Witch Burnings

[R. P. Lane]

Ok, TEIN, you win. I would like to address this idea of a ‘faith in god/dess gene’. I read your and j. d.s reply, and then while cleaning out some files in my desk, gave this some thought. I also have read about a ‘religion’ gene but didn’t give it any credence. This thought apparently came into focus by a group that calls themselves ‘light workers’. They say they are in communication with extra-terrestrials from the Pleiades system. The fellows from the Pleiades refer to themselves as the Federation.

When I first heard of this gene I thought right off that it was the dumbest thing I had ever heard of. But then, kind of, sort of, somewhat, thought of my studies in the history of religions. ‘Something’ sort of, kind of, to a degree, appears to follows certain genetic lines. The symbols, mysticism, numerical sequences, etc., are prevalent in each subsequent generation of those particular lines. I’ll give an example here of ‘power/spirit’ animals. If the mother (I’ll use mother to simply things) for instance had a lion as a power animal that spoke to her in dreams and visions then her offspring would have a lion as well. The symbol of a bird would be the same way carrying on from generation to generation. These people were typically called shamans, witchdoctors, medicine men/healers etc. Someone not of an authentic genetic line who wants the same sort of role would generally imbibe in some sort of hallucinogen and try to have the same kind of visions.

One problem that I have with it being a ‘gene’ is that the ‘spirit/guide creatures’ are sometimes animals and sometimes fairies/little people, sometimes deceased relatives etc. Yet these beings are ‘teachers’ who know what is going on at a different location from where the shaman is, is able to teach a ‘new’ thing to the shaman, and caution him/her on foods, drink or whatever. A ‘gene’ would not be able to do this. I’ve spent about 20 years studying this and I have to tell you TEIN that I have never really come to a conclusion about it. Actually, I don’t even really like to discuss it because it is such a lengthy and in-depth topic and doesn’t seem to have any logical answers to it.

Having studied it both in university and then on my own I had decided to investigate the particular spirit animals that show up in the lives of shamans repeatedly from generation to generation. This led me through archaeology, anthropology, geology and astronomy, genetics and palaeontology. Many of the artefacts found during excavations were the same creatures over and over again. I ended up researching ancient civilizations, Stonehenge, ancient Sumeria, Babylon, ancient Egyptian and Scandinavian mythology, and Mayan ruins until I was sure that my brain was fizzling out.

I decided to write all my notes into a manuscript complete with maps. Going onto the Internet to look for a publisher I found that many were too busy or very unethical (stealing material to the point of being incarcerated) and the horror stories from Writers Beware that I just didn’t bother with it any more. I also stopped discussing it. Then one day while posting against animal abuse on Care2 using my new Firefox toolbar, I somehow got thrown or pulled onto a strange site. I have to tell you TEIN, I just sat here confused for a second or two wondering where I was. I looked at the title and read Science Fiction and Fantasy. Knowing I didn’t belong there I was just about ready to leave when I spotted the title of this thread. I read it through twice and guess what, you have me discussing all this stuff again. No, TEIN, don’t try to make something mystical out of this, it was just the Fire Fox toolbar, no magic at all.

And please, TEIN, don’t answer me with ‘it’s god’ behind it all.

[R. P. Lane]

Originally Posted by j. d. worthington

There is talk about a "God Gene" being bruited about; somewhere around here you'll find a link to an article about such. It may or may not turn out to be a genuine genetic quirk, but chances are that, yes, it's played a large part in our evolution (the belief, that is) -- as is pretty much inevitable, when one considers a species coming from a background of no understanding of the world and the universe around it, to our present state of hard-won knowledge. Along the way, religion would be an almost certainly necessary part of that development. This has been acknowledged for well over a century, now. Whether or not there is a genetic component is another matter, but it is being investigated....

And to more or less steal your line, TeiN: Time to open yet another can of worms on this subject:

Texas high court rules exorcism protected by law - Yahoo! News

Title: "Texas high court rules exorcism protected by law", from the AP, datelined Fri., June 27, 2007....

Incidentally: No, I haven't abandoned the thread; I just (as I noted when first answering Rachel's posts) don't have much time to respond here for the time being. And, this being the sort of discussion where, if anything worthwhile is going to be said, consideration and deliberation on what one posts is necessary, I simply lack the time to do anything I want to say justice; hence am forced to keep silent most of the time....

