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Question for Athiests and church bashers
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The Savanna-IQ Interaction Hypothesis is, obviously, only an hypothesis at the moment but it's been gaining a lot of ground in the last few years. It's explained a lot of seemingly contradictory studies and evidence for it is continually building.
Interesting, would you mind stating what this evidence is?
I'm not sure this is about the same study but on doing a bit more googling:For a start, look at the graph of IQ versus belief, and focus on nations with a mean IQ of around 100. In these nations, there's almost no correlation between IQ and belief. The apparent connection comes mostly from a gaggle of nations that are characterised by high levels of belief and low IQ. And, importantly, these are all low-income nations. We already know - and Lynn acknowledges - that increasing material wealth in Western Nations in the 20th century lead to increasing IQ. Does this have anything to do with it?0 -
nozzferrahhtoo wrote: »
What the user is pointing out, and what you are missing, is that each generation has had more of those gaps filled in with knowledge and education that was not available to the generation before. This is not calling previous generations "uneducated" as you want to portray it. It is just recognising that our generation knows more than the ones before it.... which is entirely true and I see no problem with pointing out that fact. Do you?
Did you even read the users post or mine ? he doesn't mention anything of what you are saying above ? unless maybe you're some sort of mind reader.
I never said previous generations were uneducated or portrayed it , thats what the user i was replying to implied as a reason for them believing in god. did you even read my post ?
Anway what "gaps" are you talking about .0 -
philologos wrote: »Interesting, would you mind stating what this evidence is?
Savanna-IQ interaction hypothesisEmpirical evidence
Nocturnal activities
Several studies have accumulated evidence that substantiate the Savanna-IQ interaction hypothesis. Kanazawa and Perina (2009) contended, and then verified, that intelligent individuals are more inclined to flourish at night. Specifically, humans evolved to be diurnal--to restrict most of their activities to the day rather than to the night.
Many arguments reinforce the proposition that humans, throughout evolution, tend to be active mainly in the day. First, humans rely appreciably on their vision--a sensory modality that is not especially effective at night, particularly before the advent of artificial light. Second, in almost all traditional cultures, as emphasized by a vast array of ethnographies, activity begins at dawn and tends to wane at dusk. This pattern, for example, has been observed in the Yanomano, the Mukogodo, the !Kung San, and the Sacha Runa (for a brief review, see Kanazawa & Perina, 2009).
Accordingly, the modern trend to udnertake some activity in the night, a trend that was facilitated by artificial lighting, demands intelligence. That is, according to the Savanna-IQ interaction hypothesis, general intelligence is needed to complete tasks that diverged from the ubiquitous activities in a previous epoch. General intelligence, therefore, should be correlated with willingness to maintain activity during the night.
To assess this possibility, high school students completed a test of verbal intelligence, the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test. In addition, participants were asked to estimate the time they usually retire to bed on both school days and weekends. Consistent with the Savanna-IQ interaction hypothesis, students who performed well on the test of verbal intelligence also typically retired to bed late (Kanazawa & Perina, 2009).
Alternative explanations for nocturnal activities
Nevertheless, alternative explanations could, potentially, explain the relationship between general intelligence and activity during the night. Specifically, many other factors affect the circadian preferences of individuals, sometimes called morning versus evening types.
Diaz-Morales (2007), for example, showed that personality is related to whether individuals are alert, energetic, and capable during the morning or night. Specifically, individuals who prefer the night tend to be less conscientious. They also utilize logical rational arguments, in lieu of their intuition, to reach decisions. Finally, they prefer tangible information rather than abstract concepts.
Several mechanisms could explain the association between personality and activity during the night. To illustrate, the body clock of humans naturally spans 24 hours. That is, if humans lived in a cave, with no interaction with anyone else, they would awake 1 hour later each day. As a consequence, all humans experience a natural tendency to want to awake later each morning. Conscientious individuals, however, are especially likely to conform to social conventions. That is, they override their natural impulses more effectively and, as a consequence, can more easily awake earlier.
