Does the HADD hypothesis explains why making unfalsifiable claims on random things being secretly connected by a higher power is sometimes called religion and sometimes called evolutionary psychology ?
I appreciate the video. Nicely done. Although I'm not seeing the problem. There's biological capability and cultural reinforcement (confirmation) ... gene-meme interaction. A feed-back loop. I have flow diagrams if anyone is interested. ;)
Re -lig - ion Reg- ion Leg - ion Re- volut - ion In-vent- ion Where ;and when ; WAS this ..Ion ? Why were the upper portions of the heavens called , “ ion - o- sphere” Does it declare , “ Io - no - sphere “ ! Was it the place of Sion ; or Zion ? To go. Off-plane port? Consider Indus Valley Indus -tree A volute is a spiraling compressing configuration. There; was solut involut , etc. HERE was a portal to another plane.
Look at ancient egypt. It seems very interesting the shift from animal gods to human gods. It seems that human based gods emerges when complex urban society develops. Extrapolated, it could be that humans in urban settings naturally just assume the most dangerous thing around them is not an animal predator, but another human.
Is there a time in ancient Egyptian religion in which we can see a "shift" in such gods? From my understanding, animal Egyptian gods not always depicted or seen as animals, they are also represented as humans sometimes. And what about those non-urban societies that depict their gods as human-like or those that lack an anthropomorphic body at all?
@Wednesday's Child the Egyptian gods are very distinct from the other pantheons that you mentioned, and the similarities between the rest of them can be explained because they are all descended from proto Indo European religious practices.
Osiris and his sister (Isis) were not anthropomorphized animals nor their parents Geb and Nut and these are some of the earliest Gods in the pantheon so it would be hard to put a time line on a transition period. Early paleoliths in Egypt show basic animal headed concepts most likely arising from the shamantic practice of "inhabiting" a sacred animals "power" through the use of a head dress made of a skull and other elements. The Egyptians are often referred to as a bronze age people with a stone age soul because they did not forget these ways when they urbanized
@Wednesday's Child Egypt had language that has been deciphered and plenty of physical artifacts. Though too often Egyptology is more interpretive art history than archaeology id say there is a bit more to work with.
www.thevolumesoftruth.com/Above_Reproach Thus says The Lord to His servant: My son, why do you question Me in this way? To question My servant is to question Me. Therefore listen and have understanding, that My will may be fulfilled in you. That which you call the Old Testament was indeed written through My servants and prophets of old, and all who were wise gave heed, obeying the writing thereof. Yet even then that which would come to be written in the New Testament already existed, awaiting the day I would send out My apostles and prophets to proclaim the Good News. Was it the Old Testament? No. It was the New Testament, never before seen, heard or published. And now the time has come for Me to send out My apostles and prophets once again, to announce My coming and to set all these crooked paths straight; behold, it is time to blow the Trumpet and prepare My way before Me. Does that which My messengers proclaim agree with the Bible? Yes. For the words in these Letters are My words; as are the words in your Bible My words, though they have been greatly misinterpreted and mistranslated by men. Therefore put no difference between them. For to reject any part of My Word is to reject the whole. I tell you the truth, the three books are one, one on-going testament to My glory. Thus much of what My servants proclaim, you have already heard. Yet they will also declare that which you have not heard (nor have you understood, because of man’s doctrine in you). Therefore, again I say to you, what My prophets of the end of this age write is indeed new to many, yet remains in perfect agreement with the prophets of old. For I do not change; I shall surely make My plans known.
From a believer's perspective HADD fits with the idea that there is intentionality on the part of God to be known by us. "You have made us for yourself o God and our hearts are restless until they rest in You" (Augustine)
This sounds a little bit similar to the idea of Sensus Divinitatis by John Calvin and used by Alvin Plantinga. Here are two links some video clips about this, that might interest you. ua-cam.com/video/lro05RvPMkE/v-deo.html ua-cam.com/video/lro05RvPMkE/v-deo.html
Everything can fit with God. That’s the reason it’s not a good theory. “You can’t explain that!” always becomes “Of course God did it like that!” once we do. And that can be done for any unexplained thing, really.
@wearealltubes" I have not created the Jinn and Mankind, except to worship me " Then, there is a hadith qudsi that goes something like " I was a hidden Treasure I desired to be recognized so I created the creature" . : کنت کنزاً مخفیاً فأحببت أن أعرف فخلقت الخلق لکی أعرف. Just what I have read. Sufism has used it a lot in their texts.
This is a great channel, and very underrated. I've always been interested in religion and I'm glad there is someone who makes such high quality videos on these subjects.
Never have I wanted to subscribe and like a UA-cam channel more than I have yours. I know you are also an academic with all of the demands that come with it (lectures, classes, research, publication, dissertation students), but you are doing good work here. Bringing religious literacy to the table is essential for us to claw our way out of this mess. Please continue! And at an alarming rate!
As an atheist who tried a catholic prayer practice, I have this hunch that there is utility in relating to the chaos of the world in an anthropomorphized manner. It felt strangely natural and it kind of made it easier to pay attention to subtle "responses of the world" to your own actions.
I think that's such an interesting overlap between pareidolia and confirmation bias, because it only appears once you prime yourself to look for these communications. You see a similar pattern with the concepts of synchronicity and manifestation.
I don't think Durkheim can really account for religion either, though. Religion is not just a communal experience; in some ways it is deeply individual. Durkheim certainly explains much of how organised religion and religious communities develop, but he doesn't have any way to account for religious Inspiration, which often flies directly in the face of organised religion. The basic intuitions that often guide religion do seem to have something more than a purely social origin.
If he's correct, that explains inspiration as a simple epiphany. Your imaginary friend gave you really good advice, in other words. It's a moving experience to hear the ultimate knowledge from the ultimate boss of the universe, and you just happen to be his best friend.
@@haywardjeblomey6505 But Durkheim doesn't really have any way of accounting for epiphany, that's the problem. Structuralism can only account for what we do with epiphany (viz. interpreting it within a religious framework). It's reductive to suggest that religion comes about as the result of social interaction and the creation of community when there are clear counterexamples. I'd posit that it's actually more hylomorphic, with both upward and downward causality.
@@Salsmachev You don't know where epiphany comes from? It comes from memory (experience) and the processing of those memories through other emotional states. One can never come to the correct conclusion if they don't have the experience of knowing the proposition, for example.
@@haywardjeblomey6505 I don't think we actually have any substantive disagreement here. Epiphanies, according to your explanation of them, are not consistent with a wholly structuralist/Durkheimian account of religion.
I can't find the original source, but I recall seeing an article that said that organized religions tend to form when the population of a group exceeds one million people. This would seem to fit with the social aspect proposed here.
I mean the first organised religions that we have evidence for came about in cities with populations between ten and twenty thousand, so a million seems rather too high a number
People who have never had a paranormal experience cannot fathom what it's like to have one. I can tell you from years of experiences that these phenomena exist. I consider myself an educated person, a pretty rational one at that (and, no, I do NOT do drugs). My encounters with the paranormal on numerous occasions rocked me to the core, and made me realise that whatever I was denying existed is not only real but quite earth-shattering. My whole outlook on this subject has completely turned my world upside down.
Oh! This was very interested! I myself have no actual knowledge in regards to the cognitive sciences inspired religious studies field, this has been very fun to watch.
Loved this video! Could you do a video on the history of marriage in religion? I read an article for my sociology class that claims for the first 500-1000 years of Christianity the religion rejected the concept as "tainted and secular," and didn't adopt it as sacrament until 1215. I don't know if there is any truth to this, but I thought you might have some knowledge on the subject. Thanks!
An excellent video as always! I love how you're able to explain things in an understandable way for the general public without sacrificing the complexity of these topics. Usually people on youtube focus just on one side of the argument, but you always give an explanation of both sides, even in such a short video. I really appreciate all the work you do!
*+ReligionForBreakfast* A point of criticism about 8:48-9:10 Yes, obviously..cultural learning mechanisms are VERY important in shaping the content and place where religious form. That's not the claim of HADD either (i.e. it doesn't claim to describe how it happens, just suggests that HADD is at the forefront for the entire process, it allows it 'to go'). That's not a real argument against what HADD. That counter argument to HADD is, I think, akin to saying: "the shape, slope, and surrounding features of the land (like reefs, rocks, islands, etc.), the trajectory of the ocean currents, and the force and direction of the wind are the factors that determine what the waves will look like, what direction they go, the height they will have and other things. Therefore we can brush away the moon and tidal currents as contributing to the explanation of the movements of seas and oceans." I think it's missing the point entirely. I see it as HADD opening the door for personal/chance interpretations and other larger social forces (both in the moment and over looong stretches of time) to either discount/explain away or run with those HADD experiences. We certainly don't know how it all works, and I think focussing too much on those neuro-studies is going to be a red herring. We might see where it starts to happen, but locking people up in an ƒMRI for the entirely of belief-forming that can take quite long it's going to be practical. And to some extent, even if/when those devices become tiny and portable, you can only see where it happens - that doesn't necessarily tell you (why or) how it happens _like_ that.
Granted to all of that. But the reason I'm excited about the progress happening with the neuroscience of religion (not just *adoption* but continued *adherence* to beliefs) is that once we know the exact mechanism and process by which a person chooses emotional satisfaction from sticking with happy memories vs embracing the new and unknown based on objective evidence, then we can explore how to shape experiences scientifically so that people can be incentivized to think rationally. Taken to the next level, we could develop a cure for irrationality!
