Religion a figment of human imagination

[Pale Blue Dot]

Humans alone practice religion because they're the only creatures to have evolved imagination.

That's the argument of anthropologist Maurice Bloch of the London School of Economics. Bloch challenges the popular notion that religion evolved and spread because it promoted social bonding, as has been argued by some anthropologists.

Instead, he argues that first, we had to evolve the necessary brain architecture to imagine things and beings that don't physically exist, and the possibility that people somehow live on after they've died.

Once we'd done that, we had access to a form of social interaction unavailable to any other creatures on the planet. Uniquely, humans could use what Bloch calls the "transcendental social" to unify with groups, such as nations and clans, or even with imaginary groups such as the dead. The transcendental social also allows humans to follow the idealised codes of conduct associated with religion.

"What the transcendental social requires is the ability to live very largely in the imagination," Bloch writes.

"One can be a member of a transcendental group, or a nation, even though one never comes in contact with the other members of it," says Bloch. Moreover, the composition of such groups, "whether they are clans or nations, may equally include the living and the dead."

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn13782-religion-a-figment-of-human-imagination.html?DCMP=ILC-hmts&nsref=news8_head_dn13782

[asthmaticeog]

1. I sure do like that analysis.

:thumbsup:

[Jed Dilligan]

2. But what about praying mantises?

[theoldman]

3. Well imagine that.

[Beregond2]

4. Every aspect

of human culture is a product of the imagination. So what?

[ShaneGR]

5. Religion isn't just imagination, look up at the sky and you find the origins

The sun rises. The Son Rises. Next winter start watching the sun go lower in the sky each day. One day the sun will stop dropping and for 3 days it will only rise to that in the sky, neither lower or higher. After approximately five days the sun will begin to rise higher in the sky each day. The Son is born on that day, December 25th. Coinciding with the winter solstice.

[Sequoia]

40. Nope, Jesus was NOT born on December 25.

More like September or March 28. The early Christians decided to do the Jesus born thing around the solstice so the pagans would buckle under their power.

[Mr Rabble]

47. I think that was his/her point. nt

[zeemike]

6. Perhaps he is just imagining it

That life and the consciousness just begins suddenly out of nothing and ends suddenly with death?
Is he a man dreaming he is a butterfly or a butterfly dreaming he is a man?

[Prophet 451]

10. Chuang Tsu

"But forever afterwards, he didn't know if he was Chuang Tsu who had dreamt he was a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming he was Chuang Tsu"

My will contains a clause that teaching must be read at my funeral.

[dysfunctional press]

7. man created god(s) in his own image.

supposed adults who can't let go of their various santa clauses are continually fucking up the planet and civilization for the rest of us.

it's very frustrating, to say the least.

[Prophet 451]

14. Thank you so much

Not all believers are fucking up civilisation and the planet, you know. "If thou findest an inequity, ye must correct it. If thou art witness to injustice, ye must not stand idle. If thou come across pain, then give relief. For if the lot of man is to improve, the seer must be the doer" (Philosophies 72:2, TDA). In other words, some of us do recognise that praying for a better world is not enough. One must get one's hands dirty.

[Djinn]

22. yeah they are

While of course people have more to fear from the biblical literalist nuts than your average Kumbaya Christian (moderate Muslim, jolly Jew??) unfortunately we can not point out the utter ridiculousness of religion for fear of offending "moderates".

"Moderates" tend to view the arguments in much the same way as the nuts - ie if I say there is no god, the bible is mostly plagiarized middle eastern folklore and there is NO punishment or reward after death - just decay, I get told I'm being a bigot.

Not only is praying not enough it is counterproductive - people in power have always used God as a control mechanism - that is all it has ever been (which was sad enough 2000 years ago but that we're STILL believing the rantings of ancient inbred goat herders who thought it was oakilly doakilly to sell your daughter, is thoroughly embarrassing) and it will never end until people can have real conversations about the harm of religion without being called a bigot because you don't believe in someone else's imaginary friend.

How can we ever move forward as a species when a large number of us (and an overwhelming number in the world's only superpower) explain our situation via fairy stories?

