-other is one of them.

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No the fear thing is probably an evolutionary benefit and a pretty devastating psycho-social drawback.

By the way, the ancestor that was worshiped is the "big guy." "Ancestors" can be pretty expensive responsibilities (both emotionally and financially).

Group-unifying mechanisms are based in human emotions. That is, it is pretty hard to compel human groups to action through logic and really amazingly easy to compel them to action through roused feeling. The most compelling emotions tend to be lust, love, terror and guilt.

I agree that religion has been a primary tool for group cohesion. How it actually functions in society is by manipulating the emotions of individual humans and our basic social primate nature. One of those "basics" is our need to obey authority (the consequences of refusal can be grave for both individual and group if in a moment of crisis someone stops running away and says "Hey wait a minute, is that jackal really meaning to eat me?" So we have an inbuilt need to obey, to fear disobedience, and an absolute terror of being abandoned and ostracized. Of course that has its downside. The Milgram experiments show us the downside in a secular sense just as religious wars show us the same thing is a non-secular sense.

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Originally Posted by MaryLupin

Please read my response to Sandra in post 118 on the difference between varieties of "faith." There is an equivalent difference between the various meanings of "prediction."

Since "faith" in science is based on empirical evidence and logic, it would seem to suggest that a specific theory's proven success at prediction in the past might suggest that some future prediction (yet to be evaluated) would carry more evidentiary weight than a prediction of a miracle (say the second coming) that has been made many times in the past and failed each time.

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That isn't a good argument. There's quite a lot to "unpack" here, so bear with me.

A specific theory's proven success at prediction in the past might indicate future predictions will be accurate. That is true, but the theories of abiogenesis and inflationary universes (and Giant Flying Spaghetti Monsters and creative gods) have none of them succeeded at predicting anything in the past. That means we can't reliably say anything about the likelihood of them being able to predict something in the future. Evolutionary theory and Big Bang theory have predicted things in the past and can therefore reliably be expected to predict things in the future, but those theories are only tangentially related at best to abiogenesis or inflationary universes.

You simply can't argue (and this is what I think you're getting at) that, because Evolutionary theory makes accurate predictions and works as a model for how life developed that abiogenesis will also work; the two things are only connected in the sense that one is imagined to have occurred before the other. Evolution through natural selection has never predicted anything about the origin of life - only the origin of species, which is an utterly different question. Likewise the Big Bang has only ever claimed to predict what happened after inflation began, not why it occurred.

If you're arguing that science in general has been able to predict things in the past, and thus will be able to predict things in the future, then I'd agree with you, but it doesn't follow that abiogenesis or inflationary theory will be proved right - for the simple reason that science is equally likely to prove a theory wrong in the future as it is to prove it right.

And even that discussion is to miss the point I've been making all along: even if in two hundred years time abiogenesis and inflationary universe theory have been proved right (they can't be, but let's pretend they are), it still doesn't matter a jot to the question of whether atheism or theism are correct. All it has done is to have removed the question a step further back. (Where did the false vaccuum come from? etc. etc.)

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Originally Posted by MaryLupin

Or are you suggesting that empirical evidence and logic are also acts of "faith?" And if so, which kind?

A "satisfying explanation?" What do you mean by this? Do you mean this as an emotional statement (like finding comfort in one's religion) or are you using it as an indicator of logical coherence?

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Empirical evidence and logic aren't acts of faith, no. But when their limit ends is where faith comes in - and when it comes to these sorts of questions (can inert matter spontaneously create life, can false vaccuums spring into existence and create universes) we've reached that point.

By satisfying explanation I mean logical coherence. For all the reasons outlined ad nauseum above, atheism isn't logically coherent because its central axiom (god doesn't exist) cannot be logically proved or disproved.

God not existing isn't an axiom of atheism, unless you subscribe to the idea that atheists are unthinking idiots. We wouldn't say God doesn't exist, yadda yadda yadda, therefore God doesn't exist. The reason we don't think he exists is because there's no reason to think he does, which includes other people telling us he does.