I find that psychologists and other scientists often overlook aspects of culture which are integral to understanding things like religion. This is why it's important for people discussing these theories to be deeply grounded in religious studies and history more generally. I'm glad you pointed to that in this video
Psychology isn't the science that has traditionally accounted for culture and religion. In fact, clinical psych has had to find ways of accommodating things like cultural norms in a fairly ad hoc manner in more recent decades. But in practice, a good clinical psychologist will handle those issues well as part of cultural competency. That said, the psychology of religion is a valuable research area into itself which I personally feel is ripe for some major new research developments.
I've heard of this one before I liked your retelling of the lesson I also liked your personal touch, as you mention your own persuasion that Religion is a social construct. Good to enter the dirt and stake your own claim!
Great channel, definitely deserves more subscribers. Here are my views on what you said. I agree with you that HADD isn't the end of the story but it definitely is an important part. I think HADD + Abstract Thinking, together with some other social facts (like social identity) can easily explain how religions can develop.
I'm not very religious but the Lord's prayer helps me calm down when my anxiety is at its worse. It is very interesting how that is hard wired into my inner self. Probably has something to do with me learning it as a child and me finding comfort in it now that I'm older. Either way I'm glad it works when I need it the most.
This is awesome!!! Thanks so much for exploring religion in the mind as well as in the brain. I hope you'll find a way to BRIDGE the social and hard sciences to show where in the brain and in the genes our loyalty to community, rituals, etc. play out. Eg., amygdala and DRD4 gene.
Animals has HADD too, but I don't think they are religious. But we differ from other animals that we have a much deeper understanding of the future and the past, so we can ask ourselfs "What hapens after we died?" etc. Then we make up answers which becomes a part of our culture.
That and the ability to communicate abstract concepts, which I think is the major criterion for culture. AFAIK only orcas can do this outside humans, and the scientific literature describes them as having cultures.
As a curious coincidence (Or maybe not), the analogy of the ghost being the coats' rack is very similar to a Buddhist one. This one is about being in a house without light and seeing a snake on the floor. But you take a candle and see it was just a rope. The analogy is to illustrate that nothing in Samsara can hurt us and hence we are just mistaking a rope with a snake. I am a Buddhist, but i do have to say that if we try to apply this from a secular-practical point of view then it's not only useless, but kinda dangerous. I find that funny.
Hypothesis: Religion began as a recursive psychosocial phenomena starting with HADD in a small group of humans, but continued into cultural learning mechanisms when these humans taught other humans, like their children, which evoked HADD and informed how later humans experience and understand it. Transferred or was connected from threat detection to anthropomorphizing via placation behavior- leaving or offering a predator meat to avoid becoming its prey. This relationship influences the CLMs of the society, and is anthropomorphized as rational behavior on the part of the predator since it appears to be following a social construct like trade. This again enters the CLMs and the idea of placating or bargaining with other HADD instances not so directly attributed to predators begins to manifest in the psychological conditioning of the society.
Maybe as humans moved into settlements in the Neolithic, those cultural methods slowly changed from fear of predators to storytelling which was passed down over the millennia. Pantheons usually reflect the social status of society. So if you have a hunter-gatherer tribe of a couple dozen people, spiritualism might make sense; likewise, if you have a budding empire from a city-state with a king, it makes sense that the gods would have particular identities with control and hierarchy. This would also explain the slow formalization and stratification seen in religions and the usage of kings to represent themselves as divine as they likened themselves to gods.
Alejandro Guerra Villegas Using Ockham’s razor it’s absurdly unlikely to think every single person who has seen a ghost was mistaken. It is assumed to be impossible, then other often unlikely explanations are looked for.
Love you and your channel. Sounds to me that cultural forces amplify the inherent individual HADD neurophysiological tendencies. Greetings from Ireland. ❤️👍🏻👌☘️🇮🇪
Spinoza had a similar theory about organized religion as being caused by improper identification of final causality in natural phenomena. Although Spinoza never implied that judging natural events as having finality is part of some natural human cognitive behavior, he sees it as a vice that ultimately leads to moral servitude.
I believe the paintings and other depictions of human/animal beings made by early humans are better explained by trance states, dreams, etc. And I agree with your friend: religion is a complex issue and I believe complex issues have complex origins. Both biological and cultural influences must play a part in it. On a personal note, I anthropologize my computer, and he definitively has a mind of his own. I talk to him often, shout at him and shake my fist at it, but he still does his own thing. Maybe a nice offering would change the tide in my favor? Here's a thought!
I also wonder how this theory might relate to the tendency for young children to invent "invisible friends" or pretend that their stuffed animals and dolls have personality and are talking to them and the children talk to these inanimate objects? Basically, belief in invisible supernatural beings (spirits, ghosts, gods, angels, demons...) is an extension of the tendency of young children to have "invisible friends". Freud's theory holds that this is exactly what is going on: belief in a god is an "infantile neurosis" - adults acting like children, being attached to God as an invisible friend. So, question of cause and effect: is the idea of God merely an extension of the childhood tendency to invent imaginary friends? Or do chidren "invent" these imaginary friends because the mind of a child actually is more open to perceiving the real existence of these invisible beings? Might it be that religious skeptics lose this childlike innocence due to an overly logical mind?
I wouldn't say it "doesn't hold water" he even quotes a colleague "it is important for the history of religion [...]". I'd rather say it explains the origin of the tendencies (a framework of sort) that "are made use of" later during cultural interactions to conceive of gods we traditionally find in religions.
These actually sound like 2 different things. Like when people do stuff together in a community with a sense of belonging. That would be interesting to study biologically because it can happen even in the absence of belief in the supernatural.
There's substantial scientific evidence that how religious or spiritual someone or a group is largely boils down to genetics. Of course culture and upbringing influences what particular religion you tend to believe in, but whether or not a person is religious/spiritual at all mainly comes do to genetics.
I always understood that idea as an explanation of how belief in the supernatural got started, NOT as an explanation of why we have world religions. At best, how we got beliefs in the first gods. Everything after that is clearly a social (and sometimes even intentional) phenomenon, that may get bolstered by the original thing, but involves much more (especially childhood indoctrination). Though I have to say, arguing that religious people are more likely to make this misattribution is a counter-argument seems to me a bit absurd, as that is exactly what I would expect to see if the theory is correct. People more likely to commit this misattribution would thereby more likely to assume they had found support for their religion, thus making it more likely for them to commit to their religion. Now I wouldn't expect a huge difference there, but that's certainly the result I'd expect.
I think that to anthropomorphize natural phenomena was their scientific approach to stuff. e.g. Violence is like tiger, must beware of tiger, must beware of tiger in people (violence in people). Tiger as a 'god' would be actually a way of thinking of "a natural principle not binded by tiger..". I think the spiritual is a model for similarities between observable phenomena.
A second step towards religion/mysticism would be: e.g. there is a tiger person (violence) principle around there. It is not bound by an object, by people or animal. It can manifest when you least expect (a tree falling over someone and killing). Let's friggin respect 'tiger person' (let's beware of violence)
Excellent insights! Thanks! My question now, is where do these impulses / needs / decisions take place within the brain! I want to see a timeline of which areas are stimulated in which order, to get an understanding of the true difference between the believer and the skeptic.
I think HADD explains the physical basis for religion pretty well, it's a mechanism that became useful for society building reasons and made it more likely that people believe in certain flavours (like personalised gods rather than generic power)
There is also a hardwired tendency to discern faces in a jumble of visual features, or even static. It causes us to see patterns, even though we know there is no face and no organization actually present. Look at a cloud, haven't you ever seen a bunny rabbit? This evolved in the same way as the HADD you mentioned, and is further enhanced by social pressures to see and understand expressions. The "face" of the Man in the Moon is a perfect example, and the Moon was often regarded as a god in early societies. So, there is the mechanism needed to go from fearing sneaky tigers and ghosts to fearing capricious gods. None of this, however, can disprove the notion that a God actually does exist, and has created a finely tuned Cosmos, designed to evolve intelligent life with religious tendencies.
Actually I first learned the legend of the rabbit on the Moon and for a long time I never saw "the man on the Moon", I used to see a rabbit. The first time I saw a human face on the moon was after a documentary talking about that when I was already an adult. Now about what you mentioned, I think the HADD is a very poor explanation for the development of beliefs, it could be a factor, but I see things like introspection/meditation and philosophy as something essential for religions, not just giving random names and faces (and that's in addition to the part about social norms already described on the video).
Of course it cannot disprove an unfalsifiable God concept like the one you describe. There is no way to observe a universe and intelligently determine that it isn’t fit for intelligent life, so that isn’t surprising at all for that to be the case. As always happens, we come up with an explanation for the huge influence religion has besides it not being true, but it still doesn’t matter, because there is always something we cannot explain, isn’t there?
i think... both of these theories make an amount of sense, but i don’t think either is the full story. life is hard. i think religion arose because it gave ancient people a way to understand and try to control the chaotic, mysterious, and often dangerous world around them, and because it gave solace and a sense of purpose in times of tragedy. it filled (and still fills) a need, and society and the human brain empowered it.
Great video, 1 disagreement. The theory isn’t really designed to explain how religion works, it only hypothesises towards why religions begin to develop and why there is a notion of the supernatural in human cultures. Expecting the theory to also explain why religion socially operates as it does is like expecting evolution to account for the movement of the planets, then saying evolution has flaws cause it can’t account for elliptical orbits.
Also, pareidolia and our ability to have imaginary conversations with others( often times arguments we have in the shower) definitely add to the picture.
Yeah, I know how you feel. One way to say it diplomatically would be to compare it to love. Loving someone has a neuro-chemical basis too baked into our brain from evolution. But that fact doesn’t negate the meaning and importance in loving someone. Same goes with religion.
