*"Believe in Aliens Instead of God? "*

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I need to go and think some more about it.
i only just got up, at an almost unprecedently early hour and need to go get a coffee. Been fun debating. I am going to "imagine" myself" some more into believing in alien life, to see what dif it makes.
Re religion; i think it's important not to vilify it as if was mostly evil/negative. I will think out some concrete examples of its role in moral development, in social cohesion and technological advance, which by the way is not negligible, eg; the arabs and the egyptians made most of their scientific progress as a result of RELIGIOUS searchings for understanding.

In what way is belief in alien life "distracting"? Compared to ANy other idea? In what way is it not "facing reality squarely"? That is only according to your definition of reality, one which dismisses alien life as a "distraction", as "comforting", thus of no value, as if comfort is of no use to anyone. Whereas it could be that it is such an essential human need, one recognised by the earliest creators of "religion", which if not satisfied in the majority of the population leads to increasingly nihilistic behaviour. After all we are NOT just creatures of instinct. humans maybe need "comfort"/meaning, like all animals need water, if they are to advance, continue.

All for now.

Last edited by ouinon on 20 Jan 2008, 6:45 pm, edited 5 times in total.

I have enjoyed the time. Thanks.

I think your point about arabs (and here, more precisely, I think you should mean Islamic arabs) is on target. I know that algebra was improved significantly because of the difficulties posed by the Q'ran regarding the disposition of wealth and land, for example. And that was a religious purpose that advanced mathematics. However, it was to serve a religious purpose and that had its separate effect, as well. The research in mathematics was not one of a free inquiry here. But instead a directed one. So mathematics was advanced along narrow lines to serve certain purposes. There were side effects to be true.

I will await your examples.

Jon

Stonehenge, the pyramids, through the Acropolis of Athens, Incan and Aztec temples, to cathedrals and mosques. Many/most of which oddly enough are World Heritage Sites or something. The visual arts and music of the european middle ages, all the result of religious activity. etc etc. The dreaming art of australian aboriginals, the wall paintings and carvings of Hindu temples.
Modern science is even the result of christian thinkers after its fruitful collision with islam in the late middle ages. etc etc.

I realised that unless say that it would have been better if humans had never stopped being nomadic hunter gatherers because we would have avoided causing a lot of damage that way, there was no end to the ways in which religion had impacted favourably on society.

However, I found a very interesting, to me anyway because i had never heard of any of this, article/review on the net about new thinking on the phenomenon of religious belief. That it exists perhaps because of exactly what i suggested, the increased size of our brain sometime in the last 50,000 years, which creates a space for it, formed by the "intersection" of three "new" aspects of cognitive function, those of
a)belief in agency, which is very good for survival cos tends to protect from surprise/sneak attacks etc etc
b)tendency to seek/find causation, even when there is none; a kind of automatic searching for patterns, also very useful for survival, and
c)theory of mind, the ability to imagine someone elses mind as separate from ones own, therefore in a sense the possibility of seeing a mind as independent of a body.

The big argument is then about whether this "accidental byproduct" would have had any survival advantages itself. That is still up for debate.

For most of the population atheism is actually more difficult than belief. For a minority with reduced theory of mind, if there IS anything in that appellation, atheism might be more natural.

Hmm, for most people it is a need, an empty space which fills itself, with whatever belief is going. To not do so takes conscious thought, EFFORT.

Anyway, here is the link; very long and interesting ! !

http://www.scribd.com/doc/2653/Darwins- ... f-Religion

Well, that's a new thought. Am going to go away and think about it. Imagine if a "byproduct" was responsible for all that architecture, and art, and music, and thought!! And passion. Wow!!

Last edited by ouinon on 22 Jan 2008, 3:21 am, edited 9 times in total.

I am kind of under the weather, today (in case the idiom isn't also a french one -- this means I'm 'sick' today.) I just glanced over your comment and I'll read it in more detail when my headache abates a bit.

In general, I think my desire for examples isn't supposed to be about cathedrals and mosques, paintings or pyramids. Can you look back a bit and see what I was talking about there? I didn't ever claim that religious expression (oppression might be a better word) hasn't produced some objects of beauty. That's a different subject, really, and not about something I'm considering. A strawman. I'll come back to that in more detail on my own when I can, if in looking back you cannot see what I was talking about a few posts back.

