They didn't believe in the same thing per se. It's just that the proof of Intelligent Design of some sort exists is much more overwhelming then the proof that it doesn't. All agree on that aspect. However, they are very differing and enlightening views.

Although it is worth remembering that Jennifer was using it in such a manner as to imply they all came to the same conclusion.

Her quote asserts that they all pretty much believe in an Intelligent Designer of some sort. However, she does not specify what their beliefs are beyond that.

I'm not reading this because i am faithful and i know what the truth is.. if you don't believe in the lord then thats you and you'll parish for what you do wrong and not asking forgiveness for your sins.

First, I think you mean "perish" not "parish."

Second, you are completely ignoring 1 Thesselonians 5:21 by not reading the rest of the topic.

Third, by letting your beliefs go unchallenged, you are only proving to yourself how weak your faith truly is.

I should hope you will reconsider your ignorance.

how about you stop there now, just because i spelt something wrong just to let you know it was late when i posted this and you have no right to judge my faith. i have been saved and asked for forgiveness and i believe in the holy spirit and i know its true because i feel it and experience it everyday and the one who is ignorant is the nonbelievers :] im not forcing anyone to believe im just saying its your own problem what happens to you of being in the wrong. good day sir don't speak to me i wasn't even talking to you fyi :] but anywho thats what i meant. don't respond to me again im done with this thread and you as well. thanks please be mature about it and go on.
also one more thing please just stop this nonsense.. don't turn this website into gaiaonline i never visit it anymore really because 80 percent of people there are like this. if it turns into that then i am so out of here.. sigh.. the world nowadays

In the words of one of our kitten lovers...

objective thought is not a bannable offense. This thread will remain open. If you find that the topic of discussion is too much to bear or goes too far against your own personal belief structure, please feel free to avoid it. There are other places on our site where you are not asked to debate anything, just chat as you feel like it.

I wasn't saying your argument was wrong because of your spelling, first of all.

Second, you've blown this way out of proportion. Bringing up Gaia is completely irrelevant to the topic.

Third, I have every right to judge your faith, or lack thereof, because you have exposed it to everyone in this topic to see. If you had actually read at LEAST the OP, you would understand that the topic is about brain function, which is (or at least SHOULD be) completely compatible with most belief systems. Because you are so scared of finding out that you MIGHT be wrong about something, you refuse to challenge your own faith, and you ignore scripture that asks you to examine EVERYTHING and THEN draw conclusions.

If you can't even adhere to your own scripture, and you've tried to put yourself into this self-contained bubble that consists of you plugging your ears and screaming at the top of your lungs, what does that say to the rest of us?

I think I'm within my right to conclude that your faith is weak.

Meaning what according to my OP?



Not just one study, there have been several. Here is another, though you can find more by just searching for them.

Quote:

Originally Posted by god Net Why do different gods exist? Why do certain tribes subscribe to one god over another or even to many gods? Can neurotechnology help us better understand our relationship to our belief in higher powers? Until recently, religion and spirituality were deemed as cultural, a product of social conditioning, and not biological. Religious beliefs and spirituality was the 'playing field' for theologists and philosophers, not biologists and scientists. Many scientists were skeptical and unwilling to consider the spiritual as science. Now neurotheological researchers around the globe are examining what specifically happens within the brain when a person has a “religious” or “spiritual” experience. The latest controversy revolves around whether or not there is a 'God Spot', a singular spiritual center in the brain, a module of neural circuits specifically designed for religious experience. Speculation about the God Spot was triggered in 1997 when a team at the University of California, San Diego, saw that people with temporal-lobe epilepsy were prone to religious hallucinations which lead some researchers to stimulate temporal lobes artificially to see if he could induce a religious state. They found that this could create a "sensed presence". However, recently a group of Carmelite nuns have been assisting scientists in their quest to discover a circuit of nerves in the brain to explain man’s almost universal belief in a deity. As part of their research they found no God Spot. "The God module, as some scientists call it, is a mirage," according to the study by Dr Mario Beauregard of the Department of Psychology at the Université de Montréal published in the journal Neuroscience Letters. "The main goal of the study was to identify the neural correlates of a mystical experience," said Dr. Beauregard. The study demonstrated that a dozen different regions of the brain are activated during a mystical experience. In other words, mystical experiences are mediated by several brain regions and systems normally implicated in functions such as self-consciousness, emotion and body representation. Bottom line: We have a "God Net" not a "God Spot." So what will be next? Perhaps, a spotted God net?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Shtona (Post 1765853001) You claimed that the 'existence' of God may have been a necessary one in the past to ensure human survival, does that mean that the rise in the number of Atheists worldwide is going against our survival instinct (therefore survival of the fittest). Or is it simply another step in human evolution? I know you may not have the answer, but I pose these questions as things to think about.

