As I said before... Religious beliefs are prevelant for many reasons:
-Easier to understand than current levels of science (Can you refute this?)
-Gives people hope (Poor, Wronged, Meek, Downtrodden will triumph.)
-Afterlife (We humans fear death, and want to be imortal.)
-Arogant (We want to think we are above everything else on the planet, and universe for that matter.)
-Empowerment (Gives people an "unasailable" excuse to kill, steal from, judge, bully, punish, 'educate' other groups of people... We compete for resources, and what better excuse to get rid of the competition?).


Those are just the ones off the top of my head... They are valid excuses today, just as they have been for melenia, and thus they are valid and potent reasons for its existance today.


Think about it for a second, and you will see that generally the mose devout believers of any faith are the one that have the hardest lives... Religion/faith gives them hope, and the courage to 'endure' their lives... The poor, the uneducated, the peasants, the victims of social injustice... Just these groups make up the bulk of the worlds "faithful", as it gives them hope, and allows them to endure... And in many cases, it also keeps them docile. Why ???

Conversely... Generally speaking, those with power, higher education, afluence tend to be less devout in their beliefs. Why ???

(For those who are smart and affluent yet devout, please look up the definition of generally before flying into a rant and discounting what I'm saying.)





Now as for explaining this in terms of Dawinism or Natural Selection...

The obvious would be that "the poor, the uneducated, the peasants, the victims of social injustice" are easily the vast majority of the world's population, and tend to be more prolific at producing offspring... Thus there are vastly more probable 'believers' being born than not. This can be said to fit the process of natural selection... More offspring born that are faithful, equals a population of more faithful. Think about it... Can anyone disagree with this statement ???

Lets face it: Affluencey begets afluencey, and poverty begets poverty, generally speaking.



Although I personally view natural selection as a process regarding "physical traits" not emotional or metaphysical ones, so I will say that its really apples and oranges trying to make religion fit that process.

This is this is part of what I was getting at. The most likely explanation is that religious belief has an adaptive function. It can create group cohesion, calm anxiety about death and uncertainty, give a sense of meaning, etc., etc. The most obvious solution is that religious beliefs are based in human need.

To put religion against science: is it really so obvious that science is a such a more adaptive activity for the human species? Science has given us the atom bombs, germ warfare, experimentation on human beings, global warming.

It easily adapts to purposes which don't seem to be in the best interests of the human species. For example, how much scientific research goes into arms development and how much scientific research goes into curing diseases in countries where life expectancy is less than 50 years? Well, beats me. But I imagine there's no comparison. Or consider how easily science adapted to Nazism, Stalinsim etc. These regimes had no problem finding scientists to carry out genocide.

From the point of view of evolutionary theory I have a hard time imagining a criteria for truth which doesn't include adaptability. Which is perhaps why people like Dawkins are so shrill about trying to demonstrate the nonadaptibilty of religious belief.

To someone like an evolutionary biologist, aknowleging that religious belief has an adaptive function is on par with saying it's true.

I must say that you sometimes sound more like a Platonist than Plato. "The idea of truth". "The idea of Darwinian evolution". As if these things existed apart in some realm, independent of the way the concepts might be used by you, me or anyone else.

But I don't understand how bits on a hard drive could possibly be true or false.

The ability to predict in a precise way can certainly be adaptive. As can other things. Is this part of your criteria for truth? A claim must correctly predict something?

I was referring to the claims in the actual post. And I guess I was baiting a bit. But I honestly would like to see a more constructive dialouge in these threads.

By a true believer I simply meant someone who believed the truth about some particular belief. The false believer is simply someone who holds the opposite belief.

(e.g. suppose we consider the religious-style belief that there is a God who deals out justice to human beings).

To put religion against science: is it really so obvious that science is a such a more adaptive activity for the human species?

From the point of view of evolutionary theory I have a hard time imagining a criteria for truth which doesn't include adaptability.

To someone like an evolutionary biologist, aknowleging that religious belief has an adaptive function is on par with saying it's true.

my question to John wasn't about how his spiritual beliefs could be adaptive (or anything like that). It was about how his belief about the reality of this spiritual nonsense could be compatible with a universe in which organisms are gradually designed by a process of natural selection. Basically---how can a non-magical organism evolve to do something magical?

(Of course, John claims his claims aren't supernatural, but his plain refusal to describe them in naturalistic terms and his constant insistence that you cannot consider them in the same way you'd consider a scientific claim indicates that he's simply mistaken.)

I think what John has been saying is that the only way to know whether his claims about direct perception (or whatever he has termed it) are true is to experiment yourself with meditation, and to see if you experience the phenomenon he describes. If that is the case, then your repeated requests for objective evidence are futile. None can exist.

