(August 26, 2015 at 7:37 am)Fake Messiah Wrote: Religion has hijacked the evolved tendency of humans to accept authority when they’re young, something that would have enhanced the survival of our ancestors (learning is a good way to avoid the dangers of experience). Because when you're born you don't know anything and have to listen to your parents to survive like "Don't play near that lake cuz crock will eat you." and those kids that didn't listen didn't pass the disobedient gene. Similar if you hear a rustle in the bushes, you’re more likely to survive (or get food) if you believe it came from another animal than from a gust of wind. These beliefs about conscious agents in nature can easily be transferred to things like lightning and earthquakes. Because our ancestors lacked naturalistic explanations for such things, conjectures about supernatural humanlike beings or spirits might follow. So afterward it is really hard for lots of people to part something they learned in childhood as "untouchable" (sacred, if you want) truth.
And so if you’re born in Saudi Arabia, in all likelihood you’ll be brought up Muslim, accepting its doctrines as true. If born in Utah, the chances of your becoming a Mormon are high (around 60 percent), and in Brazil you’re likely to become a Catholic. To a very large extent, which religion you accept and which you reject are accidents of birth. And after you’ve been religious for years, and surrounded by those who believe likewise, you become emotionally invested in your faith’s truth. This makes you more susceptible to confirmation bias and less likely to be skeptical about your beliefs.
Yeah but all the rituals of going to church and the theology of Christianity are so unappealing I don't even understand why people form or sustain any emotional attachment to it. I went to a religious church school where they taught you stories of the Bible as if they were fact and I became an atheist by the time I was aged 10 and it never caused me discomfort to not believe any of it because I had no attachment to it in the first place.
The single only thing I can see in its appeal to adults to believe in life after death but you have no fear of death when you're a child so that doesn't apply when you're growing up.
