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Religion and the human mind
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It'll have to wait 'til I get home. I'll have a look then.
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ok, thanks
it's not bashing by the way. Just some thoughts on faith and the workings of the brain.
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That could have been expressed in a paragraph of text instead of wasting bandwidth and time in a video. There was nothing in the video that added anything to the content.
The argument seems rather a weak one. After pointing out that archeological evidence is subject to interpretation (true) and therefore leaving it aside, the presenter appeared to have two main points:
1. Children tend to ascribe purpose and/or mind to things we consider random and inanimate, and religion is the same activity.
One weakness in the argument is that the premise is not well established. The answer you get from a child depends very much on how the question is asked. Children tend to answer as they feel they are expected to. They often interpret a question as an invitation to imagine. There is no reference to a study, where one can check the methodology.
A second weakness is that adults are not children.
2. The part of the brain used when thinking about God is the same used when thinking about other human minds.
But what would you expect? We already know that it is difficult to imagine God except as a person, so of course that's what people do, but realising at the same time that it is inadequate.
Of course I may have missed something in the argument.
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sorry about your bandwidthJay Ingram, author of Theatre of the Mind: Raising the Curtain on Consciousness, does these short journal pieces on Discovery exploring the brain.This one struck me as interesting as I often as the question; why do people believe in this whole god thing?Jay's Journal could have been summed up in a paragraph but an in depth look at the research could have made for a hour documentary, at the least. What I take from this brief explanation is that humans have a strong propensity for anthropomorphism. Hence the love of talking animals in Disney and the need to believe in a renegotiable consciousness behind the universe.