h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

It's the 'inspiring' I disagree with. I have little doubt that humans want (I wouldn't say 'need'!) to believe things that are reassuring. That's a different concept though.

Alright. What if I claim that there is a Satan-shaped hole. If you were to deny that, would you be making a claim that you couldn't back up? Of course not! It would be up to me to justify my claim, not you to disprove it.

We know precious little about the beliefs of prehistoric humans, except what we can tentatively conclude from their art and artefacts. As for historic humans; well those with the leisure to develop writing have left records, but they would be the very ones to spend time in speculation (idly or profitable) anyway. They have given us science, mathematics and much more. These dominant classes always kept the lower orders in their place with threats of divine wrath; but they would, wouldn't they. I expect that in ancient Greece the gods sort of took the place that television occupies now. Certainly, the lower orders of our era (if there is a heirarchy of people in any sense - there will be two extremes to it) seem to have more interest in soaps than in sanctity.

I look with my mind. I can only tell what I see.

Satan is part of the Judaic-Christian-Islamic tradition. Other traditions have mischief-makers (such as Loki, or Hermes) but I am not aware of any other traditions which include a force for evil. But then other traditions are not monotheistic. I suspect that those who believe in Satan do it out of a polarisation of their belief in a single and benevolent god. Content again, Toxxin. No dice.

You say:

"These dominant classes always kept the lower orders in their place with threats of divine wrath; but they would, wouldn't they."

But how does that work, unless the lower orders beleive in a divinity whose wrath they fear?

"The bogey man will get you" doesn't work unless you believe in bogey men.

I think that Patten-Chaser has it right.

You do not see that in many humans throughout the species there is in fact a 'god-shaped hole'. You just don't buy the commonality of the need in the human psyche to believe that there is more to life than the dirt we are made of.

The entry answers a very specific question - assuming that there is not god, where did this common human need to believe in a god come from?

If it is not a question you ask, then this answer (which may be right, and which may be wrong) is not going to interest you.

Thanks for the dumbing down of your questions - I appreciated it.

a dumbed down bint called Ben

And I would say "do" instead of "want" or "need". Empirical observation: humans believe.

?

I would assume you were being deliberately obtuse. Satan is one of many gods, and would fit comfortably into Ben's "god-shaped hole". This is another of your misdirections. The point concerns the (non-)existence of a 'god-shaped hole', not the nature of the god that might fit such a hole. Is your use of cheap debating tricks deliberate, or don't you realise you're doing it?



This is the nub of your argument, isn't it? The term 'inspiring' doesn't appeal to your personal taste. Look in a dictionary (as an impartial indication of the generally accepted meaning of 'inspiration') and then please come back and tell us why 'inspiration' is inappropriate.

Pattern-chaser

"Who cares, wins"

OK. Let's have a science-shaped hole or a reassurance shaped hole. They work in my argument just as well. The point is that it is up to anyone who claims that there is an X-shaped hole to demonstrate it, not for those who deny it to prove that particular negative.

It's not good enough to say 'Humans believe'. It has to be 'inspired belief' and I don't accept that there's any evidence for that or even that the concept has coherence. Nothing I've read here comes close to changing my mind - I know that means that you will just criticize my mind.

Without consulting the dictionary it is clear that the word 'inspire' refers to breathing in. So these beliefs are absorbed with the atmosphere or by osmosis without passing through a thinking filter I take it. (Guess you'd need an air filter).

So a Satan-shaped hole refers to content, but a God-shaped hole does not! I can't wait to see how you're going to explain that one.

The lower orders are kept dumb and preferably illiterate. They are pretty gullible when a sufficiently charismatic character tells them something that might benefit them. "It's lousy here, but there's pie in the sky when you die! If you toe the line."

If this God-shaped hole (content Ben, content!) is really there, then why do many folks fill it with something else? Or do they leave it empty? The question regarding its existence does interest me, but to ask why it's there at this stage is premature.

Ok - the god-shaped hole is a presuppositon of the entry. I will make that presupposition explicit.

That way, if someone stumbles on the entry and doesn't think it odd that spirituality or 'inspired belief' turns up across all human cultures without exception, they can say 'this is tosh' and amble off again.

Personally I find it odd.

Personally you don't.

Fair doos. My username states my view on differing opinions.

B

*ignores backlog*

> "the word 'belief' is taken to mean 'inspired belief'"

Contrast 'inspired belief' with other things belief can mean.

> "Visionaries are dangerous people, because their visions make them powerful."