@@ReligionForBreakfast it doesnt even negate the existance of objective love or an objective divine/God or anything really. As someone in the comment section noted, religious beliefs being hardwired inside us coincides with '' intentionality on the part of God to be known by us.''
ALways thought that the need to believe in the afterlife as a way to cope with death anxiety in recently self-aware primitive humas and common practices like talking to the dead after they´ve passed were the "why" and the "how" at the bassis of the formation of early religious rituals and beliefs and the first deities. This video is more about the pre-dispositions that enabled those practices and the creation of deities that would explain forces of nature and random uccurrences. So interesting.
It seems to me that neurology explains the very basic origin of superstitiousness or magical thinking while social and cultural studies explain it's more advanced evolution that applies better to modern humans. I don't think these theories exclude but complete each other. Also I noticed that the reason people choose to remain superstitious is often fear or arrogance or both. Humans fear unknown so they prefer made up answers to uncertainty. Humans are arrogant enough to think that everything revolves around them: good and bad vibrations, gods, karma which all fit human morality and point of view. They don't want to acknkwledge their true place in the universe and its real nature out of simple weakness.
I think reducing religion to just names and faces is an error, so HADD is a very poor explanation. Not just because the social aspect explained in the video but also because philosophy and meditation(praying is considered one form of meditation) are important parts of any religion and cannot be explained by HADD (if anybody thinks praying is just asking the gods for favors, that totally misses the point). I think HADD may have contributed to giving faces to the and personalities to the deities or other mythological creatures, but that's just like the facade of religions, not the essence.
I don't think it matters that HADD doesn't explain religious philosophy because philosophy is a different activity that often doesn't have anything to do with religion. It makes perfect sense that, once religion came into being, it became a topic of discussion by philosophers (just like everything else), and that some philosophers integrated religion into their philosophy since it was so important to them or tried to use philosophy to justify their religion. However, I think you are right that HADD doesn't explain where meditative practices come from. They seem to be central aspects of pretty much every religion, so a good theory of where religion comes from should explain them as well. There is most likely no single psychological or sociological cause that can explain why religion exists - it comes from a combination of factors.
@@daddyleon I think social influences have become important over time. However, they didn't seem too important in the first religions. For example, the Mesopotamians pretty much thought of themselves made to be the slaves of the gods while the Ancient Egyptian temples were mainly just for the priests. Commoners rarely went to temples. It wasn't like a place of worship of today. On the other hand, it's definitely not just HADD because humans believed objects like the Sun were gods. Sure, the Sun moves around in the sky. However, you aren't going to get a glimpse of the Sun out of the corner of your eye and think it was a person. I think the answer is closer to a little girl talking to a doll like its a real person or even having an imaginary friend. However, I really don't think the social aspect played that large of a role.
@@lukeeckstein3498 Sorry, I don't understand, could try and explain how the Mesopotamian/Egyptian societies didn't influence their citizens while their societies were very different and the people within the societies did share quite some beliefs - ifaik, at least.
@@daddyleon Oh boy, I'm not saying that societies didn't influence their citizens. They certainly did. I'm just saying there wasn't as much of a communal aspect to the religions of the past like there is today. For example, people today might go to church or a bible study. This may give the appearance that communal activity is important in religion. Which it may be today, but not in the past. In ancient Egypt you didn't get people going to the temple every week.
@@lukeeckstein3498 Sorry I still really don't understand. Perhaps it's because I'm not a native speaker? You mean societies that build pyramids and ziggurats weren't really into communal religion? Sure, now we have bible studies, madrassas, etc. But that doesn't mean that society, the 'priestly class', and the zeitgeist explanations for HADD didn't have a major influence.
This is a very interesting analysis of the phenomenon, but I think in addition to mentioning the influence of people around us, there is an important factor not to forget and it's the way young people in many conservative religious societies having their minds "programmed" to record and register religious formulas and apply them robotically at a very early age. These young people, develop that religious robotic attitude all throughout their life and it becomes as something difficult to get detached from. But indeed some will succeed to do so. I read an article once about how professionals in scientific fields could still have religious reflexes and beliefs in religious societies that contrast and contradict their rational daily work and expertise. It seems as if the emotional side of the brain was trained at an early age to register and defend emotional formulas independently from the rational side? The way religious people act and defend emotionally their faith feels to me more like when someone is blindly in love. The difference is that its a long consistent state of being in love? Could it be that this is more responsible for the perseverance of religious beliefs than the interesting and reasonable mentioned factors?
2:40 - There actually is the major downside of just loss of potential energy (your senses & co-ordination device - i.e. your brain, are power hungry). Then you also just have the lack of ability to think of other things. Think of novellists or engineers, etc. going for a walk in the woods to clear their heads or just walk & think. I can easily imagine the probably thousands of times someone has wanted to/just gone to walk in the woods to think through something, from couplings & children & marriages (forced or proposed) to how can I plant my crops better.
Thank you. This is a topic I’ve long considered and wondered about. I have my own theories that are too long to express, but it’s good to learn about other people’s concepts.
I think the origin of religion has everything to do with what makes us different to other animals. Because while intelligent animals like dogs may have HADD and societal cues/obligations, they don’t have art or religion. What exactly makes us different from animals that allows us to think abstractly?
@Magdalena Ray We simply have the brainpower for it, and the parts of our brains handling rational decisions have become proportionally larger relative to the rest of the brain. Complicated language probably led to our ability to think abstractly too as we needed to think in those terms more and more to communicate efficiently. Needing to convey future events and hypotheticals let us think in those terms too.
2:45 Specifically, "jumpy, superstitious" hominids survived more often than "rational, atheist" hominids. 8:02 Meld superstition with a social creature that has a brain with a *lot* of interconnections and religion is one of the things that emerge?
this explains conspiracy theories too. whether there is a hardwired tendency to assemble cognitive perceptions into complex structures (early Chomsky), this is how language is learned - and religion is encoded in language. as we are increasingly isolated from actual natural threats, the mind wanders....
Another try at showing why this theory only makes sense in the context of the scientistic belief system: I did my first programming course in 1968. During my career in the field, I developed a sympathetic understanding of the difference between a machine and the instructions that make it work. Anyone who has stared at a computer screen, trying to figure out how to make the thing do something, will tell you that the machine alone is not sufficient. But you can see in this video that the scientistic belief system does not allow for this. Somehow, if you can point to some part of the machine as being involved in an activity, you have explained how it is performed. Once you stop doing this, you will see that the amount of programming that exists in living systems is truly phenomenal. For instance, did you know that migratory birds have four different navigation systems, and that the designers of the systems that are used for navigating modern jets can't match their accuracy? Where did this programming come from? The idea that it arose by natural selection from chance mutations is only plausible to those who are deeply ensnared by scientism. Others might think it laughable. Oh, and the values of a number of astrophysical constants are so uncannily what they need to be for us to be here that physicists have had to invent a by definition unprovable multi universe theory to avoid acknowledging the involvement of a conscious designer, or should I say Designer. And then you could look at the joint probability that life emerged from lifeless chemistry. Rather less than the chance that a single atom could be located in the entire universe. And so on, and so on. It is time to move beyond Darwinism. But it is in the nature of all believers to cling to their beliefs, and to persecute those who try to change them. So we are stuck with videos like this, instead of simply acknowledging the truth. A creator does exist.
Excellent job and man, you did this 3 years ago... The temporal and amygdala; it sounds like identifying (agency) to mediate a fear, gain control, as you summed up in the beginning. The ability for agency I think is a value free judgement. I mean, would our neurology be particular whether you imagine someone behind a tree or a god in the sky? Great examination... Thank you
Once again an amazing video full of food for thought! So, the whole idea of God, or to be more accurate, the need of believing to a higher deity or a higher purpose, or even believing that "there must be something bigger out there" derives from our quality of life. When you have a tough life, starting from the cave men fighting carnivores until today giving their daily struggle, you *have* to believe that somewhere must be something (call me Heaven, Paradise, Elysian Fields etc) in order to give meaning and reason to keep fighting this daily struggle. Believing in a higher power means hoping for a better life. Even if it's the afterlife, there must be something better, it cannot just end here. That's why usually rich people tend not to believe in a higher being. In case they do, it's definitely not the "savior" who will bring the salvation and redemption, it's more like a purpose to give justice to this world; that's why we see (very) rich people becoming philanthropists and humanitarians; they might believe in a higher power but as a meaning to this life, not to save them at the afterlife. Keep in mind for example the eternal fight between physicists and religious people on "why does the universe exist"? Physicists say "based on quantum theory, well, it just popped out from nothing, for no reason" while religious people can't except that the whole freaking universe came to be by accident and that life looks like it's an error (since there's nowhere else, as it looks like till now of course).
@Stratos Nikolaidis We don’t know the reason why the universe exists. Neither of the options you presented have good evidence behind them. Why can we not just admit we don’t know everything instead of asserting whatever option we like most? Accidents do happen, and intelligent beings do exist. There’s no reason to believe only the latter could have happened to create the universe.
@@Kevorama0205 I couldn't agree more with what you say; definitely we don't know how universe was created (there are theories only) and even more we don't know why and who's (or what's) responsible for its creation and existence. People try to find answers. Either through belief or science. Personally, I can't accept that the whole universe is a result of a photon popping out from nothingness by accident. Someone or something must have pulled a trigger.
@Stratos Nikolaidis Why is it not just as absurd for the trigger-puller to not have its own trigger-puller-trigger-puller? Can a universe not pull its own trigger? These are very common and basic questions, I know, but I don’t think the universe coming from a non-intelligent cause is less reasonable than an intelligent cause simply existing without external reason.