We have many more things to band ourselves together by other than religion that religion is becoming pretty much a moot point. There are still those that rely on it heavily to be in communities that cherish religions and only "hang out" with those who practice the same religions. (ie: Catholic schools, Youth Groups, Churches, etc.) However, for the rest who do not embrace religion we have ingrained into our heads that murder is wrong already so we need no other reason then that it is against the law. At least, that is the way it works for the majority of the people in the world. However, bottom line being, is that we no longer need religion to guarantee our survival. In fact, I think it would be safe to assume that humans, in their own way are evolving towards a more chaotic belief system of nothing supernatural to keep themselves surviving. As long as we continue to believe that killing is wrong, and other "wrong" things are wrong, then overpopulation will continue, and will effectively wipe out the entire human race. So by getting rid of religion, we get rid of the original basis for what is believed to be morality, and maybe people will start questioning more whether murder is actually a "wrong" thing to do.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Shtona (Post 1765853001) I personally like to believe both. My own view on the 'survival of the fittest' theory is a little complicated, but for the most part I think that it no longer applies to humans as we've found ways to circumvent it. It's not that we've outsmarted nature, it's that we've found ways to create more than what we need, therefore making it possible for the weak to survive along with us. And so it's not uncommon for us to defy our 'survival instincts' (religion). Some see this as a bad thing, I see it as progress... Defying our old ways of survival is evolution...

Yes, Our old ways of surviving was to keep every individual surviving no matter the cost. Now that we have too many individuals, our method of survival might be to eliminate that which caused us to overpopulate in the first place in order to save the entire species as a whole. In other words, getting rid of the false connotations of "good" and "evil" and instead replacing that with what is natural instead.

You do not "know" what the truth is. You can only "believe" you know what the truth is. No one can "know" what the truth is as that would require proof. There are many religions out there that are not Christianity. What makes which religion right? If you cannot prove your religion is the truth, then you cannot "know" that it is.

No one has any right to judge anyone's faith, however everyone has every right to question the faith you hold. If you cannot defend it, why have it? That would be like me saying I believe Carbon Dioxide will keep me alive instead of Oxygen. In order for me to keep this belief, logically, I would have to prove to myself that it will indeed do what I believe so that I can defend it when people question it. Since Carbon Dioxide will not keep me alive, I cannot hold this belief and be true to myself.

The one who is ignorant is the one lacking in knowledge and facts. The one who is stupid reads said facts and denies them absolutely. If you do not read others arguments how will you discern for yourself what is true and what is false. My God Module links do not prove that a God does not exist. In fact, it could very well be the opposite that a God does exist and gave us humans the ability to acknowledge God's presence by placing a God Module inside of our brains in the first place.

Comparing this to Gaia is not mature and I believe an insult to all the hard working moderators and admin that work to keep this site as tolerable as possible for everyone. Just because you are offended by an idea, does not mean it is becoming Gaia. It only becomes like Gaia, when there are people who debate in an "Extended Discussion" forum and only say what they believe and not back up their thoughts by reasoning or sources. Then, when those beliefs are questioned they decide to yell at you and call you ignorant and call you names because they disagree, like what you did to Keyori, instead of discussing the idea in a mature and intelligent manner.

Oh no, not all of them believe in intelligent design. Yes, a plethora of people do believe in that theory, but as I said - several actually debate against it.

Some of the people that Lee Strobel interviewed are well renowned. And some DISAGREE with ID! Yes, he likes to focus more on the people that do believe it in, after-all, it's a case for a creator. But nonetheless, the people he interviews do not always tell the readers what they want to hear. I was pretty shocked myself about some of the stuff that was stated.

