Christian and Superstition - Pigeon Religion

[Immortalist]

Once upon a time a scientist was training pigeons to do various things
for food rewards, a pigeon one day might stand on one leg, and
incidentally receive a food reward. Even though standing on one leg
had nothing to do with getting the reward, the pigeon would ever after
stand on one leg when it pecked away at the computer panels. The
behaviour would be reinforced, since it appeared to work. Human
religionists often do the same when they change severals religeous
interpretations of the world and it starts working. They assume all
the things they did were necessary, and prosletyse to others about
their necessity. These superstitions are for the most part harmless,
but they do make needless extra work when new facts are discovered
about the world that conflict with these dogmas.

http://mindprod.com/jgloss/pigeonsuperstition.html

A superstition is an irrational belief about the relation between
certain actions�often behaviors�and later occurrences, such as the
belief that the number 13 causes misfortune or bad luck. Whether a
belief is superstitious is not defined by the "truth" of the result,
however, but by the methods through which truth is sought.
Superstitions are often based on invalid reasoning resulting from
misunderstandings of causality or statistics, with others spring from
unenlightened fears, religious beliefs, traditions, and a general
belief in the supernatural.

The superstitious individual erroneously believes that the future, or
the outcome of certain events, can be influenced by certain specified
behaviors, despite the lack of a causal relationship in reality.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superstition
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,20361761-29677,00.html

Over-Sensitive Agency-Detectors

Humans routinely attribute intentions, beliefs, and desires in order
to interpret the behavior of others. Other humans are seen as agents,
that is, as entities that pursue goals in accordance with their
beliefs and desires. Attributions of agency are so ubiquitous that
they are typically taken for granted in everyday life. These
attributions are not always correct in identifying the beliefs and
desires that underlie a specific action of an agent; yet, if people
did not see others as agents, the capacity to understand their
behavior would be severely impaired. For example, people would be
surprised when others got up and moved. Abundant research documents
children's acquisition of human agent concepts over the first several
years of life (Astington et al., 1988; Perner, 1993; Wellman, 1990),
but there is little work available on the development of non-human
agent concepts. Yet, people often attribute intentions, beliefs and
desires to animals as well as to ghosts, gods, demons, and monsters.

http://cogprints.org/2363/

...Why are we humans predisposed to have only these kinds of religious
concepts? Boyer�s answer, in brief, is that our brains have been
"designed by evolution" to employ particular cognitive systems that
help us to make sense of "particular aspects of objects around us and
produce specific kinds of [inferences] about them."

http://www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft0201/reviews/griffiths.html

Evolutionary Reasons For Humans To Be "Over-Sensitive Agency-
Detectors"

Now, an agent is just some entity that is moved or guided by its own
awareness and goals; for humans, other human beings are among the most
important agents in our environments, but there are also the various
non-human animals. Given that the presence of other agents (and what
they are doing) matters to our prospects for survival and
reproduction, why would we be over-sensitive to their presence?
Consider predators. 'Detecting' a predator that is not there is not a
terribly bad thing; failing to detect a predator that is there is much
more serious. And something very similar goes for prey: Detecting
lunch that isn't there is much less serious than failing to detect
lunch when it is there. In both direction, our capacities for agency
detection should be tuned to generate more false positives than false
negatives. For evolutionary reasons, we should expect to 'detect' some
agents which are not there. Is the perception of (accidental) patterns
of cues in our environment at the root of the detection of
supernatural agents, of gods? That cannot be the whole story, for
there would be no general evolutionary pay-off for over-sensitive
agency detection unless we could rapidly drop mistaken conclusions
about the presence of predators or prey as new evidence comes in. (You
can starve while looking for the lunch that is not there or while
cowering in hiding from the predator that is not there.) Even if
initial detection of supernatural agents is a function of over-
sensitive agency detection routines, something else is needed to
explain what stabilizes belief in such agents.

