Author Topic: Treating Religiosity  (Read 2063 times)

Offline moot

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« Reply #30 on: November 13, 2004, 10:48:52 PM »
I'd say it was just an efficient and fairly foolproof way for the species to survive.  We don't need instincts anymore either.

Basta excess baggage.
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Offline Nash

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« Reply #31 on: November 13, 2004, 10:49:51 PM »
Quote
Originally posted by AKIron
I disagree. If Christ was not resurrected there is no point to Christianity.


Right.

Offline moot

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« Reply #32 on: November 13, 2004, 10:54:46 PM »
Quote
Originally posted by Nash
Quit using the word religion. You're trying to marginalize the whole thing, and you know it.

The word is spirituality. Or faith.

So, it turns out our brain is wired for such "irrational" things, as you say.... love and emotion.

It also turns out that it is wired for spirituality.

But you accept the first two, and question the third as if it were some kind of tumor?


Love is emotion. Is spirituality.  The extreme cases are where you start to have non-negligible unwanted consequences.
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Offline Shuckins

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« Reply #33 on: November 13, 2004, 10:55:20 PM »
Careful Suave.   You're on a slippery slope.

If emotions and love are necessary social functions how can they be irrational activities?

I have no problem with the theory that our brains have neuron paths that seem to be wired for religion.  My faith provides an answer to the question of "Why" it is configured that way.  Religion is just as necessary a social function, and just as irrational, as love and all other human emotions.

Your purely rational, "scientific" approach seems to have been unable to provide you with an answer.
« Last Edit: November 13, 2004, 10:59:16 PM by Shuckins »

Offline GRUNHERZ

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« Reply #34 on: November 13, 2004, 10:55:33 PM »
Quote
Originally posted by Suave
Well, less than 10% of the population suffer from religiosity. Most fanatics are believers because people they trusted the most in the universe told them it was true.  In other words it doesn't come from influences within, ie. hallucinations, it is a product of social influences. Nobody is born a stalinist or a catholic, but we now think that the hard wiring in our brains is there to facilitate it.
 
But, just to illustrate the flaw in your logic in reference to disease and disorders.If 90% of the world had aids would the ones without it be the unhealthy ones? No. Disease isn't determined by frequency or prevalence.

We allready know that we're born with the physiolgy and brain mapping for irrational activity, emotions and love. But the necesity for these social functions is obvious.

The question is, why are humans equiped with the brain paths for religion? What purpose does this irrational activity serve? Population control? Tribal and territorial purposes?  Is it really species specific to homo sapiens sapiens?


90+% are religious.  90+% of the people have sight. 90% of humans can walk..  I guess those are diseases too, and the few blind  ones are the normal people.  Your AIDS anolgy is riduculus...

As for your humans questions, well humans are the only species on earth to do many things...  Why? Well that depends on who you ask and what their viewpoint is...

Now go take a pill and cure your atheism disease, hopefully they will be able to correct yoiur abnormal brain functions... Because one of the definitions of disease is an abnormal state of your body, which is directly related to the genetic prevalalence of of traits in a human poulation. Like the 90% of people who have the brain functions for religion. If you lack that brain function then something is certainly wrong with yur bidy, just as much as if you were born without eyes or legs..  Maybe its not a disease, maybe its just a disability..  But hey, at least yiu can now get the better parking spaces...

Also before ou get all hurt and start insulting me as some unenlightend religious type or whatever just know I'm not any sort of churchie too.

But I will call you out on your ridiculus idea that somehow religious though is an abberant disease when religion is as common and normal as sight in humans...

:rofl

You enlightened tollerant progressive folks are amzing...
« Last Edit: November 13, 2004, 11:03:56 PM by GRUNHERZ »

Offline Nash

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« Reply #35 on: November 13, 2004, 10:59:34 PM »
My tendancy wouldn't be to ask why faith seems to be an arbitrary wiring in the brain alongside other seemingly irrational things such as emotion and love...

I would instead ask why it's even wired there in the first place...

If I was without faith, that question would give me pause...

It wouldn't lead me to ponder on how to eradicate it.