@@Kevorama0205 agreed. That's where the question "why we're here?" comes. So, in a universe came to be by itself, by accident, why we're here? What was before and what's next? Is there a higher reason and purpose of our existence? These are questions which create the belief and religion. Both ways of course, "religious" religions claiming that they know the truth of the higher being and "religious" atheists stating that there's no such thing. Both cases exist based on their belief system.
@Stratos Nikolaidis My position is that one shouldn’t hold a belief either way on the existence of a generic intelligent designer, since there is no evidence either way, nor can there ever be as far as I can tell. However, belief in a specific theistic God like Jesus is contrary to the evidence in my view, and disbelief in all such claimed gods (atheism) is more reasonable by far. Atheism isn’t really about deism at all, and one can be undecided on deism while confident in atheism. So people who claim a deistic God does exist are on equal footing with those who claim such a God doesn’t exist, but theists and atheists are not on equal footing in that way.
We also anthropomorphize the theory of evolution. When people describe the mechanics of the theory, the rhetoric many people use implies intentionality.
it's dark when i go by bicycle to work every morning. and today i saw at least three people on the road. they turned out to be a shrub, a switch board, and a garbage bin. But for a split second they me brain saw them as human figures, and drew my attention to them. this was H.A.D.D in action and i think the darkness supercharged it so conclusions about what shapes in the dark were was made before i had time to analyze them
Trouble with your counter to this theory is it suffers from sample bias. You are more likely to believe what people around you believe because that belief is more common in that area, by definition…
In my experience, everyone I've ever come across always seem to a 'religious' connection towards something, whether it's in a God, something material, or something else, despite them being religious or not.
My theory is increasingly that ritual is deeply linked to the very biology of all things. It requires some extension of what we think of as ritual, but if ritual is a process of differentiating the self from non-self, then you could argue that a lot of actions in nature are in some basal sense ritualistic and that ritual action predates religion by possibly millennia.
Nah, like most things due to the neuroplasticity of our brains, religion is softwired. Little things are hardwired, like the ability to feel heat, reflexes, nausea, etc...
In my nonprofessional opinion: hyperactivity is the starting point from which people begin looking for answers. They think about it, talk about it, validate each others' theories. They then share these theories with their kids who accept them because they trust the adults in their lives. Every generation adds something to the theories until they become full blown religious doctrines.
Orthodox Christian here: I am sure that a lot of religious experiences are of psychological and evolutionary nature, but however our faith is not built on that. There’s quite a considerable difference between what I sometimes experience during prayer or liturgy and what my faith is built upon
I think HADD + Cognitive thinking may be the seed of the origin of deity but creativity is really the key. Our ability to be creative and to communicate these musings and fictions is what really laid the ground work for religion. After all, chimps have pretty good HADD instincts and there’s evidence of their cognitive ability but you wouldn’t be able to convince it to “give you his banana and he will go to heaven” (TED Radio Hour podcast “How things spread”)
Well done. 1 Thought: H.A.D.D. with regards to the predators hinges on the fact that there were actual predators. The hyperactivity is caused by previous real and dangerous experiences. For it to be applied to "seeing gods everywhere", there must have been a real and dangerous "god-experience" to begin with or do they mean to say the lack of a predator then caused the believe in some other invisible "agent". This is then nothing more than the so-called "god-of-the-gaps" theory. I'd rather consult C.G.Jung (evolutionary Psychologist!!) on all of this.
Take his example of when the wind blows open a door and someone assuming it is a person opening the door. The threat is not real but the person perceives it as a threat or at least as another person. Apply this logic to ancient peoples, many of whom had very little to no understanding of natural phenomenons, and you can see how these superstitions arise. Religions can come about later as groups form and beliefs about these occurrences are shared. These groups developed various ways to combat and petition to these perceived humanlike threats, one common example being animal sacrifice.
@@whatwecalllife7034 So it's basically the "god-of-the-gaps" theory, except that it's linked to a "predator awareness" in animals, not explaining how the "awareness" of a possible predator turned into the "awareness" of a god. It could maybe lead to "awareness" of a devil: fear caused by the imitation of predators, or fear itself. That makes sense, a devil-of-the-gaps theory. The definition of the devil becomes... wait for it... ignorance.
@@ABird971 Where in there did you see anything about "god of the gaps"? Where in there did I mention anything about "predator awareness"? What about what I typed was unclear for you?
@@whatwecalllife7034 If I understood you correctly you just tried to reiterated the H.A.D.D. idea the way you understood it. Do you know the "god-of-the-gaps" theory? What you said is nothing more than that. I think H.A.D.D. is trying to make clearer, the connection between the "god-of-the-gaps" theory and evolutionary psychology. But like ReligionForBreakfast, I don't buy it. Also: the assumption that ancient people had "little to no understanding of natural phenomenons", is a fallacy. Rather modern-day city people have little- to no understanding of natural phenomenA. Evolutionary psychology has come much further than these kindergarten ideas. ;)
@ABird971 We developed hyperactive agent detection because of predators. Then, we detected agents way more than necessary, including to explain natural phenomena, which led to gods. It was still an evolutionary advantage overall, just with an additional side effect that didn’t really hurt us that much when we made our gods bigger and bigger to fit with any reality.
There are shortcomings in both to explain things like why there's a movement toward Christianity in largely Muslim communities that forbid Christian teachings. Countless other examples can be found, including mass conversations to early Christianity.
I was just listening to Daniel Kahneman cite the theory of biologically wired religion tendencies in Thinking, Fast and Slow last week. Thanks for giving this idea some more context!
This reminds me of Theo Jansen, a kind of contemporary Da Vinci, who makes wind powered walking machines out of pvc pipe structures. The randomness of the wind creates the illusion that those machines have agency, that they walk or stop on their own will, it's easy to adopt the utterly irrational idea that they're living beings.
I think it's both individual and culture. I think the tribal mystical roots of mysticism start with individual experiences and are then codified into some shared doctrine that, over time, assimilates more and more aspects of cultural identity. So for the person 400 years later, yes, you got your religion as a social experience. But all of that is a mountain of ideas added to over generations, going all the way back to the original mystical beliefs of the individual, which were potentially inspired by a TON of different spooky natural phenomena (crazy dreams, sleep paralysis, mental illness, incredible weather events, incredible coincidences, psychedelic drugs, and yes, even our brain's innate sense that something's secretly watching you in the dark, etc.).
The problem with cultural learning alone is that it doesn’t tell us the origin of a belief. All it tells us is that someone has a belief because their parents had it because their parents had it because their parents had it… but where does this regression end? Personally, I think the origin of a belief is where we should place hyperactive predator perception, and cultural learning allows the initial fluke to endure as a belief.
if we get our beliefs from the people around us, where did they get their beliefs then? There has to be some sort of basis in which these beliefs arose from rather than the "we got it from society" or it's a tradition thing. I'm far more convinced of the H.A.D.D. theory since it provides the foundation of the simple to complex evolution of religiosity. Though i may not communicate it well, i hope that anyone who's reading this will understand what im trying to ask. :)
H.A.D.DOUKEN
Morpheus Seashellsbytheseashorepheus
Does the HADD hypothesis explains why making unfalsifiable claims on random things being secretly connected by a higher power is sometimes called religion and sometimes called evolutionary psychology ?
I appreciate the video. Nicely done. Although I'm not seeing the problem. There's biological capability and cultural reinforcement (confirmation) ... gene-meme interaction. A feed-back loop.
I have flow diagrams if anyone is interested. ;)
Re -lig - ion
Reg- ion
Leg - ion
Re- volut - ion
In-vent- ion
Where ;and when ; WAS this ..Ion ?
Why were the upper portions of the heavens called , “ ion - o- sphere”
Does it declare , “ Io - no - sphere “ !
Was it the place of Sion ; or Zion ?
To go.
Off-plane port?
Consider Indus Valley
Indus -tree
A volute is a spiraling compressing configuration.
There; was solut
involut , etc.
HERE was a portal to another plane.
ua-cam.com/video/g8rx_SDeaao/v-deo.html
Plot twist: there WAS a spirit haunting Darwin's umbrella
No, he didn't train his dog properly so it barked at anything.
Is video seems question begging
It was the spirits of all the turtles he eated
@@narrelleweir6383 Pretty sure that was just a joke, my guy.
Look at ancient egypt. It seems very interesting the shift from animal gods to human gods. It seems that human based gods emerges when complex urban society develops. Extrapolated, it could be that humans in urban settings naturally just assume the most dangerous thing around them is not an animal predator, but another human.
Is there a time in ancient Egyptian religion in which we can see a "shift" in such gods? From my understanding, animal Egyptian gods not always depicted or seen as animals, they are also represented as humans sometimes. And what about those non-urban societies that depict their gods as human-like or those that lack an anthropomorphic body at all?
@Wednesday's Child the Egyptian gods are very distinct from the other pantheons that you mentioned, and the similarities between the rest of them can be explained because they are all descended from proto Indo European religious practices.
Osiris and his sister (Isis) were not anthropomorphized animals nor their parents Geb and Nut and these are some of the earliest Gods in the pantheon so it would be hard to put a time line on a transition period. Early paleoliths in Egypt show basic animal headed concepts most likely arising from the shamantic practice of "inhabiting" a sacred animals "power" through the use of a head dress made of a skull and other elements. The Egyptians are often referred to as a bronze age people with a stone age soul because they did not forget these ways when they urbanized
@Wednesday's Child Any hypothesis about the belief systems of the people of Gobekli Tepe are just unverifiable assumptions
@Wednesday's Child Egypt had language that has been deciphered and plenty of physical artifacts. Though too often Egyptology is more interpretive art history than archaeology id say there is a bit more to work with.
