Man is hard-wired to believe. Many of the most fierce atheists are "superstitious.

[Joe Chi Minh]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1211511/Why-born-believe-God-Its-wired-brain-says-psychologist.html

[tbyg52]

1. >>Man is hard-wired to believe.

Quite possible. Still doesn't prove there's anything to believe *in*.

[Joe Chi Minh]

3. Quite right. But the superstitious squeamishness of the scornful atheist

is rather humorious, isn't it? Would you feel comfortable walking around for a day wearing a pullover of Geoffey Dahmer or Ted Bundy?
Or cut up a cherished photo?

[ZombieHorde]

6. I don't see how not cutting up a cherished photo is superstitious. nt

[Joe Chi Minh]

13. Well that depends. I thought that too. Perhaps, he should have asked them to

stick pins in the pictures of their nearest and dearest, approximately in the area of the heart, maybe.

[tbyg52]

18. I still would not do it, because I would not want to mutilate the photo.

A *copy*, no problem. I wouldn't have thought it up on my own, but I'd be glad to contribute to research..... ;->

[Warpy]

9. The t-shirt thing is just plain tacky and offensive to many people

I have cut up a lot of cherished photos to put into collages. However, there are some of specific occasions I keep intact because they help me remember that occasion.

What is your point?

Belief might be hard wired for believers, but the lack of belief has to be hard wired for the rest.

Remember, I just believe in one god less than they do.

As for real superstition, there's only the smallest Irish superstition nagging at the back of my mind that disasters happen in groups of 3. My life is not upset when they fail to.

That article is just one more believer trying to describe atheists in his own terms of hard wired belief. It never works and believers need to give it up.

Try doing it next year for Lent. Maybe it'll become a habit.

[Joe Chi Minh]

15. Ah, Warpy, Warpy, Warpy. More atheist fantasy. It works so well a large majority of mankind,

almost all far wiser than Western man, believe in a God or Gods; a supernatural realm.

Of course, it's tacky, but so much worse - and that is what you are trying to downplay in your facile fashion. Indeed, it should be a very serious indictator.

But as for the pastiches, how about sticking pins in the person or people in those photos?

[Warpy]

21. Why would I want to stick pins in the collages?

It wouldn't do the surfaces any good and would cause the whole piece to degrade faster. It's just plain silly.

Why do believers always offer such silly ideas?

Better examples of superstition include triskedecaphobia and the avoidance of black cats. Not vandalizing family portraits is hardly proof of anything but wanting to keep them around to remember people long dead. Vandalizing them might be evidence of superstition if you came from that type of family.

As for your argumentum ad populum, it simply doesn't work. There are always individual variations outside any statistical norm.

Now about refraining from defining people you don't understand at all in your own narrow terms--it's time to consider abandoning it. The whole strategy is not working well for you.

[Joe Chi Minh]

22. Well, I expect there are more atheists who would not want to take a chance on

the credentials of voodoo beliefs with their loved ones. And a very healthy thing that is too, imo.

Everything precious to us in this life relates to our emotions and our sense of emotional well-being or otherwise. That is why he used tacky and/or fearful experimental devices. If we have food and shelter, family and/or friends, the rest is really dross. I spend most of my waking hours in front of this computer, but I could live happily without it.

"There are always individual variations outside any statistical norm." That is just a puerile point. Did I deny that. On the contrary, your tiny minority forms just such a group. You're all at sea. Out of your depth.

[Warpy]

23. I wasn't aware I was in the presence of such a superior being

I knew god was dead, but I wasn't aware you'd gotten the job.

Congratulations!

(BTW, you might want to look up "puerile")

[iris27]

27. Warpy doesn't fit your pat theory, so you assume zie must be an outlier and

that "most" atheists must fit into the nice little box of your expectations? Well, sorry, I'm another one who has no problem demolishing copies of treasured pictures (do it quite often for scrapbooking actually...cutting of my dead grandmother's head and everything!), and would be fine with sticking pins into copies of photos of loved ones if we're running an experiment about who is or isn't willing to risk the chance that voodoo is real. I also live on a dead-end street, inviting absolute ruin into my life - at least according to practitioners of feng shui.

Besides, I don't know what your religious background is, but when I grew up Lutheran, we were taught that superstition was a sin, because it meant you didn't trust in God's protection. So how does THAT fit in with the way you've twisted this article - and the way the article twisted the original research?

