Religious belief instinctive

The article states that "we tend to see purpose in the world...We see agency. We think that something is there even if you can't see it...All this tends to build up to a religious way of thinking."

And in this way the "seeing of agency" leads to religious thinking. But what is it that leads to this "seeing of agency"?

It seems to me that creation always points beyond itself. All things, living or otherwise, point beyond themselves to ancestral beginnings and ultimate ends, to what Aristotle called the efficient and final causes. It is natural to think in this way, because it is a way of thinking that is validated everywhere by our experience with nature. In order to think otherwise, one must part ways with the naturalist world view and assert that exceptions to naturalist principles exist beyond the horizon of our knowledge.

But it would be unfair to single out the skeptical point of view on this count, as though only skeptics start making exceptions to the rules at the point where knowledge leaves off and mystery begins. Religious people make this exception as well when they assert God as the Alpha and the Omega, as the one for whom there is no ancestor nor any purpose beyond his own nature.

But here is the point: Although both skeptics and religious people assert exceptions to the rules as we understand them to exist in nature, religious people have always celebrated that exception as a God who is worthy of being worshiped; skeptics have instead pretended that there is no exception on their side of the argument.

But this exception is asserted by their minimalist epistemology, whether they admit it or not.
 
found this online....

'Actually we were fooling ourselves, for deep down in every man, woman, and child, is the fundamental idea of God. It may be obscured by calamity, by pomp, by worship of other things, but in some form or other it is there. For faith in a Power greater than ourselves, and miraculous demonstrations of that power in human lives, are facts as old as men himself.'

'We finally saw that faith in some kind of God was a part of our make-up, just as much as the feeling we have for a friend. Sometimes we had to search fearlessly, but He was there. He was as much a fact as we were. We found the Great Reality deep down within us. In the last analysis it is only there that He may be found. It was so with us.'
 
The word ‘religious’ in this case can represent many different things, depending on where you are and who you ask. It can mean a sense of awe and wonder at the beauty and mystery of the cosmos (the God of Einstein and Spinoza), or it can just as easily point to doctrine and dogma that creates division and hatred among people.

There's an important difference between the feeling that there exists something transcendent and divine—perhaps knowable, perhaps not—and the insistence that we take a submissive and slavish posture towards it. I love the idea of something ‘out there’ and love even more the idea that we might meet it on our feet and not our knees.
 
Funny. That's what the Bible says about human nature too. So, science and the Bible do agree. Who would have thought?
shocked.gif
 
If you want to believe that, it's ok with me. However, the question remains for you to answer: Other than a creative, willful God, what sort of "something out there" can supply the purpose that the article claims people are instinctively drawn toward?
 
Coelacanth.
Thanks for the explanation of objectivist and constructivist. I had not run into those terms before. Although I disagree with your characterization of the my "Unifying Nature of Everything" as constructionist, I'm pretty sure I won't be able to change your mind on that, so I'm willing to agree to disagree. Thanks for the exchange of ideas. It was enlightening.
OH
 
Hasn't it been pretty well established that belief in a supreme being/religion has an evolutionary basis?

Now, that in now way supports the notion that Jesus is divine, or that the Christian bible is anything more than a collection of fables.
 
Yes, Coel! I see you have pointed out my logical "before" fallacy in which I thought to be so careful not to make! Damn be my mind to the laws of this universe’s physics and its “box”. I’ve seen nothing you’ve stated I can disagree with. After making the post, I wondered if my understanding of Aristotle’s analogy was wrong, and you are eluding it is. I laugh when I disagree with my own wrong presumptions, yet communication is the key to understanding and knowledge.

Does God (lack of a better term) cause everything? Hmm... Is free will just caused by God? Is it really God's free will? Can we exist outside of this universe and spacetime and be with God? Like a pixel jumping off the computer screen to see hornfans from a new perspective, and see me at the keyboard causing changes?

How could we prove something exists outside of spacetime? Does consciousness exist outside of spacetime? If consciousness can exist outside of spacetime, does that mean consciousness has something in common with God (who is outside of spacetime)? I think these are the exciting questions.
 
The Bible does say that God created us in His image. Consciousness as something which can exist beyond space and time could part of what that image means.
 
I have a book of prose by a guy named Hugh Prather. He wrote "Am I a body or am I a mind riding a horse named body?".

Cartesian
 
As I thought on this further, I began to have a troubling concept. My neurons firing are simply following the laws of physics. I choose to not go pee, or to go pee. When I’ve decided, the neurons obey and fire off to create the movement of my body. We do not think the decision to “go pee now” or “go pee later” is the result of a mechanical process although the results of the decision is mechanical. The decision is free will - and that is what makes us, us.

Then I recalled a man I helped while volunteering at a hospice. The poor man was a wreck. The cancer in his brain had changed him. He was a college professor - a brilliant man, but his wife stated "he's gone away". Then I thought about other diseases of the mind that are biological in nature and represent mechanical failures in our brains. They can have a dramatic impact on who "we" are. Did he go away?

If “Me” (or soul or mind) is different than the accumulated hardware made of billions of neurons firing, how can that ethereal holistic concept of “me” be so greatly affected by chemicals like alcohol or cannabis? If a chemical reaction in my body can so impact my “mind/soul”, then doesn’t that support the idea that my soul is simply a chemical process? I certainly don’t like this idea.
 
I for one had no problem in the past thinking that once I die, I no longer exist. I remember thinking through the whole thing in grade school and just logically accepting it. So I know my belief is not based on my dislike of the thought of mortality.

Gadfly, your comments are the beginning of gnosticism which in term came from Greek philosophy. At the center lied the belief that the spirit and body were separate entities with different moral abilities. spirit=good. body=evil.

The Christian view is adopted from the Jewish view which says that spirit and body are different but not separate. There is a unity so that a change in one must naturally affect the other. That isn't to say that one could not exist non-corporeally. But body and spirit=good in this view. That is also why resurrection is a part of Christianity and Judaism. Human existence assumes body even if it doesn't necessitate it. Or at least that is the intention that people will existence bodily.
 
I think there are far fewer irreligious people than there are people who consider themselves irreligious. For example- Global Warming advocates. Many (most) don't understand the math behind it, but trust the scientist/priests that lead it, adhere to their beliefs even when (especially when) evidence runs contrary, and subscribe to an apocalyptic vision of end times resulting from our sins. If that's not a religion, I don't know what is.
 
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