The vsauce of religion right here. Even kinda sounds like him.
He doesn't enunciate like an idiot tho
He should edit his videos and scripts the same way :D
lemme guess, his name is Gabriel. Brother of Michael?
www.thevolumesoftruth.com/Above_Reproach
Thus says The Lord to His servant: My son, why do you question Me in this way? To question My servant is to question Me. Therefore listen and have understanding, that My will may be fulfilled in you.
That which you call the Old Testament was indeed written through My servants and prophets of old, and all who were wise gave heed, obeying the writing thereof. Yet even then that which would come to be written in the New Testament already existed, awaiting the day I would send out My apostles and prophets to proclaim the Good News. Was it the Old Testament? No. It was the New Testament, never before seen, heard or published.
And now the time has come for Me to send out My apostles and prophets once again, to announce My coming and to set all these crooked paths straight; behold, it is time to blow the Trumpet and prepare My way before Me.
Does that which My messengers proclaim agree with the Bible? Yes. For the words in these Letters are My words; as are the words in your Bible My words, though they have been greatly misinterpreted and mistranslated by men. Therefore put no difference between them. For to reject any part of My Word is to reject the whole. I tell you the truth, the three books are one, one on-going testament to My glory.
Thus much of what My servants proclaim, you have already heard. Yet they will also declare that which you have not heard (nor have you understood, because of man’s doctrine in you). Therefore, again I say to you, what My prophets of the end of this age write is indeed new to many, yet remains in perfect agreement with the prophets of old. For I do not change; I shall surely make My plans known.
@@toddyahushua7972 Cool story, bro.
"It was only the wind. You've been hadd!"
Must've been the wind.... For King and Country!!!
Then took an arrow in the knee
Why I read this in Johnatan Frakes voice?
From a believer's perspective HADD fits with the idea that there is intentionality on the part of God to be known by us. "You have made us for yourself o God and our hearts are restless until they rest in You" (Augustine)
I like that. Might be the basis for a cognitive theology of some sort. Seminary dissertation topic?
This sounds a little bit similar to the idea of Sensus Divinitatis by John Calvin and used by Alvin Plantinga. Here are two links some video clips about this, that might interest you. ua-cam.com/video/lro05RvPMkE/v-deo.html
ua-cam.com/video/lro05RvPMkE/v-deo.html
The muslims believe that God wanted to be known and this is the reason to create human beings.
Everything can fit with God. That’s the reason it’s not a good theory. “You can’t explain that!” always becomes “Of course God did it like that!” once we do. And that can be done for any unexplained thing, really.
@wearealltubes" I have not created the Jinn and Mankind, except to worship me " Then, there is a hadith qudsi that goes something like " I was a hidden Treasure I desired to be recognized so I created the creature" .
: کنت کنزاً مخفیاً فأحببت أن أعرف فخلقت الخلق لکی أعرف.
Just what I have read. Sufism has used it a lot in their texts.
This is a great channel, and very underrated. I've always been interested in religion and I'm glad there is someone who makes such high quality videos on these subjects.
I love this theory because I'm a simultaneously spiritual and highly analytical person.
You will love Dr Jordan Peterson's videos
What does it mean, that you are spiritual?
@@cristobalrojas3712 yea, if you want to fall down a reactionary rabbit hole
how is it possible?
@@wendbnew u have a connection with the unseeable forces
YOU ARE SO UNDERRATED TO THE POINT WHERE I FEEL BAD
Never have I wanted to subscribe and like a UA-cam channel more than I have yours. I know you are also an academic with all of the demands that come with it (lectures, classes, research, publication, dissertation students), but you are doing good work here. Bringing religious literacy to the table is essential for us to claw our way out of this mess. Please continue! And at an alarming rate!
i love how you updated your avatar with a beard
As an atheist who tried a catholic prayer practice, I have this hunch that there is utility in relating to the chaos of the world in an anthropomorphized manner. It felt strangely natural and it kind of made it easier to pay attention to subtle "responses of the world" to your own actions.
I think that's such an interesting overlap between pareidolia and confirmation bias, because it only appears once you prime yourself to look for these communications. You see a similar pattern with the concepts of synchronicity and manifestation.
I don't think Durkheim can really account for religion either, though. Religion is not just a communal experience; in some ways it is deeply individual. Durkheim certainly explains much of how organised religion and religious communities develop, but he doesn't have any way to account for religious Inspiration, which often flies directly in the face of organised religion. The basic intuitions that often guide religion do seem to have something more than a purely social origin.
If he's correct, that explains inspiration as a simple epiphany. Your imaginary friend gave you really good advice, in other words. It's a moving experience to hear the ultimate knowledge from the ultimate boss of the universe, and you just happen to be his best friend.
👏
@@haywardjeblomey6505 But Durkheim doesn't really have any way of accounting for epiphany, that's the problem. Structuralism can only account for what we do with epiphany (viz. interpreting it within a religious framework). It's reductive to suggest that religion comes about as the result of social interaction and the creation of community when there are clear counterexamples. I'd posit that it's actually more hylomorphic, with both upward and downward causality.
@@Salsmachev You don't know where epiphany comes from? It comes from memory (experience) and the processing of those memories through other emotional states. One can never come to the correct conclusion if they don't have the experience of knowing the proposition, for example.
@@haywardjeblomey6505 I don't think we actually have any substantive disagreement here. Epiphanies, according to your explanation of them, are not consistent with a wholly structuralist/Durkheimian account of religion.
I can't find the original source, but I recall seeing an article that said that organized religions tend to form when the population of a group exceeds one million people. This would seem to fit with the social aspect proposed here.
I mean the first organised religions that we have evidence for came about in cities with populations between ten and twenty thousand, so a million seems rather too high a number
People who have never had a paranormal experience cannot fathom what it's like to have one. I can tell you from years of experiences that these phenomena exist. I consider myself an educated person, a pretty rational one at that (and, no, I do NOT do drugs). My encounters with the paranormal on numerous occasions rocked me to the core, and made me realise that whatever I was denying existed is not only real but quite earth-shattering. My whole outlook on this subject has completely turned my world upside down.
What did you experience exactly if I may ask, and how did you come into the conclusion that it’s paranormal?
Check the wires in your house
Oh! This was very interested! I myself have no actual knowledge in regards to the cognitive sciences inspired religious studies field, this has been very fun to watch.
Loved this video! Could you do a video on the history of marriage in religion? I read an article for my sociology class that claims for the first 500-1000 years of Christianity the religion rejected the concept as "tainted and secular," and didn't adopt it as sacrament until 1215. I don't know if there is any truth to this, but I thought you might have some knowledge on the subject. Thanks!
An excellent video as always! I love how you're able to explain things in an understandable way for the general public without sacrificing the complexity of these topics. Usually people on youtube focus just on one side of the argument, but you always give an explanation of both sides, even in such a short video. I really appreciate all the work you do!
*+ReligionForBreakfast* A point of criticism about 8:48-9:10
Yes, obviously..cultural learning mechanisms are VERY important in shaping the content and place where religious form. That's not the claim of HADD either (i.e. it doesn't claim to describe how it happens, just suggests that HADD is at the forefront for the entire process, it allows it 'to go'). That's not a real argument against what HADD. That counter argument to HADD is, I think, akin to saying:
"the shape, slope, and surrounding features of the land (like reefs, rocks, islands, etc.), the trajectory of the ocean currents, and the force and direction of the wind are the factors that determine what the waves will look like, what direction they go, the height they will have and other things. Therefore we can brush away the moon and tidal currents as contributing to the explanation of the movements of seas and oceans."
I think it's missing the point entirely. I see it as HADD opening the door for personal/chance interpretations and other larger social forces (both in the moment and over looong stretches of time) to either discount/explain away or run with those HADD experiences.
We certainly don't know how it all works, and I think focussing too much on those neuro-studies is going to be a red herring. We might see where it starts to happen, but locking people up in an ƒMRI for the entirely of belief-forming that can take quite long it's going to be practical. And to some extent, even if/when those devices become tiny and portable, you can only see where it happens - that doesn't necessarily tell you (why or) how it happens _like_ that.
Granted to all of that.
But the reason I'm excited about the progress happening with the neuroscience of religion (not just *adoption* but continued *adherence* to beliefs) is that once we know the exact mechanism and process by which a person chooses emotional satisfaction from sticking with happy memories vs embracing the new and unknown based on objective evidence, then we can explore how to shape experiences scientifically so that people can be incentivized to think rationally. Taken to the next level, we could develop a cure for irrationality!
I find that psychologists and other scientists often overlook aspects of culture which are integral to understanding things like religion. This is why it's important for people discussing these theories to be deeply grounded in religious studies and history more generally. I'm glad you pointed to that in this video
Psychology isn't the science that has traditionally accounted for culture and religion. In fact, clinical psych has had to find ways of accommodating things like cultural norms in a fairly ad hoc manner in more recent decades.
But in practice, a good clinical psychologist will handle those issues well as part of cultural competency.
That said, the psychology of religion is a valuable research area into itself which I personally feel is ripe for some major new research developments.
This channel is a real gem!
I've heard of this one before
I liked your retelling of the lesson
I also liked your personal touch, as you mention your own persuasion that Religion is a social construct.
Good to enter the dirt and stake your own claim!
Great channel, definitely deserves more subscribers.
