“We’ve evolved to be creationists�

“We’ve evolved to be creationists� is a quote from the “The Atlantic Monthly� article “Is God an Accident?�—December 2005 issue.

Paul Bloom, author of the article, informs us that “human beings come into the world with a predisposition to believe in supernatural phenomena…this predisposition is an incidental by-product of cognitive functioning gone awry�.

Paul Bloom informs us that nearly everyone on earth believes in miracles, afterlife, and the creation of the earth by some supernatural power. While doing research into infant behavior, psychologists have recently discovered that humans are born with a predisposition to believe in some supernatural actuality. These scientists conclude that this predisposition is a random happenstance of cognitive functioning gone awry. These conclusions led to the question “Is God an Accident?�--the title of the article.

I have just found the answer to a question that has baffled me for years. Why do non-believers love to talk religion? Perhaps talking about religion is much like ‘whistling past the cemetery’.

Everyone loves to talk religion because we are all born with the “gut feeling� that there is a body/mind duality. Because we “feel� that mind is a “spiritual� entity we easily accommodate heaven, soul, god etc.

Science says that this gut feeling is a result of “cognitive functioning gone awry� and religion tells us that this is a matter of faith. What do you think?

I think the answer you found is going to lead you to another answer.

Fortunately, reason can lead us beyond our incorrect intuitions. Special relativity, quantum mechanics, and atheism are all counter-intuitive, but correct. Nationalism is another wrong intuition to be overcome.

Here's a paper that I read that seems to apply to what you are talking about, sort of.

http://www.psych.ubc.ca/~ara/religion%20se.../Boyer_2003.pdf

2 of the 3 are supported by strong evidence. The last one is not and is your opinion. God is all about us if only you open your mind. Like the fish in the ocean who vainly searches for water. God is all around you, Rick. Open your mind.

Do you believe everything Paul says? Do you really think Paul has any inkling of what he's talking about , that he just has too much time on his hands, that he's a troll with base ulterior motives, or that he's just trying to make a buck selling a book?

Sure, sure.

So our brains and hence our minds and hence the way we experience and conceive of the world are all products of evolution by natural selection. And theistic worldviews, specifically, are erroneous conceptions resulting from same. Fine.

But what about this:

What is there that could not be called an erroneous conception if it resulted merely from evolution by natural selection? The watchmaker is blind, remember. If a certain theory seems to correspond unusually nicely to the way we experience the world, yay for that, but what of it? Both the theory and the perception are just results of evolution by natural selection. The correspondence is fantasy; there's nothing about the theory that -really- corresponds to the nature of things. It only corresponds to the way we see things, and that's just because evolution happens to have dictated our perceptions and our theories (and our perceptions of our theories) in this way.

To put this in a curious thought experiment: if moths, for instance, or deep-sea fish had analytical intelligence and a set of experimental tools well suited to moths or deep-sea fish, what theories would they produce? Would they differ from our own? And if they did, how would we deign to disprove them?

Yerr, look at the interpretation of "God's will" by Islamic terrorists. Look at their "tool set".

A very interesting paper. Thanks for the link.

Strong evidence is required for any claim of existence of a supernatural entity. What evidence supports a theistic world view?

Hmm... I see your point, of course (it's hard to miss). But it's not really what I was talking about...

...but then, what I was talking about is perhaps not really the core topic of this discussion, so that's okay.

The paper linked above by "lcsglvr" really is on topic. Take a look at it. We seem to be evolved to be believers. That's why overcoming false beliefs can be regarded as an accomplishment.

Yes, very interesting, as you say. Thanks for prodding me to overcome my laziness and actually read the paper.

"...people's religious concepts often diverge from what they believe they believe."

Now that's interesting, and it's something I've often thrown at myself - maybe, despite calling myself a Buddhist, I still unconsciously harbour belief in a God (*cue psycho-thriller score*) or other 'supernatural' concepts.

