RE: The development of spirituality in evolution.
June 14, 2014 at 5:56 pm
(This post was last modified: June 14, 2014 at 6:09 pm by Rahul.)
My personal thoughts on this idea is that spirituality is most likely a spandrel to our intelligence and emotion. A by-product or side effect.
Spirituality is definitely a truth about humanity because it speaks to innate human qualities. Mainly our emotional states and our tendency to make shortcuts to conclusions in order to quickly deduce what we are currently experiencing. I literally jump sometimes when I see a water hose laying in high grass because my immediate shortcut thought is SNAKE! without taking the time to logically step back and examine what I just saw before reacting.
I definitely feel spiritual thoughts, or "Awe" as I tend to refer to it at times. But it's usually because I'm geeking out about something. Having a cerebral "holy shit" moment.
I don't think spirituality helped us survive in nature. But it appears to have helped us survive in human societies. Kind of like the Peacock tail. Helps us to reproduce, but is a major drag on our personal resources and escaping predators. At least historically in some of those regards. If I never left my small hometown of highly religious, conservative folks; me being an atheist would be a major obstacle to my finding a receptive mate for sure.
Spirituality is definitely a truth about humanity because it speaks to innate human qualities. Mainly our emotional states and our tendency to make shortcuts to conclusions in order to quickly deduce what we are currently experiencing. I literally jump sometimes when I see a water hose laying in high grass because my immediate shortcut thought is SNAKE! without taking the time to logically step back and examine what I just saw before reacting.
I definitely feel spiritual thoughts, or "Awe" as I tend to refer to it at times. But it's usually because I'm geeking out about something. Having a cerebral "holy shit" moment.
I don't think spirituality helped us survive in nature. But it appears to have helped us survive in human societies. Kind of like the Peacock tail. Helps us to reproduce, but is a major drag on our personal resources and escaping predators. At least historically in some of those regards. If I never left my small hometown of highly religious, conservative folks; me being an atheist would be a major obstacle to my finding a receptive mate for sure.
Everything I needed to know about life I learned on Dagobah.