And what I was saying about intelligent life, you kind of missed my point. I wasn't saying the existence of intelligent life would sway the matter, I was saying what do you think life elsewhere in the universe would create religion to be like? Look at our planet from another planet's point of view. A God, created in our image, watching over us and answering our prayers and performing miracles, etc., etc. In that sense it seems clear we made it up.

Now, may I ask why you are telling me that since I don't believe in religion, therefore I have made a leap of faith, and am no longer using my logical senses? You're saying that no matter what anyone thinks, reason has left the room, and they're all equally leaps of faith. This doesn't make sense. It's like what Red said that all argument is ultimately circular reasoning - all you're doing is arbitrarily taking away my ability to have an objective sense, randomly saying that what I believe is at odds with reason.

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Originally Posted by MaryLupin

No the fear thing is probably an evolutionary benefit and a pretty devastating psycho-social drawback.

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You really believe that? Given what religion has accomplished in terms of binding societies together to achieve certain goals? But in any case, the psycho-social benefits of religion go deeper than that; you've read Claude Levi-Strauss' thoughts on the matter?

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Originally Posted by MaryLupin

By the way, the ancestor that was worshiped is the "big guy." "Ancestors" can be pretty expensive responsibilities (both emotionally and financially).

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But being expensive is not being a big guy in the sense that you were implying (big and scary and wanting to beat everybody over the head). Totemism and ancestor worship serves the function of categorizing and organizing the material world in a society in which there is no 'science' as we understand it. It's hardly just about frightening people into being easily swayed.

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Originally Posted by MaryLupin

Group-unifying mechanisms are based in human emotions. That is, it is pretty hard to compel human groups to action through logic and really amazingly easy to compel them to action through roused feeling. The most compelling emotions tend to be lust, love, terror and guilt.

I agree that religion has been a primary tool for group cohesion. How it actually functions in society is by manipulating the emotions of individual humans and our basic social primate nature. One of those "basics" is our need to obey authority (the consequences of refusal can be grave for both individual and group if in a moment of crisis someone stops running away and says "Hey wait a minute, is that jackal really meaning to eat me?" So we have an inbuilt need to obey, to fear disobedience, and an absolute terror of being abandoned and ostracized. Of course that has its downside. The Milgram experiments show us the downside in a secular sense just as religious wars show us the same thing is a non-secular sense.

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But heirarchies exist in all animal groups - and animals don't have religion. I'm not sure that religion therefore has the function that you're ascribing to it - browbeating everyone into obedience. I think that's genetically hardwired (as is indicated by the fact that atheist societies are equally as susceptible as religious ones to being compelled by the need for obedience).

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Originally Posted by Noisms

For atheists, the comfort comes from knowing that everything boils down to science, logic and reason.

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What about atheists who are also poets?

Mr. Dr. Ralph, In an earlier post you said

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Originally Posted by Mr. Dr. Ralph

"There is no "beyond" logic or reason. So long as statements are made of intelligible words or numbers, logic may be applied. Again, it's false to say that an entity, in this case God, can be outside the scope of logic. So long as a statement conveys an agreed upon idea, it is eligible for such analysis."

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I agree that once a statement is made then it places itself in the empirical world and as such is prey to its rules. The problem comes when assessing how humans make meaning and the different ways in which they use language. That is, much or our meaning appears to be formed pre-linguistically and sometimes language is used to try and express that meaning. One common way in which this happens is in art. We make meaningful connections between different aspects of the world. Although one may know they are in no way empirically connected they are nevertheless meaningful and therefore speak to the experience of being human. The art of poetry is (at least in part) the attempt to share with other through the medium of words the act of making meaningful connections.

An example: at my familial home I am considered to have a badger as a sister. In no way do these people not know that a badger and a human did not pop from the same womb. They know that the connection between the Badger and Mary (designated as sister) is not literal in that sense. But it is literal in the sense that badger and mary are considered to have co-responsibilities to each other. This is a meaningful connection of the same sort as "brother sun, sister moon."

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Originally Posted by Noisms

Both provide coherent worldviews for the believer, in other words. Same motivation, different way of dealing with it.