Jon

I realised it would involve hours of work to present even a few examples in fairness, in all their ambiguity and complexity.
However, while looking I found the article I've linked to above, about brain structure and how the newly emerging cognitive functions created a built-in tendency to religious belief.

If can't fight my brains structure completely i at least want to choose carefully so is as useful/clear eyed a belief as possible! Investing small stones, clay objects, or other "things", with secret life to satisfy my yearning like Jung did is almost enough to satisfy my own "tendency" I think, and an object can be so abstract, no attached values, whereas ideas are so loaded with them.

Last edited by ouinon on 22 Jan 2008, 3:26 am, edited 8 times in total.

Isn't that like Scientology?

Seriously though, I believe in a 'God', I also believe in aliens, and I believe God and evolution and science can all sit perfectly happily together. No problems.

This world would be vastly different if it weren't for religion anyway, as has been said...

With reference to the cognitive function theory for religious belief as simple byproduct of brain structure, although people on Autism spectrum are supposed to lack one of the three elements, that of "Theory of Mind", Aspergers on the other hand have buckets of that tendency to pattern recognition, and finding meaning in confusion, etc ( otherwise known as fluid intelligence), so there could be some serious religious tendencies too ! !


PS: I think it's interesting how story tellers got to work almost immediately on repairing the breach the last 100 years, on creating something else to fill the cognitive hole, for people to believe in.; suddenly a demand for a certain kind of story; sci-fi, and detective fiction,( agency, pattern recognition, and theory of mind).

Last edited by ouinon on 22 Jan 2008, 3:30 am, edited 1 time in total.

LeKiwi; i am so slow sometimes. Wasn't until I had switched whole system off and gone to bed that realise you hit nail on head.
....Hubbard had this idea already!! Combine aliens with psychobabble/cognitive psychotherapy ideas ( which resemble a kind of detective story in your own head), and bingo, new religion.
OMG.

Thank you for that, LeKiwi, sorry took a while to get into my head!

Inadvertently seen behind the scenes at the creation of Scientology.

Last edited by ouinon on 22 Jan 2008, 3:32 am, edited 1 time in total.

If this theory is sound then it might be possible to say that the vast majority of the population are in a sense "dependent" on religious/irrational/superstitious beliefs of some kind, their cognitive brain functions will create the need in them. They will believe almost anything going, and could be vulnerable to those who do NOT suffer from such knee jerk diffuse belief states, or whose belief states are more dramatically black and white.

There may have been an advantage in a relative detachment from this belief reflex, or in it's being disrupted, subject/open to reflection, and for people who discovered they could guide and channel this tendency in others, and make something productive out of it (for themselves? Or for everybody? With the very best of intentions? ! ) Early glorious success , strengthening tribal identity, etc , may have reinforced belief that it was a good thing.

Just thinking how drug dealers traditionally, in the case of hard drugs, do NOT use the stuff themselves. Who better to run religions than those who are themselves not subject to the "belief-urge/hunger". Does that make religion bad tho?

Is uncontrolled superstition actually less destructive in the long run than organised belief?
Anyone ? Is it better that people believe in a WIDE range of everything from aliens, gods, spirits, astrology and tarot cards, palm reading and clairvoyance, tea leaves and i-ching, to their cars, fluffy toys, or latest gadget, etc etc, than in a centrally created and stored/protected/banked mental totem called god?

Yes, I remember being pretty astonished and horrified when i discovered how early christianity had eradicated almost all traces of the earlier european religions, destroying temples and suppressing ceremonies with violence etc, something that is almost never mentioned whereas the inquisition is common knowledge.

This article, suggesting to me how religion might have literally represented exploitation of a majority human need by those relatively immune to it, and/or with a particularly black and white version of it, even if sometimes was with good intentions, has been very useful.

Last edited by ouinon on 22 Jan 2008, 3:34 am, edited 2 times in total.

I think the theory, about religious/superstitious belief being the by-product of recent cognitive evolution, helps to see it as a majority weakness, a disability, a blindspot, with no mysteriously beautiful nature to it. What is huge and awe inspiring and horrifying is the empire built on it. Organised religion is an industry based on giving people their "medicine", so that they feel alright.

