do religious people really believe?

[Angrboda]

They believe in the reality of perceptions and cognitions which, themselves are cobbled together by the parts which make up useful cognition,

What does it mean? The reality of cognitions which are cobbled together by parts which make up useful cognition?

Meaning that individual cognitive components which are normally useful if combined in the right combination and proportion, give rise to independent cognitions that apart from their utility in the proper combination, are essentially cognitive errors; it is theorized that it is these cognitive errors that give rise to religion, and, seeing as they are composed of parts that are otherwise adaptive, they aren't selected against evolutionarily or socially. (An example might be the ability to attribute mind to objects in our environment [like people or animals] gives rise to attributing mind to things that don't possess a mind. For more on this, see for example Religion Explained by Pascal Boyer, Why We Believe In Gods by J. Anderson Thomson, Jr., The Belief Instinct by Jesse Bering, or, one I haven't read, In Gods We Trust: The Evolutionary Landscape of Religion by Scott Atran.)


This is a rather lengthy quote for such a short book, but somehow I rather suspect that Dr. Thomson would not object. (You may also be interested in a powerpoint slideshow for a presentation he gave last summer, but my recollection is that it's missing a lot without his narration. download here) This is from Why We Believe In Gods: A Concise Guide To The Science Of Faith by J. Anderson Thomson, Jr., M.D. (Which is only $10 at !)

Decoupled Cognition

Imagine that the only way you could think about what might be going on in another person's mind was for that person to be sitting in front of you. Human relationships as we know them would be impossible, and the same was also true for our ancestors. We need to evaluate the likely thoughts and feelings of others, even when those others are nowhere to be seen.

For this reason, human beings are uniquely adapted to accept the presence of disembodied entities and to assume they will behave in certain ways. Most of us do it every day.

Have you ever thought of a perfect response to a conversational challenge when it was too late to use it, and mentally replayed how the conversation could have gone? Lain awake at night agonizing about fixing a social or career misstep? Mentally rehearsed a marriage proposal, or a request for a raise?

We humans have the remarkable ability to create and implement a complex interaction with an unseen other — boss, spouse, friend — in our minds, regardless of time or place, in the past or in the future. You had an argument. You were wrong. You want to apologize but you need to plan how. You mentally rehearse it, envisioning how the other person will respond. And all of this occurs while you go about your daily life. This is called decoupled cognition, and it is key to religious belief.

We can decouple our cognition from time, place, and circumstance. This ability arises in childhood and is seen vividly in play. A child might say a bottle cap is a flying saucer. The child knows what it really is but can choose to ignore the reality and think of it as a flying saucer, with the attributes imagined and related to as such. The child is decoupling his or her cognition.

Theater and filmgoers use such "suspension of disbelief" all the time. They know that what is happening on the stage or screen is not real. Yet, when watching, they choose to believe that the people on the stage or screen really exist, that they live in another place and time, that the car really was blown to smithereens, that a character came back to life.

As adults, this mechanism is crucial to memory and planning. We can go back and forth in time, place, and circumstance as we think how to manage the relationships in our lives. We remember the meeting with the boss. We plan a conversation for the future. All this interaction is with others who are not there at the moment.

Interacting in our minds with unseen others is natural. Many people mentally converse with recently departed loved ones. A natural extension of this — a leap of faith, if you will — can become ancestor worship and belief in gods. Our mind's ability to create a complex relationship with unseen others simply expands.

Theory-of-Mind Mechanisms

Closely related to decoupled cognition is an amazing mental capacity, systems in our brain called theory-of-mind mechanisms, an understated name for an amazing gift. Before we can imagine how someone might react, we have to somehow understand what and how that person probably thinks. And, for the most part, we are able to do that. We have an innate ability to "read" what another person may think, believe, desire, or intend, in remarkable detail and with remarkable accuracy, and make assumptions based on that.

Think of people you know well. You can probably fairly accurately imagine what issues they might be considering at this very moment. You can make an educated guess as to what they think of you. This ability likely helped our ancestors determine who was friend and who was not, interact socially, and plan accordingly for survival.

This ability for joint attention may be the key to human uniqueness. Alone among the apes, we engage in complex cooperation with others, not only reading others' minds but also reading others reading our minds. We take it for granted because it seems so simple. But it is not.

For example, you and I plan to meet at a theater for the 9 p.m. movie. We have constructed a plan to cooperate in a joint venture. Each knows of the other's commitment to the task. But you know I can be late. So you told me to be there on time, and I know you are frustrated with my tendency to be late. And you know I know of your displeasure with my tardiness. When I arrive in plenty of time for the movie, you smile. I know you are pleased at my punctuality, and you know I see and understand your pleasure. Not a single word need be said. It is just one small step to imagining an amorphous humanlike mind with ideas, feelings, and intentions about you and your fellow man. We can imagine this humanlike mind and engage in a joint venture. We'll build a cathedral with and for him. He'll be pleased. We'll know he's pleased if good fortune comes our way.

Intensionality

A closely related phenomenon is intensionality, spelled with an "s" This is another extraordinary, taken-for-granted mental capacity. It goes like this:

• First Order: "I think."
  
• Second Order: "I think you think."
  
• Third Order: "I think you think that I think."
  
• Fourth Order: "I think you think that I think that you think."
  

Let's try it this way:

• First Order: "I hope."
  
• Second Order: "I hope you like this book."
  
• Third Order: "I know you are aware that I hope you like this book."
  
• Fourth Order: "You can be certain that I know that you are aware that I hope you like this book."
  

These can, of course, be colored by circumstance.

Imagine a social situation. A woman is talking to a man she thinks is boring. But the man thinks the woman considers him very attractive. In a corner of the room, watching, is the woman's husband, who suspects that his wife is flirting with the other man, because he knows she is angry with him and believes she is retaliating — which, in fact, she may be doing, knowing that it will annoy her husband.

This kind of awareness of what other people think, and what other people think about what we might think, is something that is utterly indispensable for social relationships.

Religions easily utilize intensionality.

• First Order: "I believe:'
  
• Second Order: "I believe that God wants:'
  
• Third Order: "I believe that God wants us to act with righteous intent:'
  
• Fourth Order: "I want you to believe that God wants us to act with righteous intent:'
  
• Fifth Order: "I want you to know that we both believe that God wants us to act with righteous intent.”
  

Psychologist Robin Dunbar notes that third-order intensionality is "personal religion." But, for you to be convinced, there must be fourth-order intensionality — someone else adds to your mind state, asking you to believe. That produces "social religion.”