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All that I am trying to say here is that many atheists still revel in the metaphorical and awe-full play that has until recently been the purview of the religious. One can play with "spirits" without believing in their empirical existence. So as a sort of atheist, I don't take "comfort" in the coherent world view of science, because there isn't one. There are so many theories, so many points of view, that they simply cannot all be right. (This is the problem of being evidence bound. I find it hard to believe in something once I discover it is self-contradictory.) Rather I take comfort in my human ability to play even if I know my evolution has given me tinted glasses.

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Originally Posted by NikolaiI

God not existing isn't an axiom of atheism, unless you subscribe to the idea that atheists are unthinking idiots. We wouldn't say God doesn't exist, yadda yadda yadda, therefore God doesn't exist. The reason we don't think he exists is because there's no reason to think he does, which includes other people telling us he does.

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This is a bit like saying "God existing is not an axiom of theism - the reason we think God exists is because there's a reason to think he does!" Utter gibberish, in other words. It doesn't mean anything at all: "the free movement of capital is not an axiom of the Washington Consensus! The reason we believe in the free movement of capital is because there's a reason to!"

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Originally Posted by NikolaiI

And what I was saying about intelligent life, you kind of missed my point. I wasn't saying the existence of intelligent life would sway the matter, I was saying what do you think life elsewhere in the universe would create religion to be like? Look at our planet from another planet's point of view. A God, created in our image, watching over us and answering our prayers and performing miracles, etc., etc. In that sense it seems clear we made it up.

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That has nothing to do with the argument. All you're saying is that, if we were to find alien societies with different gods, it would disprove the traditional Christian view of what God is. So what? Disproving Sunday-school religion by no means the same thing as proving there isn't a God. Theism is a bigger theory than "there is a God created in our image, watching over us and answering our prayers" etc.; just ask a Hindu, or Shintoist.

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Originally Posted by NikolaiI

Now, may I ask why you are telling me that since I don't believe in religion, therefore I have made a leap of faith, and am no longer using my logical senses? You're saying that no matter what anyone thinks, reason has left the room, and they're all equally leaps of faith.

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No, that isn't what I'm saying. I'm saying that when it comes to the question "does God exist?" the only rational answer is "I don't know", given that it can't be proved either way. Neither atheists nor theists give that answer, ergo, they are not rationally-based beliefs.

It really isn't that big a deal. I'm certainly not criticising atheists or theists - anybody with the balls to take a leap of faith should be applauded (within reason). I just find the crude distinction between irrational, emotional religious people and rational, scientifically-minded atheists to be completely false. Both systems are as irrational as the other.

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Originally Posted by MaryLupin

All that I am trying to say here is that many atheists still revel in the metaphorical and awe-full play that has until recently been the purview of the religious. One can play with "spirits" without believing in their empirical existence. So as a sort of atheist, I don't take "comfort" in the coherent world view of science, because there isn't one. There are so many theories, so many points of view, that they simply cannot all be right. (This is the problem of being evidence bound. I find it hard to believe in something once I discover it is self-contradictory.) Rather I take comfort in my human ability to play even if I know my evolution has given me tinted glasses.

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What I meant wasn't exactly that science provides a coherent worldview - only that it provides a coherent system of making sense of the world i.e. through scientific enquiry, postulating theories and proving them true or false. Likewise, religion is a coherent system of making sense of the world - God has arranged things a certain way, and that's the way it is. There is comfort in both. (And, I might add, discomfort too.)

Nonono. Let's say you've lived all your life and never encountered anyone religious. Then one comes along and tells you their religion. You don't believe, and this is irrational? Why on earth would you think this? There are a lot of religions, and not believing them is irrational?

No, don't tell me what you're saying, because you said it again, atheism and theism are equally irrational. You're not going anywhere, seriously. So if you're not prepared to give a centimeter, then we'll just have to agree to disagree.

Again, leap of faith it is not. Why would you think that no matter what anyone thinks reason has left the room? You take away reason for all sides - all sides have taken a leap of faith, and there is no reason anywhere. What a load.

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Originally Posted by NikolaiI

Nonono. Let's say you've lived all your life and never encountered anyone religious. Then one comes along and tells you their religion. You don't believe, and this is irrational? Why on earth would you think this? There are a lot of religions, and not believing them is irrational?