Good This whole section reads well (though I wish you would stop having such tiny paragraphs...), and that's a nice semi-conclusion.

> "she inspired us because of our need to believe in her"

A few cases of 'our', like this one, could be replaced by "people's" or similar. I didn't believe in Diana, nor did she inspire me. I'm happy to be told than people, in general, were inspired by Diana, but less happy to be told that *we* were inspired by her.

> "it is not the believer's deity that saves them"

Not necessarilly. While I'm ok with that, unqualified it might irritate the faithful of certain traditions.

> "The only way that something as bizzare and universal as the human need for something to believe could have arisen is in evolutionary response to environmental pressures"

I totally disagree. Blind panic is not an evolutionary advantage, but something that we have as a side effect of things that are evolutionary advantages. IE, we panic because we can multi-task and respond to pressure and other stuff. Similarly, cars do not shudder in a low gear because they were designed that way, but because it's a side effect of things that *were* designed in. So that entire section I see as being, well, wrong.

Sorry

-Martin

Good point about la belle Diana, and I will change the entry accordingly.

You are right about my liking for short paragraphs; it overdramatises the page and is a bad habit which comes from inflicting death by power-point for a living. I will make changes there too.

I also take the point about the lack of qualification in ""it is not the believer's deity that saves them". The motto of the project is tread on no toes. I suspect that this entry may well be unsuitable for the project, which is ironic, because it is the one which kicked the project off. Still, I dearly love an irony.



"The only way that something as bizzare and universal as the human need for something to believe could have arisen is in evolutionary response to environmental pressures"

This is the nub of the entry of course, and as I have already said to Toxxin, the entry is the answer I came to a couple of weekends ago after 25 years or so of asking this question.

As I also said to Toxxin, if there is a better or more convincing answer, then I will go there. It is a question I genuinely want to find the answer to, and better answers are - well - better.

I am not particularly interested in converting people to the 'church of the evolved god'. It is enough for me if the argument is lucidly and unambiguously made.

If it can be refuted then I will recant. Hell, I have recanted before and will do again.

Thanks for your comments Lucinda.

B

I already did:



Why not? The point is that people believe, and the inference, because belief is so widespread, is that they *need* to believe in something which inspires them to lead their lives in one way instead of another.



More misdirection.

Fact: large numbers of people *do* believe.

Fact: they have done for millennia.

Fact: people's beliefs inspire them to act in particular ways.

To postulate the existence of a "god-shaped hole" in the human psyche is a fairly obvious reaction to this, IMO.



Make up your mind, Toxxin: either it's incoherent (in this context: insufficiently defined, OK?) *or* it's coherent but there's no evidence for it. Which is it?

Pattern-chaser

"Who cares, wins"

The argument seems to be revolving around two questions.
What's the difference between an 'ordinary' belief, and an 'inspired' belief?

And Do we have a god shaped hole in our belief systems?

For the first we do make such distinctions in ordinary speech, but the term is rather undefined. It has connotations of beliefs from a divine source (according to my dictionary), but what Ben seems to have in mind is inspirational beliefs rather than inspired ones. (The Buddha would be a good example). These would certainly be functional as motivators.

For the second Does the "shape" of the hole in your belief system dictate the "shape" of your god? If you believe in God is there a hole at all?
What's the relation between the first question and the second?

I can see what Ben's driving at, (I think) but I tend to look at it from a slightly different perspective. I'll think about it some more when I'm a bit further on with what I'm SUPPOSED to be doing.

So for everything (X) that people believe there is an X-shaped hole. Occam's razor suggests the hole should be thrown out since it adds nothing to the concept of belief. In the words of a teacher of mine "It's too true to be good."

You make a good point when you say I can't have it both ways - yet I can by this little manouevre. Inspired belief can be considered from an empirical or conceptual point of view. If 'IB exists' is an empirical observation, then we need evidence for it. If it follows from the concept of belief, then we need a coherent account of it. But in the end that is only a holding stratagem. Unless the concept becomes coherent, there is no point in searching for evidence of one-knows-not-what. That is, in fact, my criticism of this entry - in a nutshell.

Nevertheless, I accept also that sometimes related evidence can help to clarify a concept. There can be an interactive process whereby we approach a better understanding of the world. Perhaps there has to be. I just don't see that much of that has gone into this entry.

<

I already did: >

Well fine! So they both refer to content, or neither does. That is the point of my argument (not the shape of the hole, or of Satan for that matter ). I have implicitly concluded that Ben would want to say that both 'holes' refer to content, but I don't know.

