Once a philosopher said: "God died a long time ago, people just don't know about it."
Religion has always walked alongside man. Whatever ancient civilizations archaeologists find, there is always evidence that people believed in deities. Why? Why can't people live without God?
What is "God"?
God is a supernatural supreme being, a mythological entity that acts as an object of worship. Of course, hundreds of years ago, everything inexplicable seemed fantastic and awe-inspiring. But why worship the mythical creature of the present man?Modern science takes a giant step forward every day, explaining what used to be considered miracles. We have interpreted the origin of the Universe, Earth, water, air - life. And they did not arise in seven days. Once people attributed all catastrophes to the wrath of God. Now we understand that an earthquake is a consequence of the movement of the earth's crust, and a hurricane is a consequence of air currents. Today, scientists are finding clues in biblical cataclysms that are not so difficult to interpret. Why didn't people look for an explanation for this many years ago?
Religion - salvation or opium for the people?
Religion played a huge role here. As you know, the Bible was written by people and edited by people too. I think that in the original writings and in the modern book that everyone has in their home, we would find many differences. You need to understand that religion and faith are a little different things.The Church has always inspired fear in man. And the church is not only Christian. In every faith there is a semblance of heaven and hell. Man has always been afraid of punishment. It is known that the church had colossal power over society. Above itself, only a doubt about the existence of the Almighty could be burned at the stake. Religion was used as a means of intimidation and mass control. Over the years, the church has lost trust among the people. What is the Inquisition worth, which destroyed thousands of people throughout Europe. In Russia, for example, those who missed the service on Sunday were publicly beaten with a stick on Monday. During the Stalinist repressions, priests violated the sacrament of confession by passing information to the KGB. The church fought against "heretics" - dissident people who could ask uncomfortable questions.
Even now, there are many religious movements that simply zombify people using trust and various psychological tricks. For example, "White Brotherhood", very popular in the early 90s. How many people were left without apartments, savings and families. It seems, well, how a sane person can believe in salvation from a dubious subject. It turned out - maybe. But, unfortunately, people are not taught these stories. As before, various religious movements "brainwash" gullible citizens. And the people believe them, even if tomorrow they say to drink poison in the name of God. What God needs these senseless sacrifices.
In our modern times we can safely discuss on any topic. Many theologians have made arguments for the existence of God, just as many atheists have refuted them. But there is no clear evidence for the existence of God, just as there is no evidence that he does not exist. Everyone makes his own choice of what to believe and to whom he prays.
What gives us prayer and why should we believe?
Prayer is a petition. Ask and it will be given to you. But don't we shift the responsibility to God for our laziness when we ask for what we can achieve ourselves: a house, a car, a job. If it does not work out, you can simply answer - God does not give. If we cannot arrange a personal life, the easiest answer is that God decided so, rather than look at ourselves from the outside and start doing something about our shortcomings.It is proved that human thought is material. What we think, wish, dream and ask for can come true. Our word is magic. Sometimes we ourselves do not know how we can injure or inspire a person. Perhaps words along with thoughts have great power. So what is it: the influence of God or the unexplored possibilities of the human brain?
During true prayer, a person seems to be transferred to another dimension, where time slows down. Maybe in this way we become a little closer to God?
I remember one episode from "Dr. House" when the patient's husband, an atheist, prays for his wife. When asked by House why pray if you do not believe in God, he replied: “I promised my wife that I would do everything for her recovery. If I don't pray, it won't be all."
What gives us faith? Faith inspires a person, makes him confident in his abilities. But we believe that God helps us, and not in our own strength. There are many stories about how faith saved people from cancer, drugs, alcohol ... But maybe this power was already in these people? Maybe faith in God just provoked some special hormone in a person?
There is a lot of information for reflection ... But for some reason we pray and believe when nothing more can be done.
Soul Anatomy
But what about irrefutable evidence of the existence of the afterlife? Let's think about the soul. Back in the 19th century, there were attempts to weigh the human soul. And the American doctor succeeded. As a result of many experiments, he found that the change in the weight of a living and dead person becomes a little more than 20 grams, regardless of the initial body weight.In the 20-21 centuries, research continued, but the theory of the existence of the soul was only confirmed. I even managed to remove her exit from the body. It is worth considering the experience of people who have experienced clinical death. They can't absolutely strangers tell the same stories.