Well, hello there. I won't wait for you to reply since you state you are too busy at this time. But I do want to say that I really think that the church in the above link acted very unethically. If the elders of the church felt that she had psychological problems from something she witnessed then they should have taken her to a hospital (freaking out) and had a doctor look at her. Exorcism was used for the 'casting out of demons', an archaic method for mass control by instilling fear. It was not used for trauma from witnessing an event/s. It sounds to me like the church is trying to cover it's 'backside'.

[Lobolover]

Dont forget that even people like Luther promoted hatred.

[j. d. worthington]

Unfortunately, yes; time constraints keep me from engaging in this discussion the way I'd like -- though when I can, I'll be more than happy to. I agree that the church behaved unethically -- but I'd say that's putting it mildly. My point about opening yet another can of worms has to do with this being yet another example of such beliefs providing an excuse for such actions, protecting the guilty from punishment. This sort of thing is barbaric and, frankly, should be condemned by anyone with a scintilla of sense; and those who participate in such deserve little consideration in my book. (Hell, I haven't forgiven Ann Putnam yet!)

On "the God gene"... what I was referring to earlier was something which has become a topic investigated by various evolutionary biologists, actually, and has little (or actually, IIRC, nothing) to do with the group(s) you mention in your earlier post. The actual article linked to in the thread (which I'm having trouble finding) was from the New York Times, and was discussing the matter in light of these investigations....

I frankly hesitate to say that there is such a gene, but I won't dismiss it out of hand....

[j. d. worthington]

Ah. Found the article, though not the thread:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/04/ma...olution.t.html

[R. P. Lane]

I went to the link j.d., thank you for finding it. But I have to ask you a question. Is this where TEIN got the idea that there is a ‘god gene’? I tried to save a few paragraphs but the link wouldn’t let me so I ended up printing it out and then retyping selections. I typed exactly as it is taken from pages 8 and 9 at the link. I left out redundant words that really had no bearing on the subject. You can check this out for yourself. In fact, I would like that so there are no misunderstandings.
*******************************

One of the most vocal adaptationists is David Sloan Wilson…… Wilson’s father was Sloan Wilson author of “The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit”, …….Sloan Wilson became a celebrity with young women asking for his autograph, especially after his next novel, A Summer Place became another blockbuster movie. The son grew up wanting to do something to make his famous father proud.

Darwinians were critical of group selection, the idea that human groups can function as single organisms the way beehives or anthills do. So he (Wilson) decided to become the man who rescued this discredited idea. “I thought, Wow, defending group selection – now, that would be big,”

Dawkins once called Wilson’s defense of group selection “sheer, wanton, head-in-bag perversity.”…..

Still, for all its controversial elements, the narrative Wilson devised about group selection and evolution of religion is clear, perhaps a legacy of his novelist father. Begin he says with an imaginary flock of birds. Some birds serve as sentries, scanning the horizon for predators and calling out warnings. Having a sentry is good for the group but bad for the sentry, which is doubly harmed: by keeping watch, the sentry has less time to gather food, and by issuing a warning call, it is more likely to be spotted by the predator. So in the Darwinian struggle, the birds most likely to pass on their genes are the nonsentries. How, then could the sentry gene survive for more than a generation or two.
***********************
I did not see anything at all in the rest of the material that referred to a ‘gene’ or even an allele on a gene that was responsible for the belief in a supreme god/dess. This is all I could find after reading the pages through twice. What Wilson has done is use his faculty for ‘words’, which he no doubt inherited from his novelist father, to establish his argument that there is a gene for religious beliefs. No one else mentions or even backs him on this that I could find. This is also where the idea of ‘group selection’ comes into play. Wilson did no more than create a scene using a selection of terminology to come up with something that would cast him in the light and ‘make his father proud’. Of the other theories mentioned referring to ‘hard wiring’ of the brain, on the last page you will read that 3 of the proponents are religious, although they outwardly claim not to be. Actually, I suggest that all go back and read that last page and then scroll back to the 1rst and follow what these guys are saying. There is absolutely nothing from these men that I can give any credence to. I’ll go with Dawkins.

[j. d. worthington]

I've no idea where TeiN got the notion; but I've run into it here and there; sometimes from the biological standpoint, sometimes from the mystical. Here is something that gives a bit more on one of the major proponents of the idea:

God gene - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

As I indicated above, I'm more than a little skeptical of the idea (I think it is both too narrow and too broad on various points, and I have trouble seeing where the genetic component would come in here, rather than social preconditioning), but it is a quite recent (one might almost say nascent) field of investigation, so I'll not dismiss it altogether yet... though, like you, I'm more inclined to Dawkins' point of view with such matters....

