WilliamBlue

Are humans hard-wired for faith? - CNN.com

This article says we are programed for religion, although the Nuns disagree, sounds about right to me.

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somdude85

Hmm. That is interesting. Hardwired for religion? I would be skeptical about that. However, it would make more sense to me that the feelings our complex brains produce can be interpreted different ways. Perhaps religion functions to categorize those feelings in order to offer explanations based on our perceptions of the world around us.

Feeling --> Questioning --> Interpretation (shaped by our experiences/observations) --> Categorization (organization) --> Explanation (i.e. faith)

somdude85

Another thought..

To answer this question with any certain degree of certainty, a controlled experiment would be needed. Ideally, a group of newborns would need to be raised through adulthood blind to any modern belief system/spirituality that currently exists.

Of course, this would raise ethical concerns as well as questions as to how this experiment would be possible in the first place.

jaej

"Religion exists because of two things: being alive, and having to die."

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mister_lister

A long time ago, late 80s early 90s, an article similar to this one appeared in Time Magazine. Essentially, geneticists had identified a gene in people who are religious that is not present in non-religious people. They called it the "god gene". This caused a lot of contraversy at the time and I remember churches talking about predestination and this gene's implication with that.

Doesn't explain people like me who once believed deeply and then aquired knowledge which disproved my religion (Christianity) and I stopped believing. There seems to be a lot more than genes involved in whether a person is religious or not.

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jaej

Lol. Predestination. In church, they tried to tell me that, since god knows everything, he already knows who is going to heaven and who is not. Predestination is, I think, one of the main ideas of Calvanism. (Journeyman, you probably know more than anyone so correct me if I'm wrong) However, they said that even though god already knew, I still had to make the choice.

Since god knows though, there really is no choice. If he knows everything, there really is no such thing as free will, because it is already determined. Plus, as Og always says, the concept of 'self' is in itself a myth.

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