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Neurotheology

#11
Syne Offline
(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.
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#12
stryder Offline
Spirituality is a funny thing in a sense that it doesn't have to have any reference to a God or Gods.

One way where spirituality can be suggested to have shaped neurological development (if only a small amount) is in regards to the "Passage of Man" ceremonies, where some shaman gets the young tribe members to indulge in a hallucinogenic compound and them has them ride it out. When applied to thousands of years of ceremonies, it could be suggested that the neurological development of people would have changed (It might even explain why some of our receptors respond the way they do), the experiences of would have been shared (after all such states tend to create temporary problems with the person pondering solutions, which eventually leads to a state of profound rationalisation. Some might even consider enlightenment.)

It's something that has existed in all religions to my knowledge, it's just some are more straight forwards with it while others will hide such acts behind metaphor or "Incense Burners".

There are other "clues" to that sort of history too, for instance why are some people more likely to be addicted to anything than others?
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