Last edited by ouinon on 22 Jan 2008, 3:39 am, edited 2 times in total.

It certainly is plausable that there are other life forms in the universe. However, I think replacing belief in superstition with another kind of belief is misguided. We don't know if it is even possible to contact other life forms, or if they are too far away.

My question is has anyone here on the WP been abducted personally?
I've read that five million americans a year have reported this "strange phenomenon."
Though as a footnote this article included something about double-wides and Elvis bumper-stickers...
... Consequently, it mustn't have been of great importance.

If I may offer my opinion, I believe that many a folk entertain delusions to make life more palliatable. Whether it be bible scripture or monthly visits from aliens whom probe one's ass like it's chinese buffet, I tend to ignore these ludicrousities; I've got my own delusions to support.

I think it's **possible** that **some** of the people who claim to have been obducted by aliens were telling the truth. No doubt there are also people who filed reports for attention or publicity or something as well though.

That is interesting, because is closely related to the question that i've been asking myself since reading the article at:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/2653/Darwins- ... f-Religion

because it seems to suggest that most people have a hard-wired tendency to attribute/assign agency and causality incorrectly/when there is none, and to imagine fully fledged consciousness /mind outside of themselves, which has been of immense use for survival but also produces superstition and religious belief.

Which means that most people always WILL have a tendency to superstitious/religious belief, for the foreseeable future, unless find some way of excising it from brains(! !), but which would also excise three very important cognitive functions at same time.

So what is to be done with "it" ( this built-in need/tendency) ? Leave it up to everybody to satisfy the need in their own way, or attempt to "run" it as the huge organised religions have done? Leave it entirely up to free-market forces, each church fighting for its share, and a few achieving a monopoly from time to time with whatever consequences, or encourage small religious/superstition businesses, protect them, put restraints on the size of churches, or at least on the kind of activities they can engage in?

After all, if "religion/superstition" is a need, that most humans inevitably experience to some extent or other, then organisations ( of whatever size) catering to this need should perhaps be subject to the same rules and regulations as are the food and agriculture industries, for instance, to protect people from the biggest abuses, and to protect society from poisonous effects too.

Belief in alien life could perhaps be a positive thing, if not overwhelmed by paranoia, but perhaps there will always be some people for whom belief in the currently inaccessible/unperceived involves paranoia; after all the cognitive capacity to attribute agency and causality will tend towards attributing it too much in order to survive, which is not so far from paranoia.

But, for the same reasons as food and agriculture industries are not supposed to play a role in government, I propose that no religious/superstitious businesses/organisations should be allowed to play a role in/be connected to any government either!
Implementing that would involve some interesting changes.....! !

Last edited by ouinon on 22 Jan 2008, 7:54 am, edited 3 times in total.

The thing is that I don't believe that it can be a majority phenomenon, because for example the extraordinarily NT father of my son has no interest in religion, attributes agency and cause to nothing at all off his own bat, except in the case of the most obvious and easily verifiable things. He is the opposite of superstitious, though very prone to believing what other people tell him.
And there are thousands, millions, like him. Who'll do what they're told, ask no questions, docilely practice a religion if they have to, but without needing it at all.

So the tendency to religious belief arising from the intersection of these three cognitive functions is possibly confined to a minority ( however sizable) of the population; those with higher fluid intelligence, including the tendency to ascribe things to agencies and causes, ( as part of fluid intelligence's "pattern recognition" and "finding meaning in confusion"),..... at the same time as having "theory of mind",.. (tho am dubious about what this last might mean seeing as psychologists are increasingly unclear about what exactly the tests for it are measuring).

Religious/superstitious belief/tendencies may be more like a dysfunction, affecting a certain number of the population, having generally fairly harmless consequences, but sometimes, particularly when channelled by various individuals and/or organisations, having quite astonishingly disastrous effects.

Society needs laws to protect people with this brain-quirk from exploitation by others for political purposes, financial profit or other accumulation of power.
I am sure tests could be designed to measure this neurological condition. It's not just the same thing as fluid intelligence obviously. And once people with the condition were labelled, they could receive support, protection, and understanding.

Or is that what churches do/have always done, in return for a lot of power etc, like Big Pharma does with pills?

Last edited by ouinon on 23 Jan 2008, 6:58 am, edited 1 time in total.