Offline moot

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« Reply #36 on: November 13, 2004, 11:00:34 PM »
See GH, you're on your ad hominem high again.
You're playing with words, or you didn't understand what Suave's saying.  
It's the fanatical symbolismic extremism, not just believing in a black-box system for anything you've no explanation for.
You should read it again.
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Offline GRUNHERZ

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« Reply #37 on: November 13, 2004, 11:05:59 PM »
Quote
Originally posted by moot
See GH, you're on your ad hominem high again.
You're playing with words, or you didn't understand what Suave's saying.  
It's the fanatical symbolismic extremism, not just believing in a black-box system for anything you've no explanation for.
You should read it again.


He is trying to introduce the idea that religios though is a disease of the mind.

I'm giving him a reality check...

Offline Nash

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« Reply #38 on: November 13, 2004, 11:06:47 PM »
Y'all please quit with the "religion" crap.

It doesn't really apply here. When we're talking about... appearently..... an area of the brain receptive to this stuff, well that area knows no religion.

Think of religions as being different languages trying to talk about the same thing.

Religion can bite my arse. The ends do not justify the means if the means run counter to the ends.

Offline Shuckins

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« Reply #39 on: November 13, 2004, 11:09:07 PM »
Sorry Nash...

...but HE started it! :D

Offline moot

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« Reply #40 on: November 13, 2004, 11:10:08 PM »
Nash think about it like this, for a moment:
Rational thought, and irrational thought.
Logic, causality etc for the first, poetry, emotion and all derivatives in the second.

If you take two systems and give each different operating systems, you most likely won't get indentical outputs from them, and if you did, it wouldn't prove they are the same ( we know this, we defined them as such).

So if any two people are not the same down to each atom, they can't have the same lives or points of view or taste etc. This lets you deduce they won't have anything further up the fundamental scale in common.   So if you are from one tribe and meet someone from another that's across the planet in a completely different climate, you most likely won't "get" what the other is saying.

Like in almost every conflict so far, Irak-US, Ireland/UK, Christianity/Islam, Koreans/Japanese, your neighbour/you, alpha male/subordinate male, whatever.


None of this is new and is probably taught in any introductory philosphy class, but it's the basis for IRRATIONALITY not being a viable system of civility.
Which doesn't mean it must be erradicated.  It's flawed for the purposes in question and shouldn't be ignored as such, depending on the level of tolerance for error/conflict/whatever.
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Offline GRUNHERZ

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« Reply #41 on: November 13, 2004, 11:10:27 PM »
Quote
Originally posted by Nash
Y'all please quit with the "religion" crap.

It doesn't really apply here. When we're talking about... appearently..... an area of the brain receptive to this stuff, well that area knows no religion.

Think of religions as being different languages trying to talk about the same thing.

Religion can bite my arse. The ends do not justify the means if the means run counter to the ends.


For our discussion religion and spiriituality are identical as we are talking about brain functions that predispose people to such beliefs.  The organizational, bureocratic, institutional, ritual and societal aspects of religious practice or observance are not relevant here.

Offline moot

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« Reply #42 on: November 13, 2004, 11:15:46 PM »
yeah, it's not the machine that's the subject, it's the "spiritual concept", chill :D

GH, the way I see it, that's not what he's saying.
He's meaning that there is a certain amount of reliance on irrationality that is past a certain disfunctionality tolerance threshold, just like you aren't "sick" at the moment, yet harbouring a sizeable amount of non-symbiotic organisms.

He's not revolutionizing anything about the day to day coexistence between rational thought and religious values.
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Offline Nash

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« Reply #43 on: November 13, 2004, 11:17:36 PM »
That's the thing tho, Shuckins....

Religious folks tend to reel in horror over what Suave posted.

Me? I get jazzed about it....

There's an area of the brain wired for spirituality? Cool!

Christians or whatever, will freak out 'cuz maybe it goes against something in the bible. Scientists will.... well I don't know. Atheists, it proves something to them perhaps....

Now you could make the case for any number of positions. One would be "there's a cure for it". How lame is that?

Give me a syringe and I'll show you a cure for love.

So no... All I see here is an acknowledgement by science saying tha our brains are not only wired for emotion and love, but also wired for faith.

How folks respond to that is their own business..

Me... I just say to myself "hmmm.... science just acknowledged something I already felt to be true."

Offline Nash

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« Reply #44 on: November 13, 2004, 11:20:17 PM »
No no no.... Grun...

Even for purposes of discussion I will never equate spirituality with religion.