4th April 2014, 12:59 PM
Wax Wrote:What I find interesting are the theories behind why humans are hard wired to belive in things like religion and other concepts that you cannot prove or disprove. Aspects of a none physical world such as right and wrong. I think it was Prachett who said you can take the physical world a part and put it though a grinder but nowhere would you find one physical particle of beauty, love or hate . Myths are important to humans and "truth" is in the mind of the believer. This goes as much for scientific theory as religion though one you can deconstruct and test for physical laws. The other you can probably also deconstruct and test for rules that show how cognative processes developed in humans.
Remove our ability to believe in the impossible and you remove part of what makes us human. (I am not a creationist but I believe people have the right to express ideas up to the point when they begin to hurt themselves and others)
Me too.........but I'm more interested in the evidence of HOW humans learn to believe in things like religion and other concepts that you cannot prove or disprove. These things are taught, they are not hard wired.
PP is on the nail.
Just like I was taught and raised from an early age to question everything and seek evidence. Not to be bound by religious or other indoctrination, even that which I was being raised by...........
Many others in this world are raised to think and do as they are told.
It probably has its root in an evolutionary tactic of how to transfer so much information from one generation to the next, by imitation and copying without reasoning. Combined with competition tactics for resources....i.e. the internal division of who is us and who is them and why.
There was some really interesting experiments on baby chimps and baby humans with puzzle boxes to see the difference in cognative approaches to a problem. Saw it on TV so don't know where the experiments are published.
While I agree with GK that this may all be being blown out of proportion.........news band wagons ho.........and Dawkin-esq polarising of scientists versus religion doesn't help anyone.........I would also warn that yes, survival of the fittest is the one universal fundamental principle, the one universal law that dictates everything else.........your grand unified theory if you like.....UNLESS, competition between species is removed, but that is, of course, impossible.
Its a cold-hearted view of the universe I know, but at least its fair.
For something to 'live' something else has to 'die', or for you physicists out there, Energy can be neither created nor destroyed, but can change form - Law of conservation of energy.