Scientific basis for religious belief

vengeful god

There’s a reason why people believe in God…

in “The Varieties of Religious Experience,” William James wrote:

“All of our raptures and our drynesses, our longings and pantings, our questions and beliefs . . . are equally organically founded.”

Scott Atran studies why we have religious beliefs. They seem to be widespread, almost universal, as far back in pre-shistory as we can tell. Atran looks at the puzzle from an evolutionary point of view. Why would religious beliefs evolve? Are they a side effect or a major player in our survival?

Lost in the hullabaloo over the neo-atheists is a quieter and potentially more illuminating debate. It is taking place not between science and religion but within science itself, specifically among the scientists studying the evolution of religion. These scholars tend to agree on one point: that religious belief is an outgrowth of brain architecture that evolved during early human history. What they disagree about is why a tendency to believe evolved, whether it was because belief itself was adaptive or because it was just an evolutionary byproduct, a mere consequence of some other adaptation in the evolution of the human brain.

Which is the better biological explanation for a belief in God — evolutionary adaptation or neurological accident? Is there something about the cognitive functioning of humans that makes us receptive to belief in a supernatural deity? And if scientists are able to explain God, what then? Is explaining religion the same thing as explaining it away? Are the nonbelievers right, and is religion at its core an empty undertaking, a misdirection, a vestigial artifact of a primitive mind? Or are the believers right, and does the fact that we have the mental capacities for discerning God suggest that it was God who put them there?

In short, are we hard-wired to believe in God? And if we are, how and why did that happen?

[William] James, who taught philosophy and experimental psychology at Harvard for more than 30 years, based his book (above) on a 1901 lecture series in which he took some early tentative steps at breaching the science-religion divide.

In the century that followed, a polite convention generally separated science and religion, at least in much of the Western world….  the mutual hands-off policy really began to shift in the 1990s. Religion made incursions into the traditional domain of science with attempts to bring intelligent design into the biology classroom and to choke off human embryonic stem-cell research on religious grounds. Scientists responded with counterincursions. Experts from the hard sciences, like evolutionary biology and cognitive neuroscience, joined anthropologists and psychologists in the study of religion, making God an object of scientific inquiry.

The debate over why belief evolved is between byproduct theorists and adaptationists. You might think that the byproduct theorists would tend to be nonbelievers, looking for a way to explain religion as a fluke, while the adaptationists would be more likely to be believers who can intuit the emotional, spiritual and community advantages that accompany faith. Or you might think they would all be atheists, because what believer would want to subject his own devotion to rationalism’s cold, hard scrutiny? But a scientist’s personal religious view does not always predict which side he will take. And this is just one sign of how complex and surprising this debate has become.

Angels, demons, spirits, wizards, gods and witches have peppered folk religions since mankind first started telling stories. Charles Darwin noted this in “The Descent of Man.” “A belief in all-pervading spiritual agencies,” he wrote, “seems to be universal.” According to anthropologists, religions that share certain supernatural features — belief in a noncorporeal God or gods, belief in the afterlife, belief in the ability of prayer or ritual to change the course of human events — are found in virtually every culture on earth….

Follow the link to read about it: New York Times.

In memoriam: Albert Cotton, inorganic chemist

F. Albert Cotton (1930 – 2007) was the Grand Old Man of inorganic chemistry. He revolutionized the field, bringing unprecedented precision and developing a whole subfield of inorganic bonds; he nurtured the leading chemists of a new generation; and he produced a large body of work himself.

You can read about him in the Telegraph: Professor F Albert Cotton.

Religions: Chondogyo

From Wikipedia:

“Chondogyo, or Cheondogyo, is a 20th-century Korean nationalist religious movement, based on the 19th century Donghak movement founded by Choe Je-u.”Being rooted in Korean Buddhist, Confucian and Daoist beliefs and rituals with some Christian influence, this Korean religion is becoming more and more popular in North and South Korea with the revival of Korean nationalism. Cheondoism arose from the Donghak (東學) revolution that began in 1812 in Joseon.

“Cheondogyo transliterally means Master in Heaven, in which cheon refers to Heaven, do refers to the ways and gyo refers to religion. This is often mistaken for Cheonjugyo, which is Roman Catholicism….