Here are my views on what you said. I agree with you that HADD isn't the end of the story but it definitely is an important part. I think HADD + Abstract Thinking, together with some other social facts (like social identity) can easily explain how religions can develop.
I'm just gonna put this out there I swear my cat is plotting against me but then again I might just be anthropomorphising her actions :P
You are wrong. She is gatamorphing YOUR actions. She beleives that you are thinking and reasoning.
Your cat is plotting against you.
Nah, cats are evil. You're not paranoid, she is out to get you 😂
haha.
I'm not very religious but the Lord's prayer helps me calm down when my anxiety is at its worse. It is very interesting how that is hard wired into my inner self. Probably has something to do with me learning it as a child and me finding comfort in it now that I'm older. Either way I'm glad it works when I need it the most.
i love that for u
Same here!
That’s like with me and the Shema.
This is awesome!!!
Thanks so much for exploring religion in the mind as well as in the brain.
I hope you'll find a way to BRIDGE the social and hard sciences to show where in the brain and in the genes our loyalty to community, rituals, etc. play out.
Eg., amygdala and DRD4 gene.
Animals has HADD too, but I don't think they are religious. But we differ from other animals that we have a much deeper understanding of the future and the past, so we can ask ourselfs "What hapens after we died?" etc. Then we make up answers which becomes a part of our culture.
That and the ability to communicate abstract concepts, which I think is the major criterion for culture. AFAIK only orcas can do this outside humans, and the scientific literature describes them as having cultures.
As a curious coincidence (Or maybe not), the analogy of the ghost being the coats' rack is very similar to a Buddhist one. This one is about being in a house without light and seeing a snake on the floor. But you take a candle and see it was just a rope. The analogy is to illustrate that nothing in Samsara can hurt us and hence we are just mistaking a rope with a snake. I am a Buddhist, but i do have to say that if we try to apply this from a secular-practical point of view then it's not only useless, but kinda dangerous. I find that funny.
Are you still Buddhist
Hypothesis: Religion began as a recursive psychosocial phenomena starting with HADD in a small group of humans, but continued into cultural learning mechanisms when these humans taught other humans, like their children, which evoked HADD and informed how later humans experience and understand it.
Transferred or was connected from threat detection to anthropomorphizing via placation behavior- leaving or offering a predator meat to avoid becoming its prey. This relationship influences the CLMs of the society, and is anthropomorphized as rational behavior on the part of the predator since it appears to be following a social construct like trade. This again enters the CLMs and the idea of placating or bargaining with other HADD instances not so directly attributed to predators begins to manifest in the psychological conditioning of the society.
Maybe as humans moved into settlements in the Neolithic, those cultural methods slowly changed from fear of predators to storytelling which was passed down over the millennia. Pantheons usually reflect the social status of society. So if you have a hunter-gatherer tribe of a couple dozen people, spiritualism might make sense; likewise, if you have a budding empire from a city-state with a king, it makes sense that the gods would have particular identities with control and hierarchy. This would also explain the slow formalization and stratification seen in religions and the usage of kings to represent themselves as divine as they likened themselves to gods.
Brilliant! This is a deep and useful subject for all of our species. Excellent job, I would love to see videos with further research
Love the deviation into neurotheology! Hope to see more :)
Btw how’s the Shinto videos coming along?
I just realize watching this video that Creepy Pasta is the "modern" way in which we (humans) are interpreting the Ghosts, Monsters, Demons & Gods.
Alejandro Guerra Villegas Using Ockham’s razor it’s absurdly unlikely to think every single person who has seen a ghost was mistaken.
It is assumed to be impossible, then other often unlikely explanations are looked for.
@@apersonlikeanyother6895 I'm not saying that Creepy Pasta is a lie, I'm saying it's the modern equivalent to manuscripts from Old Age.
Love you and your channel. Sounds to me that cultural forces amplify the inherent individual HADD neurophysiological tendencies. Greetings from Ireland. ❤️👍🏻👌☘️🇮🇪
The beard is coming in quite nicely
I know this isn't the point of your videos but I HADD to say it.
Spinoza had a similar theory about organized religion as being caused by improper identification of final causality in natural phenomena. Although Spinoza never implied that judging natural events as having finality is part of some natural human cognitive behavior, he sees it as a vice that ultimately leads to moral servitude.
Psychology and Religion - two areas which need to mix more.
Alicia Tur How so?
I believe the paintings and other depictions of human/animal beings made by early humans are better explained by trance states, dreams, etc. And I agree with your friend: religion is a complex issue and I believe complex issues have complex origins. Both biological and cultural influences must play a part in it. On a personal note, I anthropologize my computer, and he definitively has a mind of his own. I talk to him often, shout at him and shake my fist at it, but he still does his own thing. Maybe a nice offering would change the tide in my favor? Here's a thought!
I also wonder how this theory might relate to the tendency for young children to invent "invisible friends" or pretend that their stuffed animals and dolls have personality and are talking to them and the children talk to these inanimate objects? Basically, belief in invisible supernatural beings (spirits, ghosts, gods, angels, demons...) is an extension of the tendency of young children to have "invisible friends". Freud's theory holds that this is exactly what is going on: belief in a god is an "infantile neurosis" - adults acting like children, being attached to God as an invisible friend. So, question of cause and effect: is the idea of God merely an extension of the childhood tendency to invent imaginary friends? Or do chidren "invent" these imaginary friends because the mind of a child actually is more open to perceiving the real existence of these invisible beings? Might it be that religious skeptics lose this childlike innocence due to an overly logical mind?
Honestly I think I can actually invent an invisible friend if I like. I also already tend to have conversations with my self.
It's good to know about this theory, because it makes sense in a way, even though doesn't hold much water... Creates a really great discussion!
I wouldn't say it "doesn't hold water" he even quotes a colleague "it is important for the history of religion [...]". I'd rather say it explains the origin of the tendencies (a framework of sort) that "are made use of" later during cultural interactions to conceive of gods we traditionally find in religions.
I was about to make a bad joke, but i H.A.D.D homework to do
😂😂😂
Great work! It shows you enjoy what your doing.
These actually sound like 2 different things. Like when people do stuff together in a community with a sense of belonging. That would be interesting to study biologically because it can happen even in the absence of belief in the supernatural.
There's substantial scientific evidence that how religious or spiritual someone or a group is largely boils down to genetics.
Of course culture and upbringing influences what particular religion you tend to believe in, but whether or not a person is religious/spiritual at all mainly comes do to genetics.
I always understood that idea as an explanation of how belief in the supernatural got started, NOT as an explanation of why we have world religions. At best, how we got beliefs in the first gods. Everything after that is clearly a social (and sometimes even intentional) phenomenon, that may get bolstered by the original thing, but involves much more (especially childhood indoctrination).
Though I have to say, arguing that religious people are more likely to make this misattribution is a counter-argument seems to me a bit absurd, as that is exactly what I would expect to see if the theory is correct. People more likely to commit this misattribution would thereby more likely to assume they had found support for their religion, thus making it more likely for them to commit to their religion. Now I wouldn't expect a huge difference there, but that's certainly the result I'd expect.
I think that to anthropomorphize natural phenomena was their scientific approach to stuff. e.g. Violence is like tiger, must beware of tiger, must beware of tiger in people (violence in people). Tiger as a 'god' would be actually a way of thinking of "a natural principle not binded by tiger..". I think the spiritual is a model for similarities between observable phenomena.
A second step towards religion/mysticism would be: e.g. there is a tiger person (violence) principle around there. It is not bound by an object, by people or animal. It can manifest when you least expect (a tree falling over someone and killing). Let's friggin respect 'tiger person' (let's beware of violence)
Excellent insights! Thanks!
My question now, is where do these impulses / needs / decisions take place within the brain!
I want to see a timeline of which areas are stimulated in which order, to get an understanding of the true difference between the believer and the skeptic.
I think HADD explains the physical basis for religion pretty well, it's a mechanism that became useful for society building reasons and made it more likely that people believe in certain flavours (like personalised gods rather than generic power)
There is also a hardwired tendency to discern faces in a jumble of visual features, or even static. It causes us to see patterns, even though we know there is no face and no organization actually present. Look at a cloud, haven't you ever seen a bunny rabbit?
This evolved in the same way as the HADD you mentioned, and is further enhanced by social pressures to see and understand expressions. The "face" of the Man in the Moon is a perfect example, and the Moon was often regarded as a god in early societies. So, there is the mechanism needed to go from fearing sneaky tigers and ghosts to fearing capricious gods.
None of this, however, can disprove the notion that a God actually does exist, and has created a finely tuned Cosmos, designed to evolve intelligent life with religious tendencies.
Actually I first learned the legend of the rabbit on the Moon and for a long time I never saw "the man on the Moon", I used to see a rabbit. The first time I saw a human face on the moon was after a documentary talking about that when I was already an adult.
Now about what you mentioned, I think the HADD is a very poor explanation for the development of beliefs, it could be a factor, but I see things like introspection/meditation and philosophy as something essential for religions, not just giving random names and faces (and that's in addition to the part about social norms already described on the video).
Of course it cannot disprove an unfalsifiable God concept like the one you describe. There is no way to observe a universe and intelligently determine that it isn’t fit for intelligent life, so that isn’t surprising at all for that to be the case.
As always happens, we come up with an explanation for the huge influence religion has besides it not being true, but it still doesn’t matter, because there is always something we cannot explain, isn’t there?
Many people have HADD these experiences.
i think... both of these theories make an amount of sense, but i don’t think either is the full story. life is hard. i think religion arose because it gave ancient people a way to understand and try to control the chaotic, mysterious, and often dangerous world around them, and because it gave solace and a sense of purpose in times of tragedy. it filled (and still fills) a need, and society and the human brain empowered it.
