Reddit reviews Why Religion is Natural and Science is Not

This is an interesting argument, one that Francis Collins calls the "signpost" argument - that the fact that we have this tendency for belief is evidence (not proof, but evidence) the G-d wants us to seek him. Fair enough. But it doesn't follow that our god-sense evolved for a purpose, let alone that purpose (where's the selection pressure? Who's failing to reproduce for lack of a god-sense?).

An alternative, and I think more parsimonious, explanation is that belief in a higher power is a side-effect of certain psychological capacities that, in the proper context, are highly adaptive. In particular, I'm talking about theory of mind: our ability to perceive other people as thinking agents, like us but independent of us. Robert McCauley gives a detailed treatment of it in his book Why Religion is Natural and Science is Not, but this article is much quicker and to the point: we apply theory of mind where it doesn't belong, and the consequence is religious belief.

That slide is horrible, especially if it’s supposed to be
read as some kind of a syllogism. The connection to
colonization appears to be out of place and bizarrely
ahistorical.

But then, there’s some valid arguments for the title
OP chose. On this topic I recommend the book “Why
Religion Is Natural and Science Is Not” by Robert
McCauley (Ox 2011).

EDIT: Amazon link for the lazy: http://www.amazon.com/dp/0199341540

> You think the origin of religion is that we examined the world and used our imagination, then kept that ruse going for centuries?

Nope. It wasn't examining the world. It was evaluating it through our experience of it.


>Religion is not made from hypothesizing about the world's mechanisms.

I didn't say it was. You really should read more carefully.



>Religions persists despite the wrong assertions they make; not because of them.

Religions persist because people believe those type of assertions to be true. Why do people believe those sorts of things to be true? Because it's natural to do so.
Religion has existed for many thousands of years in every society because the kinds of explanations it provides are precisely the kinds that come naturally to human minds. [...] Religion makes intuitive sense to us.](https://www.amazon.com/Why-Religion-Natural-Science-Not/dp/0199341540)



>As for your idea that somehow the tendency to create gods evolved in us (and not other animals), that can be disproven by finding even one religion that does not have gods.

The exception does not prove the rule. Also, the Buddhism practiced by most Buddhists does involve gods. Also also, the process of initiation explains buddhism and taoism. [Kress, Oliver (1993), "A new approach to cognitive development: ontogenesis and the process of initiation." Evolution and Cognition 2(4): 319-332.]

Look, you just Do. Not. Get. It. You're arguing about religion. I'm citing the consensus of those scientists and philosophers who study the cognitive science of religion.



>Believing in gods since the dawn of civilization is demonstrably wrong.

I didn't say that., either. I said before the dawn of civilization.

Paleoanthropologists Leroi-Gourhan and Michelson contend that religious behaviour emerged before 30,000 years ago at the latest.
Behavior that can only be seen as religious - or ancestral to religious behavior - reach back into the Middle Paleolithic, as early as 300,000 years ago, coincident with the first appearance of Homo neanderthalensis. Paleoanthropologists Andre Leroi-Gourhan and Annette Michelson believe religious behaviour emerged by the Upper Paleolithic, before 30,000 years ago at the latest,[1] but behavioral patterns such as burial rites that one might characterize as religious — or as ancestral to religious behaviour — reach back into the Middle Paleolithic, as early as 300,000 years ago, coinciding with the first appearance of Homo neanderthalensis and possibly Homo naledi. There is some indication that first religious behavior occurred in the Lower Paleolithic (significantly earlier than 300,000 years ago, pre-Homo sapiens. You are obviously ignorant of the widespread Middle Paleolithic (300–45 ka) Neanderthal bear-cult. There's tons of evidence that humans of the Middle Paleolithic believed in an afterlife. The Circular Enclosures of Central Europe built in the 5th millennium BCE served a cultic function. At Goseck circle they did human sacrifice. The megaliths were roughly concurrent.

You really should read more carefully.