Neil DeGrasse Tyson on Disproving God

[Kernel Sohcahtoa]

The science on this one is pretty clear. (I made three citations on another thread) such as this one: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20...103828.htm

Thank you for your response , Neo-Scholastic. In particular, I found the following passage from the link posted in the quote above to be interesting:

Experiments involving adults, conducted by Jing Zhu from Tsinghua University (China), and Natalie Emmons and Jesse Bering from The Queen's University, Belfast, suggest that people across many different cultures instinctively believe that some part of their mind, soul or spirit lives on after-death. The studies demonstrate that people are natural 'dualists' finding it easy to conceive of the separation of the mind and the body.

Now, when reading this, it reminded of a passage from J. Anderson Thomson's Why we believe in gods: A concise guide to the science of faith, which discusses the concept of mind-body dualism:

Because we need to work with other people to survive, our brains evolved the ability to make assumptions about others, to create conjecture to help us coexist in social settings.  We are born accepting that others are like us, intentional agents with minds like ours, even though we are unable to literally see their minds.

One aspect of this is called mind-body dualism split or dualism, the view that the mind and body function separately, without interchange.  We cannot conceive of souls unless we see mind as separate from body.  And we do, because our brains are wired that way.

The medial frontal area of our brains, just behind the space between the eyes, contains the circuits for introspection, awareness of our own nonphysical attributes, our emotional states and traits, and our own wishes and desires.  It is also the part of our brain with which we reflect on the abstract: other people's minds, their intentions, beliefs, desires, and feelings--their non physical attributes. 

This ability is not learned; it is innate, hard-wired.  The brain represents mind and body in separate neural circuits . This allows us to separate minds from bodies, to experience and believe that they are entirely different categories (Thomson, 50-51).

Now, along with the human tendency for dualism, Thomson also observes that the human mind is also prone to attributing causal, human-like agency to nearly everything that it encounters.  In addition, he observes that the human mind also has a tendency to fill in the blanks (inferential reasoning and minimally counterintuitive worlds) (Thomson,  64-66).  Furthermore, decoupled cognition, an aspect of the human mind that  allows people to conduct complex social interactions with unseen others, aids people in their need to co-exist in social settings and to have successful relationships with others.  Hence, these aspects of the human mind complement humanity's need for attachment, especially to something that cannot be observed. (Thomson, 54)

Now, from the article that was linked in your post:

'This project suggests that religion is not just something for a peculiar few to do on Sundays instead of playing golf. We have gathered a body of evidence that suggests that religion is a common fact of human nature across different societies. This suggests that attempts to suppress religion are likely to be short-lived as human thought seems to be rooted to religious concepts, such as the existence of supernatural agents or gods, and the possibility of an afterlife or pre-life.'

Is human thought rooted to religious concepts, or do religious concepts provide an effective means for people to stimulate those areas of their brains that are hard-wired or rooted to attachment, dualism, inferential reasoning, decoupled cognition, and etc.?

References

Thomson, J.A. (2011). Why we believe in gods: A concise guide to the science of faith.  United States of America: Pitchstone Publishing