You've also asked John to explain how direct perception could have evolved; but, if I understand John correctly, it is not that we have evolved to experience direct perception, but rather, we have evolved not to. That is, what has evolved is an elaborate thought process that tends to interfere with our innate ability to perceive directly.

Every author I've read on this subject has said the same thing: that you experience direct perceptions only when you learn to quiet the constant inner dialogue of thought.

Now, I'm skeptical about the whole thing, but enough smart people claim to have had this type of experience that I'm open-minded to the possibility that it is real.

Yes, that is absolutely what he's saying. The problems I have with it are...ii) he is claiming he isn't actually making any claims and that his position therefore should be immune to counter-argument

iii) if one is going to take this tactic seriously, you essentially have to allow its use to argue any other proposition---if people disagree, you can just declare they haven't had the experience.

Let me illustrate by analogy.

The God of the Old Testament exists. I know, because of direct personal experience...

I don't really think this is what John has said at all. (At least, not using evolutionary language.)

But, if we do have an "innate ability to perceive directly"---whatever that actually means---whether obstructed or not, it has to have evolved. It has to have either been some sort of accidental bi-product of useful adaptations, or it has to have been an adaptation itself.

I don't believe in the "constant inner dialogue of thought".

Or at least, I don't believe I experience it as I've read it described (which, by the way, I'm curious what authors you're thinking of---I'm only really aware of this as a doctrine of pop self-help guru type stuff).

Well, obviously, he is making a claim; but if he doesn't realize he is, that shouldn't matter if what you are interested in is finding out the truth of the proposition, rather than in winning an argument about it.

Sure, but God is implausible, whereas the idea that that there is a quality of perception unobstructed by thought, is not.

I think you are missing the simplicity of the proposition. Direct perception, is (I think) supposedly the simple the thing; it's all the thinking we do that is the more advanced evolutionary development. The labels that our brains put on things interfere with what our perception of those things would be without the labels.

Once we've labeled something, we have trouble perceiving the thing directly--as it really is; rather, we tend to perceive an image that we have associated with the label.

I think that it is quite easy to see that it exists. Simply, sit quietly with your eyes close for a few minutes and observe your thoughts. Is your mind quiet? No, you're constantly having thoughts.

J. Krishnamurti comes to mind, though he may not have phrased it using my words exactly.

fracture... You do make some good and valid points, but you also overlook when people speak in "general" terms, and discount what they say with extreme examples.

I have yet to see you concede that someone with an opposing view even makes a good point, but have only attacked and attempted to discredit opposing views or the opposers themselves.

It (religion) can also create fear and hatred of outsiders, wasting of time and resources in pointless rituals, subjugation of women, ostracision (or worse) of anyone "different", ... well, you get the point.

It has also increased our expected lifespan from around 40 to the 80's, turned a number of deadly diseases into mere inconveniences, and given you the clothes you wear, the clean water you drink, the ... well, you get the point..

yanqui said: It easily adapts to purposes which don't seem to be in the best interests of the human species. For example, how much scientific research goes into arms development and how much scientific research goes into curing diseases in countries where life expectancy is less than 50 years? Well, beats me. But I imagine there's no comparison. Or consider how easily science adapted to Nazism, Stalinsim etc. These regimes had no problem finding scientists to carry out genocide.

Do you seriously consider this the fault of science??? If so, you're even more stupid than I gave you credit for.

See my post above for Dawkins' position.

yanqui said: To someone like an evolutionary biologist, aknowleging that religious belief has an adaptive function is on par with saying it's true.

:wtf: Because something makes somebody happy, it must be true? Oh boy, you really are that stupid.

:roll:

I don't understand what sounds Platonist there---I was using "idea" there in a way completely consistent with common language usage.

And as I believe I said earlier: I don't think there was any such thing as "ideas" in the universe prior to the evolution of minds. If that sounds Platonist, I don't know what to tell you.


It depends on their interpretation. Information is more than just its physical representation---there has to be something capable of reading and interpreting it.

If bits on a drive are treated as a claim by something (a human mind, a software program, or whatever), it can meaningful to discuss whether it is a true claim. If not, then not. Same thing for vibrating air, text written on paper, etc. There's nothing magical about this.


Correct predictions help; so does consistency with other things that are considered "true" (on whatever grounds---observation, deduction, whatever).


It's almost impossible to have a coherent discussion about anything without first assuming that "truth" is a meaningful concept. (Aside from John's claim that having coherent arguments is not important, I think he and I are mostly on the same page about this.)


But there isn't always an "opposite" belief.


