Faith/God/Prayer...genetic, maybe?

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In all fairness, this new guy needs to learn boundaries. People have been harsh to him first elsewhere in the forum.

Don't f**k with Dent, or Sand...Those are some basic ground rules.

First you tell me I'm hot and then chase away my prospects. Goodness me!

Realise this, it was you who attacked me for misrepresenting your "opinion" when you have quite clearly shown you think it is far more than that. All I have done is to point out the fallacious nature of your attack



My reaction to your reasoning will be determined purely upon whether or not I find it infantile jabber or thought provoking. So far you have made a statement, then tried to headbutt anyone who disagrees with it. So once again I ask you to provide evidence or at least your subjective reasoning for the original statement. Or of course you can just continue on like a petulant child



I doubt it

Last edited by DentArthurDent on 25 Jan 2010, 12:04 am, edited 2 times in total.

This was the start of what has become known as 'the god spot' studies where done on epileptics and deeply religious people and found that the same area was highly active, then tests showed that 'mystical' hallucinations could be triggered by artificially stimulation of this area. More recently the research is showing that it is no where near as simplistic as this, and religious thought/ euphoria is caused by a very complex network of many different areas of the brain.

Whatever buddy. Go ahead, accuse me of all these silly things while you're just basically describing yourself. And to say I believe it's something more is your delusion- it's absolute crap and you know it. And at this point I'd rather just call you names as all you've been interested in is personal attacks yourself. Maybe if you'd grow up a little and stop with the instigating, you'd get a more insightful discussion. Why should I take you seriously when you can't even be respectful?

Dent, quit being a dick. There is no need to flame a new guy like that for expressing his opinion, especially when his opinion is actually relatively well thought out, and supported by plenty of people much better informed than yourself. I know you don't like religion, but your insistence on attributing all religion merely to social brainwashing is incredibly stupid. Quite a few studies have shown that there are real, tangible benefits to religious belief. (Religious people live longer, have lower rates of crime and substance abuse, and tend to be significantly more successful in achieving their goals) Obviously any trait that promotes such characteristics will be favored by natural selection, so yes, religiosity is selected for in humans and there is almost certainly a genetic basis to whether someone is more or less spiritually inclined.

@Greshym_Shorkan: Welcome to PPR. Normally the flames are a little bit cooler here; you must have hit a nerve or something.

This item from the web might be interesting.

"We’ve all seen the many, mostly US studies, that suggest that religious people live longer. Especially those that attend religious services on a weekly basis or greater.

A puzzling paradox to me then is why the nations with the greatest longevity are largely those that are the least religious. Sweden, for example, has been considered the least religious nation in the EU yet it’s people live significantly longer than Americans, who are the most religious. Swedes live longer on average than even Canadians with the exception of the Canadian sub group who live in British Columbia."

Thanks buddy. Yeah, I'm just ignoring this Dent guy from now on, as he's proven himself nothing but creep.

I have already acknowledge that there are or at least were, benefits to religious belief. So why would a non believer suddenly start praying to a god he does not really believe in at a time of crisis, to think this is caused by deep social beliefs is hardly 'stupid', If you own a radio, TV, computer, read newspapers etc then every day of your life you will hear about god, and how god came to the rescue of someone in need. Just today I hear the guy from Haiti, thanking god for bringing his brother to find him (ignoring the fact that his brother was simply searching the ruins of the shop in which he was working at the time of the quake) So yes I will 'stupidly' suggest that the probability for Greshym to have been swayed by this constant god barrage is far higher than the probability of the existence of a 'god gene'


I disagree, that religious people as you claim have these characteristics and therefore are more likely to produce descendants is one thing, and I certainly will not argue against it, but to suggest that religious belief ITSELF is a genetic trait is crap, or at least unproven.

On the subject of flaming the OP yeah you are correct, I am suitably chastised. I could have put my original disapproval a little less harshly

Last edited by DentArthurDent on 25 Jan 2010, 1:35 am, edited 1 time in total.

Obviously you can't speak without getting ugly, and are determined to paint yourself as some kind of victim if I even reply to you. I refuse to respond to another thing you say.

And British Columbia is the least religious province in Canada. So Sand dealt with the age issue.

Orwell, the American states which are strongly religious have the highest crime over all.



top ten religious states: Mississippi, Alabama, South Carolina, Tennessee, Louisiana, Arkansas, Georgia, North Carolina, Oklahoma, and Kentucky and Texas

Least religious: Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, Massachusetts, Alaska, Washington, Oregon, Rhode Island, Nevada, and Connecticut.

Your next statement is full of holes too.

If you mean that more religious people are striving to become university professors, scientists, astronauts, etc, ad nauseum... than non religious... then who are you kidding? It may well be that the goals of religious people are easier to achieve, thus more of them get there. Its easier to become a pastor than a professor. Its easier to become a parent than a pediatrician.

Last edited by Fuzzy on 25 Jan 2010, 2:08 am, edited 1 time in total.

It's probably important to accept that religion has much more to it than a belief in a supernatural agency. It provides an armature upon which to build a social structure which transcends both nationality and race and even particularly local cultures. It provides a logic for excusing the random tragedies that time and circumstance incurs on all people and, although this is blatantly and totally wrong in the overwhelming number of incidents, the supernatural tail that wags the dog ingests enough mystery from the unknowable supernatural that the bulk of people choose not to question it. For centuries it took the many diverse myths that various cultures devised to explain unexplainable origins and wove them together in a rather naive tapestry that permitted most people not to question these basics.It was and, to a large degree, still is an instrument of politics that gave leverage to those in power. It gave structure to cultural morality that, to a large degree, is merely the necessities of maintaining order and generally decent behavior.

When the Enlightenment began to poke holes in the mythic nonsense that decorated much of the belief it also, by association, started to poke holes in the other attributes of the entire religious structure. It became uncertain as to which of these many social functions were justified or necessary or required for rational bases to remain powerful. Instead of examining each of the aspects of religion and determining what was necessary to society and what was useless or detrimental religious advocates felt it necessary to defend the thing as a whole even though much of the mythic substructure is obvious foolish nonsense. It is a process of retaining or throwing out multiple baths and babies and at the moment is quite a mess.

^ indeed, the whole notion that without religion a harmonious society cannot exist is a nonsense, that somehow a truly secular society will descend into totalitarianism, violent anarchy or that the world will descend once more into global conflagration is plain wrong.

Ok, time for a truce and a restart. I am not a complete ass, a creep, or a self deluded victim, you, I am sure, are not a complete twat. I apologise for flaming you at the start of this thread, and also the creation vs evolution one. I can get a little carried away. Whilst I do not agree with your position I was being a tad nasty, and maybe even a little arrogant

In order to install change, the old needs to be stripped away. So, to get rid of religions you have to have some sort of anarchy (peaceful anarchy hopefully) and then replace it with some other ideology. Humans need beliefs. Try to go without believing anything you think and you'll probably go mad eventually.

I don't trust religious people either, but spirituality is a different thing. That is not a cultural phenomenon, but an individual one. Spirituality is not cultural, but religiosity is.

The general evidence seems to be that believing things rather than doubts is a surer road to insanity. Paranoia is a prime example.