[tbyg52]

12. I would refuse to do either one, but it wouldn't have a thing to do with "superstition." nt

[mike_c]

4. exactly so....

And I do agree that religious belief is hardwired to some extent-- certainly all behavior has a genetic component and religious behavior is no different. Add layers of sociality and self/group/other patterned responses and it's easy to see where religious belief might be hardwired. At least, the notion is a damned good working hypothesis in search of some data!

[Joe Chi Minh]

11. "And religious behaviour is no different." You may well be correct in the strict, narrow sense

of those words, relating as they do to just "a component". But that is the key phrase, and can be so easily missed by the thrust of your follow-up (possibly in accordance with the author's). That such physical hard-wiring would be the be-all and end-all of religious belief, would be an unwarranted assumption - though arguably a theoretical possibility. I use "arguably" in the broadest sense, but that takes us into areas of knowledge, reductionist science knows not of - to paraphrase Pascal, a mathematician, physicist and religious philosopher.

[hatrack]

2. Ah, yes, the Daily Mail

No particular editorial bias there . . .

[Joe Chi Minh]

5. Only the theistic bias of a very large majority of mankind. And you don't have one in relation

to your belief or lack of belief?

[ZombieHorde]

7. The article is pretty vague, I wish there was some more details. edit: I see why now.

There was not a real experiment. This is just the musings of a psychologist.

[Joe Chi Minh]

16. Oh. Not real experiments. I don't think Englsih can be your first language.

[tbyg52]

19. >>I don't think Englsih can be your first language.

Huh? Is this a jab, a gratuitous assumption, or just a non sequitur? Just curious.....

>>Englsih

Oh, or a little joke....?!

[trotsky]

34. KCDM the 3rd has an inferiority complex.

He lashes out against atheists in order to compensate. He is best left ignored.

[ZombieHorde]

24. You are right, Englsih is not my first language, English is my first language.

Not real experiments.

I stated, "not a real experiment," as opposed to your, "not real experiments," but I understand you speak Englsih, so your way may be right for you.

[pokercat999]

8. From the article:

"Another experiment involved asking subjects to cut up a treasured photograph. When his team then measured their sweat production - which is what lie-detector tests monitor - there was a jump in the reading. This did not occur when destroying an object of less sentimental significance.
'This shows how superstition is hardwired into our brains,' he added."


No it doesn't show that at all. It shows the person had an interest in one object and not in the other.

However if other parts of the article are true, that people are hard wired for religion it might lead us discover that religions are created not from fact but from superstitions among other reasons.

[tbyg52]

14. I must admit to always having assumed it's something hardwired -

not to believe all by one's self, perhaps, but to go along with how one is indoctrinated. How else to explain the number of churches and the statistic that people are most likely to be the same religion as their parents?

But I have no proof and have not given it any very deep thought - all I want from religion is for church marquees to quit telling me I'm going to hell..... ;->

[sakabatou]

10. I am?

[FarrenH]

17. No evidence of being hardwired to believe presented at all. None.

Unless the article is misrepresenting the scientist and he has some evidence not described in the article. None of the behaviour described amounts to evidence for being hardwired for religion.

PZ Myers has already provided a powerful rebuttal to the purported evidence being presented. When children are one year old their "natural, intuitive way of reasoning that leads them to all kinds of supernatural beliefs" makes it difficult for them to comprehend that moms face still exists when she hides it behind her hands. And its likely that their reactions when playing peek-a-boo map to specific electrical activity in the brain. But only a fool would suggest that that leads an adult to a compulsion to believe people cease to exist when they're not around. A compulsion that makes it "futile to try to get people to abandon their beliefs because these come from such a 'fundamental level'."

And even a smidgen of neurological knowledge tells you that even the most rational people have irrational impulses simply because of no-longer-useful survival instincts and the way learning takes place in neural networks, without wiring for some mystical experience being required to account for it. So behavioral evidence from adults with some common cultural experience is largely irrelevant.

Even the possibility that irrational decisions have been mapped to electrical activity in particular areas of the brain is fraught with problems. A very strict definition for "irrational" or "superstitious" must be supplied, for a start. And even then one can rationally assume large parts of the brain aren't involved simply because of the broader category of thought involved.

You wouldn't expect a motor reflex in the left foot when someone is thinking about cutting up a photo, for instance. One would expect activity to be localised to some degree in the brain for most tasks. So it has to be shown that the activity being observed is not merely localised but close to unique for that particular strict definition of "superstitious" thought. I doubt such evidence is available, but perhaps Hood has been poorly represented by the article above.