Why can't I give up my faith in God
I am a modern thinking person who is used to doubting everything and looking for evidence. But I can't give up my faith in God. Faith gives me peace of mind, confidence that help will come at a difficult moment. I remember the movie "What Dreams May Come", where after death a man and his children go to their own paradise. The husband - in the pictures of his wife, and the son and daughter - in the country that they believed in in childhood. And it was faith that helped to pull a wife out of hell, who got there after a suicide. And I want to have my own paradise. After all, according to our faith, it will be given to us.Well, there are more questions left than answers... Modern man is used to relying on medicine, science, technological progress, but he cannot give up faith, hope, love and, in fact, God.
Religion was born under the furry foreheads of our ancestors somewhere in the Middle Paleolithic. Science as a method appeared later - that in ancient Greece. But, like all our other qualities, both did not come down to us on a cloud, but inherited from animal ancestors. Actually there is no religion and science in animals. But they have what both religion and science have grown out of: faith, knowledge, and also the need for both.
At first, animals needed objective knowledge to increase their control over their environment. The processed facts add up to experience, and the more it is, the better the animal is adapted, the easier its life and the more successful reproduction.
Faith appears later, approximately at the same level of mental evolution as figurative thinking. The dog barks at the noise outside the door because he believes that this noise is not just for nothing, there is someone behind him who needs to be barked at. And it gives her the illusion of control. Just an illusion, but enough to reduce the stress of an incomprehensible and potentially dangerous situation. And the lower the stress level, the easier life and more successful reproduction.
The benefits of knowledge are obvious. But there is a lot of it from faith:
Faith saves time and brain resources when making decisions. In nature, the one who decides not so much correctly as quickly decides well.
Faith sees behind random phenomena some force that created them and tries to influence this force. This saves from the development of learned helplessness. When everything is bad and nothing can be changed, you can hold on to illusions and rituals like a straw, and this imaginary straw really supports.
Faith improves our ability to understand each other. The alien soul of darkness, all our ideas about the inner world of another are only guesses, phantom facts. But nevertheless, they help us build real relationships, make friends and influence people. that the better a person has developed empathy and the ability to understand someone else's psyche, the more he has a tendency to this or that kind of religiosity. It seems that relationships with imaginary friends work as a training ground for honing your soul-reading skills.
Finally, faith turns our existential anxiety into fear. Great replacement, right? True, excellent. Animals already have a fear of death. Hence the well-known farewell and burial rituals of elephants, monkeys, and dolphins, and ethologist Mark Bekoff, in The Emotional Life of Animals, describes such behavior even in llamas, foxes, and wolves. Great empaths - dogs - are afraid of the death of the owner. Koko about her beloved kitten hit by a car: “Bad. Sad. Sleep, kitty ”(R.I.P., Coco. Us too).
According to the famous psychotherapist Irvin Yalom, we have anxiety of non-existence and pre-conceptual knowledge of death from birth. It becomes conceptual at the age of five, when we first realize that we are going to die. For good. Someday, and I'm gone. At all. Horror! According to Heidegger, horror is an extreme level of anxiety, at which it is impossible to single out the object that causes it. While a person is in this state, he is not capable of any action. Anxiety paralyzes will and activity because it is not separated from my self. But if it is turned into fear, he will be isolated from me and controlled. Not by me, but by someone else. With whom, as our Machiavellian intellect believes, it is certainly possible to negotiate.
Science is uncompromising, but religion is always the art of negotiation. Well, death is an opportunity you can't refuse. But is it possible to negotiate terms? Any religion accepts the fact that you will die, but complements it with the promise that under certain conditions, everything will not end there.
The hope of immortality is our way of controlling the fear of death. Irrational, illusory, but no other has yet been invented. Science is busy, and we need it right now.
Life, with its existential problems and general unsettling spontaneity, stresses us, and there are only two remedies for this - control and predictability. Real or illusory - for the psyche is not so important.
