So… This is based on all the species we know, who practice religion right?
Good to know that all of recorded human history has just been a phase. I mean, shit show that it has been.
Ah yes, this man has EVOLVED beyond the intelligence of past species. He is not just educated, evolution has gained him superior intelligence!
Praise evolution! Glory to the Homo Atheismus! They might look the same as every religious human but they are actually a different species!
Does this sub come with bandages?
What if the intelligent species have gone extinct because they were so socially good and giving, that they sacrificed themselves when they reached the epitome of religious intelligence… ?
And whatever’s leftover from those that are still surviving are the ones that are yet to go over that phase, and they are all but sheeps at the moment (ones that pray to false idols, or follow other religious figures to guide them, without much critical thinking)?
Those are the ones that were leftover, are the ones that hunted the mammoths to extinction, and have driven other animals and plants species to extinction due selfishness.
What if good, intelligent, and sensible people are becoming more and more scarce due to their new profound knowledge that they have acquired.
Maybe I’m biased because I liked certain people so much (Mr. Rogers, RIP) 😅
this man has EVOLVED beyond the intelligence of past species. He is not just educated, evolution has gained him superior intelligence!
Yes, exactly. This is exactly what’s happened. Humans are far more intelligent than any other species on earth.
They might look the same as every religious human but they are actually a different species!
You’ve missed the entire point of the post. Religion is a symptom of not being intelligent enough as a species to get past simple answers to hard questions. Atheists aren’t more enlightened like you’re implying, just that atheism is the next step in human intelligence that not everyone has made or will make for a thousand years. As a whole, humans are still an incredibly young species.
This post implies that to move past religion into atheism a species must evolve to gain so much intelligence that they can now answer all the unknown questions.
Thus directly saying that atheists are a different more intelligent human species than religious people.
Replace species with civilization and intelligence with knowledge, then it fits.
Sadly, the only way I can imagine to obtain experimental confirmation of this hypothesis would be unworkable.
It would be necessary to take a population of infants, raise them in strict isolation and teach them nothing of religion, carefully excluding anything that even hints at the concept, while giving them the scientific method and lots of understanding of reality otherwise. Then allow them to develop their own civilization and monitor them for several centuries to see if the concept ever emerges.
I always figured that religion arose from the natural inclination of the human brain to look for order in chaos (and it’s then exploited by those with power as a means of controlling people). Since there will always be circumstances outside our control, I would expect people to at the very least have superstitions, if not full-blown religion, no matter how much scientific knowledge they have. Until the fundamental nature of the human brain changes, at least.
What other guy said, there could be biological predisposition to religion. Many experts believe that it is a natural anti-depressant.
This is pure conjecture, but to me religion has always felt like an extension of parentage and hierarchy. You start off with your parents as your “ultimate superiors” (they decide for you, teach you etc.). At some point you learn that they are also part of a similar framework, with society and the state as their “ultimate superiors”. Gods and so on would then be the next step, the superior to all superiors.
This would explain the “natural anti-depressant” - an intact family gives us feelings of safety, protection, and other positive things. An intact society does the same. It seems logical that religion would do the same on an even larger level.
Does anyone know of counter-examples? E.g. religions with gods viewed as below the individual, or religions that don’t claim to be the framework in which everything else lives?
Religion doesn’t just provide social safety net which elicits comfort; on the personal level, the act of praying and meditating provides some comfort to the individual.