Would you be comfortable with a doctor who practiced his trade by singing "dem bones" over and over again?

[SammyWinstonJack]

32. ...

:thumbsup:

[QueenOfCalifornia]

37. BINGO! DING! DING! DING!

I say it all the time - but then people like to quote their fantasy cult classic, the Bible, to make their somewhat delusional points.... It's crazy I tell ya.

[stevedeshazer]

8. Man created God

And furthermore, there's something even bigger out there than Man's God.

Maybe even bigger than George W. Bush's ego. After all, Man's God talks to him.

[dflprincess]

34. I prefer this image of past presidents

I'll bet Carter is the only one who isn't cheating.

[Old Codger]

9. as for me

I don't trust any adult who has an imaginary friend.

[RC]

11. Chimps have been know to run around making loud noises and

beating the ground with sticks during the length of thunderstorms.

That first sentence is wrong. Out arrogance blinds us to so much.

[Djinn]

24. and that demonstrates imagination how?

That's fear, pure and simple. Large thunder storms can be followed by large floods, forcing non gill owning animals to scarper. Chimps shriek and freak out during them, most likely for the same reasons they shriek and freak out if they see a cobra nearby. It's a warning to other chimps - it's very practical.

What makes you think it has anything to do with imagination?

[RC]

42. Our arrogance blinds us to so much.

We are related to the chimps. Something like 98/99 % of our DNA is the same. Chimps are self aware.

How do you think our religion got started? Quite conceivably the exact same way.
Religion started long before someone got the idea to put a bell on a building.

Our arrogance is destroying us because we are destroying the earth.

[Djinn]

44. and once again

how does anything you've posted demonstrate that animals have imagination

[RC]

49. Tell KoKo that.

http://www.koko.org/world/

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/koko/asl.html

Google is your friend, use it.

[tuvor]

12. Where's the proof that only humans have imagination?

[Prophet 451]

15. AFAIK, there isn't any

The concept is called "anthromorphism". The assumption that if an animal develops intelligence, it will act like a human.

[Prophet 451]

13. Disagree

Mr. Bloch is entitled to his opinion, of course, but I suspect humanity is the only species to have evolved a form of religion because we are the only species to have evolved mass communication.

That said, I'm a believer (Satanist at it happens, but still faith) so I'm hardly unbiased.

[Subdivisions]

25. delete. wrong place. hate it when that happens. n/t

[Postman]

16. transcendental social - fancy way of saying "playing make believe"

or "let's pretend"

[kenny blankenship]

17. Yes, but it's the invisible figments that stir the most action in the visible physical world

Tell people the polar ice caps are melting and world civilization is endangered from aberrant climate--including flooding, droughts, and widespread crop failures-- and they stare at you like cows chewing their cud; tell them God condemns gay penguins and they will have to be restrained from going to Antarctica to kill all of them. Half of them will go to the North Pole intent on killing penguins that aren't even there and melting the rest of the ice cap with blow torches. It's funny.

[BlooInBloo]

18. Ugh. Semi-intelligent people are worse than out-and-out idiots. Just go read...

... some Nietzsche, Kant, and Hegel (and then the 20th century pragmatists + later Wittgenstein) for an fully intelligent discussion of this.

[Sequoia]

30. Just give it to us in a nutshell.

Were these guys semi-intellignet or lofty rambler ons?

[BlooInBloo]

31. You're a good American.

[Sequoia]

33. Is that like a "good German"?

[BlooInBloo]

35. No idea - dunno what good Germans are like.

[Sequoia]

36. Acutally that's sort of an insult.

A "good German" was one who kept silent and went about his/her way while the Jews were being rounded up and exterminated.

[BlooInBloo]

39. Ah. Fascinating.

[crimsonblue]

19. My take

Religion likely formed as a result of children asking their parents lots of questions: "Why does the sun rise?" "Why is the sky blue?" "Why am I alive?" "Where do babies come from?" What starts out as folklore to appease children evolves into tradition and legend. Religion has always been an attempt to explain the natural world and human's place in it. As technology increases, the need for religion decreases. I can only hope that the use for religion is completely gone by the time I'm old and gray. Viva la science!