The scientists placed two groups of rats in an awkward position: they were tied up, lying on their backs, and there was nothing they could do about it. But one at the same time could gnaw a wooden stick, and the other could not. Guess which group recovered faster from stress? In gnawing a stick, as in any ritual, there is no rational meaning. But there is value in reducing stress. Experiments on animals and people show that imaginary control of the situation calms just like the real one. And if you can't see the difference, why pay more?
That is why there are no atheists in the trenches under fire, and even in an airplane during turbulence there are fewer of them than ten minutes ago. Religion provides a way out of a hopeless situation. Yes, you painted it on the wall yourself. But for your health, this is better than none.
But if faith is such a useful thing, why is it now so scolded by scientists, educators and others good people with a good education?
After all, it wasn't always like that. When the craving for faith and knowledge, combined with the accumulative mechanism of culture, gave rise to religion and science, for the time being they lived peacefully. Shaman healers. Priests-astronomers. Monk geneticist. Books were written in monasteries, universities spun off from abbeys, and it was hard to tell where one ended and another began. But the powerful socio-cultural institutions that gradually grew up on the basis of faith and knowledge became isolated and moved from cooperative to competitive relations.
And by the beginning of the 21st century, their conflict had reached a historical maximum. Yes, once scientists were burned at the stake, but the Middle Ages, in principle, burned. It was a normal way of resolving issues, and scientists passed on a common basis. But when, in the 21st century, supporters of religion and science arrange real cockfights, mother's believers and mother's atheists go wall to wall on the Internet, and scientists and priests throw droppings and banana skins in public debates, this is no longer quite normal. Moreover, the feelings of the participants are so intertwined and mutually offended that the devil himself will not understand who believes in what, who knows what and who is ready to cut each other's throats for what. For truth? For influencing the audience? For the victory of your concept over the concept of the enemy? Whatever it is, the result is the next unpleasant thing.
Knowledge and faith are the main natural ways of regulating stress. We need both of them, because knowledge works in conditions of sufficient information, and faith - in conditions of insufficient information.
But public opinion insists on a choice: no, my friend, either you are with us on the side of light, or with them on the side of darkness. And we have to choose.
A difficult choice situation triggers a well-known effect of cognitive dissonance: having chosen one, we immediately begin to devalue the rejected option.
Chicken or fish?
Uh-uh... Well... Probably fish... Yes, fish! Useful fish. And what about the chicken? It doesn't even contain phosphorus.
It's not scary that a person chose a religion, it's scary that a false dichotomy imposed by society makes him devalue the alternative: "What's your science, it doesn't know anything, only problems from it." And this can deprive him of much of what science could give him, but will not give, because she herself stands in the pose: “Stop believing here or get out.”
Although no one is forced to choose between their basic needs. We are entitled to both. On the knowledge to reduce stress with the help of real facts. And on faith to do it when the facts are not enough.
But to maintain adequacy, we must separate the phantom facts from the real ones. And this is where the main problem lies.
In the new issue of "Everything is like animals" we are conducting a simple experiment illustrating the relationship of faith and knowledge in a single head. I modestly hope that for someone it will clarify something and maybe even slightly reduce the number of senseless showdowns that flooded TVs and the Internet. After all, in order to get rid of prejudices, and not to strengthen them or replace them with others, you just need to carefully add knowledge to each individual head. And they themselves will force out everything superfluous. Believe me, there is no other way to achieve this.
Physiologist, Nobel laureate in medicine
Tell me, is there a god?
-Not.
-When will it be?
From jokes
Once, at methodological seminars at our academic institute in the 1980s, a doctor of biological sciences, I will call him by the initials E.L., began his speeches with shocking: "As you know, there is a God!"
So I'll start with shocking. As you know, there is no God in nature. Not Orthodox, not Uniate, not Catholic, not Protestant, not Calvinist, not Anglican, not Shia, not Sunni, not Jewish, not, I'm sorry, Chinese.
Dear reader! If you are a believer, do not rush to close the page with indignation! A little patience. I'm just going to explain that God exists, but as genetic knowledge, and that the belief in the existence of God is rooted deep in the subconscious of people from their first breath at birth. But, unfortunately, it does not exist in nature, just as there are no ghouls, Baba Yaga, Santa Claus, not to mention the god Ra, the goddess Astarte, Zeus, Jupiter, Perun, etc. And certainly there is no God in churches, cathedrals, monasteries, mosques, synagogues and other "charitable" institutions that claim to be especially close to God.