In short, individuals who are conscientious, and also neglect their intuitions, are more alert in the morning than in the evening. These qualities, however, might hinder intelligence, at least on some tasks (see Cognitive experiential self theory).
This is just a brief overview of some of the evidence, if you'd like I could pull up more detailed descriptions.
Edit - I haven't read the study that article critiques so I can't really comment but they aren't the same studies.0 -
Did you even read the users post or mine ?
I never reply to a thread unless I have read every post in it. Nor do I respond to a post without reading both it and any post(s) it is itself a reply to. The post you replied to is not calling people with a belief in god either uneducated or uncivilized. You appear to be inferring that this IS what the post is saying however. It is not.he doesn't mention anything of what you are saying above ? unless maybe you're some sort of mind reader.
I am referring to things he has said, but I am also saying things of my own to help your understanding further. I never once said that everything I am writing is from his post.I never said previous generations were uneducated or portrayed it , thats what the user i was replying to implied as a reason for them believing in god. did you even read my post ?
Yes I did, which is why I am saying your interpretation that the user in question is calling previous generations "uneducated" is essentially wrong. He may be inferring they knew less than us, but that is a different thing. Different, and also quite true. Or do you think it is not true?Anway what "gaps" are you talking about .
Depends on the person. There are things some people do not know or understand that others do. There are things that no person yet knows or understands fully... and some we do not know or understand at all.
Whatever the gap is, the person with that gap can often invent a god and insert it into that gap. For example the knowledge we have on the origin of our universe is relatively poor compared to other knowledge we have. This leads people to simply declare god exists and god is the explanation for why we have a universe.
Before Evolution was as understood as it is today people did not understand how something as seemingly complex as humans could come about naturally and so the only thing they had to fill that "gap" in their knowledge was god.
Some people simply have experiences in their life they can not explain. They turn quickly to supernatural explanations to fill that gap.
The gaps are numerous and variable, but the response is often the same.... invent a god and insert it into the gap to "explain" whatever it is the gap is about.0 -
philologos - I am not sure why you are reading and replying to my posts on this thread with unwanted, unasked for, unsolicited PM messages but suffice to say given my past experience with you I want any discussion between us to be in public, on record and not behind closed door.
Not to mention that in the light of THIS post by you....philologos wrote: »I've told nozzferrahhtoo precisely why I won't be responding to his posts. After repeated false accusations that he made that I was lying I decided not to respond to any of his posts. I can take any form of insult being thrown at me other than a false attack on my sincerity. He's one of three people on my ignore list on boards.ie.
.... I am not sure how you are reading my posts, nor how you expect me to even reply to your PMs unless.... shock horror IneversawthiscomingohwaityesIsodidandIcalledit.... you have told yet another in a long line of lies and you never had me on ignore at all which is why you keep replying to me and my posts despite claiming to have me on ignore.
Suffice to say again if you want to say anything to me, say it on the forum. I will not be entertaining PMs from you.0 -
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nozzferrahhtoo wrote: »Actually it is funny just how many things Christianity took from, and it was a lot more than Judaism. The Christ myth is an amalgamation of quite a few myths that were in circulation at the time. Anton Batey detailed quite a few of them in his debate against Pastor Cook.
Indeed.Again however it is important to point out that even if it WAS useful in the past, that says nothing about its usefulness now.
I have already stressed that I wasn't commenting on whether or not it's useful now, so I'll keep this on topic.However I still have seen no argument that it was useful in the past nor have I seen you argue that position per se. I have seen you SAY that this is your position for sure, but I am not really seeing the argument for it.
I need to stress that while a lot of the debate is going on between atheists and Christians in this thread, I am neither an atheist nor a Christian. I think it would help you all if you thought about what religion actually is, but it's very hard to define. The core of religion is not belief, which people waste their time criticizing, it's commitment to socially constructive behavior.