[the smiling weirwood]

I am a staunch supporter of better education and logical, scientific examination of the world. But to imagine that a globally adhered to program of purely scientific thought would be the cure-all to societies' ills is a little simplistic. I am purposefully exaggerating your view point, J.D.

To begin, the whole idea of universal or incontrovertible fact is flawed. We as humans perceive existence through ourselves, if that makes sense. We are not instruments to simply record date but reacting to it! My point here is that if we are to define scientific evidence, what you would call Truth, to be those things directly available to the senses then we cripple ourselves.

Cyclic differential equations are pretty awesome, but aside from a handful of highly educated individuals has anyone heard of them? Much more likely to be widely known is the Mona Lisa, or "Let It Be", or the statue of David. That might be because many more people than don't find these things to be "uplifting" or "beautiful." This isn't logical. This has no basis in scientific fact. But it remains that it provides value to peoples' lives.

There is something in the human condition that thirsts for Art. Art isn't logical, it isn't something that can be computed or measured(however much the ancient Greeks tried) or even adequately explained in the dictionary. But it remains that people live better, are happier, and function on a higher level when inspired or influenced by art in some form.

This is a poorly organized point, but please bear with me. Perhaps if you read it all through together you might see what I'm trying to get at.

I think what I am trying to say, is not that art is important, which it is; but rather that those things we can experience directly are not the end all be all of the universe. Despite the fact that I feel love, or lust, or envy, or compassion or jealousy or whatever, is there any evidence that I felt those things beyond what I tell you? No there isn't, but that doesn't diminish the truth of it. This ties into your mention of metaphysics. Are you advocating metaphysics or their existence? Which definition of metaphysics are you using? This all boils down to debating the existence of something we can't directly experience, and the heart of the matter is that there are very few things we can directly experience and none of them hold much value when compared to the essence of the human spirit.

We can sit and talk forever about what the human spirit is, but think honestly: is there not some feeling, some emotion you experience when you observe firsthand something of great beauty? Whether it is wrought by human hands or the forces of nature, do you feel nothing? Can you explain this feeling? Is it a response to stimuli or an emotional thing? Which is more true, the electromagnetic spectra producing the sensation on your retinas or whatever indefinable something else you feel?

Maybe my point is this; that truth is subjective. Whatever you want to say in response, it is so. Parson feels that what she believes to be true is true, J.D. feels his believes to be true, and they are contradictory but true for each person.

Existence is the sum of our experiences. This is a simple truth. Kind of like Schroedinger's cat. I haven't seen a deity, so until such time as I have firsthand knowledge of one it both exists and does not exist. To take that further, until that time people who say there is or isn't one are both liars and truthful. How is that logical? Intuitively one would say that there is a universal truth which would render one side of the argument false all along, but the greater truth is that there isn't one. What you are thinking of as Truth is really more like a resolution.

There have been many science fiction scenarios in which human belief shaped reality, and in a sense it is true. We find rational explanations for things because we believe they can be rationally explained. If we believed that the universe was totally chaotic and eternally quixotic would we even try? So then we would not have any system of science and instead a record of how random the universe was...and this line of thought brings to mind a recent Scientific American article I read which questioned the consistency of the universal constants. Interesting stuff, no?

[R. P. Lane]

Originally Posted by j. d. worthington

I've no idea where TeiN got the notion; but I've run into it here and there; sometimes from the biological standpoint, sometimes from the mystical. Here is something that gives a bit more on one of the major proponents of the idea:

God gene - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

As I indicated above, I'm more than a little skeptical of the idea (I think it is both too narrow and too broad on various points, and I have trouble seeing where the genetic component would come in here, rather than social preconditioning), but it is a quite recent (one might almost say nascent) field of investigation, so I'll not dismiss it altogether yet... though, like you, I'm more inclined to Dawkins' point of view with such matters....

Thanks for the link j.d.

The God gene hypothesis states that some human beings bear a gene which gives them a predisposition to episodes interpreted by some as religious revelation.

This goes along with what I had tried to explain to TEIN in a post earlier. That some genetic lines appear to have 'something' that follows from one generation to the next. However, it does not behave as a biological gene would. This link may also explain why this 'something' is able to change shape or appearance according to the belief system of the genetic line. I have done much study on this, not books written by individual shamans, etc., but by serious social anthropologists researching that aspect of primitive societies. It is these individuals who have become priest/esses, shamans, etc., and led communities in religious matters.

