DiscussWorldIssues - Socio-Economic Religion and Political Uncensored Debate - View Single Post - Is Believing In God Evolutionarily Advantageous?

**Peptobismol** · 09-03-2010, 04:10 PM

The part of this question that I am struggling with is whether a predisposition to believe in religion is a cause or an effect. What I mean is whether belief in religion is some kind of primary characteristic - something that might manifest itself in an infant, like, say, an appropriate fear of heights, or a predisposition to understand and use language.

Or is it a side effect, perhaps of something like our instinctive tendency to find patterns (which is so strong that it often leads us to find patterns where there are none), or of our instinctively social nature, where we tend to think in terms of alpha-males in the tribe (if you have a boss, it stands to reason there is an even bigger boss out there that he answers to, or something of that nature).

In either case, I could imagine evolutionary consequences from a belief in religion, but what I am trying to work through is whether it is religion itself that drives those consequences or whether something else drives it and religion just comes along as a side-effect, albeit a powerful side effect.

any thoughts?

09-03-2010, 04:10 PM	#8
Peptobismol Join Date Oct 2005 Age 58 Posts 4,386 Senior Member	The part of this question that I am struggling with is whether a predisposition to believe in religion is a cause or an effect. What I mean is whether belief in religion is some kind of primary characteristic - something that might manifest itself in an infant, like, say, an appropriate fear of heights, or a predisposition to understand and use language. Or is it a side effect, perhaps of something like our instinctive tendency to find patterns (which is so strong that it often leads us to find patterns where there are none), or of our instinctively social nature, where we tend to think in terms of alpha-males in the tribe (if you have a boss, it stands to reason there is an even bigger boss out there that he answers to, or something of that nature). In either case, I could imagine evolutionary consequences from a belief in religion, but what I am trying to work through is whether it is religion itself that drives those consequences or whether something else drives it and religion just comes along as a side-effect, albeit a powerful side effect. any thoughts?
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