Religion is a social behavior, the word itself derives from another that means "to relate". Its religious services and rituals are communal. The quality of a group or a society depends on members' commitment to the group and adherence to its standards. It shapes behaviors owed to the in-group and the out-group.
How does this relate to how it was useful in the past? It enhanced the quality of life in a society and inspired people to die in defense of it. Darwin noted sociality arose as a defense against predators. Groups with a stronger religious inclination were more united and had a comparable advantage over less cohesive groups. Emotionally committed groups were more likely to prevail in warfare. Groups that used religion to coordinate collective social activities like planting fields would be better able to survive. People in more successful groups left more surviving children, evolution's only yardstick for success.
Another smart move of religion - it passed collected wisdom down generations to ensure society's survival and imputed it to the gods. Hunter gatherer societies were extremely egalitarian. There were no priests or Kings or police. I have stated this earlier in the thread. Religion was an invisible government before we had settled societies. It evolved with society, and did itself become government through religious power. When we first took up agriculture, we tied the main religious rites to the farming calendar because the unaccustomed hard labor required collective action.
It those days it played roles in reproductive behavior, political movements, generating bonds of trust needed for commerce and, of course, it was a huge part of (a weapon of) warfare. In some ways in some parts of the world it still does, but that's off topic. Religion is based deep in the emotions. Even today we see the link in social functions and religion in times of the greatest emotions, birth, marriage and death. Why do you find it hard to reason with religious people in your debates? Because religion is rooted deeply in the emotions, and people within a religious group have an emotional bond that is hard to break, and high levels of trust, which I addressed in an earlier post. All this makes a group extremely cohesive.
In short, if religious behavior offered no benefit, groups that wasted so much time and resources on it would have been eliminated by groups that didn't carry such a handicap in the struggle for survival.Plus I must reiterate the problem of comparison. Given we have no societies in our evolutionary history ultimately devoid of religion in any meaningful way.... we have no point of comparison on how we would have evolved in it's absence. That is no small problem for your claims.
Ironically, this makes my point. The main evidence for thinking that it is an evolved part of human nature is the fact that it is universal. Every society in the world possesses religion. This suggests it's an adaptation, a trait shaped by natural selection. If it's an adaptation, it has a genetic basis. In fact, the common features of religion wouldn't persist for over 2000 generations, 50000 years, without a genetic basis. Another poster said religion stuck around because it's good for priests, or something to that effect. Wrong. It was universal in hunter gatherer societies. Like I said already, it's rooted in the emotional levels of the brain. Nothing to do with intelligence, which is what a lot of you seem to be arguing about. "The universal features of a species have a Darwinian explanation", said Richard Dawkins, and he was correct.
I know this was a time consuming post and a long read, but I was asked to make my argument.That we could not have evolved without religion is a claim that I literally can not find any substance for however.
You miss the point here. Could or could not is irrelevant. We did evolve with it. Religious behavior is a universal trait of all of the survivors.0 -
I want to say Spirituality, not religion. Spirituality is Individual; Religion is Societal.Religious behavior is a universal trait of all of the survivors.0 -
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I want to say Spirituality, not religion. Spirituality is Individual; Religion is Societal.
Just to be clear, your post was edited while I replied to it.
was an addition, right?Spirituality is Individual; Religion is Societal.
My post dealt with religion and, importantly, religious behavior. We would probably agree on the term 'instinct for religion'.0 -
An instinct for spirituality perhaps. It takes a special kind of individual to decide to come up with a church or a 'religion'0
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I don't think I used the word Church. Nor was I talking about the modern organised religions of today.0
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Join Date:Posts: 30476
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The main evidence for thinking that it is an evolved part of human nature is the fact that it is universal.
Neoteny is an evolved part of human nature, religion is a byproduct of our neotenous behaviour. Religious behaviour is not something we explicitly evolved but likely came about as a combination of neoteny and social behaviours. To quote Desmond Morris again,
"Man's evolution as a neotenous ape has put him in a similar position to the dog's. He becomes sexually mature and yet he still needs a parent - a super-parent, one as impessive to him as a man must be to a dog. The answer was to invent a god - either in the shape of a Mother Goddess, or a male god in the shape of God the Father, or perhaps a whole family of gods. Like real parents they would protect, punish and be obeyed".