So what's the opposite of that? There's not any God? There's not a good reason to believe there's a God? There's actually three Gods, named Larry, Curly, and Moe? There's a God, but he deals out pain and suffering instead of Justice? That the proposition "there is a God" is neither true nor false---it's simply incoherent, because no one seems to be able to precisely explain what the word "God" is supposed to mean?

Anyway, I still don't really understand what this has to do with anything.

Who cares?

[Whether something is good or bad, or true or false, has nothing to do with whether it is adaptive for you to do it or believe it. The birth control pill is one of the greatest human inventions ever, and it is pretty obviously not beneficial for reproductive success...

All those problems can associated to science as well, in so far as it becomes an unreasonably rigid belief system. Here´s a quote from Dennett showing us his fear and hatred of the outsiders:

I think that there are no forces on this planet more dangerous to us all than the fanaticisms of fundamentalism, of all the species: Protestantism, Catholicism, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism, as well as countless smaller infections. Is there a conflict between science and religion here? There most certainly is. [Daniel C. Dennett, Darwin's Dangerous Idea]

As far as pointless rituals go, how much of science is really of any practical value to mankind?

Science has certainly helped with a number of diseases. But how many of these diseases occur in poor areas, were people can't afford to pay the high money return that modern science demands?

At any rate, the fact that science easliy adapts to evil purposes is a SHORTCOMING of science, so I guess in that sense we may say it is a FAULT of science.

Maybe you can enlighten us about the relationship between adaptivity and "truth". I would actually be interested in this. And please be clear and precise.

I'm still interested in how you think bits on a hard drive can be true or false. If I understand, you seem to say that the truth value of the bit can be defined by a software program. Is this definition arbitrary, or does it have a further objective criteria in terms of whether or not the software carries out the programmed function in terms of it's "belief"? I hope this makes sense, because it's a real question.

I also like when you seem to suggest that "true", as a concept used by human beings, can take on a variety of DISTINCT meanings. That's one reason I think we should probably be careful when we blow off certain beliefs because of the truth value we assign. Especially when those beliefs have a widely accepted prevelence and a proven resiliency. In the context of mathematics, the meaning of true and false is quite clear. Outside of that realm, things become considerably trickier.

As far as the last stuff fracture, about "true believers", it seems to me you're being intentionally vague and argumentative. I was answering a question you asked about what I meant. I am a mathematician. For a mathematician, a proposition is either true or false. There is no middle ground. I think you know that. A proposition is false when "it is not the case that ..." however that might be. In other word, if there is no God that deals out justice. Maybe religious beliefs shouldn't be treated as propositions. That may certainly may be the case. For the sake of illustration, I was trying to use a religious belief as an example.

Here, let me give you an example from mathematics. The belief is: there is a smallest real number in the open interval of real numbers between 0 and 1. What is the opposite, in this case? I think you know the answer and what is true here.

Wait a minute. Are you implying, for example, that if the activity of science were to lead to the extinction of the human species, that doesn't matter? This seems like a strange thing to blow off: "extermination of the human species phhhhh who cares? At least they practiced science, which was the really important thing."

Maybe I'm not correctly using the word "adapative". What I meant was something along the lines of "beneficial to the human species", or at least: "promoting the survival of the species". In that case your example of the birth control pill would be something quite adaptive, since it leads to a control of overpopulation, which definitely could endanger the human species.

When you raise a small child, these are the kind of beliefs you deal with:

I NEVER taught my child "the belief" the flower is red. I DID teach her to USE the word red by pointing out to her that such and such a flower was red. And she might have asked me "what color is that flower?", but not because she was confused about her belief, but rather because she'd forgotten what word we use to describe that color.

So now, tell me why you think adaptivity, in the sense I'm using it here, has NOTHING to do with truth?

This is just begging the question, though. Plenty of people think God is not implausible.

And while you apparently think this "pure perception" stuff is plausible, I just think it is too incoherent to really be taken seriously.

This almost seems like something that could even be molded into a testable hypothesis (assuming you can come up with a specific meanings for "labeling" something and perceiving it "directly"). The (presumed) additional claim that somehow meditation can limit this (in a beneficial way) would probably be testable as well.

People can think what they want. It doesn't alter the mathematical fact that God (as creator of the Universe) is implausible.

I don't think that is a reasonable position to take. The idea that there might be a state or quality of consciousness that you haven't experienced (or at least recognize that you've experienced) is hardly an outlandish claim.

Sam Harris states as a fact that such a state exists, and I think he explains its nature using terminology that is easier to understand than Largo's.

We are talking about an experience. It doesn't seem a subject matter well suited for scientific testing.

