science4ever

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/scienceonreligion/2013/07/religion-is-it-always-tribal/ He says that this is a very well known phenomena. Schools has such initiation rites and even at work you go through a kind of test period to become part of the work team. If you behave too annoying they tend to decide to force you to leave work. Religions too has these kind of tests of loyalty to stand the pain or else lose the gain of being member . One explanation is to ward of cheaters. The pain should be so intense that cheaters prefer to not even try. What is your view on this?

Here is a suggestion from Cognitive_science_of_religion http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_science_of_religion Maybe that is the one with best support or that have the consensus among the researchers. Adaptation as an explanation seems much less supported. What else than these exists? What kind if research experiments would be needed for to find out which explanation that is the best model? Maybe such experiments would not be ethical to do? I mean it would not be morally fair to start up a fake religion for to test if it worked. And if one tell that it is a faked religion that is used for a test how many would want to participate? So research seems very hard to do? One can only rely on self reporting and how reliable are such?

G that is purely natural and has nothing to do with anything supernatural. Their ways to behave triggers similar bodily patterns in us one can see it as body language through inner mimicking of their outer behavior and we feel that in our body due to that inner mimicking so it is not some kind of supernatural energy or field that radiate it is our body that perceive their body language and tone of voice and eye movement and poster of the body and how their behavior relate to what they are saying and the words and all that together get "read" by our body and it guess base don earlier such guesses through our whole life getting feedback on our take on what it means when people show such attitudes. Even if there existed a god we would still make up our human anthropomorphic stories because that comes natural to us to do. We do that for real people all the time. I don't trust that we see others the way they really are. We always see them through our own bias and our way to take things. We are within a bubble of interpretation that is unique for each individual.

Yes I found a site where they had done that but not sure how to find it again. Natural overtones is interesting too. Some do coincide with our notes or tones that we use for melodies so it could be our brain really hear them inside too. some would say they are just cultural constructs but I find that not very likely. Natural fifths seems to be something musically talented persons hear without having formal education or having to be told about it they just hear it naturally.

I would not name it amateur science at all due to me not structured and science is a highly structured biz. I test out different shapes of mouth pieces for lip reed instruments like Trumpet like new instruments. Very laid back non ambitious just for fun "sci" not real science. It is really fun. Take the trumpets they have way back in time. Baroque Trumpet. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baroque_trumpet Here is a Trumpet guy on internet giving all the right dimensions. Making a PVC Natrual Trumpet he mispelled natural there. He gives both inch and metrics to help us with different thumbs I bought such pvc at a local mall cost almost nothing. The expensive part is the mouthpiece he use a standard 7C Trumpet. I bought on in plastic from Kelly for some 25 to 30USD depending on color. But I wanted to know acoustics so I tested a lot of wild ideas how to get the sound without having to buy a real mouth piece. So I used my imagination and as long as one have fun why not try it out?

Seems there are many currect suggestion from science on how religion works. Some refer to religion as an adaptation. others say it is a byproduct. I know to little about such theorethical thinking. Has anybody listed all these suggestion and tried to evaluate them? Which theory seems to have best support from experiment or actual research on believers. One big problem to get reliable knowledge seems to be on one hand the ethics of experimenting it is morally wrong to make a test religion and start to convert people to it and if you tell them that it is a test religion that later will lose financial and staff support how many would still partiticipate and how reliable would that research really be if it was all fake? on the other hand how ethical is it to make a real religion based on science theoretical knowledge would that even get funded and be approved of by those that have the money? So seen from a strict science perspective what is the best explanation for how religion works and what can be tested in practice without getting un-ethical and goind far out into forbidden science?

I got contacted today by a fervent believer in this stuff so maybe it works like a variant of Transhumanism or even as a religious faith but expressing itself using pseudo science. This guy has named it NEXUS THEORY The motivation seems to be this So to me it looks like a New Religious Movement (NRM) that use sophistery to sound scientific? Think of it it means they have done this now for some 4 years so they don't want to give up obviously. Has there come any new reliable information that give any credit to it? In case anybody wonder about my own take on this claim "we are all living parallel illusions of separateness." I trust it is the other way around. we are all living our lives in total separateness due to how the body/brain works.