Thank you Martin. I'm afraid that this looks like becoming a battle of the sexes, and since Noggin is carefully as impartial as possible, then that's me versus the rest.

I introduced that concept of characteristics that are secondary to genuinely evolved characteristics a short time ago in this discussion. I think these are what Ben calls 'pandemic' characteristics - ie; not universal (therefore, for me, not primarily evolved [exception: sexual dimorphism]). I like your example of juddering in certain gears (I happen to think that you should say too high a gear, but that ain't the point). Yep, blind panic occurs because we evolved the fight-or-flight reaction and it is no longer appropriate in most situations.

<<>>

<<I already did: >>



This nonsense has just about destroyed any benefit we might have gained from the metaphor of a god-shaped hole in the human psyche.

The original reference is to a (metaphorical!) container of a suitable size and shape to accomodate a god; any god. You suggested a particular god: Satan, who would, by definition, fit the container. Ben tried to steer the discussion away from the particular god, and back to the container itself: does it exist? - if so, why? - if not, how else do we account for the prevalence of belief? - is the concept of a 'god-shaped hole' useful? - and so on.

Your limited perspective and inappropriate nit-picking have reduced what could have been an interesting voyage of discovery to tedious drudgery. Belief - a mostly subjective phenomenon - is unlikely to give of its best in response to unimaginative objective pedantry.

Tomorrow is another day....

Ok, well humans do get inspired belief. This we can take as fact. From that, postulating a (non-universal) god-shaped hole is reasonable. However, there are a number of reasons why this may happen:

Pure benefit. People with inspired beliefs are more successful in dealing with life.

Evolutionary benefit. The ability to believe and argue for absurdly irrational things may be a kind of mating/fighting behaviour designed to impress the opposite gender and scare off the same gender.

Memetic benefit. Certain ideas may propogate despite being a hindrance to their hosts. This particularly applies to memes that are self-propagating, such as any evangelistic faith.

Side effect. Having irrational beliefs may be the side effect of certain brain functions. For example, in order to be able to hold and reject beliefs, and also be able to form plans in a timely manner, it may be necessary for the brain to be vulnerable to inspired beliefs. If the evolutionary benefits are large enough, the downsides

Social benefit. Certain ideas may propogate because of the surrounding social structures. Language is a good example: we do not use 'the' as the definate article because there is a the-shaped hole in the communication part of our brain, but because it's evolved socially as a standard part of communication. Similarly, what religion one is may have socially evolved as a standard part of our identities.

Look at it this way: if I ask you "do you believe in God", you may say yes (implying a god-shaped hole which is filled) or you may say no. If you say no, and I ask why, then *whatever* reason you give, I can use that as evidence for a god-shaped hole that in your case is filled by science/rationality/dislike of Mormons/whatever.



Now, I'm not saying that any of these is *the* answer. I'm just saying that they might be the answer, and I can't see a reason to postulate hard evolutionary benefits as the only answer. "If most members of a species have a particular characteristic, then that characteristic must have served that species well in the past" - I just don't think that 'must' is accurate.

-Martin

Ok, Martin, let me propose a deal.

I will take out 'Must' if you work up what you have written into an entry for the project.

What you say is appros, and coherent, (no surprises there), and the project is not about garnering converts to 'the church of the evolutionary function of belief'.

It is about asking what the f**k belief is, why and how we do it, and what it does to us and for us.

Hey - I will take out the 'must' anyway.

Thanks for spending time here.

B
*armed and dangerous today - sorry*

Ahh, bxggxr it. Yeah, ok, but it won't be specific to belief, if that's ok.

That would be great, and I will look forward to it. Check out the Uni Project Page. A853751 If what you write fits in with the project, then I will be able to include it. If it doesn't - then into Peer Review it goes!

B

< Look at it this way: if I ask you "do you believe in God", you may say yes (implying a god-shaped hole which is filled) or you may say no. If you say no, and I ask why, then *whatever* reason you give, I can use that as evidence for a god-shaped hole that in your case is filled by science/rationality/dislike of Mormons/whatever. >

I wish I new what point this para is making, is it ironic or what?

Whatever anyone says can be explained by a God-shaped hole! Sure and by the same token a reassurance-shaped hole. Therefore all this alleged evidence for a God-shaped hole is worthless. Is that what you mean Lucinda/Martin? It sure is what I mean!