My reaction was prompted by the first item in the writer's summary of the weekend's topics:
As the resident psychologist, I reiterated my empirically based argument that belief in the afterlife is more or less an inevitable byproduct of human consciousness. Since we cannot conceptualize the absence of consciousness, even non-believers are susceptible to visions of the hereafter.
So if I CAN conceptualize nothingness and DO NOT believe in an afterlife, then I'm a Darwinian anomaly? Cuz, believe you me, I am human and I am conscious.
Haven't read the rest of the article yet. Can't wait to learn more about the "natural" foundations of religious belief.
...OK. This bit is interesting:
What if, as I suggested in my answer to this year’s “Annual Question” [regarding the existence of a supreme being], the data suggest that God is actually just a psychological blemish etched onto the core cognitive substrate of your brain? Would you still believe if you knew God were a byproduct of your evolved mental architecture?
No, cuz I don't believe in the first place. Ergo, might one argue that people who don't have that blemish etched onto their brains are further up the evolutionary chain?
I rather like that interpretation.
Recommend this post