words are tools for human communication. Humans agree upon how to use words. the usage change over time and dictionaries try to reflect the current usage but also to indicate if a usage was archaic or formal and so on. When you use the word conscious the way you do here then seen from my perspective you go way beyond what the word is used normally. you use some kind of special pleading. As I get it hat is what Moontanman and others point out to you. That plants react chemically is for science to find good words for and I don't trust the scientist would get approved of if they say that the plants really are conscious of what it chemically react to. the word conscious is for the level that higher mammals funtion on. When my mother had a stroke and lost all speech then she did not seem to be aware of that she failed to speak at all. she acted as if her "speech" was totally okay but it had no content. Had she been aware of that her speech was totally non-comprehensible then she whould have tried to ask for pen and paper using some kind of hand sign scribling in her hand and pointing to where there where a note block for that purpose and had written somehing on it. When we for some ten years tried to at least get her to be aware of signing yes or no to show her wants that failed too. Yes and no seemed to abstract for her to grasp. Had she been aware she could have accepted that thumbs up is yes and thumbs down is no. Or nodding her head is yes and shaking head left right is no. smiling can be yes and looking grumpy could signal no to a question like Do you need to ... whatever we thought she wanted. She was awake but how aware was she? Consciousness as a word is used in many ways and to saw that a plant is conscuous that it is in danger seems to stress how to use the word too much

Ed I am very bad at logic and even if the atheists say that formally I am atheist I don't feel like atheist I rather feel like being a self identified theist but the theist would say that my God is a false one so neither atheist nor theist nor agnostic seems to be good words for me. My take is that the most logical way to relate to God is to realize that it is a human construct a kind of psychological tool for both individual and social group norm setting. So I am a too user. Would be wrong to say that I am a tool maker but user of a social psychological tool sounds right. Philosophy does not seems to be able to handly social tools very well. To ask if the tool exist outside of human culture is not get what a social psychological tool is. Compare with other social tools like sport and music. Way back in time at least music had supernatural explanations. A gift from the gods. Now we realize that music is a cultural tool for entertainment. My view is that religion is a social tool. Why should it be so hard to make good logical reasoning for social tools? You say that Agnosticism is the more or most logical position but theists would say that they do the best logical reasoning and atheists most likely would say atheism is the default most reasonable way to see it. If all of us comes to different conclusions how useful then are philosophy?

I have left the thread but if one read what wiki say as it is intended by the authors then it does not follow what you claim it to do. Moontanman is right.

John I agree that is a good explanation. The reason I wanted or felt a need for a logical reasonable definition is that that is what atheists usually demand. The atheist say that You either believer in a live real supernatural god or you do not. No description other than the one above formulated by atheists satisfy them. I can not know but I do find it likely that if you present your explanation above to an atheist forum then they either say it is trivially true and thus irrelevant to them or they say that it would make that believer an atheist because the believer are aware of that if they followed the atheist logic then they most likely would have to admit they have no good argument for God apart from that it feels good to have that relation with God. So I would need to combine your insight with what Phi for All wrote and use that as the basis for a logical reasoning expressed more formally. But I have no talent for doing such. I think you say something important about logic being a distraction to the faith. Expressed in my clumsy way. 1. A believer already have that faith in God and if they want to use logic for to defend their faith in God then they start from that position. I believe that God exists how do I defend that faith? 2. Atheists have never had a belief in God or have lost the childhood faith and lack faith now and they start from that position. I am without faith in God and I defend that position using logic. 3. Both believer and atheist would see logic that start from a psycological and social perspective as a distraction? they either trust philosophy and thus are motivated to use formal logic on their views or they don't trust philosophy and have no inner motivation for to use formal logical reasoning. 4. From an outsider perspective it seems both are locked into defending their positions. None of them seems to be willing to see their position from an outsiders behavioral perspective.

Okay, I think I understand what you try to do. I try to leave this thread remind me if I accidently return to it. the reason is that I have seen no evidence for that philsophy know anything about being conscious unless they learned it from science.

I loved cognitive dissonance from day one I heard about it. Leon Festinger was one of my favored scientist But this many years later science has come up with more refined variation of cognitive dissonance. I have not followed the progress from cognitive dissonance to the more recent suggestion but sure I agree 100% that cognitive dissonance is part of the explanation but how do you make a formal short to the point text about that fact? If you just say. Believers believe in god due to them doing cognitive dissonance that maybe works for those that have read a lot about what these words refers to. How do you do a logical definition of how faith in god works using the idea of cognitive dissonance? What exactly is it that the believer do logically to be in cognitive dissonance? How does it work logically.

