Harm And The Evolution Of The Gullibility For Religion
Harm And The Evolution Of The Gullibility For Religion
In entry 547 I compared two videos revealing the atrocities suffered by the children in Kinsey's research. While one was as seemingly unbiased documentary, the other was biased by the christian religion.
This brought me back to the old question, why a level of intelligence in the human brain inventing advanced technology did co-evolve with a level of irrationality causing delusions like the one of the existence of deities and all subsequent nonsense.
Gullibility to delusional beliefs did evolve for a reason. Falling for such beliefs was in some way beneficial in the adaptation to coping with the challenges of the survival of the species, no matter how unfortunate it is for the oblivious individuals.
To declare not harming and not be harmed as the essence of a good life is a part of the wisdom of Epicurus. Harm is the key explanation of the evolved susceptibility to religious beliefs, because the success of the survival of any species is enhanced and enabled by harm to individuals.
Generally speaking, instincts lead often to behaviors, which as a side effect cause harm to the self and to other individuals of the same species.
Procreation: In mammals, pregnancy is a hazard, burden and source of pain for the female.
Ingroup-outgroup: Herds and groups of animals hunt and eat members of their own species not belonging to the own group. They kill outgroup members in defense of their territory. They rob and steal outgroup members' prey from hunting and cause their starvation. All this is done by instinct to enhance the resources for the own offspring.
Hierarchy and competition: Male animals fight to become alpha males and to gain control over as many females as there are. These fights sometimes lead to serious wounds, mutilations and deaths. Sometimes new alpha males not only usurp control over all the females, but also over their fertility by infanticide.
Spider cannibalism is an example.
"...a female spider kills and eats a male of the same species before, during, or after copulation."
"his indirectly contributing nutrition to the eggs. "
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spider_cannibalism.
Male spiders having observed other males being eaten are nevertheless unaware, that by following their instinctive urges to get near the female spider, they will also be eaten. Had the male spiders a conscious choice to run away and keep at a safe distance from all female spiders, they would prevent being harmed as individuals, but their species of spiders would get extinct.
The female spider also has no cognitive option to refrain from eating the male as a choice to spare him harm. Would she do this, this may lead to less surviving offspring due to malnutrition.
Animals are determined to follow their instinctive urges, because they have no cognition sufficiently evolved to allow them to anticipate future events, nor to attribute effects correctly to their own behavior, even in the case of empathy. They lack the consciousness of having a choice. Animals suffer harm at the moment, when it happens, there is no cognitive anticipation. Following their instincts but lacking cognition, animals cannot be held responsible for harming.
In humans, the instinctive behaviors leading to the successful survival of the species are the same as in animals, but the human cognition adds unique aspects to the subjective experience of the collateral suffering of the harm. There is an unfortunate correlation between reproductive success and its price of harm suffered by individuals.
1. Mirror neurons, empathy, remembering own experiences and understanding causality enable humans to anticipate the harm inflicted by their intended behavior before acting. Humans have a conscious choice between harming and not harming.
2. Human cognition includes abstract emotions and intellectual needs, which can be invisibly and non-physically harmed. Humans do not suffer only momentarily, but for a long time and sometimes in advance.
Examples of the harm to humans due to the major instincts
Procreation: Jerks harm women emotionally by commodifying and objectifying them due to their need for sexual homeostation.
Men harm women physically by inflicting pregnancy upon them.
Ingroup-outgroup: Victims are seriously harmed by varieties of exploitation like war, slavery, colonization used as methods to acquire resources for successful procreation:
Hierarchy and competition: In every competition, where there is a winner, the loser at least suffers emotionally. But in more drastic fights for higher places in hierarchies, the harm can be much worse, serious material damage, physical mutilations or even death.
The evolution of the cognition and the evolution of being determined as animals to pursue instinctively the advantages for the survival of the fittest seem to be mutually exclusive.
Being determined by instincts became a cognitive problem as a by product of the evolution of the human cognition. As the result of the developing understanding of causality and the awareness of the self as an actor, at some point of their evolution humans started to comprehend the responsibility of how specific behaviors cause harm to others and of having the option to either inflict the harm or to refrain from doing so. The brain's mirror neurons and ability to experience some empathy added the knowledge of the other's experiencing harm.
Religions are very outspoken to point out the benefits for the recipients of harm. The side effect of the delusion of being rewarded after death does indeed
- make some people more resilient to suffering.
- motivate people to choose to suffer by making specific sacrifices to earn the reward.
But religions seldom admit the other side of the coin. Religions also create, enable and enhance the suffering, which requires the resilience to cope with.
The Milgram experiment has shown, that people are prone to harm others and accept it as justified to do so, whenever someone of authority takes the responsibility. Generalizing this supplies an explanation of the attraction of religion.
The authority of the real life researcher in Milgram's experiment can be replaced by the authority, power or superiority of a delusional and imaginary figure of a deity.
