Even though long, quite good read.
In short: two researchers are exploring if evolution can be attributed to our idea about afterlife. So far they see that apparently tendency for this idea is hardwired into us, and not merely a meme - the younger the children, the more they take afterlife seriously (should be opposite if mostly culture influenced this). (The only weak point which I see in their experimant is that possibly younger children are more prone to anthropomorphisation. ) So evolution made us at least more open to the idea of afterlife/gods/spirits.
Interestingly, no outrage has taken place...perhaps because ID folks dismiss evolution altogether, so no biggie for them. And they can always say that god made us that way...
Inreresting/fun quotes:
The mouse strolled across a small puppet theater made up with a plastic tree and artificial grass, where the alligator hid. The mouse explained his woes: He was lost, sick, sleepy, hungry, and thirsty. After the mouse's brief soliloquy, Mr. Alligator emerged perfunctorily and ate the mouse. The end.
After making sure that the child understood the concept that the mouse was no longer alive, he or she was asked a series of questions.
(many other questions) Can he still smell the flowers?
After making sure that the child understood the concept that the mouse was no longer alive, he or she was asked a series of questions.
(many other questions) Can he still smell the flowers?
children come into the world with a strong tendency to believe in a soul that survives death. The children responded, in other words, exactly the way they would if there were systems already in their brains that prevented them from thinking that intentions, thoughts, and feelings ceased after death.
Bering thinks that a belief in the supernatural might have helped proto-humans survive on the savanna. "If you think you're being monitored, your behavior will be enhanced in a fitness-enhancing fashion," Bering says. In other words, believing that a God was watching might have made our ancestors more likely to survive.
"Humans have evolved this tendency to look for explanations, to look for causes," he says in a characteristically dispassionate way. "This ends up giving meaning to life. It forms how we think about the world. Religion and spirituality emanate from it."
"My meaning in life is to illustrate that there really is no meaning,"
"We've got God by the throat, and I'm not going to stop until one of us is dead."
"My meaning in life is to illustrate that there really is no meaning,"
"We've got God by the throat, and I'm not going to stop until one of us is dead."
At the center of the highly coordinated, PR-driven ID agenda: to make biology sound as if it were in disarray, as if science itself were in high retreat.
That's proved a brilliant tactic, resonating with millions of Americans who seem to relish the idea of scientists' having second thoughts about Charles Darwin's historic insight. The thing is, it isn't true. Biological evolution is as strongly held, and experimentally and observationally supported, as ever. There is no retreat from evolution, despite what ID adherents desperately want school boards around the country to believe.
That's proved a brilliant tactic, resonating with millions of Americans who seem to relish the idea of scientists' having second thoughts about Charles Darwin's historic insight. The thing is, it isn't true. Biological evolution is as strongly held, and experimentally and observationally supported, as ever. There is no retreat from evolution, despite what ID adherents desperately want school boards around the country to believe.
These anthropologists and psychologists wonder if the nearly universal human tendency to believe in gods is a kind of programming that resulted from natural selection. Until recently, the field had an unwritten rule: Focus your work on the beliefs and spirits of little-known "primitive" societies in far-off lands.
But hands off Jehovah.
But hands off Jehovah.
"You can never get around God designing our mind to believe these things," Bering says. Just as some creationists believe that God purposely buried dinosaur fossils so that we would find them, so too it's easy for such a mind to think that God would bury a fossil representing himself in our brains.
But that concept can also be turned on its head. Just as some creationists believe that scientists are deluding themselves about the bones they dig up that seemingly confirm evolution, Bjorklund and Bering believe that their work shows that creationists are operating under their own delusions.
They can't help believing in creationism. After all, evolution made them that way.
Bjorklund calls creationism the "species default." "The notion of creationism is intellectually easier to understand," he says. "It's been only very recently that we get to understand how things emerge without a creator, and it's hard to really live that way. Our minds did not evolve for this."
As famous biologist Richard Dawkins suggests, "It is almost as if the human brain were specifically designed to misunderstand Darwinism and to find it hard to believe."
Bering agrees. "It is clear that when it comes to the big questions in life, our brains have evolved so that science eludes us but religion comes naturally," he writes in American Scientist.
...
The irony is, Bjorklund and Bering know that even if they are right, we are all hardwired to disbelieve their results. "There will never be a day when God does not speak for the majority," Bering wrote recently. "As scientists, we must toil and labor and toil again to silence God, but ultimately this is like cutting off our ears to hear more clearly. God too is a biological appendage."
They can't help believing in creationism. After all, evolution made them that way.
Bjorklund calls creationism the "species default." "The notion of creationism is intellectually easier to understand," he says. "It's been only very recently that we get to understand how things emerge without a creator, and it's hard to really live that way. Our minds did not evolve for this."
As famous biologist Richard Dawkins suggests, "It is almost as if the human brain were specifically designed to misunderstand Darwinism and to find it hard to believe."
Bering agrees. "It is clear that when it comes to the big questions in life, our brains have evolved so that science eludes us but religion comes naturally," he writes in American Scientist.
...
The irony is, Bjorklund and Bering know that even if they are right, we are all hardwired to disbelieve their results. "There will never be a day when God does not speak for the majority," Bering wrote recently. "As scientists, we must toil and labor and toil again to silence God, but ultimately this is like cutting off our ears to hear more clearly. God too is a biological appendage."
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