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You're really missing the point, still. Not believing in a given religion isn't irrational, no. But saying you can be *sure* it is false is. And that's the axiom of atheism: that religion (theistic religion, anyway) is false.

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Originally Posted by NikolaiI

Again, leap of faith it is not. Why would you think that no matter what anyone thinks reason has left the room? You take away reason for all sides - all sides have taken a leap of faith, and there is no reason anywhere. What a load.

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No, not all sides. Did you even read what I wrote? Agnosticism isn't irrational. That's the whole point. You seem weirdly wedded to the idea that saying "the original postulation of a given theory is not rationally provable" is equivalent to saying "everything is irrational!" - which I've never ever said, nor even hinted at.

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Originally Posted by NikolaiI

No, don't tell me what you're saying, because you said it again, atheism and theism are equally irrational. You're not going anywhere, seriously. So if you're not prepared to give a centimeter, then we'll just have to agree to disagree.

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Yeah, for the love of God, let's agree to do that.

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Originally Posted by Noisms

You really believe that? Given what religion has accomplished in terms of binding societies together to achieve certain goals? But in any case, the psycho-social benefits of religion go deeper than that; you've read Claude Levi-Strauss' thoughts on the matter?

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Religions work best as cohesive social mechanisms in low-impact tribal societies. They give a sense of mutual purpose and coherence that allows bands and tribes to negotiate the sometime rigors of their environments, not to mention giving them common grounds when far flung bands come back together to negotiate marriages, trades and other necessities of life. However, the very coherence of of the world-view can act as a problem when exposed to the different (but equally coherent) world-view of another human group. Hence the meeting between Native groups and Anglo groups in the Americas was hardly binding, nor has it been between Christian and Muslim tribes in (say) Ethiopia. (And as I am sure you are aware, there are many, many examples of conflict due to religiosity.) In the world that has come to be, especially since the European wars of colonialization, it would seem that religion causes more breakage than linkage.

And yes. I have read Claude. As a structural anthropologist he really did see that religion bound us, of that I have no doubt. And while I agree with him that Westerners are essentially of the same stuff as Tribesmen, I cannot agree with the basic stance of structuralism as it was propounded during his time.

Are you a structuralist then?

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Originally Posted by Noisms

But being expensive is not being a big guy in the sense that you were implying (big and scary and wanting to beat everybody over the head). Totemism and ancestor worship serves the function of categorizing and organizing the material world in a society in which there is no 'science' as we understand it. It's hardly just about frightening people into being easily swayed.

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I was thinking of a "big guy" in the sense that a dog is an alpha. Fear is a very large component of maintaining alpha status (whether in dog kind or human kind). The threat of deadly force is often more effective than its actual use. (Cite: the threat of hell.) One propitiates ones' ancestors because, in part, if you don't you are risking plague, drought, death of your children or some other such horror. Not making the very expensive rites causes enormous guilt and fear. Your comment on "totemism and ancestor worship" serving as a "categorizing and organizing" force is deeply structural. Look at it from the point of view of a conflict theorist for a moment and you will see that they are also ways to restrict and control the flow of resources. Then look at a specific practice of "ancestor worship" from the point of view of an ethnomethodologist and you will see something else entirely. And the fun thing is, that there are elements of truth in all of them, despite their apparent contradictory nature.

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Originally Posted by Noisms

But heirarchies exist in all animal groups - and animals don't have religion. I'm not sure that religion therefore has the function that you're ascribing to it - browbeating everyone into obedience. I think that's genetically hardwired (as is indicated by the fact that atheist societies are equally as susceptible as religious ones to being compelled by the need for obedience).

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Well, I'll accept for the moment that non-human animals don't have religion, but animals do...the human animal does. This is not just a piece of semantic play. It highlights an important assumption you make, and an important assumption I make. You assume (based on an analysis of "and animals don't have religion") that humans aren't animals. This despite the fact that you know biologically we are. The assumption is based on a belief that we are somehow fundamentally different from the rest of "creation." I assume (based on my education--both in schools and out of it--what, by the way, is your assumption based on?) that humans are one kind of animal with specific trait- and skill-sets. So when I look at human religion as it has appeared in the anthropological literature and as it appears in my familial home, I compare that to my studies in non-human animal behavior and see far more similarities than differences.

