A rational basis for religion

[D'kian]

The various threads and arguments trying to prove the existence of God rationally reminded me of an idea I had: what if there were a rational basis for religion? I've never done anythign with it, but I developed two possible scenarios:

1) The primitive inhabitants of a planet are visited by humans (in the future, anturally). The humans can heal them, improve their crops and even make it rain sometimes (actually they can scoop water with one fo their ships and dump it over forest fires, but what do primitives understand?) This goes on for a few years until the humans suddenly have to leave (the primitives never know why). Accidentally they leave behind a magical device that shows pictures of various humans (a digital photo frame). The primitives do paintings and sculptures of their human "gods" and worship them, hoping they'll return.

Over time the frame stops working and even decays. the paintings and sculptures get distorted, the tales grow taller withe every re-telling and hundreds of years later the primitives belive in a superior being that looks somewhat like them, who is all powerful and all knowing, who created them and the world, etc etc.

2) For some reason, possibly an experiment, a group of robots are left in an isolated world. They have tools to get raw amterials, process them and build more robots, but they don't know enough to change their own programming. So they ahve a limited number of basic programs for each robot type and no more.

Among the programming is the knowledge that human beings exist and that they created robots. But no robot on the planet has ever seen a human being.

Years alter the robots ahve a working society. They worship the humans who created them. Depending on one's assumptions about robots, and on the definition o fhumans they carry within, they might endow human with more abilities than they know for certain they possesed.

[bluey]

Kinda like this?

The problem isn't that there was never any logical basis for religious conclusions. The problem is that we now have more information, a wider scope of experience and observation, better logic and actual values at stake, yet people are unwilling (to the point of violence) to give up these unwarranted conclusions.

[Space Patroller]

Kinda like this?

The problem isn't that there was never any logical basis for religious conclusions. The problem is that we now have more information, a wider scope of experience and observation, better logic and actual values at stake, yet people are unwilling (to the point of violence) to give up these unwarranted conclusions.

By positing a supreme being, religion fills a niche in the hierarchical nature of the universe. Also it is just passed on from generation to generation as the repository of morality (From Atlas Shrugged "Man does not need to return to morality, but to discover it")

Yet, there is something that fullfills the promise of religion dropped right in the lap of every O'ist.

http://cockpit.spacepatrol.us/09feb.html

I replace supreme being with a supreme principle -> suprem state of being. We get all the good stuff and none of the bad.

[D'kian]

Kinda like this?

Close, but not quite. Cargo cults assume there's a supernatural agency providing the "cargo." Men are just men, even if some can steal or divert the "cargo" the gods meant to have been delivered elsewhere.

[Devils_Advocate]

Kinda like this?

All right. Okay. I've decided the point of my life.

I'm going to spend my life making enough money to buy 2 shiploads and 2 planes of food and other cargo. I'm going to buy an American WWII GI uniform. And I'm going to go there and tell them that I am John Frum, and I've come back with their blessed cargo.

[Q.E.D.]

I do not understand how the existence of a creator would mandate worship. Similarly, children need not worship parents. Its a mixture of fear of death/nature, collectivist thinking, and psychosis that inspires religious fervor.

[D'kian]

I do not understand how the existence of a creator would mandate worship. Similarly, children need not worship parents. Its a mixture of fear of death/nature, collectivist thinking, and psychosis that inspires religious fervor.

Sure, but it's just so damned prevalent. Every human culture that ever existed has some form of deity or deities they worship. INvariably these gods are ascribed exhorbitant powers and the creation of the world in some form. So there must be a psychological basis for it. There are numerous hypotheses on the subject.

It's only when we gain knowledge of the universe's workings, and when we gain sophistication in the use of reason, when we reject to be ruled by the emotions of fear and satisfaction, that we can begin to question the notion of a divine being or beings.

I've also toyed with the notion of an alien race that never develops religion.

[MichaelH]

Sure, but it's just so damned prevalent. Every human culture that ever existed has some form of deity or deities they worship. INvariably these gods are ascribed exhorbitant powers and the creation of the world in some form. So there must be a psychological basis for it. There are numerous hypotheses on the subject.

It's only when we gain knowledge of the universe's workings, and when we gain sophistication in the use of reason, when we reject to be ruled by the emotions of fear and satisfaction, that we can begin to question the notion of a divine being or beings.

There are two main sources I've observed:

People want to perpetuate the family unit in a broader sense. Christianity is big on this, using terms like "Heavenly Father". I've had very limited exposure to Catholicism, but they seem to use Virgin Mary as a "Holy Mother" figure. The Big Family is very much extended to include any living human as a child in the family.

People also use a supreme being as a repository for everything they they don't know and can't control. I had an aunt who insisted doctors must thank god after successful surgeries. She actually said, "What, do they think they do all that magic?" Because she didn't understand the technical details, it had to be the work of a god. (She was a good person otherwise, but she really slipped on this one.)