[The Straight Story]

20. We imagine, then we create what we imagine

But then, that does not mean what we imagine never existed in the first place does it?

We imagined black holes before we confirmed they existed.

[tkmorris]

45. Incorrect

Reason, Math, and Physics, wielded by people who understood them, resulted in hypothesizing the existence of black holes.

It is quite interesting that the existence of black holes was first suggested by a scientist named John Michel as the logical implication of some of Isaac Newton's discoveries, is it not? Especially in light of your thread yesterday. You see, observation of the world around us and measurement of physical phenomenon eventually resulted in Newton's theories concerning gravity, which when taken to their logical conclusion, and combined with other scientists observations, seemed to indicate that at a certain mass and volume an object would exert enough gravitational pull that it's escape velocity would exceed the speed of light. Since no mass can exceed the speed of light (see:Einstein), therefore such bodies would be completely black; not even light could escape their pull.

That's science my friend. Observation of the world AS IT IS, not as we wish it would be, and formulation of hypotheses about why this should be so, followed by rigid testing of those hypotheses. Does a criminal forensic analyst use imagination or faith to determine what happened at the crime scene? No they do not, they gather information and use what they KNOW to attempt to arrive at a conclusion. Scientists in every other field, including Physics and Astronomy, do the same. They do not imagine the universe, they EXAMINE it, and attempt to understand what they observe.

By the way, while black holes are widely accepted their existence has not quite been proven.

[Skittles]

21. some of us have ever known that is true

I doubt animals sit around pondering why they are here

[mopinko]

23. i think they just miss the big monkey who made the rules.

the big silverback old man that ruled the troop, kept everyone in line. probably told people who could do the wild thing and when.
just leaderless lonely apes we are.

[Subdivisions]

26. Religion is what makes me want God

to stop this planet and let me off.

What a silly way to cope with one's existance, by believing in masochistic, sadistic, omniscient, profoundly shy, and extremely elusive invisible beings from the sky.

But I really do like Rev. Wright.

[Festivito]

27. An inevitable figment? Well, anyway, I think my cat thinks me a god.

He ends with a maybe God theories are inevitable, I gather, considering the brain change millennia ago.

He's welcome to his opinion that he sees into the philosophical meanderings of chimps. I can barely manage discovering philosophical meanderings of my friends.

My cats in all this love me, worshiping at the alter of my legs and feet sleeping or awake, them and me. They fight, then stop in awe of me, quietly bonding with each other, when I return home.

To me this article is just more of people unable to tolerate religions' myriad problems. Yawn. Like my cat yawns, with a familiarly inevitable sense that I am its god.

[L. Coyote]

28. And, a product of institutionalized slavery? Is religion the world-view of slaves?

The Near East, Mediterranean, and Nile regions had institutionalized slavery.
Christianity seems to have evolved from slaves and the beliefs they held.

Were the slaves kept in religious ignorance to prevent their escape and rebellion? Likely so.

[Thothmes]

43. What of the religion of the enslavers

the Greeks, the Romans, the Moslems. These people believed their gods empowered them to own slaves.

[P0pEye]

29. Reminds me of John Mellencamp's old album with the Nilistic name ...

"Nothin' matters (And what if it did?)"

[FreepFryer]

38. “Religion can never reform mankind because religion is slavery.” -- Robert Ingersoll, 1833-1899

[LanternWaste]

41. So's politics and money...

So are politics and financial systems, but we go to war/live our lives dictated by/hate other people because of them too...

[NuttyFluffers]

46. the figments of human imagination covers just about everything

everything perceived falls under its purview because at some point representation must supersede the subject/stimulus in our awareness. thus all knowledge is based upon succeeding representations removed from the source experience and therefore are artificial constructions of our own conceptions... oh dear, i've probably been reading too much Nietzsche and Foucault lately. don't mind me... ;)

[Perry Logan]

48. People are a figment of God's imagination.