Whether this was beneficial to our evolution is debatable, on one hand religion provided a more tangible justification for group loyalty but on the other it made us more open to manipulation by the immoral or mad (think suicide cults). However I don't think it can be argued that religious behaviour is required for survival given the large number of species incapable of belief who survive. Most, if not all, of the communal benefits provided by religion are provided by patriotism and other intellectual justifications for innate communal behaviours and altruism we share with other animals.
[Nice post btw]0 -
If you believe the church is corrupt + power hungry and that god isn't real.
What does that say about your judgment on the intelligence of your parents, grandparents and other relatives who more than likely devoted so much of their lives to these causes? As a huge part of our society wouldn't it imply you believed they were gullible and naive people to live the way they did? Perhaps weak-willed to stand out from the crowd and question accepted truths?
(p.s. I am an athiest and pondering this question myself. Not looking to start some sort of shame parade or anything)
Given that for the vast majority of the past 2000 years, the teachings of the church were deliberately inaccessable to the ordinary people. Mass and the Bible was in latin (the first man to translate the bible into english was put to death for herasy)
The point was that the educated clergy could simply hand wave any skepticism by ordinary people by declaring that they don't understand the theology enough to criticise it.
Also, the church were enormously powerful people, people naturally tend to defer to authority.
Regardless of your intellect or your beliefs, socially, it was extremely difficult to declare yourself an atheist up until very recently (and even still, atheists are treated with a lot of suspicion)0 -
I have already stressed that I wasn't commenting on whether or not it's useful now, so I'll keep this on topic.
I know, however that does not change the fact that I see it as worth mentioning all the same. I think it is a fact worth reiterating as often as possible to as many people as possible.I am neither an atheist nor a Christian.
I too do not identify with the word Atheist myself per se. It is a word that is used to describe me often enough, and I will use it when absolutely pushed in a piece of prose when no other term will do. However it is not a label I identify with, feel describes me, nor holds any of the strawman meanings that theists would like to assign it. It is, for me, a term almost entirely devoid of useful content and I avoid applying it to myself whenever possible.I think it would help you all if you thought about what religion actually is, but it's very hard to define. The core of religion is not belief, which people waste their time criticizing, it's commitment to socially constructive behavior.
I see nothing about any of the major religions that fits that definition really. To me it very much is about belief, and most dictionaries and encyclopedias (religious and not) appear to agree with me. Religion is often defined as things like "a set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe"
However what I think your definition is doing is a kind of surgery. It is taking religion as a whole, cutting out the bad bits, the simply ridiculous bits, the unsubstantiated bits and more... leaving some bits at the middle that are "good" and running with that.
But your definition of religion is not what most people think of when they hear that word and so redefining the term is likely to cause more confusion, not less as you appear to want. People have sets of beleifs all the time. People commit to social cohesion all the time. People commit to social stability all the time. Where in your definition do we decide which ones of these are "religion" and which are not. How do you separate those that are "religion" from the metaphysics associated with that word, while not calling people committed to the same types of "socially constructive behavior" in a metaphysics free secular context "religious" too?
No, I think what you are doing is again backwards in the same way I earlier described about morality.... where people think morality comes from religion while in fact people take morality to religion and religion benefits by proxy.
Similarly I am aware that many people are committed to "socially constructive behavior" and they go about trying to achieve that in many ways and religion is just one of the tools to do that. You list things you think are "good" and conducive to "socially constructive behavior" and then make up a packaging of metaphysics to attempt to add weight to your list.
So I do not think religion promotes socially constructive behavior at all as you suggest, but that people do so and they do it wrapped in various types of packaging for their product, of which Religion is only one type.
