Belief in the supernatural and evolution

[Red Expendable]

I wanted to pose the question(s) (hopefully this is the right forum) about belief in the supernatural (gods, ghosts, etc.) and it's relationship, if any, to evolution.

From my new-found learning on evolution, I was assuming that that belief in the supernatural - in whatever forms - are an attribute specific to human beings, as opposed to other animals which do not have this attribute.

That being said, does this 'belief' provide human beings with a worthy attribute for our continued survival?

If so, can anyone give any examples?

If not, why do human continue to show this attribute in large portion of the population and for such a long period of human beings existence?

Also, if not, then does it seem that this belief-attribute is disappearing from humanity, or is it too soon to tell?

I don't want to say that the majority of the people on the planet have this view/attribute or that they have had this view in the past - because I don't have the background info on it.

But it seems from my personal experience that most people do have SOME belief in the sueprnatural.

There's a possibility that I'm way off on this line of questioning, but I'm still learning, so bear with me.

There's other questions I was thinking about asking, but I'll stop there to see if this post makes any sense first! :)

RedEx

[GodLessWarrior]

I certaintly think it has a great deal to do with the fact that humans are aware of their own mortality. Thoughts related to what we now call supernatural were completely acceptable to our ancestors. We can see how religion, in general, has transformed over time from the worship of naturalistic gods/forces to personal beings that care about people on an individual basis.

[Duvenoy]

I don't think that this has much to do with the ToE, but, whaddahell.

At one time, religion was what held a society together. All the society's laws were in the beliefs, and a reminant of this can be seen in the Ten Commandments today.

Often, as we examine one religious claim after another, we forget that virtually everybody in those times were believers. There were no scientific studies to provide explanations for the phenomena surrounding these peoples. Thus, as we are a species that demands explanations, the supernatural was credited/blamed for practically everything.

doov

[Ovazor]

Originally posted by Red Expendable
From my new-found learning on evolution, I was assuming that that belief in the supernatural - in whatever forms - are an attribute specific to human beings, as opposed to other animals which do not have this attribute.


IIRC, Skinner wrote a paper about "superstition" in pigeons. In this case the birds developed "rituals" to get food (which in reality they did regardless of what they did). It was all about the pigeons being able to understand cause and effect, and somtimes to get it wrong.


That being said, does this 'belief' provide human beings with a worthy attribute for our continued survival?

I don't think the tendency to believe in supernatural as such is an attribute for our survival, but rather a by-product of the very useful attribute of pattern recognition. Sometimes we just find patterns that aren't there.

[Red Expendable]

Originally posted by Ovazor
IIRC, Skinner wrote a paper about "superstition" in pigeons. In this case the birds developed "rituals" to get food (which in reality they did regardless of what they did). It was all about the pigeons being able to understand cause and effect, and somtimes to get it wrong.



I don't think the tendency to believe in supernatural as such is an attribute for our survival, but rather a by-product of the very useful attribute of pattern recognition. Sometimes we just find patterns that aren't there.


So the birds developed a pattern recognition, in regards to obtaining food. I'm assuming you mean, they were being fed by people in a park?

If a pigeon is being fed at a particular spot everyday, it will always go there to get fed as long as the process continues (the person continues to feed it). If not eventually it will fly to new areas to obtain food to survive - a dumpster where people always throw food away, etc.

But human beings make a conscious choice either to believe in the supernatural or not. Even with upbringing and enviroment, they can accept or reject this.

So how exactly is pattern recognition related to belief in supernatural/god/unknown?

RedEx

[Red Expendable]

Originally posted by Duvenoy
I don't think that this has much to do with the ToE, but, whaddahell.

At one time, religion was what held a society together. All the society's laws were in the beliefs, and a reminant of this can be seen in the Ten Commandments today.

Often, as we examine one religious claim after another, we forget that virtually everybody in those times were believers. There were no scientific studies to provide explanations for the phenomena surrounding these peoples. Thus, as we are a species that demands explanations, the supernatural was credited/blamed for practically everything.

doov


But that being said, with science making a HUGE impact on everyone, and being very in-your-face, even if you have these supernatural beliefs - that same person will embrace the science that makes there lives more comfy and also gives explainations, and at the same time still embrace things such as ghosts, gods, angels, etc.

Without having a response yet on the other post in regards to pattern recognition, I still don't see how belief can be based on pattern recognition, when all beliefs are without proof. So what is there to be recognized?

And don't all animals possess pattern recognition? But humans are the only animals with these beliefs, that I know of.

So are these beliefs (theism, etc.) NECESSARY for our survival? Are they being replaced by science? It seems that it is not.

I've not a done any surveys :) - but it hardly seems that the world has decreased in numbers of believers of supernatural and 'the unknown'.

At one time, it could be said that it could have helped human beings COPE because with did not KNOW. But even knowing, human beings more often than not embrace faith, and so forth.

I know, this is not necessarily an attribute as in a PHYSICALLY, but is it not an attribute still, specific to humans only?