The specific proactive act of harming by the application of electrical shocks when being told can be replaced by the permission to do every act of harm, unless it is explicitly forbidden as a sin. In this case the authority's ascribed responsibility is not limited to one act, but to all behaviors unless they are explicitly excluded. Everything appears as allowed, which the deity has not explicitly forbidden and everything allowed is done under the deity's responsibility.
Taking own responsibility is based upon the subjective conscious and sufficient justification for the choice of a behavior. Acting under someone else responsibility implies to be void of an own justification but considering someone else having a hidden and elusive justification. When the justification is ascribed to a deity, who does not even exist, then anything can be believed, ascribed or defined as justified.
All religions, that I know of, allow harm caused by instincts to a certain degree. The specific definitions of sins have indirectly also favored the evolution of the fittest religions. These are those religions, in which the definition of sin is an optimized balance between enhancing reproduction by disregarding the individual suffering and limiting all harm bad enough to damage the reproductive success.
But the deity as an imaginary figure of authority is not only considered as the one justifying all harming, which is not defined as a sin. This figure is also a bargaining partner for prospective and retrospective deals to earn permission to sin. In such deals, the harmed person is insignificant.
In this sense, here is my definition of religion:
The deity's permission serves as a sufficient justification to harm, either due to the deity having alleged unknown rational reason or by having earned it as part of a deal. Religion frees the harming person from any consideration for the victim.
This is a copy from my ERCP-blog:
http://egalitarianrationalcommitmentparadigm.blogspot.de/2012/08/55...
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Comment by Simon Paynton on August 4, 2012 at 4:24am -
Don't take this the wrong way, but I'm not surprised you're lonely if you carry on like that. You come across as very intimidating. What would you do if your partner failed to always be "an atheist, skeptic and apistic"? Run him over?
I know you have very strong views. I have very strong views as well, but I try not to hammer them into people's heads. I have learned it's better to ask questions and make a discussion, otherwise people just feel like they've been beaten up, and let's face it, most people aren't as intellectual as you and me. And guess what, I don't know everything, and neither do you.
You seem like a 10-ton truck bearing down on someone. Why not come across like a swan, or a little bird, or a lamb? A clever lamb, of course.
I'm in love with a Christian, and I'm not afraid to admit it. I consider myself a radical anarchist (as opposed to the look-at-me-I'm-so-cool-I-say-all-the-correct-things kind) and I consider that "she" is every bit as radical as me, even though she's a Christian and, politically, rather conservative. I see a lot of parallels between the anarchists and many Christians. Basically Jesus was one of us, as well as one of "them".
I just want to say I love all things German, especially your hardtechno and schranz. I think Frankfurt might be my spiritual home.
Are you saying that religion has prospered because it causes harm? Because it allows people to cause harm and get away with it? That may well be a common occurrence, and part of the attraction, but I believe that those people are a shameful minority.
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Comment by maruli marulaki on August 4, 2012 at 4:52am -
"What would you do if your partner failed to always be "an atheist, skeptic and apistic"?"
I would feel betrayed, because in this case my partner would have somehow manipulated and tricked me with lies to accept him. It would destroy my love.
"I have very strong views as well, but I try not to hammer them into people's heads."
I have no mission to convince anybody of anything. My ERCP blog has the purpose to find a partner, who reads my posts and discovers, that I am expressing, what he already is thinking independently. The clearer I am in what I say, the better the effect of allowing someone to recognize likemindedness or incompatibility and to avoid futile discussions.
"Are you saying that religion has prospered because it causes harm? Because it allows people to cause harm and get away with it? "
Yes, except not for causing the harm, but for enabling people to do the harm, which their animal instincts urges them to do, while they would not do it, if the had to justify it by their own responsibility instead of acting under their deity's responsibility.
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Comment by Simon Paynton on August 4, 2012 at 1:16pm
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"...enabling people to do the harm, which their animal instincts urges them to do, while they would not do it, if the had to justify it by their own responsibility instead of acting under their deity's responsibility."
I don't think that is how it's supposed to be or was set up to be. However, it's an all-too-common trap and danger.
"My ERCP blog has the purpose to find a partner, who reads my posts and discovers, that I am expressing, what he already is thinking independently. The clearer I am in what I say, the better the effect of allowing someone to recognize likemindedness or incompatibility and to avoid futile discussions."
I can totally see where you're coming from, and I think that's a very good idea. It's just that - god damn! - it seems like nobody could possibly live up to these impossibly high standards. Maybe I'm wrong.
"I would feel betrayed, because in this case my partner would have somehow manipulated and tricked me with lies to accept him. It would destroy my love."
If that was me, I know I would fail on some little thing, and you'd go nuts.
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Comment by Simon Paynton on August 5, 2012 at 12:45pm
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Maruli, I'm sorry to put you through it. I find this website is very good (it's Christian-oriented, but only oriented)
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Comment by maruli marulaki on August 5, 2012 at 12:53pm
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What makes you think I need advice???? I need to find my mindmate or to be found by him. Nothing else. Except anybody knowing him should send him my way.
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Comment by Simon Paynton on August 5, 2012 at 2:40pm
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Fair enough, I wish you luck.
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