This is such a Materialist & Empiricist Viewpoint
TLDW: "God is a jumpscare."
... that ♪♪♪loooves♪♪♪ you!
Love that you are back doing videos again! Could you please cover the Genetic Fallacy??(Morality defined by genetic adaptation)
"Savages" was not racist in Darwin's time. It just meant humans who lived in the wild.
Great video, 1 disagreement. The theory isn’t really designed to explain how religion works, it only hypothesises towards why religions begin to develop and why there is a notion of the supernatural in human cultures. Expecting the theory to also explain why religion socially operates as it does is like expecting evolution to account for the movement of the planets, then saying evolution has flaws cause it can’t account for elliptical orbits.
Also, pareidolia and our ability to have imaginary conversations with others( often times arguments we have in the shower) definitely add to the picture.
Well done, well put, and well, just really interesting. Thank you.
I have been trying to find a way to say this without people feeling like I am attacking their beliefs. This is very clear. Thank you.
Yeah, I know how you feel. One way to say it diplomatically would be to compare it to love. Loving someone has a neuro-chemical basis too baked into our brain from evolution. But that fact doesn’t negate the meaning and importance in loving someone. Same goes with religion.
@@ReligionForBreakfast it doesnt even negate the existance of objective love or an objective divine/God or anything really.
As someone in the comment section noted, religious beliefs being hardwired inside us coincides with '' intentionality on the part of God to be known by us.''
Pattern recognition ability is what helps us do science. But it also makes us incorrectly recognize patterns which don’t even exist.
ALways thought that the need to believe in the afterlife as a way to cope with death anxiety in recently self-aware primitive humas and common practices like talking to the dead after they´ve passed were the "why" and the "how" at the bassis of the formation of early religious rituals and beliefs and the first deities. This video is more about the pre-dispositions that enabled those practices and the creation of deities that would explain forces of nature and random uccurrences. So interesting.
It seems to me that neurology explains the very basic origin of superstitiousness or magical thinking while social and cultural studies explain it's more advanced evolution that applies better to modern humans. I don't think these theories exclude but complete each other. Also I noticed that the reason people choose to remain superstitious is often fear or arrogance or both. Humans fear unknown so they prefer made up answers to uncertainty. Humans are arrogant enough to think that everything revolves around them: good and bad vibrations, gods, karma which all fit human morality and point of view. They don't want to acknkwledge their true place in the universe and its real nature out of simple weakness.
I think reducing religion to just names and faces is an error, so HADD is a very poor explanation. Not just because the social aspect explained in the video but also because philosophy and meditation(praying is considered one form of meditation) are important parts of any religion and cannot be explained by HADD (if anybody thinks praying is just asking the gods for favors, that totally misses the point).
I think HADD may have contributed to giving faces to the and personalities to the deities or other mythological creatures, but that's just like the facade of religions, not the essence.
I don't think it matters that HADD doesn't explain religious philosophy because philosophy is a different activity that often doesn't have anything to do with religion. It makes perfect sense that, once religion came into being, it became a topic of discussion by philosophers (just like everything else), and that some philosophers integrated religion into their philosophy since it was so important to them or tried to use philosophy to justify their religion.
However, I think you are right that HADD doesn't explain where meditative practices come from. They seem to be central aspects of pretty much every religion, so a good theory of where religion comes from should explain them as well. There is most likely no single psychological or sociological cause that can explain why religion exists - it comes from a combination of factors.
Praying is considered meditation to those that never receive answers...
So it could be H.A.D.D + Abstract Thinking + Correlation.
I think you missed the bit of social influences.
@@daddyleon I think social influences have become important over time. However, they didn't seem too important in the first religions. For example, the Mesopotamians pretty much thought of themselves made to be the slaves of the gods while the Ancient Egyptian temples were mainly just for the priests. Commoners rarely went to temples. It wasn't like a place of worship of today. On the other hand, it's definitely not just HADD because humans believed objects like the Sun were gods. Sure, the Sun moves around in the sky. However, you aren't going to get a glimpse of the Sun out of the corner of your eye and think it was a person. I think the answer is closer to a little girl talking to a doll like its a real person or even having an imaginary friend. However, I really don't think the social aspect played that large of a role.
@@lukeeckstein3498 Sorry, I don't understand, could try and explain how the Mesopotamian/Egyptian societies didn't influence their citizens while their societies were very different and the people within the societies did share quite some beliefs - ifaik, at least.
@@daddyleon Oh boy, I'm not saying that societies didn't influence their citizens. They certainly did. I'm just saying there wasn't as much of a communal aspect to the religions of the past like there is today. For example, people today might go to church or a bible study. This may give the appearance that communal activity is important in religion. Which it may be today, but not in the past. In ancient Egypt you didn't get people going to the temple every week.
@@lukeeckstein3498 Sorry I still really don't understand. Perhaps it's because I'm not a native speaker? You mean societies that build pyramids and ziggurats weren't really into communal religion? Sure, now we have bible studies, madrassas, etc. But that doesn't mean that society, the 'priestly class', and the zeitgeist explanations for HADD didn't have a major influence.
This is a very interesting analysis of the phenomenon, but I think in addition to mentioning the influence of people around us, there is an important factor not to forget and it's the way young people in many conservative religious societies having their minds "programmed" to record and register religious formulas and apply them robotically at a very early age. These young people, develop that religious robotic attitude all throughout their life and it becomes as something difficult to get detached from. But indeed some will succeed to do so. I read an article once about how professionals in scientific fields could still have religious reflexes and beliefs in religious societies that contrast and contradict their rational daily work and expertise. It seems as if the emotional side of the brain was trained at an early age to register and defend emotional formulas independently from the rational side? The way religious people act and defend emotionally their faith feels to me more like when someone is blindly in love. The difference is that its a long consistent state of being in love? Could it be that this is more responsible for the perseverance of religious beliefs than the interesting and reasonable mentioned factors?
2:40 - There actually is the major downside of just loss of potential energy (your senses & co-ordination device - i.e. your brain, are power hungry). Then you also just have the lack of ability to think of other things. Think of novellists or engineers, etc. going for a walk in the woods to clear their heads or just walk & think. I can easily imagine the probably thousands of times someone has wanted to/just gone to walk in the woods to think through something, from couplings & children & marriages (forced or proposed) to how can I plant my crops better.
Thank you. This is a topic I’ve long considered and wondered about. I have my own theories that are too long to express, but it’s good to learn about other people’s concepts.
I think the origin of religion has everything to do with what makes us different to other animals. Because while intelligent animals like dogs may have HADD and societal cues/obligations, they don’t have art or religion. What exactly makes us different from animals that allows us to think abstractly?
@Magdalena Ray We simply have the brainpower for it, and the parts of our brains handling rational decisions have become proportionally larger relative to the rest of the brain. Complicated language probably led to our ability to think abstractly too as we needed to think in those terms more and more to communicate efficiently. Needing to convey future events and hypotheticals let us think in those terms too.
2:45 Specifically, "jumpy, superstitious" hominids survived more often than "rational, atheist" hominids.
8:02 Meld superstition with a social creature that has a brain with a *lot* of interconnections and religion is one of the things that emerge?
this explains conspiracy theories too. whether there is a hardwired tendency to assemble cognitive perceptions into complex structures (early Chomsky), this is how language is learned - and religion is encoded in language. as we are increasingly isolated from actual natural threats, the mind wanders....
I'm not saying it's Aliens... But it's Aliens.
Another try at showing why this theory only makes sense in the context of the scientistic belief system:
I did my first programming course in 1968. During my career in the field, I developed a sympathetic understanding of the difference between a machine and the instructions that make it work. Anyone who has stared at a computer screen, trying to figure out how to make the thing do something, will tell you that the machine alone is not sufficient. But you can see in this video that the scientistic belief system does not allow for this. Somehow, if you can point to some part of the machine as being involved in an activity, you have explained how it is performed.
Once you stop doing this, you will see that the amount of programming that exists in living systems is truly phenomenal. For instance, did you know that migratory birds have four different navigation systems, and that the designers of the systems that are used for navigating modern jets can't match their accuracy? Where did this programming come from? The idea that it arose by natural selection from chance mutations is only plausible to those who are deeply ensnared by scientism. Others might think it laughable.
Oh, and the values of a number of astrophysical constants are so uncannily what they need to be for us to be here that physicists have had to invent a by definition unprovable multi universe theory to avoid acknowledging the involvement of a conscious designer, or should I say Designer. And then you could look at the joint probability that life emerged from lifeless chemistry. Rather less than the chance that a single atom could be located in the entire universe. And so on, and so on. It is time to move beyond Darwinism. But it is in the nature of all believers to cling to their beliefs, and to persecute those who try to change them. So we are stuck with videos like this, instead of simply acknowledging the truth. A creator does exist.
Thats actually ret@rded
A fine video! Excellent introduction to the concept.
Excellent job and man, you did this 3 years ago... The temporal and amygdala; it sounds like identifying (agency) to mediate a fear, gain control, as you summed up in the beginning. The ability for agency I think is a value free judgement. I mean, would our neurology be particular whether you imagine someone behind a tree or a god in the sky? Great examination... Thank you
Once again an amazing video full of food for thought!
So, the whole idea of God, or to be more accurate, the need of believing to a higher deity or a higher purpose, or even believing that "there must be something bigger out there" derives from our quality of life. When you have a tough life, starting from the cave men fighting carnivores until today giving their daily struggle, you *have* to believe that somewhere must be something (call me Heaven, Paradise, Elysian Fields etc) in order to give meaning and reason to keep fighting this daily struggle. Believing in a higher power means hoping for a better life. Even if it's the afterlife, there must be something better, it cannot just end here.