Although the rituals, symbols and numerical sequences remain constant with each genetic line the prevailing belief system also comes into play, not only for the genetic line but for all other individuals also. As an example, if a person fervently believes in ghosts the chances are very great that he/she will see one or be visited by some paranormal disturbance. Since all entities tend to reinforce each other through communication of some sort, then other individuals hearing stories about the ghostly visitations will probably become believers also. It is kind of like an individual being surrounded by mirrors where their own belief system is reflected back to him/her.

Did I say this right?

[R. P. Lane]

Originally Posted by Lobolover

Dont forget that even people like Luther promoted hatred.

Hello Lobolover, I'm glad you joined us. Would you mind elaborating a bit on your reply? How did Luther promote hatred?

[R. P. Lane]

Weirwood


It is true, Weirwood, that each individual has his/her own ‘truths’. But what I am discussing is ‘facts’ and an individuals truths are not necessarily facts. Simply ‘believing’ something does not make it a fact. Let’s create a few scenarios.

• A child is adopted into a family. The child grows up believing that its parents, brothers and sisters are its true biological family. To the child this is ‘truth’ but it is not a ‘fact’.

• An individual sets out to buy a vehicle. He/she is told that the grey RV is in excellent shape and has low mileage on it. The individual buys the auto ‘believing’ he has gotten a real good deal. He tells his friends about his great new auto, his version of the truth as he believes it. However, the vehicle turns out to need a new transmission and the odometer had been reset. Obviously the ‘truth’ was not a ‘fact’.

• Do you know of anyone who truly believed that someone loved him/her only to find out later that this wasn’t true at all?

I don’t think I have to go any further than this to make my point weirwood. The act of believing something does not make that belief a fact.

You discuss emotions and feelings such as lust, love and envy as something that is related to ‘spirit’ but not connected to stimuli. You must have a great imagination wierwood. How can one lust, love or envy something that one knows nothing about and has never seen or heard of? All that we know is carried through to the brain by our senses, by external stimuli. Try explaining the red colour of a rose to someone who has been completely blind from birth and has never seen any colour.

You are correct, however, we are the sum of our experiences. So then what happens to the belief in a god/dess? What external stimulus has been received to warrant this belief? If an individual has ‘seen’ a god/dess, or spoken with one directly face to face, then his/her ‘belief’ may be grounded in ‘fact’, otherwise the belief has no basis other than social conditioning.

I don’t think (or I may have missed the post) that anyone said that the removal of all false belief systems would cure all of the world’s problems. This discussion has carried through from the original post that stated that people were murdered because they were ‘believed’ to be witches. It is these kinds of ‘beliefs’ that must be done away with. The time of the ‘Dark Age’ should be long gone. Only knowledge based on ‘facts’ will stop the violence and segregation of ignorance. If this means doing away with religious belief
systems then so be it. There is more than enough to wonder about in awe and delight at what we know to be fact at this time.

[TheEndIsNigh]

First of all. Sorry, been away this weekend so I wasn't able to join in.

R. P. Lane
Then one day while posting against animal abuse on Care2 using my new Firefox toolbar, I somehow got thrown or pulled onto a strange site. I have to tell you TEIN, I just sat here confused for a second or two wondering where I was. I looked at the title and read Science Fiction and Fantasy. Knowing I didn’t belong there I was just about ready to leave when I spotted the title of this thread. I read it through twice and guess what, you have me discussing all this stuff again. No, TEIN, don’t try to make something mystical out of this, it was just the Fire Fox toolbar, no magic at all.

And please, TEIN, don’t answer me with ‘it’s god’ behind it all.

Well I agree it's not god, so it must just be my magnetic personality (could be the same thing)

Originally Posted by j. d. worthington

I've no idea where TeiN got the notion; but I've run into it here and there; sometimes from the biological standpoint, sometimes from the mystical. Here is something that gives a bit more on one of the major proponents of the idea:

J. D.: I saw a review of the papers on the TV some time ago about the idea though other than the casual reference I had now idea of the detail. Course they talked about a gene and a god, the clues were there it's not a big leap. However my post was a reaction to the selective breeding program Procrastinator posted.

Over the weekend I have considered the idea and suspect a god gene is deffinately the wrong description. I shall post more when I've got it together.

[R. P. Lane]

Well I agree it's not god, so it must just be my magnetic personality (could be the same thing)


LOL, TEIN, I'll let you have that. For now.

[Ursa major]

Or it could be that you're poles apart in your argument.

Just a thought.