Religion Explained: The Evolutionary
Origins of Religious Thought - Pascal Boyer
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0465006965/
http://personal.bgsu.edu/~roberth/log2002.html

[HCM]

Post by Immortalist
Once upon a time a scientist was training pigeons to do various things
for food rewards, a pigeon one day might stand on one leg, and
incidentally receive a food reward. Even though standing on one leg
had nothing to do with getting the reward, the pigeon would ever after
stand on one leg when it pecked away at the computer panels. The
behaviour would be reinforced, since it appeared to work. Human
religionists often do the same when they change severals religeous
interpretations of the world and it starts working. They assume all
the things they did were necessary, and prosletyse to others about
their necessity. These superstitions are for the most part harmless,
but they do make needless extra work when new facts are discovered
about the world that conflict with these dogmas.
http://mindprod.com/jgloss/pigeonsuperstition.html
A superstition is an irrational belief about the relation between
certain actions often behaviors and later occurrences, such as the
belief that the number 13 causes misfortune or bad luck. Whether a
belief is superstitious is not defined by the "truth" of the result,
however, but by the methods through which truth is sought.
Superstitions are often based on invalid reasoning resulting from
misunderstandings of causality or statistics, with others spring from
unenlightened fears, religious beliefs, traditions, and a general
belief in the supernatural.
The superstitious individual erroneously believes that the future, or
the outcome of certain events, can be influenced by certain specified
behaviors, despite the lack of a causal relationship in reality.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superstitionhttp://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,20361761-29677,00....
Over-Sensitive Agency-Detectors
Humans routinely attribute intentions, beliefs, and desires in order
to interpret the behavior of others. Other humans are seen as agents,
that is, as entities that pursue goals in accordance with their
beliefs and desires. Attributions of agency are so ubiquitous that
they are typically taken for granted in everyday life. These
attributions are not always correct in identifying the beliefs and
desires that underlie a specific action of an agent; yet, if people
did not see others as agents, the capacity to understand their
behavior would be severely impaired. For example, people would be
surprised when others got up and moved. Abundant research documents
children's acquisition of human agent concepts over the first several
years of life (Astington et al., 1988; Perner, 1993; Wellman, 1990),
but there is little work available on the development of non-human
agent concepts. Yet, people often attribute intentions, beliefs and
desires to animals as well as to ghosts, gods, demons, and monsters.
http://cogprints.org/2363/
...Why are we humans predisposed to have only these kinds of religious
concepts? Boyer s answer, in brief, is that our brains have been
"designed by evolution" to employ particular cognitive systems that
help us to make sense of "particular aspects of objects around us and
produce specific kinds of [inferences] about them."
http://www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft0201/reviews/griffiths.html
Evolutionary Reasons For Humans To Be "Over-Sensitive Agency-
Detectors"
Now, an agent is just some entity that is moved or guided by its own
awareness and goals; for humans, other human beings are among the most
important agents in our environments, but there are also the various
non-human animals. Given that the presence of other agents (and what
they are doing) matters to our prospects for survival and
reproduction, why would we be over-sensitive to their presence?
Consider predators. 'Detecting' a predator that is not there is not a
terribly bad thing; failing to detect a predator that is there is much
more serious. And something very similar goes for prey: Detecting
lunch that isn't there is much less serious than failing to detect
lunch when it is there. In both direction, our capacities for agency
detection should be tuned to generate more false positives than false
negatives. For evolutionary reasons, we should expect to 'detect' some
agents which are not there. Is the perception of (accidental) patterns
of cues in our environment at the root of the detection of
supernatural agents, of gods? That cannot be the whole story, for
there would be no general evolutionary pay-off for over-sensitive
agency detection unless we could rapidly drop mistaken conclusions
about the presence of predators or prey as new evidence comes in. (You
can starve while looking for the lunch that is not there or while
cowering in hiding from the predator that is not there.) Even if
initial detection of supernatural agents is a function of over-
sensitive agency detection routines, something else is needed to
explain what stabilizes belief in such agents.
Religion Explained: The Evolutionary
Origins of Religious Thought - Pascal Boyerhttp://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0465006965/http://personal.bgsu.edu/~roberth/log2002.html

You can't cure "stupid", no matter how hard one may try
HCM

[THE BORG]

Humans have always believe ridiculous and stupid religions
and beliefs, from worshipping the phallus to a whole range
of different Gods to believing the Earth was held up by an
elephant.
Their religions and beliefs are just as stupid today, their
"intelligence" has not increased at all.
In time they will look back on Christianity and the beliefs
of today and laugh, in much the same way they laugh at the
elephant who held up the world, and other ludicrosities of
the past.
To us it is very clear, but humans do not see it at all.