Anyway though, I didn't base my decision on faith and God solely on the journalistic research of Lee Strobel. I don't suggest anyone else do, either. It's simply a suggestion of context that one should read to perhaps get a better understanding; as his books have a lot of great information. It's a great place to start anyway. From there, it's easy to come upon other books and sources as a guide. It may lead you to believe there is a God, or perhaps not.

Although doesn't this disprove (at least in part) the previous source you presented? As contrary to what the initial one claimed of there being a God spot, this seems to be expressing that such a claim is unsupported. Furthermore it seems to be another case of failing to take into account the vast diversity of religions and cultures and the impacts that these have on understandings and beliefs of an individual.

This is not entirely true, for many peoples religion still forms an extremely crucial part of their culture. This is particularly true for small scale, tribal and fourth world peoples who have been (and in many instances still are) victims of ethnocide and forced assimilation.

This is not entirely true either, as there have been several religions which have allowed (and in some instances encouraged) the killing of others.

One example was demonstrated in Primitive Government, where Lucy Mair observed among the Nuer in certain circumstances their religion required them to redress wrongs through the death of the person/people who wronged them.

Another example where religion did not circumvent this, is among the Ju| Hoansi. The females had infanticide as a means of preventing overpopulation and ensuring that they were able to contribute enough in terms of food acquisition when necessary.

I can't say if God exist, I don't even believe in the idea of, or anything relating to it. I think the idea of God was invented to uphold an idea of power, or social need. People in need tend to be the group who hold on to the idea of God, or a Godlike entity to keep some sort of balance in their lives as appose to one who may also be in a situation of need but doesnt find it necessary to hold on to an idea that hasnt benefited them. Without reading more responses this is about all I can say at the moment.

I don't see how this disproves the idea of a location in the brain that allows us to acknowledge a spiritual force of some sort. It is more like an expansion on what we already knew. Going from God Spot to a God Net. Kind of like how we know an apple falls from a tree to the ground through observation rather than floats up into the air. Later on we discovered gravity and that the planet pulls everything towards it's spherical core and not just "down". If I didn't label your inconsistency correctly, please let me know.

By guarantee our survival I was referring to the whole of humankind not the individual cultures. Technically, all the religious cultures could die leaving just the atheists, and theoretically, those atheists would survive (thus surviving humankind), not by religious ideals, but by their own set morals and their own intelligence through science.

This is true, I will admit my mistake in saying all religion has moralistic ideas against murder. The religions you mention are few and far between and are most likely practiced in secret for the most part. In the present world, most of the places you travel to would frown upon murder of any kind. This has been caused by almost a universal agreement on some of the ideals of the Abrahamic religions decided by the governments of each country and what is important to them. True, these ideals did not necessarily have to come from religion, however it is very plausible that they did. The United States, being a world power, influences a lot of countries with their government and the type of living they have. Furthermore, the government was founded on the cornerstone of Christianity, so most of the ideals come directly from that religion.

You are correct that it does not completely disprove the first article, which is why I included the qualifier"at least in part". ;) Although from a more general picture it is demonstrating that they are really just shooting in the dark here. A typical sociological attempt to explain the vast diversity among cultures through use of genetics.

You are essentially presenting the same argument which was a central part of nineteenth century evolutionism. As such you share many of their weaknesses. For instance you are attempting to provide an explanation for the path which human kind in its entirety is going to travel down. However instead of taking into account the influence which culture will have, you falsely super impose your cultural understandings of the world. In the end we find ourselves with an evolutionary explanation which is only capable of explaining those cultures which share your culturally defined understandings.

This can be demonstrated quite nicely by your assertion that we have evolved past the need to have religion. I counteracted by pointing out that this claim is in fact a culturally biased understanding of humanity and does not sufficiently explain human kind in its entirety. Indeed there are many peoples out there, for whom religion still serves a highly important role. After all research has shown both how religion can form an important part of many cultures and ethnocide and forced assimilation have highly detrimental effects not only on the people but also on the environment. An article I commonly present on this is here. Although this is not limited to Survival international, John H. Bodley has also performed research into the impact which imposed development has on peoples. An observation which he makes which is quite fitting is that in most (if not all) instances those imposing the development are the ones with the unsustainable lifestyles, whereas those with the development being imposed upon them are those with the sustainable lifestyles. Which brings me to my next point, on questioning why you made religion(or lack thereof) a key value.

