re: #423 Liet_Kynes

Oy vey. You of course ignored the gist of my evolution-based argument. I’ll go slower for your convenience.

If animals do not have an innate belief in god, and humans do, as long as you insist that this belief is innate (that is, we are born with it), it must be an evolutionary trait. There is simply no other option, unless god him/her/itself chose a “first human” and bestowed this innate trait to him upon birth. Since we are not talking or believing in an interventionist deity here, and there is absolutely no proof of him/her/it, let’s go back to evolution.
I know you do not argue that innate belief is an evolutionary trait. But if it IS innate, it MUST be an evolutionary trait. Your problem is that it makes no sense, but these are implication of your reasoning.
This generates two questions which you must answer successfully to argue that belief in god is innate and exclusive to humans.

1) When exactly did this evolutionary trait appeared in human evolution? Did the ancestors of homo sapiens sapiens had it? Why the homo erectus and not the homo habilis? And why not the common ancestor with apes?

2) What survival/environmental advantage would such a trait give? It is not clear that it would provide any, as a matter of fact. Someone with a belief in god would most likely value his life less than non-believing cavemen, for example, thinking their god would save them or that they would end up in the cave of endless meat and women in the sky. That is not a trait that assures survival and the passage of your genes to future generations, in my mind.

Since apes and other animals have no belief in gods that we know of (innate or otherwise), and there appears to be no evolutionary advantage to developing an innate belief in god, the explanation that belief in deities is a social construction of men is simpler, clearer, and more likely, Occam razor and all. (By the way, acquiring and losing traits is not evolving and de-evolving. Evolution is about adaptation to a changing environment, so there is no such thing as de-evolving, silly).

See, I am not saying that men lived socially without believing in the supernatural (and the supernatural does not equate god, sorry). I am saying that since the first men that we know of lived socially, it is specious to argue that since they believed in the supernatural, belief in god must have been an innate trait. Particularly because innate traits are hereditary and therefore must follow evolutionary principles.

Oh, and about your previous proof of how innate “justice” and “god” are, you wrote:

Does a child have an innate concept of justice? Yes. That is easy to prove. Give a small child a toy. Let them play with it. Let me suddenly take it away while the child is playing. The child will break down in tears. Why? Because that child has an innate reaction that something unjust has occurred to him.

Just so you can picture it mentally, I am rolling my eyes now. A child will cry if you take a toy away from him because you are removing something he likes and enjoy. That is a selfish impulse, not an innate idea of justice. Many many many children (I have worked with children, trust me) will remorselessly take toys they covet from other children who are enjoying them. Heck, some unborn babies strangle their twins in utero with the umbilical cords for no apparent reason. What innate idea of justice leads them to do it?

Does a child have an innate concept of a god? Yes. The best examples of this can be shown in individuals who are cognitively disabled or handicapped. They cannot be taught very much about religion, but an innate understanding of a god shines through in a very pronounced way as it is not clouded over by over intellectualizing.

I had to wonder if you were being serious here. Are you actually arguing with “an innate understanding of god shines through” mentally handicapped individuals? That is so low, it needs no refutation.