Is God a byproduct of our theories of minds? - PeachParts Mercedes-Benz Forum

kerry · #1 02-09-2011, 02:44 PM

http://www.slate.com/id/2283372/pagenum/all/

Are You There God? It's Me, Brain.
How our innate theory of mind gives rise to the divine creator.
By Jesse BeringPosted Tuesday, Feb. 1, 2011, at 12:15 PM ET

The following is an edited excerpt from The Belief Instinct, which will be published Feb. 7.

Illustration by Rob Donnelly. Click image to expand.The scientific jury is still out on whether our species is unique among social mammals in being able to conceptualize mental states—other species, such as chimps, dogs, scrub jays and dolphins, may have some modest capacity in this regard. But there's absolutely no question that we're much better at it than the rest of the animal kingdom. We are natural psychologists, exquisitely attuned to the unseen psychological world. Reasoning about abstract mental states is as much a trademark of our species as walking upright on two legs, learning a language, and raising our offspring into their teens.
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There is a scientific term for this way of thinking—"theory of mind." It's perhaps easiest to grasp the concept when considering how we struggle to make sense of someone else's bizarre or unexpected behavior. If you've ever seen an unfortunate woman at the grocery store wearing a midriff-revealing top and packed into a pair of lavender tights like meat in a sausage wrapper, or a follicularly challenged man with a hairpiece two shades off and three centimeters adrift, and asked yourself what on Earth those people were thinking when they looked in the mirror before leaving the house, this is a

Mistress · #2 02-09-2011, 03:37 PM

We are as curious as cats who by the way can sense emotional states in other animals and humans. humans have this incessant need to know "where did we come from and why" things happen. As for the ladies and gents of Walmart well I have added some photos, the answer lies within....genetic mutation, maybe.

elchivito · #3 02-09-2011, 07:10 PM

I think the pursuit of the infinite by humans is due in large measure to the fact that, as far as we can deduce, mankind is the only species that contemplates it's own death. The rest is all philosophical mumbo jumbo and mental masturbation.

aklim · #4 02-09-2011, 09:20 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by elchivito

I think the pursuit of the infinite by humans is due in large measure to the fact that, as far as we can deduce, mankind is the only species that contemplates it's own death. The rest is all philosophical mumbo jumbo and mental masturbation.

Perhaps it is like having kids or making a donation. They want to live forever. If I have kids, I live thru the kid. IF I make a donation and get the hospital a wing, they name it after me. Years after I am dead, I still live on. We all know who Honest Abe is, don't we? That gives people immortality.

Religion does that too. You die but you live on forever. So, your few mortal years is like us suffering thru school for a few years and have the rest of your life in a better place.

kerry · #5 02-09-2011, 09:48 PM

I think his argument is basically that we see 'minds' everywhere whether they are really there or not. I take this to be the basic flaw of the argument from intelligent design which is coming up in the Facebook thread. It's roughly, "Since there's a pattern, it must have been put there by something with a mind." It's a mistake. I'm looking at my kitchen floor. It's made up of 4 different styles of VCT, laid out randomly. There is no pattern or order to the relationship between the tiles. It took a lot of effort for us to make the floor random. More than once we had to stop and rethink, because we were unconsciously following a pattern.

Botnst · #6 02-09-2011, 10:32 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by kerry

http://www.slate.com/id/2283372/pagenum/all/

Are You There God? It's Me, Brain.
How our innate theory of mind gives rise to the divine creator....

It could be the other way: God provided the mind as an antenna to His divine word and we confuse the internal noise of the radio mechanism with the heavenly signal.

kerry · #7 02-09-2011, 10:36 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Botnst

It could be the other way: God provided the mind as an antenna to His divine word and we confuse the internal noise of the radio mechanism with the heavenly signal.

Sure it's logically possible (since we have the psychological tendency to see THE BIG MIND) but it might be helpful if there were some compelling evidence that the BIG MIND existed.

Botnst · #8 02-09-2011, 10:43 PM

Absent a signal, does the mere existence of a radio prove the existence of elecromagnetic radiation? I don't think so. If we look at the amplifying circuitry and notice an internally generated 60 hz hum, does that prove that what we thought were electromagnetic waves propagated through space was false? Of course not.

I think the observations are based on looking at the receiver and saying nothing outside of it is possible because it has an internal hum.

tonkovich · #9 02-10-2011, 12:44 AM

yes, the Lord works in mysterious ways, that we humans cannot comprehend.

how do we know this? well... uh, we just do.

kerry · #10 02-10-2011, 01:02 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by tonkovich

yes, the Lord works in mysterious ways, that we humans cannot comprehend.

how do we know this? well... uh, we just do.

Praise the Lord brother, I feel the Spirit moving.

Carleton Hughes · #11 02-10-2011, 10:05 AM

Said it once and I'll say it agin. Devout folks are safeguarded to a great degree against falling victim to certain debilitating mental illnesses since their acceptance of the universal insanity precludes them from havin to construct a personal one.