Lets say we are to seriously entertain your idea that social evolution is a valid theory. Furthermore that the social evolution of a people is in direct relation to the sustainability of their lifestyle. My question to you would thus be, why have you sought to make religion one of the key variables? After all many sustainable peoples on Earth have religion as a central part of their culture. Indeed for these people their religion can at times provide incentives to live such sustainable lifestyles. I would argue that a more useful means of approaching this is to separate peoples into large scale and small scale societies. As quite commonly it is in fact the large scale societies which are leading the highly unsustainable lifestyles, whereas it is the small scale societies which are living sustainable or vastly more sustainable lifestyles.

This is true, although it would be an odd approach taking into account that the peoples I mentioned in my previous post have historically led highly sustainable lives. Would you really push for the killing of those who actually lead sustainable lifestyles just to try and prove that their religion causes them to be less 'evolved'?


I would challenge you on the assertion that small scale religions are few, however by their very nature of being small scale cultures I would not dispute that they are far between.

That religions of large scale cultures were able to gain such dominance over the globe does not counteract that most religions have been small scale cultures. Indeed I would strongly assert that these large scale religions are strongly contrasting to small scale religions which have typically been the majority (by this I mean most religions have typically been small scale religions as opposed to large)

Very true, you will remember that what I am saying is theorizing, and that even if there is a "God Net" there still remains the possibility that a Spiritual Creator of some sort placed it there to begin with. However, if this God Net is found to be legitimate and is also to have been found to be created directly from the results of evolution, then it could indeed go a long way in the explanation of why certain religions existed and what caused them to exist in the first place. It would possibly show that religion was a tool developed by humans in order to band together under common interests in order to stay surviving.

All I argue on behalf of humanity is that the number one goal is to survive. I am stating it is a possibility that religion evolved in our brains to keep ourselves surviving over time by grouping together under common interests. This would be a support in the theory that social animals need a society to stay surviving. To determine anything else beyond that is going back into subjectivity and is impossible to determine correctly on an individual level.

I am not claiming culture holds no significant role in humanity. What I am claiming is that to argue on an objective level of why religion exists and whether or not it is important to keep existing, one must take into account the theory that we possibly developed it as a means to survive through evolution. As Shtona asked of me earlier, would the rise in atheism mean we are going against survival or are we evolving yet again to remove this "God Net" to survive properly in this day and age. There is a pretty big rise in atheism in general. The question is why. That is what I was attempting to answer.

To argue that religion will always hold an important role in society is near fallacy as 1) You cannot prove the reason why religion exists, and 2) You cannot prove that religion, in and of itself, is needed to continue existing. Because you cannot prove these things, you cannot simply tell me that the idea of religion should not be considered to be removed from society as a whole. I am not saying to remove it, I am only saying that it is a possibility that we are evolving as a species (through the rise in atheism) to remove it from society as it is may no longer be necessary to survive and could perhaps be the reason why we are threatening our existence in this very day and age.

So, would you argue that their religion is beneficial to these fourth world countries? Or would you assert that their religion is detrimental? The fact that they lack in size and power and thus are colonized and forced to embrace new cultures against their will may indicate that their particular type of religion was not meant to be since it was forcibly removed by other mainstream religions. The very fact that they become colonized may show that their particular lifestyle was not correct as it did not let them continue surviving. So even if they were able to live in the past or even present with sustainable lifestyles and practice their religions, does that really matter if that is all crushed in the end? I do agree that religion was necessary in the past, in order to survive. What I am able to consider is the fact that religion may no longer be necessary in order to keep humankind surviving.

I mainly meant that in theory lol. To basically let you visualize my point. I would assume that if we are indeed evolving to become atheists rather than god-fearers, that our evolution will gradually wipe out religion through pure intellectual means and no mass killing based off religious beliefs would be necessary.