RedEx

[faust]

I don't think the tendency to believe in supernatural as such is an attribute for our survival, but rather a by-product of the very useful attribute of pattern recognition. Sometimes we just find patterns that aren't there.
I think this is probably the best explanation. We see it in other things that we have due to evolutionary survival advantages being misappropriated in new environments. For instance, we don't have nicotine receptors in our brains so that we can get addicted to smoking, they are there for another reason, and are stimulated by smoking in a "short circuit" that doesn't help our survival.
We have very good eyes, due to evolution, but we end up with blindspots b/c of it, and we are *excellent* at recognizing patterns, we're so good at it that we hit some false positives. That's why we have optical illusions. It's safer to recognize a pattern that doesn't exist than to maybe miss one that does exist.

Someone posted a quote that illustrated it very well. "It's better to stay out of the woods because you are afraid of fake demons, rather than getting eaten by a real bear."

[Red Expendable]

Originally posted by faust
I think this is probably the best explanation. We see it in other things that we have due to evolutionary survival advantages being misappropriated in new environments. For instance, we don't have nicotine receptors in our brains so that we can get addicted to smoking, they are there for another reason, and are stimulated by smoking in a "short circuit" that doesn't help our survival.
We have very good eyes, due to evolution, but we end up with blindspots b/c of it, and we are *excellent* at recognizing patterns, we're so good at it that we hit some false positives. That's why we have optical illusions. It's safer to recognize a pattern that doesn't exist than to maybe miss one that does exist.

Someone posted a quote that illustrated it very well. "It's better to stay out of the woods because you are afraid of fake demons, rather than getting eaten by a real bear."

I still don't see how this shows that belief in supernatural is considered to be a by-product of pattern recognition.

And also does not explain that once shown a particular pattern to be false, that most human beings embrace it anyway.

Or to take your quote as an example: To show that there are no 'demons' in the woods, but there are bears, so be careful. Dispelling myths, and revealing facts, seem to be not so convincing to most people...

Even though telling people about a bear in the woods, a fact in a given scenario, would be beneficial to there survival if they were planning on entering that particular area. Yet to still believe in the 'demon' in the wood is not particually beneficial to someone who needs to cross the woods safely, and brings only a cross and not a gun (to defend against the bear).

Clearly this cannot be the pattern-recognition that you are talking about that would be beneficial to human beings survival? IS it?

RedEx

[Ovazor]

Originally posted by Red Expendable
So the birds developed a pattern recognition, in regards to obtaining food. I'm assuming you mean, they were being fed by people in a park?


No, they were in cages I think, with a peck-the-button-get-the-food -kind of setup. Then they weakened the causality and the birds still learned to peck the button. But for one group of the pigeons there was no causality: the birds would get food from time to time no matter what they did. Some of the birds developed kind of rituals to conjure the food -no longer pecking anything but e.g. moving their head in certain way or something like that. IIRC, I read this story from the Unweawing the rainbow by Richard Dawkins.


But human beings make a conscious choice either to believe in the supernatural or not. Even with upbringing and enviroment, they can accept or reject this.


I've never understood how anybody could consciously choose what to believe to be true.


So how exactly is pattern recognition related to belief in supernatural/god/unknown?

In the same way to the pigeons. At some point one of our ancestors who didn't have our understanding of the world picked up a false positive pattern -it might be that when he made some motion or sound he was particularly lucky at finding food, or if he damced in certain way a drought ended soon after- and attributed the effect to a supernautral cause.

[Duvenoy]

So are these beliefs (theism, etc.) NECESSARY for our survival? Are they being replaced by science? It seems that it is not.

Umm, I disagree. I think that science is gradually making inroads on superstition.

Consider: science has only been actually doing science for, what, a few hundred years or so (and I'm including the alchemists, here). This as opposed to many thousands of years of superstiiton.

It takes time, and science will probably never completely replace belief in 'spirits'. Never the less, as education becomes better, more people wake up to the world around them.

I will admit that sometimes the Bible-shouters and the Weekly World News causes me to wonder.

Pigeons: years ago, I read of a study that used these birds in one of the laboratory recognition experiments. They were in cages with the usual buttons, only one of which would produce food. As I recall, they were fairly quick to find the proper one and reacted to change easiy. No reference, sorry.

doov

[Ovazor]

Originally posted by Red Expendable

Without having a response yet on the other post in regards to pattern recognition, I still don't see how belief can be based on pattern recognition, when all beliefs are without proof. So what is there to be recognized?

Nothing to be recognised, because it's a false positive (if there was a pattern, it wouldn't lead to an counterfactual belief but to knowledge of how the world works). You are missing the fact that the event of (incorrectly) recognising a supernatural pattern instantly creates "proof" to the belief: a subjective personal experience. And subjective personal experiences tend to be for most people very convincing "proof". The belief is further reinforced by subconscious "count the hits and ignore the misses" -process as the person puts his superstition to further test.


And don't all animals possess pattern recognition? But humans are the only animals with these beliefs, that I know of.

That's because as far it is known, only humans are capable of abstact thought. But if animals without abstract thinking can pick up what stringly seems to be superstitions and develope "magic" rituals, wouldn't it be logical to assume that our tendency to do them might have roots on similar attributes.


