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1. 

   Theory_of_I
   Member

   A simplistic hypothesis and query: Suppose a person (you?) is born, raised and enculturated in the ordinary ways in a typical community environment, but with the specific exceptions that the members of this community are entirely without superstition and that in no case is the idea of a supernatural entity, belief system or religion ever mentioned. No exceptions. This person receives an excellent formal education and again, no superstitions or supernatural entities, belief systems or religions are ever referenced. No exceptions.

   It is the 21st century and much is known about the universe, the world and the human condition, but a great deal is unknown as well. At some point in the process this person, having normal human attributes and intelligence, must desire answers/explanations for things unknown.

   So, subject to the (impossible) conditions imposed and just for the cerebral gymnastics: What will this person do to satisfy that desire to know?

   Posted 1 year ago #
2. 

   Revyloution
   Member

   I didn't even know who Jesus was until the 3rd grade, so I might qualify a little for your hypothetical person.

   At an early age, I read the Greeks. I picked up the idea that 'knowing that I know nothing' is the beginning of wisdom. I also had great teachers, who taught me that learning is a life journey, not a destination.

   Einstein also really changed how I view my own knowledge. His simple statement "Never memorize anything you can look up in a book" led me to the conclusion that humans aren't individually smart. A single human would die quickly if left in the forest with no tools. We really aren't that smart, as individuals. But once we got the ball rolling, we became crazy smart as a collective. That made me realize that I didn't have to try and learn everything. I just need to follow that paths that interest me, and I can rely on my fellow man to pick up the knowledge that I missed.

   Posted 1 year ago #
3. 

   Francesco
   Member

   Being the sort of person you described in your post , I may been of some help into finding an answer:

   I got into RPG. You know, medieval battle simulationb ( we have a shitload of those in Italy, it's folkloristic).
   Also, philosphy, books, videogames, quantum physic.

   Posted 1 year ago #
4. 

   UrsaMinor
   Member

   I think superstition and something resembling religious belief would quickly arise. Both appear to be rooted in biological behaviors not unique to the human species. Rats and pigeons, for example, quickly develop what we might call "superstitions" in the laboratory. If rewarded with food at random intervals, they will associate whatever activity they were doing at the time the food first appeared with the appearance of the food, and repeat that behavior when they are hungry, even though it does not result in getting more food.

   Religious belief is more complex, but humans seem to have a hard-wired urge to attribute agency to almost everything when the sensory data do not clearly indicate the true cause. The conventional explanation is that this is a survival trait; you are much more likely to survive and have offspring if you assume that it's a tiger rustling the leaves, even if it happens to be just the wind, than you are if you make the reverse assumption. The cost of having a false belief if it's not a tiger is much lower than the cost of having a false belief if it is.

   You can see this behavior in any toddler who has been injured playing with a favorite toy. Conscious, malevolent intent is ascribed to the toy.

   Given these propensities, I think it would be difficult to keep superstition and religion from developing anew without a deliberate program to prevent it.

   Posted 1 year ago #
5. 

   Kodie
   Member

   People still love stories, and it's common enough for people to apply narratives to themselves, to be attracted to rituals and symbols, and have neurotic quirks and inconsequential preferences that mean just a little bit more to them. I've had some really low times, despite my secular upbringing, in the past few months particularly, when I wished I could get to UF and articulate my understanding of why I think some people are willing to believe in "something else." We're not all capable of the strict intellect to deny such longing to be specifically chosen for supernatural guidance and luck. I think in such a community, there'd still be liars preying on the weak in some form or other, and people susceptible to promises of a quicker fix to their problems or a method of dealing with them in manageable proportions. Like, if the chemo doesn't work, try homeopathy; if I win the lottery, all my troubles will disappear; etc.

   Posted 1 year ago #
6. 

   Theory_of_I
   Member

   @Revy " That made me realize that I didn't have to try and learn everything. I just need to follow that paths that interest me, and I can rely on my fellow man to pick up the knowledge that I missed."

   Knowledge does indeed dispel myth. But is it enough to preclude reversion to supernatural explanations for the unknown?

   @Francesco:
   "Being the sort of person you described in your post..."

   Interesting. Are you saying you were exposed to little religious influence even though you were raised in the land of the Pope?