I also question that basing a world view on a pack of unsubstantiated lies IS conducive to "socially constructive behavior" unless you think rampant lying is Socially Constructive. Further the objective nature many people claim for their gods means that such world views are harder to change, and changing our morality, our world views and our society with the times is very important. The world and our existence is not static and we can not afford to remain static beside it... so any world views that influence us to try are far from helpful in the context of "socially constructive behavior".
Also you keep repeating things like "Groups with religious inclination were more united than those without" but I must reiterate for the third time (I think) now that I am not aware which groups you are comparing here given religion has been in almost all societies... so what basis of comparison are you even using? Give me, to use your own text, an example of a society that used religion to improve farming, a society that did not, how the one that did used it thusly, and what your points of comparison and measurement are to show that the one with did better than the one out in terms of agricultural yields and successes?
So in short summary,
1) I do not really think your redefining of the term "religion" holds nor that you can so easily denude the word of the metaphysics it is wrapped in
2) I do not see anything to suggest it is as conducive to "socially constructive behavior" as you might want it to be
3) .... and in fact in many ways I find it to be in negative equity of helpfulness... in fact quite harmful... to socially constructive behavioral ends.
4) I am unaware what points of comparison you are using between societies and groups with religion and those without given there are little, if any, societies without to USE as a point of comparison.
5) Your points contradict each other. Either it is universal.... and so you have no groups without religion to compare against meaning all your comparisons are void... or there are societies without it you can point to and hence it is not universal. You simply have to let go of one of these points.Ironically, this makes my point. The main evidence for thinking that it is an evolved part of human nature is the fact that it is universal. Every society in the world possesses religion. This suggests it's an adaptation, a trait shaped by natural selection.
A point I already refuted by pointing out it did not evolve as part of human nature but that it uses things that did.
Much like a virus. We did not evolve to catch viruses, nor is catching viruses conducive to our better survival. Catching Viruses is not "an adaption" on our part just because they are universal.
You would not say that the universality of viruses means that they are useful to us, helped us in any way, or that they evolved as part of human nature or are an adaption by us.
Similarly just because religion is very good at using aspects of our brains to serve its own reproduction, and it does so universally just like viruses, this says nothing about whether we evolved to have it, whether it benefited our evolution, or it is in any way useful to us or is "an adaption".
You are therefore assuming to much about why it is universal, and about what that universality says about it.
Remember an important thing about evolution. Not every trait, attribute or behavior is a genetically based adaption but they can in fact be side effects of other adaption. You assume too much by linking the (near) universal nature of a trait to adaption or genetics. In fact just like viruses....Another poster said religion stuck around because it's good for priests
.... it is just as likely that religion stuck around because it was good for ITSELF. Viruses are just a bit of information that use aspects of the human condition to reproduce itself mindlessly, often at great costs to the host in terms of time, effort and energy, even inspiring the host to die for it at times.
Religion too is just a bit of information. Entirely unsubstantiated and apparently false information. It too is good at using aspects of the human condition to reproduce itself mindlessly. For example our "hyperactive agency detection" to name one of a long list of human traits that humans have evolved which religion uses to it's own ends. Humans naturally seek agency even when it is not there. Religion uses that to impute agency in the universe itself and so the human is left with the feeling there must be some one/thing there who has that agency.
Another user above lists Neoteny. I could list many more.You miss the point here. Could or could not is irrelevant. We did evolve with it. Religious behavior is a universal trait of all of the survivors.
But the actual claim made was, and I quote directly, we COULD not have evolved without religion. Not that we did or did not. Very specifically the word used was COULD not. If you wish to retract that claim then great... a shame after how much time you indicated you spent making it in the thread (see below) but it is certainly progress in the conversation...I've spent all my time in this thread arguing how we could not have evolved without religion0 -
nozzferrahhtoo wrote: »But the actual claim made was, and I quote directly, we COULD not have evolved without religion. Not that we did or did not. Very specifically the word used was COULD not. If you wish to retract that claim then great... a shame after how much time you indicated you spent making it in the thread (see below) but it is certainly progress in the conversation...