A human baby is born completely helpless. He will not survive even a few hours without outside help. Unlike young animals, which literally immediately or very soon after birth are able to move independently, see and search for a source of food, a human newborn can, and for a relatively long time, up to a year or more, only breathe, suck milk, and get rid of the products of digestion. Even a newborn can cry. And it's all. The first thing a newborn baby does is start breathing on its own and immediately start crying. Why does he begin to breathe - clearly. He lost the supply of oxygen from the mother's body. Why is he crying? And then, that he - still in fact a completely unconscious living lump with a wandering look and involuntary movements of the limbs - "knows" initially at the genetic level that there is someone outside of him who will respond to this cry, warm, feed, wash, protect. No normal person can calmly and indifferently ignore the crying of a child. Numerous stories of "Mowgli" show that animals cannot do this either. And the child uses this means for the first few years of his life, until he becomes a conscious being. The instinct to cry is one of the most basic human instincts. We add that the instinctive desire to cry in stressful situations remains for a long time even in adults. It is in this property and primordial knowledge that the roots and nutrient medium of religious faith in God lie. It is possible, perhaps with some degree of exaggeration, to say that the crying of a child is an instinctive prayer. This means that people actually do not just believe in God, but initially, subconsciously know that God - someone outside of them, who will personally protect them, feed them and save them from all dangers - exists. It is quite possible, therefore, that, as some researchers have noted, there is an area in the human brain responsible for religious feeling.
This instinct in children continues in the instinctive "faith in the adult." Without this instinct, children will not survive and learn nothing. Children don't have to experiment with fire to learn that they can get burned. They will be told by mom or dad or grandparents or another adult in whose care they are. When children grow up, they learn from their parents, from other adults that there is an Orthodox, Catholic, Protestant, Muslim Shiite, Muslim Sunni, Jewish, or some other god (where they came from, this is a separate conversation, we will not digress). But in the same way, they can suddenly lose faith in this if another authoritative adult tells them that there is no god. And they will not experience any trauma from this, just as they do not experience any trauma when they are told that Santa Claus is a fairy tale and that dad bought them a New Year's gift. My wife recalls that as a child she had a very pious nanny, and until the age of 7 she believed in God. One day her friend Valya said in the yard that there is no God. In horror, she ran to her mother to ask what Valya would do for it. But in the first grade, at one of the first lessons, the school teacher Lidia Fedorovna said that there is no God, and that's it. Since then my wife has been an atheist.
But the instinctive belief in the existence of God is not yet a religion. Religion is a form of social organization. There is no doubt that the modern world religions as social institutions originate in a slave society. They even retain many of his attributes. It is enough to recall the attributes and phraseology Orthodox Christianity: believers are God's servants, church hierarchs are masters, etc. In those distant times, this natural primordial instinctive predisposition of people to believe in an otherworldly omnipotent being, along with an innate property to blindly trust an older and stronger one, naturally turned into an instrument of their subordination and social organization. And the basis of people's adherence to a particular religion is, apparently, another "basic" instinct, the herd instinct. The ancestors of modern Homo Sapience lived in packs. Homo Sapience lived, and many still live, in tribes, and the herd instinct was an important genetically inherited property for the survival of offspring. The fact that this herd instinct has not disappeared and is preserved in the human psyche, I think, does not need special proof. We are not at all as far removed in our basic instincts from our primate ancestors as we might think.
The phrase "herd instinct" has a negative connotation in Russian. Therefore, modern "culturologists" have come up with a luxurious euphemism for him: "national self-identification." Remember, gentlemen, how much massacre it has caused and continues to cause, how many human destinies it has broken and continues to break in the vastness of the former Soviet Union the mental virus of "national self-identification" that spread epidemically in the late 1980s simultaneously with the epidemic of the mental virus of religiosity!
In these years, cases have also become widespread when adults who were previously non-believers suddenly become devout believers (I, of course, do not mean the cases characteristic of the Russian-speaking emigrant environment in the USA, Germany, Israel, and not uncommon in Russia itself). when it is caused by purely mercantile considerations). What should be the position of atheists, who realize that the most convincing reasonable arguments that the God preached by religions is an illusion may not be heard, simply because people can lock their minds to subconsciously unwanted information?