"In the province of the mind, what one believes to be true, either is true, or becomes true." - John Lilly (whoever he is/was)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_C._Lilly

He was a countercultural psychologist.

The second quantum revolution
To track down a theory of everything, we might have to accept that the universe only exists when we're looking at it.

http://www.newscientist.com/channel/fundam...=mg19426091.600

Unfortunately non-subscribers can read only a short introduction that says nothing new.

So the supernova that occurred 100 thousand years ago, when nobody was looking at it, 100 thousand light years away, suddenly occurs now when I see the photons of the new star in the sky? Does that make sense to you?

Hey, don't blame me, I didn't invent quantum mechanics! However ... when you look at something (your supernova) that happened 100,000 years ago, what are you seeing, then or now? Or are then and now the same? Is there and here the same? Is everything only there when we look at it?

From the photon's point of view, everything happens now. The photon, traveling always at the speed of light, enjoys infinite time dilation, so it experiences no travel time.

Suppose you are hit on the head by a golf ball when you weren't looking. Did the golfer hit the ball when you weren't looking? Of course he did. If not, how did you get hit on the head? How can this even be the subject of a serious discussion?

Is observation limited to vision? Or rather - what is the definition of an 'observer' in the context of quantum mechanics?

and he was a ketamine drug addict who destroyed his mind and body through it. He spent much of his life trying to communicate with dolphins, and at one time informed the US gov't it was going to be invaded by aliens. I think it safe to say that John Lilly was more of a crackpot than he was countercultural.

It is kinky, that's for sure. I quite like it though.

Rick, you know that this is misleading. The medium through which photons travel influences their velocity. The universe (space) is not a perfect vacuum. Otherwise where are we? Indeed, no media are perfectly homogenous.

All matter is self-observant. That's why the guy that gets hit on the head doesn't need to know the golf ball is coming.

When a gamma ray photon strikes an iron atom nucleus, ejecting an alpha particle, the nucleus "observes" the photon hitting it. This is the essence of Stuart Hameroff's Orc-OR theory of consciousness.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orch-OR

Objective reduction is the same as self observation of matter.

A macroscopic object like a golf ball does not exhibit identifiable quantum mechanical behavior. QM applies only to individual elementary particles. It's microscopic, not macroscopic.

Even if it's true that he did some foolish things, it does not follow that he did no good work nor that we can't learn something from him.

In the context of the double-slit experiment - what is the (accepted?) definition of an observer?

18 more to go...

In the double slit experiment, I would say the observer is the photographic film that records the photon absorptions. Or electronic detector or whatever image plane sensor is used.

It's not misleading. The photon travels at the speed of light by definition, and the speed of light varies with the density of the medium the photon is traveling in. The photon is forever young (ageless) within its own reference frame.

Suppose you look out the window at a nova (new star). One of the millions of nova photons stimulating your retina traveled, say, 100 thousand light-years in fairly hard vacuum, then it slowed down a bit through 50 miles of atmosphere, then slowed a bit more through 1/8 inch of window glass, then sped up through the air of your living roon, then slowed down again through the clear parts of your eye before being absorbed by raising the energy level of an electron in one of the pigment molecules in a rod or cone in your retina. No matter whether the photon was in space or glass, its perceived (if it could perceive) travel time would be zero due to relativistic effects.

The photon is a special case because it is massless and can travel at the speed of light. Massive objects (such as iron nuclei) are also emitted from supernovae, but they travel somewhat slower than light speed, some up to about 99 percent of c (speed of light in vacuum). These iron (and other) nuclei from novae are referred to as "cosmic rays."

[quote name='Rick' date='Jun 22, 2007, 02:28 PM' post='80173']
[quote name='Hey Hey' post='80163' date='Jun 22, 2007, 10:03 AM']
The photon travels at the speed of light by definition, and the speed of light varies with the density of the medium the photon is traveling in. The photon is forever young (ageless) within its own reference frame
[/quote]
Forgive my ignorance on relativity. If photon is ageless , does that mean photons have no beginning and no end? Aren't there newly created photons? What about the photons from our light bulbs?

