RE: I just don't get it
February 22, 2016 at 10:09 am
(This post was last modified: February 22, 2016 at 10:14 am by Brian37.)
When you approach any religious belief, including Hinduism and Buddhism, it is important to understand our species evolution. Creating groups allows organization, setting up social order, and that organization does lead to more opportunity at access to resources and more opportunity for safety in numbers and ability to produce offspring.
And add to that belief in the super natural in the form of deities, spirits, god or gods, what is really going on is our species gap filling projection of their own qualities on fictional things.
It isn't that humans are "wired" to believe, it is that we evolved in ignorance and our bad guesses evolved to be a coping mechanism. The Ancient Egyptians were successful for 3,000 years centered around the false belief that there was a human like super power that controlled the sun, along with other gods and goddesses.
The word for that is "anthropomorphism", projecting human qualities on non human things.
It is a result of flawed perceptions. The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins explains this not as "wiring" but a flaw in our evolution as "the moth mistaking the light bulb for moonlight". Just like it is easy to sell an ignorant child before they can think for themselves with adult reasoning the idea of Santa.
Life evolved to seek patterns, but at the same time life doesn't always have the time to slow down and assess and test what is going on around it. Just like an antelope on the African plane doesn't always have time to assess if the swaying grass is mere wind or a lion stalking it.
Our brains constantly gap fill every day almost every single second and we never notice it. It is why you can walk into a clean glass door because your brain has falsely told you the door is not there. God belief is a misfire, it is nothing more than a human projection a false perception.
Another book equally important is "The New Atheism" by Victor Stenger which says science does have something to say about the unseen, and on top of that goes on in later chapters to explain trough multiple religious examples that our species morality is in our evolution, not the artificial labels humans invent.
And add to that belief in the super natural in the form of deities, spirits, god or gods, what is really going on is our species gap filling projection of their own qualities on fictional things.
It isn't that humans are "wired" to believe, it is that we evolved in ignorance and our bad guesses evolved to be a coping mechanism. The Ancient Egyptians were successful for 3,000 years centered around the false belief that there was a human like super power that controlled the sun, along with other gods and goddesses.
The word for that is "anthropomorphism", projecting human qualities on non human things.
It is a result of flawed perceptions. The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins explains this not as "wiring" but a flaw in our evolution as "the moth mistaking the light bulb for moonlight". Just like it is easy to sell an ignorant child before they can think for themselves with adult reasoning the idea of Santa.
Life evolved to seek patterns, but at the same time life doesn't always have the time to slow down and assess and test what is going on around it. Just like an antelope on the African plane doesn't always have time to assess if the swaying grass is mere wind or a lion stalking it.
Our brains constantly gap fill every day almost every single second and we never notice it. It is why you can walk into a clean glass door because your brain has falsely told you the door is not there. God belief is a misfire, it is nothing more than a human projection a false perception.
Another book equally important is "The New Atheism" by Victor Stenger which says science does have something to say about the unseen, and on top of that goes on in later chapters to explain trough multiple religious examples that our species morality is in our evolution, not the artificial labels humans invent.