Of course, one cannot dispute the right of people to believe what they want, as long as it does not affect the interests of other people. You can not forbid them and unite in groups and public associations according to this belief. The root of the atheistic worldview is not in the prohibition of religious beliefs, but in the categorical rejection of religions as social institutions, rejection based on the realization that the idea of God they represent is a lie used to master the souls of people, and that the fundamental goal of churchmen is not to serve people , not the storage and dissemination of moral and ethical standards and the spiritual heritage of civilization, which they cynically claim without any reason, but the self-preservation and reproduction of religious institutions and infrastructure through privatization, moral enslavement and exploitation of the flock.
The humanistic duty of atheists is to try to use the still available opportunities to open people's eyes and free them from the mental virus infection spread by churchmen and from mental slavery, and often quite real slavish submission to religious preachers and church hierarchs. We cannot leave unanswered the constant massive brainwashing they subject us all to from television screens, radio and from the pages of newspapers and books in last years with the servilely enthusiastic shameful participation of the literary and artistic beau monde, then persistent and obsessive zombification, the most recent example of which is the recent campaign for the funeral of the patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church.
Perhaps people are predisposed - genetically and from infancy - to believe in powerful otherworldly beings - gods and angels. But to no lesser extent, people genetically prefer the truth to lies, they prefer to know what really exists and what does not. Otherwise, the human race would not have continued, that's for sure.
Why do people believe
Belief systems are powerful, ubiquitous, and enduring. Throughout my career, I have tried to understand how beliefs are born, how they are formed, what feeds them, reinforces them, challenges them, changes them, and destroys them. This book is the result of thirty years of searching for an answer to the question "How and why we believe in what we believe in all areas of our lives." In this case, I am not so much interested in why people believe in a strange or in this or that statement, as in why people believe in general. And really, why? My answer is straightforward:
Our beliefs are formed for all sorts of subjective, personal, emotional and psychological reasons in the environment created by family, friends, colleagues, culture and society in general; after formation, we defend our beliefs, justify and logically substantiate them with the help of many reasonable arguments, irrefutable arguments and logical explanations. First there are beliefs, and only then - explanations of these beliefs. I call this process "faith-based realism," where our beliefs about reality depend on the beliefs we hold about them. Reality exists independently of the human mind, but the ideas about it are determined by the beliefs that we hold in this particular period.
The brain is the engine of beliefs. In sensory information coming through the senses, the brain naturally begins to look for and find patterns, patterns, and then fills them with meaning. The first process I call patterning(English. patternicity) - the tendency to find meaningful patterns or patterns in data, both meaningful and non-meaningful. The second process I call agency(English. agenticity) - the tendency to imbue patterns with meaning, purpose, and activity(agency). We cannot help doing this. Our brains have evolved in such a way as to connect the dots of our world into meaningful drawings that explain why this or that event occurs. These meaningful patterns become beliefs, and beliefs shape our perceptions of reality.
When beliefs are formed, the brain begins to look for and find supporting evidence to support those beliefs, complementing them with an emotional boost in confidence, therefore accelerating the process of argumentation and rooting, and this process of confirming beliefs with positive feedback is repeated cycle after cycle. Similarly, people sometimes form beliefs based on a single experience that has the properties of revelation and is generally unrelated to their personal background or culture in general. Far less common are those who, after carefully weighing the evidence for and against a position they already hold, or one for which a belief has yet to be formed, calculate the probability, soberly make a dispassionate decision and never return to this issue. . Such a radical change of belief is so rare in religion and politics that it becomes a sensation when it comes to a prominent figure, for example, a clergyman who converts to another religion or renounces his faith, or a politician who switches to another party or gains independence. This happens, but in general the phenomenon remains rare, like a black swan. It is far more common to see radical change in beliefs in science, but not as often as one might expect, guided by an idealized image of a sublime "scientific method" that takes into account only the facts. The reason is that scientists are also human beings, equally affected by emotions, forming and reinforcing beliefs under the influence of cognitive bias.