[quote name='Rinzai Dharma' date='Nov 17, 2007, 05:08 AM' post='85486']
[quote name='Rick' date='Jun 22, 2007, 02:28 PM' post='80173']
[quote name='Hey Hey' post='80163' date='Jun 22, 2007, 10:03 AM']
The photon travels at the speed of light by definition, and the speed of light varies with the density of the medium the photon is traveling in. The photon is forever young (ageless) within its own reference frame
[/quote]
Forgive my ignorance on relativity. If photon is ageless , does that mean photons have no beginning and no end? Aren't there newly created photons? What about the photons from our light bulbs?
[/quote]

The very best book that I have discovered for the lay person to understand such questions is "QED" by Richard Feynman. It is a great book that is within the ability of most lay persons to gain a comprehension of Quantum Theory.

Beautifully said. I feel relieved that at least some people realize that intuition is not something "magical pointer to the truth" and is more like something to be critical of.

How can you say these things are correct? They are only correct untill someone with a better sounding guess comes along...

It's not likely that special relativity or quantum mechanics will ever be overturned as "incorrect." Small adjustments, maybe, but the major schemes are fairly solid. However, our intuitions are ever suspect.

Didn't they come to the conclusion of special relativity and quantum mechanics through intuition, which was later proven through emperical means? A hypothesis has to be created, it is not discovered--one has to know what questions to ask in order to make sense of or attain an answer.

Intuition often plays a role in discovery and creation, but intuition is often very wrong, and must be tested by reason. Many great feats of creation actually defy intuition. That's why many creative people are rididuled during their lives: most people intuitively reject their work, unable to see the greater possibilities.

Many people also create false systems based off of intuition that happen to be very practical, and these false systems are taken as truth--calculous anyone?

I think calculus is mostly true. Many mathematicians seem to think so. Newton used it to verify Keppler's rules.

Instantanious change? If that is true (not just a close enough apporximation to be practical) I missed something.

.Intuition can be true.
.Truth is always intuitive.

Those are very different statement


While it is true that intuition can lead to prediction of truth, it is not ALWAYS correct. Intuition is just a habit of perception. For example we are used to objects falling down so we have intuition that if i release this object it will fall down. We also are used to seeing cause and effect. If i hit this ball - it will move. That is also habit. Intuition is just an educated or habitual guess on something. It is not a magical pointer to the truth.

You may be confusing physics with the mathematics used to describe it. Mathematics is an abstraction, a simplification of the real so that it can be more easily understood. Because mathematics is abstracted, mathematical things (theorems) can be proven true. Physical theory often has a mathematical expression. In classical physics, we can ignore Planck's constant, so it makes sense to speak of instantaneous change. Classical physics is also an idealization so that simpler mathematics can be applied.

Regarding intuition and creativity, I have found that most of my creative results are counter-intuitive. Intuition leads us on a well-worn path. Stopping to question intuition often leads to amazing insight. For example, the herd intuition has the sun going around the earth. Copernicus overcame that intuition by showing how a more thorough investigation leads to a simpler explanation.

I fully agree with you Rick. You show signs of completely transcending "magical thinking".

Thank you. That has been one of my goals. More properly, the pursuit of truth leads me to reject magical explanations.

Rick,
What about the unified theory of physics? The quantum theory is only a true at a certain level. The theory of relativity also holds at another level. Aren't the physicists still in search of a unfied theory that will bind these two? Does this mean quantum theory is still not the final physical truth?

That's why physicists are still wrangling with alternative theories like the superstring.

Physicists have a lot of work to do. Even in every-day explanations, physical models are lacking. For example, there is no formula that converts the number of protons in an element into, say, a melting point. You have to take a sample and melt it to find out.

I suppose Nature created religion to stimulate competition to diversify gene pools. But is Nature God itself?

Yes. The universe is the body of god. The mind of god is still under construction.

That is a nice mind-jolting statement for the herd Rick.