About the browbeating thing...I think that obedience is hard-wired and that it is a primary function. I also think that the need to understand the events of the world is a primary animal function. For example, a cat sees a mouse-like object twitching at the end of a string and a stick in its human's hand. It attacks. The cat knows that it is not a real mouse. If it couldn't make that distinction then it would be one lousy hunter. Yet it attacks. For a while. This is play and it is also understanding...what in humans we would call making meaning. What exactly the cat understands? It's subjective experience? Well I don't know. Nagel talks about this gap between species in his wonderful essay "What is it like to be a bat?" What we can know about is the empirical evidence of behavioral development and displays in and between species. What comparative animal behavioral studies show is that what humans do is based on the same kinds of behaviors. What makes the difference is the structure and function of our brain. Our brain's development (its ability to connect many more elements of a scene at one time than a cat can achieve) allows for the extra ooomph that we call awareness or meaning construction and religiosity.

So, based on my reading and experience, I think that the impulse to religiosity in human beings is an emergent property of a set of pre-hominid primate behaviors (not limited to the ones I have brought forward here) and as such is a secondary property. That is, it piggy-backed on the more basic need to obey and to comprehend the world in terms we can understand and therefore might be restricted to human beings but is nevertheless an animal behavior.

Finally, religion does not have a "purpose" as such. It has a behavioral and evolutionary origin and it has a set of associated behaviors. To ascribe purpose is to assume that it has an inherent meaning outside of its existence. Evolution has no purpose. A behavior or physical trait is something that can work for or against an organism in its desire to stay alive, or it can be neutral in that quest. So it is not that religious behavior has any purpose to fulfill. It cannot in evolutionary terms. Rather religious behavior needs to be examined to see if it supports, works against or is indifferent to species' survival. This word "purpose" is one reason why I have a problem with structuralism. As a theory it tends to see things as having purpose, that is inherent meaning, without ever questioning the source of that "meaning" or its construction...I mean I get "raw" and "cooked" but "black" and "white?" Why not "brown" and "yellow?"

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Originally Posted by Noisms

I'd hate to put words into his mouth, but he has to hold something to be true if he's an atheist.

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Yes, He does. But not atheist also claims something to be truth without proof. I am confused, I thought you equated theism and atheism (and that was the point here) because both had faith in something, meaning belief without need of proof and that was clearly not the case.

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Otherwise, he's an agnostic: if somebody's position is "I don't know what's true and I don't care" then that is agnosticism, my friend. (Apathetic agnosticism, shall we call it? but agnosticism all the same.)

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You are confuding agnosticism and atheism - Both have the skepticism as base of their philosophy and way of thinking. An agnostic is howener one that admits a possibility under (for example god existence) the notion of "we know not yet" and a atheist do not consider this possibility and when he does, unlike the agnostic, he believes it can be tested.
The above phrase of him - "I do not know what is true" can be from a Theist (He does not care, god Did it anyways), an agnostic (I do not care, many options exist so I can not give a proper opinion), or atheist (I do not care, anyways I will not test it to see if it is true).

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Let's be absolutely clear about this. Atheist belief, at its very lowest level, must at least say, even if it says nothing else, "I don't know or care how the universe came to exist, but I do know that god didn't create it, because he doesn't exist."

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"Or just, I do not care. I just know what did not created" - his phrase was hardly enough to justify any label because a agnostic would at some level also add "It can be god or big bang".

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In other words, even at its most reductive form, Atheism is a statement of faith (or belief, or irrational supposition, or whatever you want to call it), because if nothing else it is a statement that there is no god - an assertion that can't be proved.

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Again, that is a huge mistake. Faith is Belief without need of proof.
An Atheist do not believe in god because he does not HAVE A PROOF, which he "demands". The Exactly opposite of faith.

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Exactly right: scientific hypothesis does demand proving, and that's precisely my point. Seeing as it is impossible to prove the cause of the big bang [note: I'm not talking about the big bang itself] or, if you like, the cause of that cause, or the cause of that cause, or the cause of that cause, ad infinitum, it has as much scientific, rational worth as believing that the Giant Flying Spaghetti Monster started the big bang.

