Why We Believe in Gods

[mahnmut]

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This lecture summarizes the scientific research that explains the human inclination to create divinity.

It is not a defense of atheism, but rather shows what science has to say about the various modules and capacities that humans have developed over the millenia that lend themselves to the generation and embrace of religious explanations.

Although the author makes it clear that he is not a man of faith, the lecture is not an attack on faith so much as an account of why people might believe, other than because it’s true. Very current and a good portal for someone seeking to learn more about the field.

Comments

[ddstory.livejournal.com]

That's because only one extinct bipedal ape aside from humanity advanced enough, brain-wise, as well as socially, to allow for the emergence of social constructs, including religion.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

The interesting thing about chimpanzees, however, is that there are phenomena observed in them that can shade into animism as a potential reason for what they do from the perspective of chimpanzees. So you see this in Pan troglodytes but *not* in early bipedal apes or early Homo. So does this mean that present-day chimpanzees are actually *more* intelligent than ancient proto-humans were?

[ddstory.livejournal.com]

It could be the advanced environment that has shaped their ways in that way. The world they're surrounded by is very different from that one.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

These are wild chimpanzees, so I fail to see how the environment they live in now is all that more advanced than the ones their prehistoric ancestors lived in next to our prehistoric ancestors. This as far as I know has not been seen in bonobos so it indicates something that makes humans and the common chimpanzee more similar than all other apes. Well, that and the whole wars between rival cultures that vary in the warlike-pacific set of traits thing.