Your challenge is well met. I used the phrase as a well known one again to get my point across. I will take back the "few" part, however as a unit of "few and far between" it is universally understood to be scarce in a general sense of the word. There may be many religions, however all the smaller religions are practiced by a minuscule amount of the entire human race which would make it quite negligible when considering the statistics of said religions. Hence the "Other" in the religious pie chart comparisons. :P

They were the majority, but are no longer. Now the majority are the bandwagon religions. Mainly the group of Neo-Pagan versus Abrahamic Scripts. There are several interpretations of being neo-pagan, just as there are several interpretations of following the abrahamic scripts. However, it still comes back to two mainstream religions, and then broken up from there. When people hear Pagan, unfortunately they think Wiccan. Highly inaccurate, but that is bandwagoning for you. When people think Abrahamic, people refer to Muslim, Judaism, and Christianity. From those there are separate sects and denominations based off all the different interpretations. Now even atheism has taken a huge leap and is an established "non-belief" which almost equates to its own belief.

EDIT: @Red: Ugh, you changed almost one entire section of your post after I already posted! LOLz

My argument is not based in whether or not a spiritual creator is real. But rather I am refuting the claim that belief in a Spiritual creator is the result of genetics. I would hold it is a result of the person being taught a culturally defined understanding of the world around them. Case in point if we were to take a new born child and place them among a traditional Ju| Hoansi tribe, would they grow up believing in Ju| Hoansi beliefs? If they did, would this be a result of their genetics or the culture which they grew up in?

I would argue here that religions are simply culturally defined understandings of the world. What these understandings are will differ greatly from culture to culture. Indeed I would go further to assert that it is misleading to separate science from culture, other than to recognize them as being differing culturally defined understandings. Take for instance Shamanic cultures, it has been observed that they perform many roles which science performs in our culture.

In this case it would be about as useful as functionalism, which is to say quite useless. Criticisms of functionalism is that all it does is provides truisms with no actual ability to acquire an understanding of the religions themselves.


As religion differs so greatly from culture to culture in its role and function, I would assert it is not possible to gain an objective universal understanding of it. All we would achieve by attempting this would be to remove the many religions from their context and consequently from their meaning. Thus making any such attempt at theorizing void and invalid.

All cultures change, this is widely accepted. However whether said changes are progressive or regressive is much more difficult to assert.

Which is not a claim I ever made. But rather I identified that religion has served an important role in many societies and currently serves a role in several societies. If you will notice, I avoid attempts to propose what paths peoples will follow into the future. While I acknowledge that all cultures change, I hold that this change will be shaped greatly by their cultural understandings of the world around them. As such, I am not capable of understanding which direction their unique histories will take them down.
However I can point out that a majority of material looking at the effects of ethnocide and forced assimilation have demonstrated that it has highly detrimental effects on both its victims and their environment.

Which would be presenting a culturally defined understanding of the world around us as being most evolved. Much like how Nineteenth century evolutionism presented Industrial Europe as being the most evolved society, then proceeded to explain other societies. In both cases you are taking a culturally biased understanding of what progress is. If you were simply talking about specific cultures and not attempting to provide an explanation for all of human kind then this would help things greatly. But as stands, attempting such an explanation for all of humanity makes the cultural biases push you quite strongly into the realm of subjectivity.


Yes I would argue that religion has typically served a highly important and beneficial role to these peoples.

Firstly this is based on the assumption that the value of a cultural idea is based solely on the power of those holding it to impose it upon others. Straight off the bat this is biased towards large scale cultures. As by their nature small scale cultures did not tend to be expansive.

Secondly it assumes that the tribal peoples simply gave up. Whereas in most instances they actively resisted attempts by other peoples to impost their cultures. Not only that but in recent years they have actually started to win some of their fights for cultural rights. This can be shown with Non Governmental Organizations such as Survival International who are actively taking part in their fight to acquire cultural rights. The strength of this movement is also reflected in the recently signed Universal Declaration of Indigenous Rights.

Which is still a culturally biased assertion.

Haha yeah I went back and edited it because I did not like how messy it was.

See, I am arguing whether or not a Spiritual Creator is real or not. The genetics thing is just something I found to further open up our eyes and see more possibilities. I am not saying the genetic aspect is true. I am theorizing based on the assumption that it is true. Until there is hard conclusive evidence I will not accept the "God Net" as being a universal fact. However, I enjoy theorizing based off certain views, especially when they support my own personal views.

Secondly, in regards to your cultural example, I am saying that the God Net allows individuals to recognize a spiritual presence of some sort. I am not mainstreaming it with Christianity in other words. The God Net in essence, from my own personal understanding, allows us to acknowledge some sort of divine presence. Depending on location and what is unknown at the time, is what the "religion/divine presence" will be based off of.