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Eh ? It does not make the same. Theist when can not proof still tell that is the whole truth. Atheist still demand the proof for it. That is why many scientists keep testing the big bang theory.
There is no scientific merit there, it demands testing and allowing the theory to be tested. with does not happen with the spaghetti monster.

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All this talk of abiogenesis confused the issue, because we were arguing that in relation to something else - i. e. it was being held up as an example of something that can't be proved now but "is expected to be proved" in the future, when that is patently daft; we don't know what will be proved in the future, nor what will be disproved, so what value does it have as a debating tactic?

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I think what is confuding is you equating faith with allowing a hipothesis to be tested.

not pertaining to anything or anyone in particular.

Stephen Jay Gould said

"Objectivity cannot be equated with mental blankness; rather, objectivity resides in recognizing your preferences and then subjecting them to especially harsh scrutiny — and also in a willingness to revise or abandon your theories when the tests fail (as they usually do)."

I find it an interesting axiom.

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Originally Posted by Noisms

For theists the destination isn't the comfort, I don't think, so much as the idea that what you're doing here on this earth has a purpose.

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That is comfort as well. The appeal of theism is that all problems are answered and the solutions appeal to the ego, i.e., I am here for a purpose, I am going to heaven when I die, God loves me. It seems to make sense at first but investigating theism while impartial will reveal that it is pretty weak.

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For atheists, the comfort comes from knowing that everything boils down to science, logic and reason.

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It is the coldest and least comforting thought I have imagined.

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Originally Posted by MaryLupin

Religions work best as cohesive social mechanisms in low-impact tribal societies. They give a sense of mutual purpose and coherence that allows bands and tribes to negotiate the sometime rigors of their environments, not to mention giving them common grounds when far flung bands come back together to negotiate marriages, trades and other necessities of life. However, the very coherence of of the world-view can act as a problem when exposed to the different (but equally coherent) world-view of another human group. Hence the meeting between Native groups and Anglo groups in the Americas was hardly binding, nor has it been between Christian and Muslim tribes in (say) Ethiopia. (And as I am sure you are aware, there are many, many examples of conflict due to religiosity.) In the world that has come to be, especially since the European wars of colonialization, it would seem that religion causes more breakage than linkage.

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I agree. I just don't think the social bonding in band and tribal societies you describe comes from the fear (or alpha-male-substitute) that you describe. It comes from the shared identity that religion brings.

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Originally Posted by MaryLupin

And yes. I have read Claude. As a structural anthropologist he really did see that religion bound us, of that I have no doubt. And while I agree with him that Westerners are essentially of the same stuff as Tribesmen, I cannot agree with the basic stance of structuralism as it was propounded during his time.

Are you a structuralist then?

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I don't like to think I'm an anything-ist. Isms - whether theism, atheism, structuralism, marxism, anarcho-capitalism, nihilism - are the enemies of rational thought, I think, because they see everything through the prism of their axioms - most of which are tenuous assumptions, or which haven't been properly thought through.

That said, I can see the value in structuralism. The most interesting idea of Levi-Strauss', I think, is that totemism or so-called 'primitive' religion is basically an analog of science - both are ways of arranging, categorising and conceptualising reality, and fulfil a vital, human need: the need for the world to make sense. Both are equally valid, because both achieve what they are supposed to.

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Originally Posted by MaryLupin

Well, I'll accept for the moment that non-human animals don't have religion, but animals do...the human animal does. This is not just a piece of semantic play. It highlights an important assumption you make, and an important assumption I make. You assume (based on an analysis of "and animals don't have religion") that humans aren't animals. This despite the fact that you know biologically we are. The assumption is based on a belief that we are somehow fundamentally different from the rest of "creation." I assume (based on my education--both in schools and out of it--what, by the way, is your assumption based on?) that humans are one kind of animal with specific trait- and skill-sets. So when I look at human religion as it has appeared in the anthropological literature and as it appears in my familial home, I compare that to my studies in non-human animal behavior and see far more similarities than differences.