So are these beliefs (theism, etc.) NECESSARY for our survival?


No, but they are side-effects of other attributes which are necessary or at least beneficial to our survival.


Are they being replaced by science? It seems that it is not.


No, because it's not easy to trust science rather than oneself. It can be hard to admit how easily we can be deceived.


But even knowing, human beings more often than not embrace faith, and so forth.


Its the difference between knowing from being taught and knowing from subjective experience. Our minds are heavily biased in the favour of the later.

[Bumble Bee Tuna]

when I was taking Psych 101, we learned about these birds with classical conditioning. The birds were placed somewhere where they got a piece of food every ten minutes or so. They would just be going about their business and a food pellet would come out. They would attribute the cause to whatever they had just done- cocked their head a certain way, took a step, whatever. Then as more and more pellets came more and more random movements would become a part of their food dance. Eventually they had very elaborate dances they did because they thought it would get them food.

-B

[RBH]

Originally posted by Bumble Bee Tuna
when I was taking Psych 101, we learned about these birds with classical conditioning. The birds were placed somewhere where they got a piece of food every ten minutes or so. They would just be going about their business and a food pellet would come out. They would attribute the cause to whatever they had just done- cocked their head a certain way, took a step, whatever. Then as more and more pellets came more and more random movements would become a part of their food dance. Eventually they had very elaborate dances they did because they thought it would get them food.

-B That's more or less correct, except that it wasn't a classical conditioning procedure. Food arrived in a Skinner box (an apparatus normally used for operant conditioning) at random intervals, and (as BBT reported) some (not all) of the pigeons apparently associated the arrival of food with whatever behaviors they were performing just prior to that arrival. In a few pigeons that behavior became pretty elaborate, and was performed repetitively until a food pellet (still delivered randomly) appeared. (I can imagine a pigeon saying to an unbelieving peer: "See! I told you dancing counter-clockwise works! You clockwise dancers don't know how to influence the food pellet god!")

A couple of caveats: the original sample was pretty small (8 pigeons, IIRC), and I have never seen a replication.

RBH

[Vampyric]

I don't suppose you have a link or reference for the pigeon stuff you can put up? I would be really interested in reading it for myself some time.
:cool:

[Viking]

When you combine pattern recognition with a powerful imagination, all sorts of things are possible, yet both no doubt have useful features related to survival.

Years ago my wife and I were canoeing around the thousands of lakes that make up the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in northern Minnesota. It was late fall, and we were following a meandering wilderness river and dozens of lakes in a 45 degree drizzle for nearly 10 hours.

Our destination was a lake called something like Rove Lake, where there were several campsites. After leaving Octopus Lake, named for its many arms, we knew we should be close.

Finally, we saw a small post that said "Rove Lake" and carried the canoe and packs over the portage into the lake (they have since removed all signs from the BWCA.) Anyway, I soon realized that we were NOT in Rove Lake. The shape was wrong, there were no campsites etc. At the same time, I noticed my wife was in the early stages of hypothermia - common in those conditions. I immediately put ashore at the portage and just set up our tent right there, started a fire, and cooked a pot of stew to warm up my wife.

The next morning I dug out the compass and we went back across the portage to where we came into the lake. The sign said "Granite Lake" not "Rove Lake!" Both of us had wanted to see Rove Lake so bad, we convinced ourselves that we had. What had happened, by the way, is that when we were in Octopus Lake, searching for the portage in the many arms, we ended up going back out on the same portage over which we had entered, and did not recognize it.

It was shocking to realize that if you want to see something bad enough, your brain will help you see it. Just a little story that I think illustrates my point.

[Red Expendable]

Originally posted by Viking
When you combine pattern recognition with a powerful imagination, all sorts of things are possible, yet both no doubt have useful features related to survival.

Years ago my wife and I were canoeing around the thousands of lakes that make up the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in northern Minnesota. It was late fall, and we were following a meandering wilderness river and dozens of lakes in a 45 degree drizzle for nearly 10 hours.

Our destination was a lake called something like Rove Lake, where there were several campsites. After leaving Octopus Lake, named for its many arms, we knew we should be close.

Finally, we saw a small post that said "Rove Lake" and carried the canoe and packs over the portage into the lake (they have since removed all signs from the BWCA.) Anyway, I soon realized that we were NOT in Rove Lake. The shape was wrong, there were no campsites etc. At the same time, I noticed my wife was in the early stages of hypothermia - common in those conditions. I immediately put ashore at the portage and just set up our tent right there, started a fire, and cooked a pot of stew to warm up my wife.

The next morning I dug out the compass and we went back across the portage to where we came into the lake. The sign said "Granite Lake" not "Rove Lake!" Both of us had wanted to see Rove Lake so bad, we convinced ourselves that we had. What had happened, by the way, is that when we were in Octopus Lake, searching for the portage in the many arms, we ended up going back out on the same portage over which we had entered, and did not recognize it.

It was shocking to realize that if you want to see something bad enough, your brain will help you see it. Just a little story that I think illustrates my point.

That makes sense, and I think I understand how the pattern recognition fits in with belief.

Thanks for the posts!

RedEx