Had I known that anything in my text would give you or other that impression then I would have warned that nothing in my text are intended to give that impression. Can you point out what in my text that let you draw that conclusion? Quote and what post of mine. I am surprized taht this is so difficult. I know that I am a confused thinker but in my mind this is really easy logic that almost everybody should be able to grasp. Atheists have asserted that almost every atheist see gods as something humans have made up. What I ask is how does the religious traditions set it up logically so it works for the believers that it works for. that it fails for atheists is obvious and that it fails for a lot of the believers too at times is known since the Bible. Doubting Thomas is even used as an example of such doubt. I talk about those times when it actually work and what is it about it logically that allow that to happen. One of my guesses is taht they just act as if it is the truth about reality. Phi for All wrote that the believers trust in the religious tradition that they commit to. http://www.scienceforums.net/topic/77523-atheist-philosphers-and-logic-of-made-up-gods/#entry756268 Much appreciated that you wrote this Phi for All. Right on the money. That is most likely the best explanation but how do epress that logically? If a very well-known, historically abundant religion tells the potential believer that they must have unswerving faith in the God that particular religious tradition worship then most likely some of these potential believers just trust it on faith. That is my wild guess how one can retell what Phi for All wrote so it has somewhat similar struture as other formal definitions?

But as I get it you take up a minor remark and make a huge problem out of it. Had I know you would make such criticism of that part then I would not had included it. It has very little to do with the way it works. The failure comes in when it fails and not when it works. the whole thread is about the mechanism for why it works. When it fails then it fails. I talk about when it works and the logic for that. To take up for when it fails was a mistake on my part. That is more about risk management or how to deal with the cases when it breaks down. Sure such needs to be addressed too. Compare with Car crashes. Very few refuse to use cars because there is many crashes each year. They trust in the chance that when they take a ride it will go without a crash and get rather surprised if it crash. They had no expected it. Some people actually refuse to fly and they take car or boat or stay at home. Every action can fail. Even walking over the street. Fast car can hit you. could we agree that I should not have mention when it fails. the thread is about the logic for when it works . To get bogged down in when it fails is to misunderstand the whole thing. that is a later much later conseration.

Consciousness is a term for what the brain does. Nature pruduce nothing intentionally. Nature is not aware and decidet on things. Evolution works by natural selection but that is not a consciousness on the level of nature. You use the word consciousness with a definition that has no support in reality. Self Consciousness is a process that needs a complex brain for to happen. Nature has no such brain.

pwagen, I fail to follow you. I wrote the thread to get help with how it works because that is what is a fact. Enough people have faith in it for them to survive as churches. Sure it goes down in for them alarming numbers but seems to stay on a 20% or 15% or 5% of the population so they adjust to that number of potential believers and in some countries the potential believers is much much higher. Politicians act on the statistics. None of the big candidates for presidency in US where atheist so statistically it is working. What you point out is individual failure but that does not seem to have a huge impact on the other believers. Compare with marriage. Statistics say that a huge amoung of all marriages do break up. Still new marriages continue to trust theirs will be for a long long time so getting together is something people do despite the evidence against it to work out is slim. And many marry again soon after they fail and then they fail again and marry again even three or four times. Sure a few realize that it is not easy to get it to work so they say enough is enough. Faith in being a couple and faith in belonging to a religious tradition and being loyal to it seems to be a delusion that enough people have for it to be a noticeable trend. Sure you would answer with the examples of marriages that fail and faith in god that fail. What I ask about and suggest reason for is when it works. That it sometimes fail is not part of the suggestion. That is interesting too and should be part of the suggestion but it is too early to deal with now. Compare with flying. A lot of people failed to trust that it would ever work too. They saw all those flawed experiments of people trying to fly downhill and they ended up crippled or dead and so they pointed out that it would fail. Then the Wright Brothers show it was possible and others tested too and succeeded. pwagen tell me. For those that it works what exactly is it they do to keep faith in god?

EdEarl thanks. I thought of going to see that movie when it was actual on our local movie show theater but the traffic and finding a parking lot. So I wait until our commercial TV afford to show it. pwagen. Your logic and my mogic seems to be not on speaking terms. I have not idea what you talk about. AFAIK my logic is not dependent on what a believer do when they find that their God don't live up to their expectations. The logic I talk about is what is necessary for a god to be functional enough to be one of the world religions. So if you trust your logical capacity tell me in what way what I wrote is not compatible with their gods? Here is my main logical theme about gods. What about that logic is wrong? What would need to be added for it to work?