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I'm don't know what gave you that idea. Who said I assume humans aren't animals? When I said that "animals don't have religion", of course I was talking about non-human animals; the phrase just sounds like an ugly one considering the meaning is obvious from context (or so I thought - especially since I was making clear that humans are the same as group animals in that we need heirarchies and are genetically hardwired to respond to them!). As I noted before, you seem to have somehow made the assumption that I'm a creationist, or a theist, who believes in a strict divide between humans and animals and who refutes evolution, and you're arguing with me on that basis. I'm not really sure why.

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Originally Posted by MaryLupin

Finally, religion does not have a "purpose" as such. It has a behavioral and evolutionary origin and it has a set of associated behaviors. To ascribe purpose is to assume that it has an inherent meaning outside of its existence.

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Of course it has a purpose; a purpose in the sense that it fulfils a function. Why, when the word "purpose" is mentioned, do you assume that I'm ascribing an 'inherent meaning outside its existence'? In the same way that taking a dump fulfils a purpose, or eating a sandwich fulfils a purpose, or scratching an itch fulfils a purpose, so can religion - without having 'an inherent meaning outside its existence'.

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Originally Posted by MaryLupin

Evolution has no purpose. A behavior or physical trait is something that can work for or against an organism in its desire to stay alive, or it can be neutral in that quest. So it is not that religious behavior has any purpose to fulfill. It cannot in evolutionary terms.

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That's a very narrow view of things. Religion is a product of humans - it's part of our genetic makeup's 'extended phenotype'. Same as music, story-telling, or artwork. Rather like a beaver's dam, or a spider's web, or a bird's nest, then, it seems to me that religion (and music, and story-telling, and artwork) is the product of a set of behaviours and hence genes, that have been subject to natural selection.

Taking the example of a spider's web, you wouldn't take exception to the statement that the web is a product of certain genes which a spider has and which programme it to make webs. Likewise, I think that religion is a product of certain genes which we have and which programme us to have a propensity for creating religion, and that those genes - like all genes - have become that way due to natural selection. Our propensity (our need, in fact) for religion is therefore an evolved one. It, like all of the other parts of our species' genes' extended phenotype, has been subjected to the rigors of natural selection and found to serve a purpose - bonding our groups together, and indirectly therefore serving the only real purpose of all: helping us survive.

Another example: we've evolved a taste for sugar. Our liking for sugar comes from genes which survived in us because they fulfil a purpose - making us like sugar, which is important, and in the broader context, helping keep us alive. In the same way, our propensity or 'liking' for religion has evolved. [For the record, note that I'm not arguing there is a gene for religion. I'm arguing that certain genes give us a propensity for developing and believing in religion.]

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Originally Posted by MaryLupin

Rather religious behavior needs to be examined to see if it supports, works against or is indifferent to species' survival.

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I would say that, given the fact that a propensity to create/have religion is part of the extended phenotype of our genetic makeup, religion has in the past, by definition, supported our survival. (Just as the liking for sugar, or the instinct to take a dump when you need to, has.)

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Originally Posted by MaryLupin

This word "purpose" is one reason why I have a problem with structuralism. As a theory it tends to see things as having purpose, that is inherent meaning, without ever questioning the source of that "meaning" or its construction...I mean I get "raw" and "cooked" but "black" and "white?" Why not "brown" and "yellow?"

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That seems like the exact opposite of structuralism. The point of structuralism as it was originally conceived was that the meaning of a thing is defined by that thing's relation to other things: a cat is known as a cat because it isn't a dog or a horse or a turtle or a tree or a star or a stone...'cat' in itself doesn't have an inherent meaning.

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Originally Posted by Noisms

You're really missing the point, still. Not believing in a given religion isn't irrational, no. But saying you can be *sure* it is false is. And that's the axiom of atheism: that religion (theistic religion, anyway) is false.



No, not all sides. Did you even read what I wrote? Agnosticism isn't irrational. That's the whole point. You seem weirdly wedded to the idea that saying "the original postulation of a given theory is not rationally provable" is equivalent to saying "everything is irrational!" - which I've never ever said, nor even hinted at.



Yeah, for the love of God, let's agree to do that.

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Yes I read what you wrote, please don't be condescending.