"Immortalist" <***@yahoo.com> wrote in message news:62477e9c-9beb-49f5-8b85-***@t8g2000prm.googlegroups.com...
Once upon a time a scientist was training pigeons to do
various things
for food rewards, a pigeon one day might stand on one leg,
and
incidentally receive a food reward. Even though standing on
one leg
had nothing to do with getting the reward, the pigeon would
ever after
stand on one leg when it pecked away at the computer panels.
The
behaviour would be reinforced, since it appeared to work.
Human
religionists often do the same when they change severals
religeous
interpretations of the world and it starts working. They
assume all
the things they did were necessary, and prosletyse to others
about
their necessity. These superstitions are for the most part
harmless,
but they do make needless extra work when new facts are
discovered
about the world that conflict with these dogmas.

http://mindprod.com/jgloss/pigeonsuperstition.html

A superstition is an irrational belief about the relation
between
certain actions�often behaviors�and later occurrences, such
as the
belief that the number 13 causes misfortune or bad luck.
Whether a
belief is superstitious is not defined by the "truth" of the
result,
however, but by the methods through which truth is sought.
Superstitions are often based on invalid reasoning resulting
from
misunderstandings of causality or statistics, with others
spring from
unenlightened fears, religious beliefs, traditions, and a
general
belief in the supernatural.

The superstitious individual erroneously believes that the
future, or
the outcome of certain events, can be influenced by certain
specified
behaviors, despite the lack of a causal relationship in
reality.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superstition
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,20361761-29677,00.html

Over-Sensitive Agency-Detectors

Humans routinely attribute intentions, beliefs, and desires
in order
to interpret the behavior of others. Other humans are seen
as agents,
that is, as entities that pursue goals in accordance with
their
beliefs and desires. Attributions of agency are so
ubiquitous that
they are typically taken for granted in everyday life. These
attributions are not always correct in identifying the
beliefs and
desires that underlie a specific action of an agent; yet, if
people
did not see others as agents, the capacity to understand
their
behavior would be severely impaired. For example, people
would be
surprised when others got up and moved. Abundant research
documents
children's acquisition of human agent concepts over the
first several
years of life (Astington et al., 1988; Perner, 1993;
Wellman, 1990),
but there is little work available on the development of
non-human
agent concepts. Yet, people often attribute intentions,
beliefs and
desires to animals as well as to ghosts, gods, demons, and
monsters.

http://cogprints.org/2363/

...Why are we humans predisposed to have only these kinds of
religious
concepts? Boyer�s answer, in brief, is that our brains have
been
"designed by evolution" to employ particular cognitive
systems that
help us to make sense of "particular aspects of objects
around us and
produce specific kinds of [inferences] about them."

http://www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft0201/reviews/griffiths.html

Evolutionary Reasons For Humans To Be "Over-Sensitive
Agency-
Detectors"

Now, an agent is just some entity that is moved or guided by
its own
awareness and goals; for humans, other human beings are
among the most
important agents in our environments, but there are also the
various
non-human animals. Given that the presence of other agents
(and what
they are doing) matters to our prospects for survival and
reproduction, why would we be over-sensitive to their
presence?
Consider predators. 'Detecting' a predator that is not there
is not a
terribly bad thing; failing to detect a predator that is
there is much
more serious. And something very similar goes for prey:
Detecting
lunch that isn't there is much less serious than failing to
detect
lunch when it is there. In both direction, our capacities
for agency
detection should be tuned to generate more false positives
than false
negatives. For evolutionary reasons, we should expect to
'detect' some
agents which are not there. Is the perception of
(accidental) patterns
of cues in our environment at the root of the detection of
supernatural agents, of gods? That cannot be the whole
story, for
there would be no general evolutionary pay-off for
over-sensitive
agency detection unless we could rapidly drop mistaken
conclusions
about the presence of predators or prey as new evidence
comes in. (You
can starve while looking for the lunch that is not there or
while
cowering in hiding from the predator that is not there.)
Even if
initial detection of supernatural agents is a function of
over-
sensitive agency detection routines, something else is
needed to
explain what stabilizes belief in such agents.

Religion Explained: The Evolutionary
Origins of Religious Thought - Pascal Boyer
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0465006965/
http://personal.bgsu.edu/~roberth/log2002.html

[Andrew W]

Post by THE BORG
Humans have always believe ridiculous and stupid religions
and beliefs, from worshipping the phallus to a whole range
of different Gods to believing the Earth was held up by an
elephant.
Their religions and beliefs are just as stupid today, their
"intelligence" has not increased at all.
In time they will look back on Christianity and the beliefs
of today and laugh, in much the same way they laugh at the
elephant who held up the world, and other ludicrosities of
the past.
To us it is very clear, but humans do not see it at all.

Very true.

[Dare]

Even if initial detection of supernatural agents is a function of
over-sensitive agency detection routines, something else is
needed to explain what stabilizes belief in such agents.

