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Nice find SveNitoR and congrats on losing your P.

I have to say I disagree with his thesis. While people had a failure of understanding the cause and effect to recreate and analylze the world of the past...and today. The flaw in his reasoning is that he's leaving out people's ideologies; their learned belief systems. He's lumping in irrationality with insanity.

Great sift, congrats on losing your P...

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag.(show it anyway)

My fear is that religion is baked into our minds through evolution as it serves to make cohesive herds/tribes.

To go against the religious instinct is to deny human nature - and possibly suffer the physical downside- depression and a shorter life. I'll pay that price.

I love that Jesus himself is giving this lecture. Crazy Fun!!

LOL nice lecture, listened the the whole thing. Definitely something to check out.

Interestingly I've been saying the following statement for many years now. Even had as my email signature for a few years.

==
He who hears voices is deemed schizophrenic and institutionalized.
He who hears the voice of Jesus and/or God is deemed blessed.

you can be 100% ratoinal and still utilise the same parts of the brain that religoin uses ,

you can still be very spritual , artistic , optamistic , apeal to woderment. and at the same time not have anny need to arbatreraly chose to belive in 1 of the thousends of sky daddies.

aside from that you can allso indulge parts of the mind in the full knowlage that its not real , but still get the same enjoyment , in the way people enjoy vilolence in films or enjoy ghost films , but would never kill people or beliv ein ghosts for real.



>> ^dag:

My fear is that religion is baked into our minds through evolution as it serves to make cohesive herds/tribes.
To go against the religious instinct is to deny human nature - and possibly suffer the physical downside- depression and a shorter life. I'll pay that price.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag.(show it anyway)

Maybe,

But I suspect that the rational wonder you describe is like decaf coffee. To get the jolt of physiological benefits- you need real faith- to let go and let God. It’s the relinquishing of personal control for the outcomes in your life that brings on the bliss.
>> ^westy:
you can be 100% ratoinal and still utilise the same parts of the brain that religoin uses ,
you can still be very spritual , artistic , optamistic , apeal to woderment. and at the same time not have anny need to arbatreraly chose to belive in 1 of the thousends of sky daddies.
aside from that you can allso indulge parts of the mind in the full knowlage that its not real , but still get the same enjoyment , in the way people enjoy vilolence in films or enjoy ghost films , but would never kill people or beliv ein ghosts for real.
>> ^dag:
My fear is that religion is baked into our minds through evolution as it serves to make cohesive herds/tribes.
To go against the religious instinct is to deny human nature - and possibly suffer the physical downside- depression and a shorter life. I'll pay that price.

The underlying mechanisms are probably the same. The definition of "insanity" is fairly arbitrary. It's quite plausible, although certainly not proven, that as Homo grew more intelligence, it also grew more unstable mentally. A lot of our intelligence is pattern recognition - the ability to deduce cause and effect, for example. When an intelligent being is hit by a flying stone, they quickly deduce that it wasn't the stone that hurt them, but whoever threw the stone. What if someone gets hit by lightning? Who threw the lightningbolt?

It's difficult to draw a line between rational thinking and overanalysis to the point of schizophrenia. We're just used to thinking of mental illnesses as something very separate from the normal functioning of our brains. In reality, we all exhibit "insane" traits to some extent. They can be quite useful when they don't become overpowering.

>> ^geo321:

I have to say I disagree with his thesis. While people had a failure of understanding the cause and effect to recreate and analylze the world of the past...and today. The flaw in his reasoning is that he's leaving out people's ideologies; their learned belief systems. He's lumping in irrationality with insanity.

I like the points he's making, but he's kinda hard to listen to.

>> ^dag:

My fear is that religion is baked into our minds through evolution as it serves to make cohesive herds/tribes.
To go against the religious instinct is to deny human nature - and possibly suffer the physical downside- depression and a shorter life. I'll pay that price.


Personally I feel much happier since I left religion behind. I always found difficulty in never knowing for sure if something I did would disappoint the invisible eyes upon me. There was always a nagging anxiety of what would happen if I died that day.

Now I don't have to worry about it. I have no reason to believe that my private behavior is being judged by something that refuses to provide feedback or reinforcement, and if I die then chances are I simply go back to the state I was in before being conceived.

To me, religion = stress.

>> ^dag:

Maybe,
But I suspect that the rational wonder you describe is like decaf coffee. To get the jolt of physiological benefits- you need real faith- to let go and let God. It’s the relinquishing of personal control for the outcomes in your life that brings on the bliss.

I disagree with your opinion. I look at someone like Richard Feynman with that fervent passion for life which shows in all the videos here and you see someone that definitely wasn't drinking decaf. An argument could be made that people like him are the exception, but I don't think that is the case.

Of course it is different for everyone, right? I was raised in a very strong Roman Catholic house and my parents have become more and more fundamentalist as they have become older. It is disturbing to me as I fall into the rather large "non-practicing Roman Catholic" group, but they do have a large group of friends from the church. I can see how their faith and religion connects them. But it is just one string of connection. That string is thick for them because it is something that is so important to them. So passionate for them.

I'm passionate about compassion and fairness, among other things. I have atheist, catholics, christians, reborn christians (actually only one because most are fake), buddhist, shamanistic, etc... friends because of our shared passion for compassion and fairness. Religion is the race of passions - i.e. it is very easy to "see" and then involuntarily or voluntarily push those people into our predefined groups.

I admit that I think being in a religious group is a good ice breaker in bringing people together. In that regard, I do agree with you; however, it is just about finding those other passion connectors. This has been hard for me since I'm a budding recluse, but that avenue is still there and the friends that I have made haven't been from any religious connection. Now in society I can find other people with my passions in a large city or somewhere on the internet. There are more avenues to find like-minded people. It's hard to sift through, but they exist.

In closing - I live in a majestic area. Water and a couple of mountain ranges on the horizons. When I sit down looking at the water with the mountains beyond and the cumulus nimbus clouds racing across the sky, a warm wondrous feeling consumes me. I'm not thinking about God at all. And I can assure you that it isn't decaf.

He's actually making a good point. There's a distinction between the average person's desire to anthropomorphize forces that he can't control (e.g. a storm came and wiped out my house because god is mad that I didn't give him an offering), and someone reporting in all seriousness that they received direct communication from God that details specific imperatives about how to live, and then having not only the listener believe you, but have people 2000 years later believe in the god and the message.

As he put it, get the context wrong and you're a crazy cultist, get it right, and people will be staying home from work on your birthday 2000 years later.

Edit: To put my own spin on the distinction, the first example is primitive scientific reasoning, the second is using belief as a pretext to engage in politics.