The important part of my thread is that atheist philosophers since about 1973 has written many books about the logic of how Christians fail to prove that God exist or is alive or real or supernatural. My claim is that one should take what almost every atheist know seriously. Every known God is made up by humans but the way it is made up is hidden to the believer and maybe even to those that made up the God. The logic of a made up god is what is important. How they set it up so it works for them. Michael Martin and all the other philosphers concentrate on the logic of finding proof for God outside of the made up construct that the believers set up. That is to take the made up construct in a too literal way. For to work those that construct a religious tradition with a god need to live up to a certain standard expectation on what to expect from a real alive supernatural God that is creator. It is a logical constraint that seems built into logic itself or at least how our brain is built. For to work logically for the believer the God need by logic necessity to be real and alive and supernatural and creator of the world a maybe some other features that by tradition has become known as something all real gods have. So when a philosopher try to argue with a believer on the logic of if a god is real and alive and supernatural then they go into the made up logic is set up for to be takeing as granted as true. It is by logic necessity set up to be that way for to work. I fail to find better words for it. It is very easy to grasp but difficult to find words for. Could one compare with the illusion that is reflected in everyday speech. The Sun goes up at xx AM today. Everybody know that that is just a saying. In reality it is the Earth that turn and turn and turn once each 24 hours so it looks like if the Sun goes up. Everybody knows this except maybe small children but the language fail to say like that because the natural way to talk about the Sunrise is to say the Sun goes up. It is a illusion and God is an illusion too. The language of religious tradition is not set up to admit that God is an illusion so the religious words are that God is real and alive and supernatural. Edited to place the important part first. older text below To PWagen I don't think you are right. When a god fail to heal or do the miracle that the believer expect then they try to find some explanation to the failure but they still believe as I wrote. "My current take is that even totally made up gods needs to be alive and real and supernatural for to be effective or else the believer turn to these other gods that have those features." Even if a god fail the believer still trust it to be real and supernatural and to really exist. So you have to show that that god fails for every believer that hear about the failure. Take pentecostals or Word of Life believers or Vineyard or some other Christian church. They have such failures each Sunday but does not stop believing that their god exists and are real and supernatural and sometimes do what they expect of God. They list such successes all the time and the failures they try to not pay too much attention to so either I fail to get what you say or something in my text mislead you to misunderstand me. With reservation my poor English is so confusing that it totally mislead every reader this is the best logic I can found about the functional aspect of religious traditions and the believers.

Thanks but if God has become that easy to grasp then Michael Martin would not have had any need for to write that many books what have so abstract words My current take is that even totally made up gods needs to be alive and real and supernatural for to be effective or else the believer turn to these other gods that have those features. Made up gods compete with each other. Some features seems by default to be part of the very definition or else them are seen as mock up false gods. Dictionary seems to retell it right. God - the one Supreme Being, the creator and ruler of the universe. or God from the Free Dictionary That seems to be what people expect from a god. So even consciously made up gods seems to be bound by logic to have those features. That is what my question is about. Why does it not work with a consciously made up natural God. Why does it not work with an openly made up God. As Phi for All point out above Believers can not cope with knowing that God is made up. But all atheists know that that is the case. So this contradiction that all known gods are made up but the way it is made has to hide that it is made up. Do you see what I am trying to point out. when they make up gods they have to hide that that is what they do. So there is logic about it. or consistency requirement. To hide that one made it up and still make it up? Could one compare with a Stage Magician? Amazing Randy or what name such have. They make things disappear or magically appear from nowhere. slight of hand. Here there is a kind of logical slight of words or rhetoric spin or what to name it . I want to understand the logic behind it. How is it done technically? Edit. Correction I am interested in both the person that make up such a god and the person that believe in such made up gods. 1. the person that make up the God most likely is aware in some way they make it up? Or are they too totally unaware of that they made it up? 2. The believer seems by default to have to be totally unaware of that it is a made up god. How do they fail to get aware of that it is made up. To the atheists it is so obvious that faith is ridiculed as something a child could see through so what is technically going on? Logically it should be impossible to come to faith in something one know is not true. Help me sort it out.

Could it be very individual. I had a religious Mom and atheist Dad and to me that cognitive dissonance has been a great burden but that could be due to me sensitive to body language and not everybody do care that much about how parents approve of you or not. So I vote for that it is highly individual.

I think it is cultural tradition that use language in a misleading way. But it is also how evolution made our brain that create an illusion. It is the other way around. It is the body that get self awareness but that get expressed consciously the way you retell it. so I trust it is a combination of how evolution made our brains and then culture has a way to talk about how that feels so the language expressions we use are misleading. The body describe it from the illusional experience. Compare how we talk about the Sun going up and down. The Sun is described how it appear to go around Earth. An illusion because in reality it is the Earth that turns and that create the illusion that the Sun goes up in East and down in West while it is the Earth that turn in 24 hours and the Sun is 8 lightminutes away and does not go around Earth. Earth travel a 364 travel around the Sun instead. So it is a perspective illusion that your soul or consciousness "have" a body. It is the other way around. processes in your brain get aware of being self aware and that experience find words for that process that is misleading.