As a quick point I would like to say you're right here on the wording. What I wanted to say is that we could not, and would not, have evolved the way we did, without religion it would have been very different, for better or for worse is another question, which we'll never know.
Religious beliefs are ridiculous, I never denied that. In their very nature, they have to entail something extraordinary. Religion exists in relation to beliefs, sure, but belief is not central. The fact that the belief, whatever it is, is shared, is what makes it a religion. The belief itself is not central to what religion is.
A simple definition of religion is really difficult. I stated that in the post, and I didn't offer a definition, other than to say it is a social behavior which is a fact. If I was to try to offer a definition, I would say it is a set of emotionally binding beliefs and practices or rituals that unite people. The important thing for me is the emotion and the rituals, the universal features. Yes, people commit to social cohesion all the time, but when emotion and rituals become involved it starts to cross a line. A degree of the supernatural is a universal factor, but not enough on its own to create a religion. There is no religion of magic, as far as I'm aware.
Regarding morality, I am aware that morality came before religion. I said this already. But religion defines morality for members of a group in relation to each other.So I do not think religion promotes socially constructive behavior at all as you suggest.
I'll point out again that I was using past tense. Whether it does or doesn't is another topic, but it did, in a time when we were less developed and more in need of it, as I've outlined already in the examples of my post.I also question that basing a world view on a pack of unsubstantiated lies
This is inappropriate language. We are both non-believers, but I think it's wrong to call anyone's beliefs lies. They are unsubstantiated beliefs. When you say it's a lie, you need to be able to prove it's a lie.
That something is not true does not mean it cannot be beneficial.
I am not saying it's always beneficial, I'm saying it can be beneficial. It can also be destructive of course, to be clear.I am not aware which groups you are comparing here given religion has been in almost all societies... so what basis of comparison are you even using?
The only evidence I can give you right now is that none of those societies are here, and you don't know of any society that survived without religion, because we are the survivors, and a religious instinct is universal in us.
It is clear from your writing that you are starting from the viewpoint that religion is bad. I am trying hard to be unbiased.
The view that religion has been passed on like a virus is stretched, because nonsensical information is not of great help in the struggle for survival and is unlikely to have been passed on for 2000 generations in every known human society since the dispersal from Africa.
Religion has enormous costs for the people who practice it. If it had no benefits, tribes that devoted most of their time to it would not have survived against others that spent all day on military preparations. Religion did not survive of itself. Our instinct for it survived, because it is how we evolved.
The two major conjectures put forward by the main atheist thinkers in the public realm have all come up in this thread, that it's either a nonsensical thing passed on to silly children or it's driven by manipulative priests, but the implicit premise behind these arguments is that it is bad, that it's a virus that we would be better off without, and this taints the whole debate.0 -
Religion is also a convenient method of old codgers controlling yougfellas. In the animal kingdom strength and verility ensure status.
With humans living longer and longer the old codgers discovered a way of not losing their status amongst the tribe.0 -
nozzferrahhtoo wrote: »5) Your points contradict each other. Either it is universal.... and so you have no groups without religion to compare against meaning all your comparisons are void... or there are societies without it you can point to and hence it is not universal. You simply have to let go of one of these points.
I must have overlooked this when I replied, but I don't see where the contradiction is. It has a genetic basis from thousands and thousands of years ago, as a result of natural selection. It's universal. We know it's universal because we can't find any evidence of societies that don't have it or that ever survived without it. This is what has caused your confusion with my post. A society without religion doesn't exist because of natural selection. At what exact point it became universal, we can't say.
