(Dec 15, 2016 12:05 AM)Yazata Wrote: I don't think that one can necessarily conclude that religion confers evolutionary advantage on religious organisms. I'm more inclined to suspect that religiosity is generated more or less as an accidental consequence, by other cognitive abilities that do confer selective advantage.
Yet every cooperative culture has independently developed religion.
Quote:Imagining God in personal terms implies that one assigns psychologistic predicates to 'God', that one tries to conceive of God as one conceives of human persons and thinks of God in terms of intentions, purposes, motivations, emotions and so on. So it stands to reason that our innate human 'theory of mind' would be activated.
I wonder if autistic people, who are said to have defects in this human ability (which may or may not be true) display any kind of identifiable religiosity.
Yeah, I would expect our theory of mind to be in play here. And I would be surprised if the autistic were significantly religious.