Religion: Natural Result of a Rational Mind

[Roman]

Humans are rational.

rationality: A decision making process in which one attempts to do the best one can for oneself using the resources at one's disposal economically and making tradeoffs that are internally consistent and will lead to increasing total gain. Sometimes referred to as cost-benefit calculations in which the decision maker seeks the most benefit for the least cost.
www.wwnorton.com/lenses/glossary1.htm

To use our rationality effectively, we must find patterns and causal links. As an early human in a new environment, pattern seeking behavior would be crucial to survival. From knowing which berries taste like burning and what kind of animals leave what kind of tracks, to building fire and making tools.

These behaviors require searching for patterns, discovering the pattern, and then manipulating it to our advantage. This rationality is incredibly powerful, as it allows us to manipulate our environment and predict the outcomes of complicated actions.

Pattern seeking is (or was) an entirely utilitarian endeavour, best suited to technological goals. A false positive while engaging in a technological pursuit will eventually reveal itself. Square wheels don't role well for instance. This can easily be demonstrated. It's far less expensive, in the long run, to mistakingly see a pattern where there isn't one, than be prone to missing patterns.

In fact, finding patterns is so useful, it's more beneficial to always look for patterns rather than ignore possible patterns. Pattern seeking behavior is obvious in humans, and many times we find patterns that don't exist.

When it comes to immaterial pursuits, especially predicting future events, we are far less capable. Reality is too complex, with too many variables, to possibly compute all at once. So we construct models. Though inherently flawed in their simplicity, models allow us to predict events with some degree of accuracy.

By observing past events and patterns and observing future patterns, our minds take which events they percieve as important and construct a model from them.

Religion is simply a model for reality. It takes an incomplete set of variables and looks for a pattern, either seeing a pattern where there isn't one (chaos) or seeing an incomplete pattern. Yet religion holds a certain amount of truth (whatever that is), as it models something that is real: reality.

I imagine early man, looking up at the sky, wondering what the lights twinkling above his head meant. He made up stories, based upon his life, for what the stars meant. In time, man came to see patterns in the behavior of individuals born under certain stars. Astrology makes sense. It's not immediately appearant that stars are burning balls of gas millions of skillions of miles away. And people born during certain months share behaviors with each other. We see patterns that aren't there.

That's what religion is, or at least where it came from. Of course, religions now are complex socio-cultural histories & guides for group behavior. Prior to all that though, we were just looking for a way to explain the world. Our pattern seeking behavior, our rationality, did just that.

 

[one_raven]

I agree with a lot of what you said, and I think you laid it out well.

It's far less expensive, in the long run, to mistakingly see a pattern where there isn't one, than be prone to missing patterns.

I would like you to qualify, or at least, expound on this some.
I don't necessarily agree, but I don't diagree on the face of it either.

Religion is simply a model for reality. It takes an incomplete set of variables and looks for a pattern, either seeing a pattern where there isn't one (chaos) or seeing an incomplete pattern. Yet religion holds a certain amount of truth (whatever that is), as it models something that is real: reality.

I suppose it is a model for reality, in is most base sense.
But that really ignores the core difference between religion, philosophy and science. Materialism and observable consequences.
See the point below about astrology.

As far as anyone can tell, however, even the earliest religions were more than simple philosphy, but practice and ritual.
Many times, the practice and ritual is as important if not more important than the philosophy.

I imagine early man, looking up at the sky, wondering what the lights twinkling above his head meant. He made up stories, based upon his life, for what the stars meant. In time, man came to see patterns in the behavior of individuals born under certain stars. Astrology makes sense. It's not immediately appearant that stars are burning balls of gas millions of skillions of miles away. And people born during certain months share behaviors with each other. We see patterns that aren't there.

Astrology is not religion, it was scientific endeavor.
People would observe patterns, as you pointed out, and try to make predictions from those patterns.
Astrology and Astronomy were very closely related, I would think.
Look at the stars to tell you what day to harvest, to see what weather was coming, to find direction etc.
To make the "rules" and predictions easier to understand and remember, they would have made personalities and made up stories about them.
By observing those significant differences on earth that related to different star patterns, people were compelled, again in line with your assertion, to search for other pattern dependent upon stars.
Such as if you are born under the Lion then you will exhibit these traits.
It was a natural progression.

People knew they were relatively powerless, however, and thought there must be something(s) more powerful. This was the spark of religion.

The divergence from science, however, was when people started praising those personalities, perfoming rituals for their benefit and offering sacrifices to them.
Basically, when the stories and personalities stepped away from being simple mnemonic devices and people started seeing them as "real".
When the personalities and stories gained their own will and people started to believe they can influenece the patterns by gaining the favor of the mnemonic devices.
That's what I think, anyway.

 

[one_raven]

I guess what I was saying was that religion is the result of humans putting rationality aside.

 

[KennyJC]

I would agree that religion is natural, don't agree that it is rational. You simply can't put 'religion' and 'rational' in the same sentance. I can only imagine how I would think if I walked the Earth when there was no explanation to life or the universe... I would probably be worshipping the sun, which keeps me warm and grows my food.

I think that any emerging intelligence in the universe will go through this religious way of thinking as it learns of it's own mortality. But ultimately, there comes a point when it should be left behind.

 

[duendy]

don know why it is tat men always assume it was 'man' who first lloked at Nature and stars and made patterns. always it is stressed 'man'....to be continues but a goodpoint to start from. if by 'man' you mean woman too.i would prefer HUMAN kind

 

[c7ityi_]

don know why it is tat men always assume it was 'man' who first lloked at Nature and stars and made patterns. always it is stressed 'man'....to be continues but a goodpoint to start from. if by 'man' you mean woman too.i would prefer HUMAN kind

Of course it means "woman" too! A male and a female does not differ from one another, it is only humans who have made a difference between them because of they are so attached to their bodies. Picking sides, choosing "this" over "that" is what causes evil (imbalance)

 

[duendy]

continuuing....i see a mindset which occured sometime in humankind's history, where rationaility becomes separated, psychologically from body, and emotions.
From there, the former becomes identitifed with men-who created this schism-and the latter with women, and Nature

So one could speculate that is was that particular 'eye' which looked at the heavenes, and the seeming mathemtacal 'static' order of the heavens was seen as 'God's rationality, or btter that 'God' was BEHIND it--as its architect. this presumption has come to be seen as false with modern astronomy, which as a science is much more savvy about vast time lengths and thus can see the changeningess of stella activity, kwhich anceint man wouldn't have known)....
This confusion is reflected in Platonic writings were he assumes an 'unchaning' world of forms, over and superior t the changeability of Nature. and from there comes the patriarchally-based desire to escape for changing Nature to the stella-influenced ideal of a changless 'spiritual' 'eternal' existence.

So in tis process, men who believe tis have idenitified wit this false idea of rationality and in doing so feel alienated from body, emotions, feelins, and Nature