(October 2, 2014 at 10:29 pm)bennyboy Wrote:(September 28, 2014 at 9:43 pm)Brian37 Wrote: First off your heart does not do the thinking, your brain is the organ that does the thinking.
Your brain does all the feeling, too. Just because something isn't accessible at the conscious level, or isn't comprehensible as a logical argument, doesn't mean it isn't of the brain, or that it isn't something important to the human experience.
I'm not so sure what causes religious feelings. I'm not sure I can see the evolutionary value of having them. But certainly, they are a big part of the human experience (though not all would call them "religious"). Maybe if we could better understand what the brain is doing when we have religious feelings, we could figure out the evolutionary value, and turn a counterproductive superstitious impulse into a superpowerful subconscious assistant.
One of the problems with science and atheism is that feelings sometimes get disregarded as unimportant or unsignificant, in place of logic exclusively as a way of processing the world. To me, that's not a good thing.
What causes religious feelings is the same intense feelings a gullible child has Christmas eve. The same intense feelings an insecure boy has pining after a girl from afar. The same intense feelings when someone has a baby.
Religion is our species literal ignorance of their own flawed perceptions. It boils down to "If you want to believe something badly enough you will", and our species hormones and chemical brain activity can very powerful in allowing us to gap fill with falsehoods.