The process of "faith-based realism" is modeled on what the philosophy of science calls "model-dependent realism" as introduced by Cambridge University cosmologist Stephen Hawking and mathematician and science popularizer Leonard Mlodinov in their book The Higher Design ( The Grand Design). In it, the authors explain that since no single model is able to explain reality, we are entitled to use different models for different aspects of the world. At the heart of model-dependent realism “is the idea that our brain interprets the input received by our senses by building a model of the world around us. When such a model can successfully explain certain events, we tend to attribute to it, as well as to its constituent elements and concepts, the quality of reality or absolute truth. But there may be different ways in which the same physical situation can be modeled using different fundamentals and concepts. If two such physical theories or models predict the same events with a reasonable degree of accuracy, one of them cannot be considered more real than the other; moreover, we are free to use whatever model we deem most appropriate.”
A cardinal change of beliefs is so rare in religion and politics that it becomes a sensation.
I will go even further in arguing that even these different models in physics and cosmology that scientists use to explain, say, light as a particle and light as a wave are beliefs in themselves. Combined with higher-order physical, mathematical, and cosmological theories, they form whole worldviews related to nature, therefore, belief-based realism is higher-order model-dependent realism. In addition, our brains endow beliefs with value. There are good evolutionary reasons why we form beliefs and regard them as good or bad. I will deal with these issues in the chapter on political beliefs, but for now I will say only that the tribal tendencies that have developed in us lead us to unite with like-minded people, those members of our group who think like us, and to resist those who hold different beliefs. Thus, when we hear about someone else's beliefs that differ from ours, we are naturally inclined to dismiss them as absurd, evil, or both. This desire makes it difficult to change views despite new evidence.
In fact, not only scientific models, but all models of the world are the basis of our beliefs, and belief-based realism means that we cannot escape this epistemological trap. However, we can use the tools of science to test whether specific model or belief concerning reality, observations made not only by us, but also by other people. Although there is no Archimedean point of reference outside of ourselves, a point from which we can see the Truth relating to Reality, science is the best tool ever devised for accommodating approximate truths concerning conventional realities. Thus, faith-based realism is not epistemological relativism, where all truths are equal and the reality of each deserves respect. The universe really began with the Big Bang, the age of the Earth is actually calculated in billions of years, evolution really took place, and anyone who believes otherwise is actually delusional. Even though the Ptolemaic geocentric system fits observations just as well as the Copernican heliocentric system (at least in the time of Copernicus), it would never occur to anyone today to consider these models to be equal, because, thanks to additional lines of evidence, we know that heliocentrism is more accurate. corresponds to reality than geocentrism, although we cannot claim that it is the Absolute Truth concerning Reality.
With this in mind, the evidence I have presented in this book shows how dependent our beliefs are on a variety of subjective, personal, emotional and psychological factors that turn our idea of reality into a "witch mirror", "full of superstition and deceit", in the caustic phrase of Francis Bacon. . We begin the story with anecdotes from life, testimonies from the stories of the faith of three people. The first of these is the story of a man whom you have never heard of, but who many decades ago, one early morning, experienced events so profound and fateful that he began to search for higher meaning in space. The second story is about a man you have most likely heard of, as he is one of the greatest scientists of our era, but he also experienced a fateful event early in the morning, thanks to which he established himself in the decision to make a religious "leap of faith." The third story is about how I myself went from a believer to a skeptic, and what I learned that eventually led to the professional scientific study of belief systems.
The scientific method is the best tool ever invented for connecting our beliefs to reality.
From narrative evidence, we move on to the structure of belief systems, how they are formed, developed, reinforced, changed, and disappeared. Let us first consider this process in general terms using two theoretical constructs, patterning and agency, and then we will delve into the issue of the development of these cognitive processes, and also see what purpose they served in the life of our ancestors and serve in our present life. Then we will deal with the brain - up to the neurophysiology of the structure of the belief system at the level of a single neuron, and then, ascending, we will restore the process of formation of beliefs by the brain. After that, we will study the operation of the belief system in relation to belief in religion, the afterlife, God, aliens, conspiracies, politics, economics, ideology, and then learn how a host of cognitive processes assure us that our beliefs are true. In the final chapters, we will talk about how we know that some of our beliefs are plausible, determine which patterns are true and which are false, which factors are real and which are not, how science acts as a device for the final identification of patterns, providing us with some degree of freedom within belief-based realism and some measurable progress despite psychological traps.
