Religion & Spirituality

Two Reasons For Belief

@aa180 and I were having a conversation earlier and it reminded me of this important issue. I believe, and others have purported, that these beliefs in disembodied minds, and our tendency to anthropomorphize nonhuman animals and inanimate objects are one of the most important factors contributing to religious belief. Instead of writing about another argument for the existence of god/s today I figured I would discuss these phenomena. I was originally going to just cover the topic of disembodied minds, but I find that the two are inexorably linked when talking about religious belief. I'm going to try a method of Q&A and we'll see how that goes. If you like this method let me know, if you hate it also let me know.

Two Reasons For Belief

What do these phrases mean?

A belief in disembodied minds refers to the belief that the mind is separate from the body, and anthropomorphism describes our tendency to ascribe intention or intelligence to nonhuman animals and objects. In order to help improve our understanding of these terms I'll give examples.

One example of a disembodied mind would be the belief in ghosts. This idea is that there is something extra to a person that lives on after their death. Most people understand that dead bodies no longer have needs such as the need to consume food, the need to breathe, or a need for water. Many people, however, still believe that the dead person has desires. Perhaps the dead was wronged and as such is angry, or they care deeply for you and protect you.

There are copious examples of anthropomorphism including, people talking to their pets, people cursing at their car when it will not start, and the ascribing of intention to natural events (ie the ocean, storms, and volcanoes)

What do you mean when you say that they are inexorably linked?

What I mean is that the two work in tandem to create religious beliefs. Anthropomorphism is the process by which we ascribe our innate belief in disembodied minds to other nonthinking agents.

You said that believing in disembodied minds is an innate belief, but it seems to me that it would actually be learned. Can you back your claim up?

At one time I too thought that this was a learned belief, but actually this appears to be the normative belief. It actually seems to be a process for us to pull away from this belief. There's a fair amount of research on the subject, but for the sake of brevity I'll just discuss one to back up each point.

Innate: Bering and Bjorklund published The Natural Emergence of Reasoning About the Afterlife as a Developmental Regularity in 2004. In this study children ages 4-12 year old children were asked about the biological and psychological needs of a dead agent. You can read the article if you'd like, but they conducted a test in which they described a scenario in which a mouse died. They then asked a series of questions about the mouse. They discovered that as early as 4-6 years old the continuity of death was something that children seemed aware of. When asked, "Will the mouse ever be alive again?" 96% of the 4-6 year olds said that it would not be alive again, additionally they said that the mouse would never grow old.

Interestingly the authors repeated the test this time adding adults to the group to figure out what specifically people thought continued after death, and see the differing responses between age groups. Their results are below:

Two Reasons For Belief

*I DO NOT OWN THIS* All rights belong to Bering and Bjorklund

We see a positive trend up until adulthood in which the understanding that biological processes cease upon death. There is one notable exception in that adults 18% of adults answered that the brain keeps functioning after death. My presumption is that this would have to do with the mind/brain question. Similarly in regards to the psychobiological questions we see a positive trend into adulthood. Next perceptual questions (sight, taste, smell etc) were asked and it is here that we begin to see that the gap between the youths and the adults begin to shorten, with only 80%+ of adults thinking these processes end upon death. This means that ~20% of adults thought that an agent could still see, hear, and smell things after death. This gap further closes when asked if the agent still had desires/ hopes/ wants. With as much as 50% of adults believing that the agent still has wishes. These rates continue to diminish in regards to the emotional and epistemic sections. What I glean from these trends is that as early as kindergarten we understand that biological processes stop at death, but we have a belief that some part of us lives on. The part of us that has wants and desires, the parts of us that thinks and feels is believed to be separate from our physical body. The only impact that society appears to have on this trend is that it reinforces the notion that our body dies, but the belief that something goes on appears to be relatively stable.

The entire article can be found below.

http://www.qub.ac.uk/schools/InstituteofCognitionCulture/FileUploadPage/Filetoupload,90233,en.pdf

Well, what about anthropomorphism?


Anthropomorphism is viewed across all peoples and has been thoroughly studied. I still find that one of the best studies on the subject was the 1944 study by Heider and Simmel. If you watched the video above think about how you would describe what happened. In nearly all cases people describe the mindless shapes as having some intention. If you'd like to read more about the study https://www.all-about-psychology.com/fritz-heider.html has the full text. This study is an excellent testament to how pervasive our tendency to anthropomorphize something as nonhuman and unintelligent as random shapes.

Ok, don't take it too seriously that's just how they described the movements, they don't actually think that things like animals and random shapes are actually intelligent agents.

I wouldn't be so sure. It's true that today such concepts seem silly, but that appears to only be a result of new ideals that have not always existed. In fact in antiquity it wasn't that infrequent for animals to be put on trial. Even throughout the 18th century this practice continued. Cows, pigs, rats, chickens etc would be tried in a court of law with a lawyer presenting their defense and a prosecutor, well, prosecuting. One may think that this was merely a weird manner in which to remove a harmful animal to society, but Srivastava points out a case in which a donkey who had been involved in bestiality (for which crime would be a death sentence to both parties) was exonerated due to witnesses coming forth on her behalf attesting to her (the donkey's) virtu. The man was put to death.

If that isn't enough for you, even weirder yet there have been policies throughout the world in which items were put on trial. Thanks to Aristotle and Demosthenes we know that Athens would actually try inanimate objects that killed someone. If for example and axe or brick fell and killed a man it would be put on trial and if found guilty hurled outside the city.

I get the idea, but what examples can you think of from religions?

This is quite easy. All of the gods of antiquity appear to merely be the by products of these two natural failures of cognition. Why did this storm just come and wipe out our village? Thor, Indra, El etc must be angry. This volcano just destoyed the town next to me, how do I make sure that doesn't happen to me? Make sure Lalahan, Hephaestus, and Peklenc. As you go down the list of gods you'll find that all of them appear to be perfectly explained by these two mechanisms. A belief that a mind can be separate from a body, and the attribution of human characteristics to natural phenomena including objects, nonhuman animals, meteorological events and much more.

Well, where do we go from here?

That's up to you. As I stated earlier these beliefs are no longer taken as seriously and as such is not likely to really cause much harm. If you're going to practice science, or want your beliefs to best match reality as they can you will want to watch out for cognitive biases like these.

Anyway, congrats if you made it this far! As always, criticisms, commendations, and name calling will always be appreciated!

P.S. I did not want this title, I tried 100 different ones, but the site kept saying I had already posted this myTake.

Two Reasons For Belief
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