What a load of bollocks. Really poor science, on the face of it.

[centristgrandpa]

20. not as superstitiOus as those who follow faith base malarky...

aNd some believe that GOD exist...whose hard-wired?

[darkstar3]

25. Simply put: Bullshit.

To expound:

1. Please TRY to find sources for your flamebait that aren't constantly used by other, shall we say, less savory websites.
2. Remember, if you don't want broad-brushes applied to your faith, try not to apply them to other faiths (or the lack thereof).
3. The piece you link to is armchair psychology, and total shite.
4. If "flattery will get you nowhere," just where do you think mockery is going to get you?

Oi...

[laconicsax]

26. Yay! An article that misrepresents research to make a case for faithiesm.

Murdoch's Times reported on this earlier this week: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article6823229.ece

That article made the following leaps--
Research: Superstition is the path of least resistance in the brain.
Article: We're born to believe!

Research: Most people hold superstitious beliefs.
Article: God exists!

This article just paraphrases of the Times article and makes the same mistakes.

Richard Dawkins never made such a simplistic argument as laid out in the Times and parroted in the Daily Mail. If any of the three people writing these two articles had ever bothered to read The God Delusion they'd know this. PZ Myers is dead on when he says that "The God Delusion really is becoming one of those books beloved by those who haven't read it for their ability to misrepresent it."

Let's get one thing straight. The research being reported on here shows a strong tendency towards superstition. It doesn't say that religion is an instinct, it doesn't say that we're "born to believe." Even if it did, so what? We're also born to perceive the world as a flat, unmovable object at the center of the universe. We're born without an understanding of object permanence--we have to learn that just because we can't see something or someone doesn't mean that it's gone forever or doesn't exist.

In both cases we consider rising above the infantile mindset a good thing, so why stop there? Since when is 'infants believe it' a good case for anything?

Superstitious thought is a natural part of animal thinking--pigeons demonstrate this and classical conditioning relies on it. You can train a dog to park its butt on the ground when you say "sit" because of it. Since when is a basic animal instinct a good case for believing that an omnipotent deity?

Take a gander at Bruce Hood's reaction to these articles on his work: http://brucemhood.wordpress.com/2009/09/08/i-never-said/

As Saturday night passed, I thought that they had probably decided to drop the piece as it did not fit with the simple “Born to Believe in God” angle that he wanted to push when we initially spoke. So imagine my horror to read the title of the piece in the Sunday Times. In fact, when you read the actual piece it does have me saying that beliefs are much more complex than either nature of nurture (to use that completely unsatisfactory dichotomy that is the mark of naive reasoning so favoured by journalists). And there were factual errors. I have not done a study on atheism and moral contamination beliefs about hypothetical organ transplantation though I daresay that all people irrespective of their religious persuasion would show the same effects that we found in groups of students. Still it was printed as a study on atheism.

The problem was compounded the following day with pieces in “The Daily Mail” and “The Daily Telegraph” regurgitating new versions of the story with added insertions. And so on…. like Chinese whispers the story has become distorted with individuals adding their own interpretations and agendas.

[Odin2005]

28. Many people with Asperger's Syndrome would like to disagree with your assertion

Superstitious thinking NEVER made any sense to me, even when I was little.

Emotional attachments is NOT the same thing as superstition. What utter crap.

[Iggo]

29. So then I must have faulty wiring, I guess.

Thank gawd. :rofl:

[moggie]

30. Reading the Daily Mail is bad for you

I've noticed you link to the Daily Mail a fair bit. If you stopped reading that hate-filled, right-wing rag, I think you'd feel less cranky.

[Christa]

31. You beat me to it

:fistbump:

[Deep13]

32. Of course that is not even an argument for the reality of god...

...let alone proof.

[Evoman]

33. Yeah, and so is picking your nose and eating it.

That's why almost all kids do it, and probably a good percentage of adults.

[Fozzledick]

35. I don't believe it!

[Book Lover]

36. Joe, this is not worthy of you

When I read what you write in the Catholic forum, I read the words of a thinking and compassionate person. This is snarky, and hurtful. Was Jesus snarky or hurtful?

[TZ]

37. The dailymail is a right wing hate mongering rag

the equivalent of Fox news. WAY TO GO ON POSTING FREEPER SOURCES DUDE...:woohoo:
Once again you show a total lack of critical thinking ability.