Perhaps belief in these agents gives humans a confidence
in an expected outcome that may affect their ability to
succeed in a situation. One example might be the superstition
involved with sports. A baseball player might believe his
"Lucky shirt" makes all the difference in his performance
during the game...so it's kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy.
He believes he will do well, so he does!
Conversely, without the shirt he might sabatoge his own
performance to validate his belief.
Or rituals to gain favor with the gods for a successful hunt would
encourage the hunter and enchance his physical ability during the hunt?
Belief affects physical performance?

[Immortalist]

Post by Dare

Even if initial detection of supernatural agents is a function of
over-sensitive agency detection routines, something else is
needed to explain what stabilizes belief in such agents.

Perhaps belief in these agents gives humans a confidence
in an expected outcome that may affect their ability to
succeed in a situation. One example might be the superstition
involved with sports. A baseball player might believe his
"Lucky shirt" makes all the difference in his performance
during the game...so it's kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy.
He believes he will do well, so he does!
Conversely, without the shirt he might sabatoge his own
performance to validate his belief.
Or rituals to gain favor with the gods for a successful hunt would
encourage the hunter and enchance his physical ability during the hunt?
Belief affects physical performance?

I agree about all the personal factors that you mentioned but the
social advantages are probably very important as well.

Grove found that winning teams attributed their success to stable
causes, while teams that lost attributed their failure to unstable
causes like flukes, bad breaks, and the like. This bias can be
beneficial (at least in the short run) because it allows losing teams
to avoid being psychologically devastated by setbacks, to hang in
there and continue playing in the face of a string of defeats.

The Social Animal - Elliot Aronson - 8th Editimon 1999
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0716733129/

Wade argues that the development of language allowed the elaboration
of reciprical altruism in human societies. With this elaboration came
greater opportunities for 'freeloaders' to cheat the system by
deception. There must be "...some context in which statements were
reliably and indubitably true."

http://theforcethat.blogspot.com/2006/i05/religion-and-science.html

Humans routinely attribute intentions, beliefs, and desires in order
to interpret the behavior of others. Other humans are seen as agents,
that is, as entities that pursue goals in accordance with their
beliefs and desires. Attributions of agency are so ubiquitous that
they are typically taken for granted in everyday life. These
attributions are not always correct in identifying the beliefs and
desires that underlie a specific action of an agent; yet, if people
did not see others as agents, the capacity to understand their
behavior would be severely impaired. For example, people would be
surprised when others got up and moved. Abundant research documents
children's acquisition of human agent concepts over the first several
years of life (Astington et al., 1988; Perner, 1993; Wellman, 1990),
but there is little work available on the development of non-human
agent concepts. Yet, people often attribute intentions, beliefs and
desires to animals as well as to ghosts, gods, demons, and monsters.

http://cogprints.org/2363/

[sarge]

Post by Immortalist
Over-Sensitive Agency-Detectors
Humans routinely attribute intentions, beliefs, and desires in order
to interpret the behavior of others. Other humans are seen as agents,
that is, as entities that pursue goals in accordance with their
beliefs and desires. Attributions of agency are so ubiquitous that
they are typically taken for granted in everyday life. These
attributions are not always correct in identifying the beliefs and
desires that underlie a specific action of an agent; yet, if people
did not see others as agents, the capacity to understand their
behavior would be severely impaired. For example, people would be
surprised when others got up and moved. Abundant research documents
children's acquisition of human agent concepts over the first several
years of life (Astington et al., 1988; Perner, 1993; Wellman, 1990),
but there is little work available on the development of non-human
agent concepts. Yet, people often attribute intentions, beliefs and
desires to animals as well as to ghosts, gods, demons, and monsters.

any rationalist or scientist should be careful with this concept since
scientists exhibited the opposite syndrome

Insensitive agency detectors.

This was done in relation to animals. To in any way
'anthropomophize' animals could damage your career for a long time in
the sciences. Inroads in the 60s and 70s whittled this down, but
science as a whole phobically related to the idea of attributing
agency to animals. They were to be described in mechanistic terms.

Science also relegated other races than whites and also women to
lesser agency statuses.

So the trend in science is actually in the other direction, to
attribute agency to more entities.

You should see the research now being done in plant intelligence,
plant's nervous system like responses, plant communication.

There is also a very high tendency towards Aspberger's sydrone within
the science community and scientists and engineers who do not have
this syndrome still tend to have more markers for it than the average
person. IOW the depersonalization of reality has been a part of the
underlying scientific outlook, hence the assumptions that we are in a
dead non-sentient universe, that any life must resemble us - us being
from the beginning the white European adult male.