Rather, it seems to me, that if you are interested in finding out whether such a state exists (and its attainment desirable), then the obvious way to do it would be to do the meditative work that seems universally acknowledged necessary. What would be the motivation for testing, when you can just go and have a look for yourself.

I think God is implausible on philosophical, not mathematical grounds. Though I'm curious what exactly you're thinking of when you say "mathematical fact".

Well. I guess I'm not too concerned about the long term survival of the species, but I get your point. If science was going to lead to the destruction of all human life in 20 years, that'd kinda suck.

But the point I was trying to make is that if you're arguing whether or not something is true, what the consequences would be if it were true is irrelevant.


This is not a biologist's version of "adaptive". What you're talking about is group selection, which isn't how evolution works.

"Adaptive" means beneficial to the replication of the genes. (Usually this means an individual organism's reproductive success, but in other interesting cases (kin selection, etc) it's not so simple.)

From this perspective, the birth control pill is definitely not adaptive. Neither is the deliberate choice many modern couples make to not have offspring. But that doesn't mean either of these things aren't beneficial to the species. Or beneficial to the individuals. It's just not beneficial to their genes.


I have trouble considering an imperative sentence as a "belief"....

"Don't put that in your mouth" isn't true or false. It's a command to not to do certain behaviors.


"The color of the flower is 'red'" is a different sentence from "The color of the flower is red". One is a claim about the meaning of words, the other is a claim about the color of flowers.

(This is the use-mention distinction.)


How would you say the truth value of the claim "there is no greatest prime number" is related to adaptivity (in yours or any other sense)?

Maybe "mathematical fact" was over-reaching, but what I was thinking is that there are an infinite number of possible creators of the universe we could hypothesize {Baal, Thor, Flying Spaghetti Monster, superior race from another Universe, the Abrahamic God, ...}. None of these add any explanatory power to a model of the Universe without any of them, and among this set of hypothesized creators, we have no rational reason to think one any more likely than another. Therefore, the simplest assumption would be to assign them all the same probability. And since there are an infinite number of them, the probability of any one of them approaches 1/inf, which is basically 0.

2) There certainly are intrinsic values of science to most scientists: they find the activity stimulating, interesting rewarding, etc. Perhaps they see beauty in the way they look at nature, or they enjoy the precision and power they feel in their activity. It's clear science has produced many things of practical value for nonscientists. I'm in no way anti-science. But I do think the practical value of science to nonscientists, for what ever reasons, is perhaps somewhat smaller than many pro-science people commonly think .

5) My point about all that red flower stuff was that, in contrast to the fact that cars and snakes can be dangerous, my daughter did NOT have to be taught that a flower is or is not red, she only had to be taught the correct way to express her experience of that fact.

"I want to know God's thoughts; the rest are details."

I am convinced that He (God) does not play dice."

"God is subtle but he is not malicious."

"God does not care about our mathematical difficulties. He integrates empirically."

"My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind."

"Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts."

"Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods."

"





(Sign hanging in Einstein's office at Princeton)

I am a deeply religious nonbeliever. This is a somewhat new kind of religion.

I have never imputed to Nature a purpose or a goal, or anything that could be understood as anthropomorphic. What I see in Nature is a magnificent structure that we can comprehend only very imperfectly, and that must fill a thinking person with a feeling of humility. This is a genuinely religious feeling that has nothing to do with mysticism.

The idea of a personal God is quite alien to me and seems even naive.

I cannot conceive of a God who rewards and punishes his creatures, or has a will of the kind that we experience in ourselves. Neither can I nor would I want to conceive of an individual that survives his physical death; let feeble souls, from fear or absurd egoism, cherish such thoughts. I am satisfied with the mystery of the eternity of life and with the awareness and a glimpse of the marvelous structure of the existing world, together with the devoted striving to comprehend a portion, be it ever so tiny, of the Reason that manifests itself in nature.

A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death.

The mystical trend of our time, which shows itself particularly in the rampant growth of the so-called Theosophy and Spiritualism, is for me no more than a symptom of weakness and confusion. Since our inner experiences consist of reproductions, and combinations of sensory impressions, the concept of a soul without a body seem to me to be empty and devoid of meaning.

It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.

I didn't refer to Zeno's paradox by name because I try to avoid jargon in these posts--not always successful either. Zeno's, in this case, is actually the Tortoise and Achilles. You'd think that adding up an infinite number of positive distances should give an infinite distance for the sum. But it doesn't – in this case it gives a finite sum--all these distances add up to 1.
You'll never sum this problem by saying, "Suppose I could cover all these infinite number of small distances, how far should I have walked?" You can't "cover" an "infinite number of small distances" because by definition, there's always more. My math is not spectacular but I wonder how Pure Numbers guys handle infinity.