“In 1905, Korean nationalists founded Cheondogyo based on the themes of Donghak teachings popular during the Peasant Wars. The nationalists wanted to stem, by peaceful means, the tide of pro-Japanese sentiments sweeping across Korea. During the waning days of the Joseon Dynasty, King Gojong himself embraced Cheondogyo and promoted it nationwide. The King added Buddhist and Christian rituals and codices to the new religion, which was organized into a formal organizational hierarchy similar to that of Cheonjugyo (Roman Catholicism) with Pope, Papal Nuncio, formal ceremonies, etc.

“Members of Donghak were severely persecuted by the colonial Japanese government, and so, on December 1, 1905, Son Byeong-hui decided to modernise the religion and usher in an era of openness and transparency in order to legitimise it in the eyes of the Japanese. As a result he officially changed the name of Donghak to Cheondogyo (“Heavenly Way”).

“Cheondogyo preaches that there is God and that He resides in each of us, not in Heaven as Christianity teaches. It strives to convert our earthly society into a paradise (Heaven) on Earth. It attempts to transform the believers into intelligent moral beings with high social consciousness. In this respect, it could be seen as a humanistic socialism.

Cheondogyo had about 1.13 million followers and 280 churches in South Korea in 2005.

See also Confucianism.

The secret of Intelligent Design!

The rabbit, familiar to all of us, is a famous example of un-Intelligent Design, perhaps because its digestion is more than a bit disgusting (literally) to humans. (See, for example, this discussion.)

But some creatures are beautifully “designed”. monado is (as she’s posted below) working her way through Pearse and Buchsbaum’s Living Invertebrates. She read me this passage about medusas (what I call jellyfish; p. 103 of the 1987 ed.):

The mass of mesogleal substance [a.k.a. “middle jelly”] in the bell provides bulk and tensile strength. Yet the water content of a medusa … is about 96%. … This watery mesoglea is rigid enough to serve as a firm bed against which muscles can pull, plastic enough to allow for the muscular contractions of the bell, and elastic enough to restore the bell’s expanded shape between contractions.

So what if there isn’t one Intelligent Designer, but several—an Intelligent Design workshop, as it were? The guy in charge of medusas, well, he got a good performance review. The guy in charge of lagomorphs, perhaps he was an apprentice; or perhaps he got fired, or demoted to mould.

The notion of a workshop or engineering office with different Intelligent Designers of varying, uh, Intelligence is, you have to admit it, kind of amusing.

Religions: Confucianism

From Wikipedia:

“Confucianism or “The Teachings of Confucius”) is a Chinese ethical and philosophical system originally developed from the teachings of the early Chinese sage Confucius. It should be noted that many “Confucian” teachings existed before Confucius but they were summaried and furthur developed by him. Confucianism is a complex system of moral, social, political, and religious thought which has had tremendous influence on the history of Chinese civilization.”K’ung Fu Tzu (Confucius) (551–479 BCE) was a famous sage and social philosopher of China whose teachings deeply influenced East Asia for twenty centuries. The relationship between Confucianism and Confucius himself, however, is tenuous… The first occurrences of a real Confucian system may have been created by his disciples or by their disciples. During the philosophically fertile period of the Hundred Schools of Thought, great early figures of Confucianism such as Mencius and Xun Zi (not to be confused with Sun Zi) developed Confucianism into an ethical and political doctrine….

“It is debatable whether Confucianism should be called a religion. While it prescribes a great deal of ritual, little of it could be construed as worship or meditation in a formal sense. Confucius occasionally made statements about the existence of other-worldly beings that sound distinctly agnostic and humanistic to Western ears. Thus, Confucianism is often considered an ethical tradition and not a religion. However the United Nations recognizes Confucianism as a religion.

“Its effect on Chinese and other East Asian societies and cultures has been immense and parallels the effects of religious movements, seen in other cultures. Those who follow the teachings of Confucius say that they are comforted by it. It includes a great deal of ritual and (in its Neo-Confucian formulation) gives a comprehensive explanation of the world, of human nature, etc. Moreover, religions in Chinese culture are not mutually exclusive entities — each tradition is free to find its specific niche, its field of specialisation. One can be a Taoist, Christian, Muslim, Shintoist or Buddhist and still profess Confucianist beliefs.”

When I was a child, Confucianism seemed the most sensible teaching available.

See also Shinto.