That's why usually rich people tend not to believe in a higher being. In case they do, it's definitely not the "savior" who will bring the salvation and redemption, it's more like a purpose to give justice to this world; that's why we see (very) rich people becoming philanthropists and humanitarians; they might believe in a higher power but as a meaning to this life, not to save them at the afterlife.
Keep in mind for example the eternal fight between physicists and religious people on "why does the universe exist"? Physicists say "based on quantum theory, well, it just popped out from nothing, for no reason" while religious people can't except that the whole freaking universe came to be by accident and that life looks like it's an error (since there's nowhere else, as it looks like till now of course).
@Stratos Nikolaidis We don’t know the reason why the universe exists. Neither of the options you presented have good evidence behind them. Why can we not just admit we don’t know everything instead of asserting whatever option we like most? Accidents do happen, and intelligent beings do exist. There’s no reason to believe only the latter could have happened to create the universe.
@@Kevorama0205 I couldn't agree more with what you say; definitely we don't know how universe was created (there are theories only) and even more we don't know why and who's (or what's) responsible for its creation and existence.
People try to find answers. Either through belief or science.
Personally, I can't accept that the whole universe is a result of a photon popping out from nothingness by accident. Someone or something must have pulled a trigger.
@Stratos Nikolaidis Why is it not just as absurd for the trigger-puller to not have its own trigger-puller-trigger-puller? Can a universe not pull its own trigger?
These are very common and basic questions, I know, but I don’t think the universe coming from a non-intelligent cause is less reasonable than an intelligent cause simply existing without external reason.
@@Kevorama0205 agreed. That's where the question "why we're here?" comes. So, in a universe came to be by itself, by accident, why we're here? What was before and what's next?
Is there a higher reason and purpose of our existence?
These are questions which create the belief and religion. Both ways of course, "religious" religions claiming that they know the truth of the higher being and "religious" atheists stating that there's no such thing.
Both cases exist based on their belief system.
@Stratos Nikolaidis My position is that one shouldn’t hold a belief either way on the existence of a generic intelligent designer, since there is no evidence either way, nor can there ever be as far as I can tell.
However, belief in a specific theistic God like Jesus is contrary to the evidence in my view, and disbelief in all such claimed gods (atheism) is more reasonable by far.
Atheism isn’t really about deism at all, and one can be undecided on deism while confident in atheism.
So people who claim a deistic God does exist are on equal footing with those who claim such a God doesn’t exist, but theists and atheists are not on equal footing in that way.
I’ve had this question for a while so it’s cool to see it being discussed
I honestly cannot see how both theories couldn't be complementary: HADD as a primitive cause, and culture learning mechanisms as a group response.
We also anthropomorphize the theory of evolution. When people describe the mechanics of the theory, the rhetoric many people use implies intentionality.
it's dark when i go by bicycle to work every morning. and today i saw at least three people on the road. they turned out to be a shrub, a switch board, and a garbage bin. But for a split second they me brain saw them as human figures, and drew my attention to them. this was H.A.D.D in action and i think the darkness supercharged it so conclusions about what shapes in the dark were was made before i had time to analyze them
Trouble with your counter to this theory is it suffers from sample bias. You are more likely to believe what people around you believe because that belief is more common in that area, by definition…
I ~ H.A.D.D. always enjoyed your videos -- but these new animations are a real plus!! I really mean it!
This theory is based on a distinction between natural and supernatural, as well as knowledge and religion, which in fact are novel western ideas.
Or you're delusional
In my experience, everyone I've ever come across always seem to a 'religious' connection towards something, whether it's in a God, something material, or something else, despite them being religious or not.
Hello sir. Please make a video on why our ancestors pray or pay tribute to some unknown powers they felt that are above them.. Thanks 😊
My theory is increasingly that ritual is deeply linked to the very biology of all things. It requires some extension of what we think of as ritual, but if ritual is a process of differentiating the self from non-self, then you could argue that a lot of actions in nature are in some basal sense ritualistic and that ritual action predates religion by possibly millennia.
Nah, like most things due to the neuroplasticity of our brains, religion is softwired. Little things are hardwired, like the ability to feel heat, reflexes, nausea, etc...
In my nonprofessional opinion: hyperactivity is the starting point from which people begin looking for answers. They think about it, talk about it, validate each others' theories. They then share these theories with their kids who accept them because they trust the adults in their lives. Every generation adds something to the theories until they become full blown religious doctrines.
exactly what i think
years of development made scientists just are little bit more well equipped against social bias than pre historic hunter-gatherers
Orthodox Christian here: I am sure that a lot of religious experiences are of psychological and evolutionary nature, but however our faith is not built on that. There’s quite a considerable difference between what I sometimes experience during prayer or liturgy and what my faith is built upon
Most likely is a combination of these things
I think HADD + Cognitive thinking may be the seed of the origin of deity but creativity is really the key. Our ability to be creative and to communicate these musings and fictions is what really laid the ground work for religion. After all, chimps have pretty good HADD instincts and there’s evidence of their cognitive ability but you wouldn’t be able to convince it to “give you his banana and he will go to heaven” (TED Radio Hour podcast “How things spread”)
Great topic and I really appreciate it.
Well done. 1 Thought:
H.A.D.D. with regards to the predators hinges on the fact that there were actual predators. The hyperactivity is caused by previous real and dangerous experiences.
For it to be applied to "seeing gods everywhere", there must have been a real and dangerous "god-experience" to begin with or do they mean to say the lack of a predator then caused the believe in some other invisible "agent". This is then nothing more than the so-called "god-of-the-gaps" theory. I'd rather consult C.G.Jung (evolutionary Psychologist!!) on all of this.
Take his example of when the wind blows open a door and someone assuming it is a person opening the door. The threat is not real but the person perceives it as a threat or at least as another person.
Apply this logic to ancient peoples, many of whom had very little to no understanding of natural phenomenons, and you can see how these superstitions arise.
Religions can come about later as groups form and beliefs about these occurrences are shared. These groups developed various ways to combat and petition to these perceived humanlike threats, one common example being animal sacrifice.
@@whatwecalllife7034 So it's basically the "god-of-the-gaps" theory, except that it's linked to a "predator awareness" in animals, not explaining how the "awareness" of a possible predator turned into the "awareness" of a god. It could maybe lead to "awareness" of a devil: fear caused by the imitation of predators, or fear itself. That makes sense, a devil-of-the-gaps theory. The definition of the devil becomes... wait for it... ignorance.
@@ABird971 Where in there did you see anything about "god of the gaps"? Where in there did I mention anything about "predator awareness"?
What about what I typed was unclear for you?
@@whatwecalllife7034 If I understood you correctly you just tried to reiterated the H.A.D.D. idea the way you understood it. Do you know the "god-of-the-gaps" theory? What you said is nothing more than that. I think H.A.D.D. is trying to make clearer, the connection between the "god-of-the-gaps" theory and evolutionary psychology. But like ReligionForBreakfast, I don't buy it. Also: the assumption that ancient people had "little to no understanding of natural phenomenons", is a fallacy. Rather modern-day city people have little- to no understanding of natural phenomenA. Evolutionary psychology has come much further than these kindergarten ideas. ;)
@ABird971 We developed hyperactive agent detection because of predators. Then, we detected agents way more than necessary, including to explain natural phenomena, which led to gods.
It was still an evolutionary advantage overall, just with an additional side effect that didn’t really hurt us that much when we made our gods bigger and bigger to fit with any reality.
There are shortcomings in both to explain things like why there's a movement toward Christianity in largely Muslim communities that forbid Christian teachings. Countless other examples can be found, including mass conversations to early Christianity.
Genuine personal mystical experiences are crucial
I was just listening to Daniel Kahneman cite the theory of biologically wired religion tendencies in Thinking, Fast and Slow last week. Thanks for giving this idea some more context!
Extremely underrated channel
This reminds me of Theo Jansen, a kind of contemporary Da Vinci, who makes wind powered walking machines out of pvc pipe structures. The randomness of the wind creates the illusion that those machines have agency, that they walk or stop on their own will, it's easy to adopt the utterly irrational idea that they're living beings.
I think it's both individual and culture. I think the tribal mystical roots of mysticism start with individual experiences and are then codified into some shared doctrine that, over time, assimilates more and more aspects of cultural identity. So for the person 400 years later, yes, you got your religion as a social experience. But all of that is a mountain of ideas added to over generations, going all the way back to the original mystical beliefs of the individual, which were potentially inspired by a TON of different spooky natural phenomena (crazy dreams, sleep paralysis, mental illness, incredible weather events, incredible coincidences, psychedelic drugs, and yes, even our brain's innate sense that something's secretly watching you in the dark, etc.).
I do a lot of tech support and hear about inanimate things that hate or are mad regularly.
The problem with cultural learning alone is that it doesn’t tell us the origin of a belief. All it tells us is that someone has a belief because their parents had it because their parents had it because their parents had it… but where does this regression end? Personally, I think the origin of a belief is where we should place hyperactive predator perception, and cultural learning allows the initial fluke to endure as a belief.
if we get our beliefs from the people around us, where did they get their beliefs then?
There has to be some sort of basis in which these beliefs arose from rather than the "we got it from society" or it's a tradition thing.
I'm far more convinced of the H.A.D.D. theory since it provides the foundation of the simple to complex evolution of religiosity.
Though i may not communicate it well, i hope that anyone who's reading this will understand what im trying to ask. :)