I think the repository-of-the-unknown is the reason many religious people consider atheists arrogant know-it-alls. In the religious world-view, accepting their god means accepting there are things you can't know and can't control. From this perspective, anyone saying "there's no god" is saying they know everything and absolutely control their world.

This is all in the religious person's head, of course. I don't know of a single atheist who would claim to know everything. Atheists usually know the limits of their knowledge and are willing to say "I don't know" rather than make up stories when they hit that limit.

[D'kian]

People want to perpetuate the family unit in a broader sense. Christianity is big on this, using terms like "Heavenly Father". I've had very limited exposure to Catholicism, but they seem to use Virgin Mary as a "Holy Mother" figure. The Big Family is very much extended to include any living human as a child in the family.

This would also explain many polytheistic religions where the various deities are related. But it also leaves some out. IN Judaism there's only God, without realtives.

People also use a supreme being as a repository for everything they they don't know and can't control. I had an aunt who insisted doctors must thank god after successful surgeries. She actually said, "What, do they think they do all that magic?" Because she didn't understand the technical details, it had to be the work of a god. (She was a good person otherwise, but she really slipped on this one.)

I'm stunned when I hear such things. BTW When Isaac Asimov's wife, Janet, had a mastectomy to treat breast cancer, an editor asked her to do an article about her experiences for a magazine. She was reluctant to, until Asimov told her "It will be the one article about this kind of thing that doesn't attribute the success of the operation to God." Whereupon she agreed.

In more primitive times, it made sense (ie it was reasonable given the prodounfity of ignorance) to suppose something or someone caused the weather, organized game animals, etc. Today such thinking is wholly unreasonable, especially in ourely human activities like surgery.

I think the repository-of-the-unknown is the reason many religious people consider atheists arrogant know-it-alls. In the religious world-view, accepting their god means accepting there are things you can't know and can't control. From this perspective, anyone saying "there's no god" is saying they know everything and absolutely control their world.

I don't think so. What irks religious people, and agnostics sometimes even more, is the sure certainty that there is no God or deity of any kind. At least I often encounter that kind of "argument." It's not really an argument, but more an inability to base one's knowledge on observable facts rather than on opinion.

[ChristopherSchlegel]

I think your problem is in this assumption.

So there must be a psychological basis for it.

I think it's more accurate to say there is a philosophical basis for it. As in the nature of human cognition & consciouness. There is a fundamental difference between philosophical & psychological.

I think the reason it was widely developed was due to a lack of conceptual understanding of the metaphysical versus the man-made. It was used as an "explanation" of nature by some; a tool of manipulation by others. Ayn Rand's essay at the the beginning of For The New Intellectual contains a wonderful discussion & summation of these issues.

[D'kian]

I think it's more accurate to say there is a philosophical basis for it. As in the nature of human cognition & consciouness. There is a fundamental difference between philosophical & psychological.

I understand the difference, and I still think it's psychological.

I think the reason it was widely developed was due to a lack of conceptual understanding of the metaphysical versus the man-made. It was used as an "explanation" of nature by some; a tool of manipulation by others. Ayn Rand's essay at the the beginning of For The New Intellectual contains a wonderful discussion & summation of these issues.

I have a pretty good understanding, at the qualitative level, about the workings of the laws of nature as are known at this time. I have a similar understanding about technology. Yet this leaves me with huge gaps of knowledge because scientists have lots of unanswered questions themselves.

Now, I'm perfectly content to know there are some things I don't know and leave it at that. I'm certain many of these things will be knonw later in time. I also know there are questions that won't ever be answered (like precisely how life began on Earth). That's fine by me.

But this state of affairs is not fine for many people. They have to know, if not necessarily to understand, the root-cause of everything: ergo the idea of deities to explain the world they live in. But saying "God did it," or "Apollo willed it so," is not a satisfactory explanation: it tells you nothing about the causes. How did God did it?

So I maintaint here is a psychological difference between thsoe cho can accept a given level of knowledge, and those who require a deity to explain everything.

And I hvane't yet touched on other effects believers look for in a deity, like guidance, prayer, etc.

[Grames]

Dr. Peikoff makes the following points in lecture 2 of "Induction in Physics and Philosophy":

The primary method of grasping a causal connection is to perceive it. Perception is essential, necessary and sufficient.

The perception of child's own personal agency in causing something is one perspective on causation. A child then turns from internal experience to the external world. "I make the ball roll" becomes "the wind makes the leaves flutter" "the fire makes the paper turn to ash" "the rain makes the ground wet"

These generalizations can be made after a single instance or experience because the causation is directly perceived as it is occurring.

The impersonal vs. personal causation distinction must be learned. The default tendency is to construe personal experience outward and anthropomorphize motives onto inanimate (or animal) entities. This is the epistemological root behind animism and theism. Impersonal perspective was a Greek innovation and follows upon the law of identity. "Impersonal metaphysics" was invented in Greece.

So an inability to separate teleological motivation from action is the limitation. Why this becomes a habit is a psycho-epistemological question.