   @ursa:
   "Given these propensities, I think it would be difficult to keep superstition and religion from developing anew without a deliberate program to prevent it."

   Given at minimum indifference, and more pointedly, the current level of scientific kbnowledge and related skepticism toward myth, do you think this 'person' would opt for an idea that would be considered odd by the community (as posited) and succeed in attracting enough support to initiate religious adherance to his proposition?

   @kodie
   Agreed there would be the inevitable cons and power seekers, but do you feel that religion would necessarily evolve given the things I mentioned up thread about knowledge fueling skepticism about myth?

   Posted 1 year ago #
7. 

   JonJon
   Member

   What a great question. I don't have a good answer, but I'm going to be thinking about it. A lot.

   @ Ursa's comment:

   Superstition would almost certainly still exist, as would our propensity to ascribe thoughts and feelings like ours to things very much not like us. Those are pretty deeply rooted. I imagine that not only is it better to assume that there is a tiger rustling that grass, but it also allows you to make better decisions when you can't help but think about how that tiger must be thinking, what it must be planning, and what must be the best way to avoid/scare/defeat that tiger.

   I find myself wondering whether, if religions exist within this hypothesis, they resemble paganism or animism more than ours, or if that requires more ignorance about the way the world works.

   I tend to think that storytelling becomes even more central to the world than it is now. The RPG scenario seems to play into that as well.

   I also wonder what communal life looks like. Not that you can't have community without religion, obviously, but I wonder whether you have more book clubs, or if perhaps our desire for ridiculous amounts of communal feelings has been artificially inflated by church.

   Posted 1 year ago #
8. 

   UrsaMinor
   Member

   @Theory_of_I:

   Given at minimum indifference, and more pointedly, the current level of scientific kbnowledge and related skepticism toward myth, do you think this 'person' would opt for an idea that would be considered odd by the community (as posited) and succeed in attracting enough support to initiate religious adherance to his proposition?

   Well, I'll have to admit that I was thinking more along the lines of what would happen to such a society over the generations. If it's just one initial experimental subject, there is certainly room for personal superstitions to develop, and people who have ideas that their society considers absurd or deviant get pretty good at hiding them from view. Full-blown religious beliefs? Unlikely to develop this fast in a single individual. Highly unlikely to spread to a first-generation community of dedicated rationalists. Not altogether impossible, but quite a few sigma out on the probability curve is my guess.

   Posted 1 year ago #
9. 

   FO
   Member

   @Theory_of_I: Same for me. Land of the Pope and unchurched at best.
   Quite a number of my friends are more or less like that.

   What happens to me?
   I cower in fear at the prospect that, at my death, all my memories and skills and experiences will be lost forever, that whatever I can accomplish will cease to exist the moment I close my eyes.
   But this changes with my mood.
   Really, I try just not to think about it.
   I can't buy in any supernatural hypothesis because I would never genuinely believe it.

   Posted 1 year ago #
10. 

    Theory_of_I
    Member

    @ursa: "...there is certainly room for personal superstitions to develop... Full-blown religious beliefs? Unlikely to develop this fast in a single individual. Highly unlikely to spread to a first-generation community of dedicated rationalists."

    I agree. What if the "one initial experimental subject" is a person who is a leader, charismatic, popular, persuasive and recognized as an authority in other areas. Would that tip the balance toward acceptance of his absurd idea?

    Suppose now we could envision a time far back in pre-history when humans first began to develop imagination, to get a tiny peek into the abstract and ponder about "why". In this scenario, ignorance would be the standard and superstition as you described it would prevail. Community would consist of a small group of largely interrelated individuals with a presumably older paternal leader making communal decisions.

    Would that set of conditions provide the basis for a single generational adoption of the concept of a supernatural entity to explain "why" as imagined and proclaimed by the leader? Possible...probable...?

    If so, then if that community were able to dominate other groups and enforce (or simply persuade) acceptance of this new superstition would that account for the origination of religion?

    Posted 1 year ago #
11. 

    Brian K
    Member

    I have no delusions that my knowledge and skills and such have any cosmic relevance at all. So I don;t even have FO's cosmic fears. :)

    As I have never had children (and neither have my siblings), our sub-branch of the human race will also be dying out. I have no real problem with that, either.

