Humans 'evolved' to believe in God

[Easy Skanking]

That sounds like it belongs on the tracker.

[JFK]

Well that was very boring, yet strangely interesting.

( I watched for about 20 minutes and then moved it to the background and continued listening )

[---]

(12-09-2009 02:44 AM)k.sphinctertingle Wrote:  This "Organized Religiosity" may be buried in our biology.

Prof. Robert Sapolsky Bio 150/250, Spring 2002 Human Behavioral Biology

The Biology of Religion

Key words:

Schizotypal personality disorder: social withdrawal, odd perceptual experiences, a tendency towards concreteness, metamagical belief.

http://www.blip.tv/file/2204956

Approx 1hr 20min extremely controversial lecture.

I put this around a 8/10, and that puts the Zeitgeist material around a 2/10.

Everyone I send the link to can't get past 15 minutes of the material. It simply presses too many buttons.

Many thanks that was riveting.

i certainly do agree with the idea that Japolsky is positing - although I was already aware of the anthropological literature investigating such in the middle 20th century and believe have cited it on this board a number of times too.
Specifically, the case of the phenomena of traditional guatemalan midwifery. Everything Japolsky cites is in accord with the field data retrieved - it seems imvho - but one thing which is omitted is the amazing skill that these schizo-typal women suddenly seem to have in dealing from very difficult births with no training - having traditionally been taught the process via visions and dreams during their initiation into the role. I read the actual papers while in Guatemala.

This kind of stuff is not touched on by rationalistic atheist Japolsky the Brooklyn born academic of an strict Jewish Orthodox family.

I think otherwise - the research into therianthropy is very enlightening and this is not in the remit he gave his study or address seemingly, unfortunately. but what do i know? it was very informative and interesting - i just think there was an persceptible underlying narrative too, stemming from his own given pespective.
One thing that disturbed me GREATLY was his off hand one liner to the students present and people watching the lecture was the line that although these OCD and schizotypal people may have evolved into a priest class - this I doubt - a psychopathic profile fits far better, we know this - i paraphrase but he essentially says:

normal people have to work twice as hard to make bread for the half crazies to eat.

do you not see the import of this?

his imtimacy with stephen pinker, ray kurzweil and the fact he gained his doctorate from rockefeller university have already thrown a few flags up for me shrugs

thanks for the post.

[standvast]

Interesting.

just some thoughts..

How does one begin ones orientation ?

What if we assume that humans , in order to make any kind
of orientation in their physical universe possible at all,
would have to understand the Causes and Effects
to practically everything they find in their life/ path ?

I take (early) humanity to (have) be(en) envolved in a grand mystery,
a mystery requiring (at least partially) to be unravelled in order for humans to survive /make orientation.
Humans need working explanations for the phenomena (and thus the Causes ) of the natural world revolving around and impacting them in a 1001 ways.

Some things appear to have very evident causes and results,
other phenomena were then and are still very much unexplained.
Regardless of how "advanced / developped" ones orientation
is, there are (to every person) determined and indeterminable Causes.

One could pick either part of orientation and see how
the existence of a "motivator" becomes a semi-logical assumption.
(determined / undetermined)

The determined , defined, tested and tried -"factual"-
seem -structured, planned, designed-,
It is the basic need for comprehension of the person making this appear so,
for it is the human who discovers/assumes what appears to be workable, testable relations of cause and effect in the universe.

Through this testing and assuming of "what is / how it works"
everyone has to assume there is Order (comprehendible relations) present,
(the being can't orientate otherwise and thus depends on it_)
the world begets a form / structure in the observers mind.
The Order discovered is what Sustains the being,
for in a sense ,
knowing / accepting / relating to this Order is solely what enables the being to survive,..
Since the human is dependent for orientation on
his/her observed correlations, structure, Causes and Effects,
nothing within this realm can be viewed as random, coincidental or by accident,..
The discovered Order allows the human to exist /navigate ,
and it is thus to the human an evident " Sustaining force".

The undetermined (everything in which no relation /explanation
is evident) is "Grand mystery", the same grand mystery that was
omnipresent before a human with a mind's eye and awareness of awareness to determine "Order" .

All the unexplained and undetermined out of which the apparent order is defined by the human allows for the Order, life, relations. everything.
Thus the mystery and likely the Sustaining force is greater then the discovered order at any one time, and a human would logically
assume there is "more to it" , than it has been able to make out so far.

Without the Grand Mystery to start from , there would not be a
human nor an apparent Order to make out, every part
of orientation is within or upon this grand mystery.
The grand Mystery is what allows for every human determination within it, and it allows for humans to discover Order within it's workings ,
Thus even greater than the Order discovered, is what gave rise to
that order ; the grand Mystery ("God) The Sustaining force of/behind it all.

peace'