For an example, in many religions, we see the deification of the sun. It has been known as Ra in Egypt, Apollo in Greek culture, as well as many other cultures such as some Native Americans revering it. Why did they revere it? Because they were at its mercy and they did not understand it. Instead of thinking that it is just an object equal to humans, they put the sun above the meaning of being a human. This is what I am arguing may be what our brains had us think through the "God Net." It's not that the sun doesn't exist, it is the fact that we placed the sun higher than us on the grand scheme of things. Religion, in its most general sense, is not culturally based. When defining what religion is what, then you can base it off of certain cultures. But to take religion as a whole, it simply becomes a belief in something unexplainable, that is what I am arguing the God Net allows us to do. To be able to believe in that which we cannot understand.

It is not useless and is in essence, from what you describe, functionalism. It is not about understanding the cultural diversity of religions, but rather the ability to discern why religion (as a whole) exists in the first place. Functionalism, I agree, would be completely useless to describe all the different cultural variations, however functionalism may be needed to describe the source that all these religions came from in the first place. I gave you three distinct cultures above: Native Americans, Egyptians, and Greeks. These cultures are in very drastically different locations, have different environments they live in, and practiced extremely different cultures. Why then, was one of their Divine Beings the same? This would indicate that we all, regardless of culture, had the ability to believe in something supernatural for some reason completely unrelated to the culture. This is the explanation of the "God Net."

Yes, they are difficult to assert, however I am free to have my own theories on the matter yes? I am quite curious to hear yours ^^

Yes, you and your vagueness and avoidance of your own personal opinion on the matter. Religion has served an important role. I would like you to explain to me why you believe that religion will continue to serve and important role in the future. Or if not, why do you argue my theories that removal of religion might very well be possible in the future and beneficial to our society in the long run?

This is true, deciding what is the best path for survival of the species is subjective at best. However, the acknowledgment that the purpose of humankind is to survive is indeed objective by humankind standards. I put forth my subjective views on what is best for the survival of humanity. Many do not agree, some even call me odd. However, what good is an opinion if it is not voiced?

Yet they are overpowered by the domineering religions. I will give you an example to think about: Christian Crusades.

Yes, in this day and age, people are gaining rights to keep their cultures. However you only take into account the current small cultures, what about all the ones that were completely obliterated in the face of the mainstream ones?

Secondly, you have no proof that it is fourth world religions or cultures that are triumphing and "winning the battle" but rather the triumph is in the open minded cultures and governments that they are going against instead to gain said rights to practice their cultures.

Many fourth world countries fought and lost. It was only until the rest of the world started putting religion aside and became more open minded to different ways of living that these fourth world countries gained these rights in the first place.

The idea that believing in a god could actually be kind of mental illness is intriguing.
It does seem that if someone did something like religion out side of a socially acceptable reglion, they would be locked up in a mental instution. For instance there's no difference in the believing in the bible and ME believing my transformers fandom.

My point in regards to the debate on whether or not a Spiritual Creator exists, has essentially been that belief in a Spiritual Creator is a cultural understanding of the world around us. To try and demonstrate that this is in fact a cultural understanding, I used the example of taking a child and placing them in a Ju| Hoansi tribe.

Furthermore it has been from this position that I have been arguing as the belief in a Spiritual Creator is a cultural understanding, it must be taken in its own context. Any attempt to generalize and discuss religion as a whole will only succeed in removing said religions from their own context.

I was not asserting that you were mainstreaming it with Christianity. But rather I was challenging the sources on the grounds that it is not a result of differing genetics that cultures and societies differ in their explanations of the world around them. This was a second reason I used said example. To demonstrate that the beliefs a person has will be influenced greatly by the environment they grow up in.

Although if you are to argue that Religion is not a culturally defined understanding and/or set of knowledge this begs the question what is culture. Some definitions which I find to be quite useful and that I personally go from myself can be found here. I will simply include one of them here, to save space. However if you are interested in understanding where I am coming from when I describe something as being a cultural understanding that site will do wonders.
I would furthermore argue that you are using the term religion to address certain cultures in an unfair manner. Religion is often employed by people to denounce or undermine certain cultural understandings and knowledge. As such whether or not a cultural understanding is labeled as religion or not, is more a reflection of the power imbalance between the person doing the labeling and the peoples whose culture is being labeled. To demonstrate what I mean by this imbalance, I will provide part of a really interesting essay which used such terms to Describe the cultural practices of a people living in North America.

