Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy
Quote Originally Posted by Lukie
serious question/speculation time:

A long time ago (whether you define that as 100 years ago, 1,000 years ago, 10,000 years ago, whatever) it would seem reasonable to believe in creationism and god or various gods (e.g. god of the son, god of the sea, etc). How else would you explain the world thousands of years ago?

Now that science can explain just about everything we see in our every day life, and discovered so many absolutely amazing things, why do people still cling to beliefs that are thousands of years old that are so blatantly and obviously wrong? Is it really a testament to mankind's stupidity, or is it something else?
its evolutionary. i wish i could find one particular thread i read a few months ago with excellent explanations for why this is, but alas...

it has to do with a ton of little things involved in evolution. things like personal security, many many constructs aiding society, and abstract thought.

personal security: its sort of a phenomenon that the smarter species are the more bleak of outlooks they acknowledge. being able to think about ego and time in the ways we do strongly encourage pursuit of solutions to the emptiness and destruction that we know to be our inevitability.

society: the beneficial constructs of religion on primitive and developing societies are insurmountable. there is togetherness in common transcendent beliefs. common morals and common goals are necessary for society. what likely happened over tens or hundreds of thousands of years is that the strongest societies of peoples had the strongest of common abstract beliefs, and these people survived because they were the strongest.

abstract thought: there was a time when the premier 'scientists' were also premier religionists. back then there wasn't really the 'science' distinction, but was more just philosophy. what we tend to not realize now is that science is philosophy, and religion is philosophy. the smartest of our ancestors may not have understood the scientific method and logic and its fallacies, but they could think abstractly enough to look up at the sky and see a ball of fire.

its curious how it is extreeeemely natural to think illogically, this is because logic depends on scope. to a caveman, it is amazingly logical to think the sun is a ball of fire like the fire he made by rubbing two sticks together. he thinks this due to associations and correlations between the two. this requires amazing intelligence. but what happens is that due to his misunderstanding of scientific method and logic and evidence, he applies these same thoughts to many other things.

developing man likely thought abstractly about some things, and were more correct about them than before. however those thoughts, even though they were more evolved than lesser species, had little correct foundation and ran amok. this is why we see soooooo much human and earthly analogy in religions. since humans used analogical thought to think deeper about one thing they applied that to other things. our understanding of science now shows this to be a big no no. to this day most humans believe that analogy is one of the most accurate and powerful methods of thought. it is simply not, and really the only way we know this is via science. dont get me wrong, there is tremendous value in analogy, but it must be limited to its correct scope, and even then, analogy in no way is evidence, but simply a way of sparking thoughts down a possibly more correct avenue.

we have so much religious thought nowadays because it is in our genes. because your parents and their parents and their parents and their parents......
Nice post. I find stuff like this interesting. I definitely agree with the personal security and society part. To take that a step further, society has such an enormous affect on pretty much everything whether it be religion, how people act, how people think, etc.

I need to re-read the rest of your post, but one would think that logical thought would override abstract thought, but as we both know that's often not the case.