You want me to find a society that did exist without religion - I can't, because we have no evidence of them, they didn't survive, they left nothing behind. Survival of the fittest. Universal features of a species demand a Darwinian explanation, as Dawkins and other biologists point out. If you want to argue that they never existed -as if that proves you right and me wrong - then that means natural selection isn't involved, and perhaps you're invoking the hand of God.0 -
http://freethinker.co.uk/2008/11/08/how-an-amazonian-tribe-turned-a-missionary-into-an-atheist/I must have overlooked this when I replied, but I don't see where the contradiction is. It has a genetic basis from thousands and thousands of years ago, as a result of natural selection. It's universal. We know it's universal because we can't find any evidence of societies that don't have it or that ever survived without it. This is what has caused your confusion with my post. A society without religion doesn't exist because of natural selection. At what exact point it became universal, we can't say.
You want me to find a society that did exist without religion - I can't, because we have no evidence of them, they didn't survive, they left nothing behind. Survival of the fittest. Universal features of a species demand a Darwinian explanation, as Dawkins and other biologists point out. If you want to argue that they never existed -as if that proves you right and me wrong - then that means natural selection isn't involved, and perhaps you're invoking the hand of God.
Your argument is invalidated.0 -
http://freethinker.co.uk/2008/11/08/how-an-amazonian-tribe-turned-a-missionary-into-an-atheist/
Your argument is invalidated.
I remember him telling that tale on Newstalk and I remember thinking to myself 'now why the fuck would you want to travel out there to those people and fill thier heads with shite'?
Strange.0 -
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This again depends on your definition of religion, which is hard to define, and most people don't agree on definitions because the behaviors involved are so complex. A tribe turns a Christian into an atheist - that's Ok. Because they don't believe in God says nothing of whether they have any forms of religious expressionism, namely rituals which are a key feature of religion, more so than a belief in God - a typically Western association with religion. But I look forward to reading the story and seeing if the commonly held beliefs of biologists have changed since it's publication but I doubt it.0
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http://freethinker.co.uk/2008/11/08/how-an-amazonian-tribe-turned-a-missionary-into-an-atheist/
Your argument is invalidated.
that is excellent!0 -
Those sort of people have been living in those conditions for thousands of years and never had religion or anything like that. So why would they believe. They never had it.http://freethinker.co.uk/2008/11/08/how-an-amazonian-tribe-turned-a-missionary-into-an-atheist/
Your argument is invalidated.0 -
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Those sort of people have been living in those conditions for thousands of years and never had religion or anything like that. So why would they believe. They never had it.http://freethinker.co.uk/2008/11/08/how-an-amazonian-tribe-turned-a-missionary-into-an-atheist/
Your argument is invalidated.
Religious behavior usually comes with burial of the dead. And then marking the milestones in the life cycle. Communal dancing, with percussion, becomes a ritual, and usually results in trance - dancing to enter a trance. They usually also have painful initiation rites for young adults.
Supernatural beliefs usually come as a way to interpret dreams.
Most studies into this were done by the colonial British as they encountered and documented what would be considered lost tribes.
But naturally they won't have any concept of God with all the man made theology. But it's still a form of religion. The concept of God isn't a necessity.
I mentioned before about the problems of defining religion? I have Muslim friends who object to Islam being referred to as a religion. Is Buddhism a religion? Do they have a god? Are they bothered at all about creation? Confucianism? Is it just a philosophy? Taoism? Falun Gong?
But they all share religious behavior.0 -
If religion is guilty of one thing, it's the destruction of God's creations. Just imagine the welcome we'd have still today in Hawaii ~ missionaries, I dam ye all to helll, HELL I say.
http://i646.photobucket.com/albums/uu181/SanFrancisco__/garycolemanwtf.gif0 -
My father is an atheist, the rest were nice people, but delusional.What does that say about your judgment on the intelligence of your parents, grandparents and other relatives who more than likely devoted so much of their lives to these causes?
I don't think intelligence has a direct co-relation to spiritual belief. I know a lot of PhD's and medical Drs. who are pretty devout.0 -
Chuck Stone wrote: »
It's gone over your head I see. The girls were naked and made free love, their 'husbands' did not have the concept of fidelity until the missionaries arrived and beat it into them. :rolleyes:
and made the girls wear clothes0 -
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