Originally Posted by SpoDaddy
Reply With QuoteWas this directed at what I said? I didn't say that it had no benefits. There can be benefits to anything so in itself that statement isn't remarkable; it really depends on what you mean by "strongest societal motivator", I guess, and what the other lesser motivators you're comparing it to have contributed.It's kind of retarded to say there aren't any benefits to it. Like I said, it's maybe been the strongest societal motivator for most of history.
I think our ability to pass on our values and knowledge is important. Music, art, science, engineering,agriculture, architecture, medicine,religion, philosophy of all kinds, etc, all of these things have been developed and passed on continuously until we have reached the point we are at today. Even trivial things like hairstyles develop along similar lines. Outside of philosophy religion doesn't play more than a superficial role in the development of any of them, so they'd probably develop fine without it's presence.
Even without religion there would still be morality, and as humans organize cultures would develop dominant moral viewpoints - it wouldn't be much different than how different religions lead to different morals; however, if the basic capability to develop morals was lost, things would be vastly different. The question then comes to how important is the basic ability that allows us to form religious beliefs in itself. We know that it's our ability to accept things without evidence. We know that we need to accept certain things as true before we can understand them in order to function or even become capable of understanding them when we're older. In that sense, the ability to "accept things based on faith" is an important part of our development.
Not religion specifically, not belief in a higher power. Those are things that developed because of the presence of that ability. We can teach our children about why it rains, and we can teach them about how santa gives us gifts on christmas, and they'll accept them both as the truth. Useful knowledge or nonsense, and once either are accepted they can be developed and supported in the same way humans develop anything. It's a strength, and it has weaknesses. Since we're not limited to this kind of thinking it makes sense to try and weed the weaknesses out, which is why we've developed logic, critical thinking and the scientific method. I'd put superstitions and similar religious beliefs on the list of unfortunate developments that we don't need to encourage, and I think society would be fine if they generally weren't encouraged.Different, but fine compared to where we are now. On the other hand, if the ability to believe things without evidence itself were lost, we'd probably be in trouble.
I disagree. Even Richard Dawkins concedes that human beings are hardwired to look for God (he calls it an "evolutionary misfire" since he can't find any survival benefits to it).
What was his explanation? The same evolutionary misfire would be similar to what allows people to believe in superstitions that aren't really tied to belief in a god at all. A specific desire for god/a_higher_power says something a bit different, which is why I tried to point out the same kind of thought process at work supporting the belief in things that aren't necessarily higher powers. Unless "certain numbers are scary" is a higher power. If Dawkins offered an explanation for the differences between being hardwired to look for a god vs. believing in ghosts, magic or other superstitions, I'd love to hear it.
Bookmarks