Aside from the doctrine common among Muslims (as far as I know) that we are all somehow "born Muslim" and then some of us learn error, who has made any such a statement? You are very happy to accuse anyone who does not worship at the Church of Atheism Ascendant of making such claims, but you never back up the accusation.
Aside from the doctrine common among Muslims (as far as I know) that we are all somehow "born Muslim" and then some of us learn error, who has made any such a statement? You are very happy to accuse anyone who does not worship at the Church of Atheism Ascendant of making such claims, but you never back up the accusation.
path_of_one
Embracing the Mystery
Humans do not have established brain circuitry for specific doctrine, but they do have (as a universal) an established circuitry for spiritual experience. Like all of human life, these basic drives and experiences that originate from universal human tendencies are shaped by cultural environments to form acceptable ranges of belief.
However, positing that because specific cultural attributes (i.e., particular religious beliefs or ideas about God) are not universal in humans, the entirety of human spiritual experience is fallacious is an entirely spurious and scientifically ludicrous idea. The very universality of religion as a cultural attribute speaks to the underlying human drive to have such an aspect of sociality.
It is more appropriate to say that, for example, religion is to innate spiritual experience as gender is to innate sexual experience. Cultures are diverse in their approach to gender norms, stereotypes, and so forth, but universally deal with the basic sexual drives and differences in human beings. Sexuality and sexual difference are innate, but gender (how we socially construct what these differences and experiences mean) is not. But it would be false to promote the premise that because gender is culturally constructed and learned in early childhood, without this cultural construction (for example, if a human were somehow to survive utterly alone and separate from other humans) that s/he would have no experience of sexuality.
Likewise, it is innate in humans to have spiritual experience. Even many atheists will argue that neuroscience is demonstrating there is a "God" spot in the brain. Religion shapes this spiritual experience into something that allows for social solidarity and a socially accepted meaning- that brings people together into common ethics, causes, beliefs. For better or worse, this is what culture does in general. While I am fully for liberating people from sheeple mentality, there is no doubt in my mind that it is a mystery what a society of independent thinkers would look like. Social construction of reality is a basic foundational attribute of human beings. To wish to overcome this is to wish to evolve into something more than humanity currently is.
I'm all for it. But one can't single out religion as if it were some sort of anomaly in the human condition, or some solitary pariah of social living. Politics and nationalism, gender and family construction, economy... all are ways of controlling and manipulating people, of constructing societies that work (which is to say, societies where the vast majority are content to never step outside their culturally constructed box).
I grow weary of people acting as though religion is some unique, horrific facet of human social life. To me, we need to deal with the issue of enculturation and its effects on internal liberty in a more pragmatic way- to acknowledge that the "problem" is not religion per se. Rather, the question is really if we can even have human society while simultaneously having a majority that would become self-actualized people. People who have their own experiences and who lack the lens of culture (or who have trained themselves to be self critical). What would that society look like? Would there be society any more?
Sam Albion
akaFrancisKing:ViveLeRoi!
i believe I have direct knowledge of God. I cannot be an agnostic, deep down. It's impossible. I am "gnostic", deep down, and, a theist. Not an atheist. Woo!