    Fatalism? Or just realism?

    Posted 1 year ago #
12. 

    Kodie
    Member

    I think the tendency to ignorance still prevails a great deal more than most of us are willing to admit. As a species, we know more (by we, I mean the compilation of research that, if you didn't know, could find and read about) than we did in the far earliest pre-history of human dawning yadda-yadda. But I think religious beliefs persist on account we're capable of, and more willing to, believe something is true when it's not than hit the library and really shatter those beliefs, since it mostly doesn't interfere with their daily lives. Just taking various flavors of recognized religions out of the mix, people have decisions they need to make, have differing levels of confidence and doubt, generosity and selfishness, preferences about risk, and do not understand how their brain works. Even science doesn't have that pinned down, so it's still a "god of the gaps" type of thinking, a lack of deep pondering by most people, and just using a working hypothesis for the time being. If you took away religion from the culture, a lot of people would still like things the way they used to be, not keep up with the research if it's not vital to their livelihood, stubbornly believe things that used to be true but aren't anymore, do what appears to work for them and sell it to other people, and inherit their parents' neuroses and attitudes and traditions and pass them down to future generations.

    You can have the best and most current education, and still be susceptible to woo in some form. I had a lot of thoughts while I was offline about culture, things like food and music, etc., and I frequently observe people behaving according to cultural norms which can range from neutral to cumulatively destructive while rejecting rational (neutral or productive) deviances from those norms. Take religion as an early, early, early form of science; I don't know that humanity would really be as advanced as we are if we didn't just go with something for the meanwhile until we understood more about it, and I think rational people do this now, all the time. If you don't know something, you still have to move in a direction sometimes with little to go on, a "gut feeling," a pleasing pattern of even numbers, or hopes and fantasies leading to imaginary consequences. Finding something doesn't work or seems too difficult or slow also makes one susceptible to try other things like fad diets/cures or embezzlement or new-fangled inventions like the smartphone and the cars that parallel park themselves. Since some things do work better, it's better that we are prone to think of anything as a possibility.

    Posted 1 year ago #
13. 

    Theory_of_I
    Member

    @FO: You're right on that, I don't expect anyone would buy in. But it is an uncommon perspective that I thought could ratt;e a few brain cells, nothing more.

    Posted 1 year ago #
14. 

    Theory_of_I
    Member

    @kodie:
    Well said. I agree. What I hoped to do is set up a little straw man scenario to try to provoke some of the believers who show up here into looking into their pat little indoctrinated portfolios of "I know why" and find they don't know quite how to answer that one. I realize I didn't formulate it or articulate it so good =( but it still might provide some ponderin' material for those less locked away from reason.

    OOPS...Get back here kitty!

    Posted 1 year ago #
15. 

    groktruth
    Member

    I was a bird watcher, watching a robin tugging on an earthworm, thinking about talking to the earthworm. "What would it say," I wondered, "about what was happening to it? No eyes, ears. Probably never experienced a bird before. What might it think about this experience?"

    Suddenly, I remembered a recent moment when I, inexplicably to myself, found myself "tugged" in a direction that I did not choose, want, or even approve of.(I think it was standing on the edge of a cliff, and feeling tugged to jump. Almost a voice saying, "Jump!")

    I couldn't think of any good reason why I might not be like that earthworm, with some "robin" pulling on me, to use me for it's own purposes. I was headed for being a scientist. The question about talking to the earthworm, of getting in its head as it dealt with the reality of robins, came from reading Konrad Lorenz. The idea of looking at the possibility of living beings, real beings, higher than me, in explaining strange things that I was experiencing, was born.

    I imagine that my ancestors, looking at nature, had similar thoughts. Why wouldn't it be true? They saw worms, and birds eating worms. They must have related, and had mysterious thoughts to explain.

    I still cannot think of why I should be different from the worm. Even had a girl (in the fifth grade) call me a worm.

    It was quite a challenge, learning the epistemology and science methods needed to confirm this hypothesis. Then another challenge to use those lessons to accept or reject the hypothesis. But, it remains, and a lot more plausible then it was.

    Posted 1 year ago #

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