Yes Richard Dawkins made a scale where 7 was absolute sureness there is no God and he placed himself at 6.9 so close to being very sure so he saw himself fornally as agnostic agreeign with you there but my argument is that even if such god would exist the only think you could say about that god would be made up stories that you and other humans made up. You would have no reliable knowledge about such a god, all words would be pure speculations = made up stories. Yes but Michael Martin's book was from one atheist to all the other atheists and also to those theists that like to read atheists books. So maybe he felt embarrassed then to preach to the home team public? But why then all the other argument he had a whole book of them. Would the other atheists not be familiar with them too? Maybe he is a very formal guy and only keep within the boundary of logica and the fact that all gods are made up is not about formal logic but a kind of social description of human behavior. What I really wonder about is the logic of made up gods. Okay I am bad at logic but where do I go wrong? Here is my naive take on the logic of made up gods. A made up god can have any kind of feature. Be strong or wimp or bold or shy or extrovert or introvert and expressive or silent and shiny or dark and so on. Being made up such a god can be what the believers want it to be. So the only reason for a made up god to be supernatural and really existing is that only those gods are effective. Does all of you see the logical implications. Atheists complain about the claims that believers do. Atheists and also Michael Martin tell the believers there is no evidence for that God is supernatural or that God even exist or that God is Omnipotent or Omnifriendly or Omninice whatever. But if all gods are made up and only those gods that are supernatural and existing are those gods that works for to believe in then to complain about them having these features is like moot the God where designed that way to be effective as God. All other kinds of gods would lose out in the competion and gain no supporters. Do you not see the logic?

My poor English misled you. Neither Michael Martin nor I nor you say they are different. We all agree they are synonyms. What I failed to find in Martin's text was that he at all tried to sort out the logic of the fact that almost every atheists that have written books or texts on internet know that all gods are made up gods. Regardless of what term we use for that knowledge. What surprised me was that I failed to find that he at all anywhere mention it so I speculated that maybe it was some kind of philosophers agreement that some trivial facts are so trivial that it is below them to comment on it. To me the fact that humans make up gods are what is most interesting about gods. That means that humans can control what features their gods have. If all gods are made up then logically we have total control over our gods. We can make them to the best of our knowledge and improve them each time we feel the need to.

Michael Martin is one of the most famous atheist philosophers and he ahs written books and articles and texts on atheism. I refer now to his book "Atheism - a philosophical Justification" google books made it possible to do searches within it without owning it. I searched several keywords like " pretend faith in God" imaginary belief in God made up gods make believe gods and so on. Trying to find him making logic of made up gods. I failed the only similar text I found was an example he took from Louis P Pojman and his essay Faith Hope Doubt from a book on "Philosophy of Religion" Martin not impressed with Pojman assertion that a believer could base his believe on hope that god may exist. Unwarranted Martin concluded. This make me curious on you how read this text. A famous atheist philosopher write a whole book on atheism and nowhere does he say that almost every known atheist realize that all gods are made up. The whole book seems to ignore that all of us know that that atheist view is one of the most held view among atheists? Almost no atheist would claim that some God would not be made by us humans. So could it be that him being a renown philosopher somehow could not mention the obvious because he would risk to get ridiculed for taking up space in his book on trivial truth that everybody know? Is it such a well known fact that it is logically irrelevant and therefor the logic prevent him from sharing all possible logic on made up gods and what one logically can say about such gods or what was going on in that book? And I have not found other atheist books on it either? The only book that comes near are Pascal Boyer now very old book "Religion explained" but he does not write from philosophy he write from social psychology perspective. Is that the explanation. Michael Martin not being a psychologist had to keep silent on all psychological aspects of being theist and atheist? When I google now today I find other ahteists that even set up sites with times like http://www.godisimaginary.com/ or http://www.squidoo.com/god-is-just-pretend God is imaginary or God is just pretend. Was such views too trivial for him or what is that about? I trust that all gods are made up by humans. Even if there would exist a real God humans would have to interpret and guess what that God is like. By definition we would have no way to measure that God and it would still be a made up god pointing to the real god. Could you help me sort this out. I am not that bright obviously.