Can religion be positive

[Whateverist]

Man, regressing to a childlike state is the best bit about growing up

Or at least the best part of retirement. I look forward to an ungainful retirement and a much over due second childhood.

[ManMachine]

Religion has been around in some form since before written or even drawn records. There is evidence of ritualistic burial going back to Neanderthals.

National Geographic - Neanderthal Burials Confirmed as Ancient Ritual

There also seems to be some evidence of hardwiring for systems of belief.

Belief Hardwired into our Brains?

I'm not suggesting for a moment that this is evidence of a god but it is clearly evidence that belief is important to humans in evolutionary terms, otherwise it would not be hardwired into our brains.

To dismiss religion as fairy tail or myth is to ignore its function, particularly its psychological function. It is easy to bash the social manifestation of this primary function but that is being drawn into the wrong game.

We can only answer the question, "Is religion always a bad thing?" when we understand its evolved function, and we have only recently started down that road. One thing seems certain, it was a good thing, it led to us evolving into what we are now, if it still is remains to be seen.

MM

No, see this is where you are making excuses for religion. "Belief is important". No it is not. Belief is what people THINK is important, yes. But that is not the same as belief being required. We now live without believing the sun had a god which the Egyptians falsely believed for 3,000 years. It did make them successful, but it did not make their gods real. And on top of being wrong, a lot of resources were wasted making monuments to fictional beings which is a flaw in our species that retards human discovery.

The real thing that our species is doing when gap filling to the point of concocting a religion, is the evolutionary aspect of creating groups. More members to that group, more opportunity to make offspring, more chance at survival. And those false beliefs are still not required regardless of the desires of those who hold those false beliefs.

So saying religion is important is false. There are tons of dead religions and dead gods that never were a requirement. Our real survival is due to our cooperation, not the falsehoods we create to foster cooperation.

I'm not saying religion is important at all. I very clearly said 'belief is important to humans in evolutionary terms'. If a psychological function is hardwired into our brains then it must have evolved, originally as a mutation, that gave us an environmental advantage in some way, because that's how evolution works.

Your view of religion is somewhat naïve. Religion is much more than idols and statues, for the Egyptians it would have been a vital part of everyday life; it provided structure for their society, their monarchy, their system of law, and although not exclusively, their daily rituals and habits are all derived from these structures. You cannot reduce the influence of religion to merely a drain on resources - reductio ad absurdum - and expect your point to be taken seriously.

To bring it back to the question asked by the OP I then said if we are to understand religion we must understand its evolved function, admittedly I have linked religion with belief, which I think is entirely reasonable.

MM

[robvalue]

Evolution producing a desire to believe in a creationist God is weird huh. Likes its trying to cover its tracks.

[Spooky]

I generally equate prayer to meditation, which is beneficial to health. That and the old ladies at my Lutheran church had some damn fine banana bread.

[ManMachine]

Evolution producing a desire to believe in a creationist God is weird huh. Likes its trying to cover its tracks.

Evolution doesn't produce a desire to believe in a god, just to have some kind of system of belief. The 'creation' of gods is a different function (but not unlinked), it's very similar to the spontaneous creation of supernatural, anthropomorphic causes for natural phenomenon often found in children, such as the man in the moon, the monster under the bed, the bogey-man outside the window, etc. it comes from the same psychological process, i.e. god is the supernatural, anthropomorphic cause of everything.

This is an artefact of our developmental psychology, in particular the area of developmental causal reasoning.

We usually grow out of it.

MM