Claiming it as a mental illness would be far from accurate, as mental illness would imply negativity, and religion may have come about to keep humans surviving and so would not be very negative in that aspect. Furthermore, mental illnesses are usually described as being against the norm. So, in this particular case and in light of this particular evidence, I would have to argue that atheists would be the ones with the mental illness as they may be lacking the God Net in question completely and they make up the minority for right now.


That is how certain religions are determined, not how religion is formed in the first place. What gives us the ability to acknowledge things as having higher powers than humans? What enables us to give meaning to that which we don't understand? What controls us in such a way to worship the sun, the moon, the water, the Earth, etc? We can acknowledge they exist and that they help us, but why do we worship them? Humans help each other all the time, do we worship all humans as Gods? Everything interacts with each other on some level of benefit. We only choose to worship the things we don't understand. This is not because of culture, but possibly because of our innate ability to do so. Culture just decides what to worship and how. In Hawaii, because the Volcano was not understood and seemed to destroy all the time, the goddess Pele (volcano) is worshiped as a Goddess. In ancient Egypt, the sun, (the force that humans had to answer the most in the desert area they were in,) was their main God. Like I said, the type of religion being practiced is completely culturally based, however the existence of religion in general is not.

The belief in a certain Spiritual Creator is culturally based. The ability to believe in a Spiritual Creator at all, is not. If someone is born in a culture of atheists, they could still wonder why things work and why they exist. This causes them to seek that fulfillment. Even if they are taught that everything can be taught scientifically, they may still wonder about unexplainable things. This ability to question their existence and seek a "spiritual creator" is not based off the culture they grew up in, but rather their innate ability to seek said idea in the first place.

I am not saying the type of religion practiced is genetic as I fully agree that the very diversified religions are extremely culturally based. I have even given examples of Pele and Ra above. What I am arguing is that the ability to practice said religion in the first place may be genetic and may have been instituted through evolution in order to keep our species surviving by letting us bind through similar spiritual discoveries based on the location we were in at the time and what we agreed to worship as a culture.

Take religion out of the list or call it specific religions and I'll be happy. I could argue that many of the objects listed can actually create a specific type of religion. However, to have the ability to see some sort of Spiritual Guidance in the first place is not culturally based. The cultural aspect comes in once religion, as an idea, exists, and then can be further specified on what is worthy to be worshiped.

I am not labeling certain religions as not being culturally based, but rather stating that the idea and existence of religion in the first place is not based off of culture. Once it is established that it exists, then what is decided to be worshiped, is decided by the society in question, based off many factors such as location, environment, other living creatures and their interaction, as well as materials they have and use.

Ok, Tutela de Xaoc...Point taken. Religious people are not mentally ill then based on the majority issue.

No. Sorry. Doesn't exist outside of the minds of people.

May I ask your reasons for feeling that way?

This seems to be where our disagreement stems from, so I will try to focus on this point here. My point in regards to your labeling of certain cultural understandings as being 'religion' is that this is an unfair process which creates a power imbalance between yourself and the cultural understandings you are labeling. In order to demonstrate this imbalance I provided an example from an essay which applied the same labeling to U.S.A culture. In the paragraph I quoted, you may have noticed that they are talking about Dentists.

However by describing it in such a manner they were challenging its very legitimacy. I strongly challenge the legitimacy of some cultural understandings being labeled as religion, while others are not. As it is only because we define them as being religion and actively put them into a separate category to understandings such a science that it becomes so. An observation made by Margaret Trawick which supports my power imbalance assertion is

I would assert that this is what you have been doing this whole time, by so actively labeling specific cultural knowledge and understandings as being religion. If we look at your questions, we notice they are consistently emphasizing a socially defined difference between 'religion' and 'science'. Surely you could ask many of the same questions of science or any other cultural understanding. Why is it that this particular means of culturally understanding the world is so unique that it should be critiqued more strongly that 'western science'?