Pastor Says

[Punish_her]

i didnt really follow any of that buuuuuuuut
http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-0...f-control.html - religion evolves because it reinforces fitness-increasing behaviors

[Thorne]

i didnt really follow any of that buuuuuuuut
http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-0...f-control.html - religion evolves because it reinforces fitness-increasing behaviors

As the article notes, this is all preliminary. VERY preliminary. There are many different ideas about the usefulness of religion, or more precisely, religious-tyoe thinking. People need to be able to recognize danger. Our minds tend to see things in randomness, seeking familiar patterns, especially dangerous ones. Religions tend to use this ability of the mind to convince people that things exist, whether or not there's any evidence for those things. And many religions, the big three certainly, place a high premium on frightening believers into behaving in unnatural ways. If you are afraid for your immortal soul, you will naturally be inclined to exhibit self-control. But who places the value on these social behaviors? The same people who tell you that it would be sinful to perform such acts.

I'll wait to see where this line of exploration goes, but it wouldn't surprise me that there are many other means of achieving the same results without using religion. Rampant, mindless patriotism comes to mind, for one.

And a little googling comes up with this: a more detailed report.

Among other things, they say that "[Improved self-control] could have been caused by other confounding constructs coactivated by the religion prime, such as morality concepts or death-related concerns." And, "In a more general sense, religion may be more of a cultural construct; it could be that the idea of an omniscient god has something to do with it, but it might not be the whole story."

As I said, this might be something, or it may simply be one of many actions which could get the same results. It's still very preliminary. And I would be interested to see the results when done by someone who was not himself primed to accept religion. (Mr. Rounding is Catholic.)

In any event, the possible fact that the human mind might be predisposed to believe in fairy tales says nothing about the veracity of those tales.