I love religion!

[Zagreus]

Yes, I think it was Dawkins who coined the "meme" in name at least. What I was saying up there was just paraphrasing and consolidating the way I understood what he and others have explained.

I just recogised the ideas from something I read of his, after someone on another forum wrote the same idea. It’s good, but I need to spend some time thinking about it properly, as I’m not sure I totally agree with it. To a degree though, it probably has some truth.

Whilst I'm sure that there is a social element in the development of religion, and it could indeed play a part in tribes' or groups' survival, I think there are probably other elements too. I actually think hallucinogens have a part to play as we see them in primitive tribe cultures, and there's no real reason that I'm aware of to consider our cultural ancestors to be that different. The general social construct could be as the theory you said suggests, but the initial trigger could be more substantial than merely a way to hold a community together.

Interesting point to flesh out, that a trigger would probably be necessary. What exactly do you mean? In my mind I was just figuring that most "tribes" or cultures would just start with some form of animism, as it would've been their only explanation for things we take for simple- eg. movement of the sun, moon, and stars.

See, even saying ‘some sort of animism’ requires an initial idea that there are souls in other things, and an idea of what a soul is. It’s also important to remember that our ancestors weren’t necessarily backwards cavemen terrified of the world. No one woke up one day and said, “right, that deer over there has a soul.” I’m not disagreeing with you here, merely emphasising that it probably was a little more complex. Having said that, humans are also as superstitious as they used to be, so you are right that these ideas probably started that way and developed.

There’s a couple of things that arise here; one being that most humans follow the pack, but we are the only species to also display genius. The trigger here could be the idea that one person in the tribe has an insight that he/she explains as a deity, then the others go along with the idea. (You could argue this is how Islam started out.)

Now, what would that experience be? If it’s biological, as I suspect it might be, then we have a cause. What came first, the numinous experience or the concept of deity? If people are having a certain experience, then they may explain it in the way that they can.

The second issue is one that mainstream thought seems to avoid, and that’s drugs. A shaman doesn’t come from nowhere. Naturally growing hallucinogens can cause experiences which can be regarded as religious in nature, but how would they be described before the concept of religion? I’m not convinced this could not have been the cause of some of the ideas, and then the others followed the idea, even though they had not necessarily had the same experience.

Is that making any sense? I can elaborate if you want, or we can move on. I’m not saying that’s right either, it’s just a possibility.

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Regarding the selfish gene bit, there are always exceptions to the rule, and that’s something that has begun to interest me lately. If religion is a survival issue, then why does celibacy come into it? Mother Teresa didn’t pass on her genes, yet her actions as a result of her religious beliefs helps the passing on of others’ genes; people she wasn’t even related to. Maybe on a human scale it’s just larger and we subconsciously look after our species rather than simply our genes? I think there are examples of altruism in apes too, but I’ll have to look into that.

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That's exactly the point of the Meme idea of religion- it's actually HIJACKED our sense of "same" or the part of human behavior which causes us to care more for those which are like us.

This, if you look at it from a gene's point of view, is an excellent evolutionary "strategy"- the gene which causes a family member to care for another would be passed on to many generations- think if apes had no tendency to care for their young. They do not bear enough young/litter for this to be an effective technique to have many surviving offspring. So religion as a meme has taken this sense of "caring" (which is actually just gene selfishness) . It's an idea gene- one which is very very good at spreading. I mean look at one of the central tenets of Jehova's Witness- you're not allowed into heaven unless you've converted a certain amount of people. Brilliant!!! How could that not spread?

It’s really difficult to explain stuff like that plus avoid the semantic trap of inferring genes are thinking and have a plan! You did well. The problem is that it still infers a plan of some sort. I’m not sure you can say it’s a strategy as such, more just the way things have panned out. Natural selection isn’t a strategy, it’s just the result of how things are.

I’m not disagreeing with you there, merely trying (badly) to elaborate a bit. I think that idea regarding religion is probably accurate to an extent. I don’t know enough about Jehovah Witness belief to know where the get x number of people into the faith and you can go to heaven, but it does sound suspiciously like a human device to get people to agree with you ideas.

On a slightly off tangent note, we do see that happening. Have you heard of Harun Yahya? He’s a famous Muslim creationist who apparently just blindly lies about evolution to get people to believe him. I’ve not read his stuff, but I’ve talked with Muslims who use his arguments, and they are just so flawed it’s amazing. It wouldn’t surprise me if a lot of religious ideas such as hell are not necessarily believed in by some people who espouse the ideas.

This is explained fairly well in Selfish Gene- a book i strongly recommend you reading if you haven't. It's actually got many of the ideas we're talking about here, but Dawkins is a little bit better at explaining than I am . It also has many examples of "altruism" in the animal world (down to birds, antelope, etc) and explanations for them.

I’ve not read it yet, but I might do on your recommendation. It’s only Dawkins’ literalist take on religion that bugs me, the stuff on biology he does is great from what I’ve seen and heard.

If you think religion is wonderful, why are you an atheist?

Probably for the same reason I am not a Jedi- no matter how much he wishes it were true he can't make it so. And I actually can see what he means. There are definitely some positive aspects to religion; it's kind of like the facebook before internet. The original social networking. Obviously not all church members are good people (nor are all atheists), but there are many church funded and spearheaded projects which do good.

Absolutely the opposite is actually the truth. I hope like hell I’m right and there is no God! If the Abrahamic God exists then I am in big trouble…