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From the book Secrets of the Brain. Why do we believe in everything author Shermer MichaelWhy do people believe in conspiracies Why do people believe in highly unlikely conspiracies? I think it's because their pattern-detecting filters are wide open, so any patterns are recognized as true, and potentially false patterns are not screened out.
People believe in the evil eye, conspiracy theories, racial superiority, aliens and guardian angels. Why are we programmed to believe in the first place? Because that's how the human brain works. Disbelief, skepticism and scientific approach require efforts to overcome this innate mechanism of believing. Science is guided by the principle "everything new is wrong until it is confirmed", the brain is set to the opposite: "everything that I noticed is true until it is refuted."
We owe such credulity to the frontal lobes, which are able to build logical connections, or patterns. If we see a pair of boots and a briefcase at the edge of the bridge, we immediately imagine a person jumping off this bridge. But this mechanism suffers from the verification department: we willingly believe in the observed patterns, but with great difficulty and errors we can separate real patterns from fictional ones.
Errors are of two types, they are explained famous example with a tiger in the grass. Let's say we are an ancient man walking on the savannah in search of prey. Suddenly, we notice red spots in the grass and hear a rustle. An error of the first kind (type I error), false-positive, is when we take these spots and rustle for a tiger and run away, but in fact it was the wind and flowers. We came up with a logical chain that does not exist. What is the cost of such a mistake? Small - we'll run a little.
But there are errors of the second kind (type II error): if this is really a tiger, and we do not collect the red spots and noise into a coherent picture, we will be eaten right there. The price for a Type II error is death. At such rates natural selection will promote the prosperity of willingly believing in all beings, in which errors of the first type dominate.
Believing in something is the discovery of dependency. As real - I believe that this mister is watching me, because he is following me around. And fictional: this Mr. was cured of cancer, because his wife prayed for him. The fictitious addiction is the first type of error - there is no serious connection between prayer and recovery, but the wife believes in this connection.
There is an evolutionary explanation for the constant search for patterns (tiger in the grass): this is how we survive and reproduce better. But there is another aspect: a person feels very insecure in a situation that he does not understand. Chaos is an extremely uncomfortable intellectual environment for us.
Science is a great way to sort out real patterns from unreal ones, but it's extremely young, a couple of hundred years old, seriously. Before that, nothing that a person saw around him could be explained: lightning, plague, earthquakes, illnesses and healings - everything required at least some explanation.
Our belief in the supernatural is directly related to how much we consider our lives to be manageable. People with an external locus who feel they have no control over anything are much more likely to believe anything. The spirit that you can appease is already an element of control. To create the illusion of controlling the situation, beliefs exist.
What happens in our brains when we believe? Belief in the supernatural is linked to the activity of certain neurotransmitters in the brain, most notably dopamine. Peter Brugger and colleagues at the University of Bristol found that people with higher levels of dopamine were more likely to see connections in unrelated events and discover patterns that didn't exist.
This is due to the fact that, as suggested by Brugger, dopamine changes the so-called signal-to-noise ratio. Noise is the entire amount of information that a person receives, a signal is a significant part of this information. The more dopamine, the more real and imagined addictions we see. A person with an average level of dopamine will associate the noise in the underground with mice, and a person with high level- with great-grandmother's stories about the Indian cemetery.
Dopamine improves the ability of neurons to transmit signals, thereby improving, for example, our ability to learn and be creative in problem solving. But in high doses, it can lead to psychosis and hallucinations. And here lies one of the possible connections between genius and madness, as Michael Shermer suggests - Chief Editor magazine the Skeptic. If there is too much dopamine, the signal-to-noise ratio will be too close to one - all information will be interpreted as meaningful. And then the psychosis begins.
As examples of two such types - "patterns just right" and "patterns too much" - Schremer cites two Nobel laureates: the sane, witty and social Feynman and the insanely talented John Nash - a hallucinating paranoid. Feynman saw just enough patterns to make discoveries and cut off non-existent connections. Nash considered everything to be a significant pattern (he made many Type I mistakes), which led to stalking mania, imaginary friends, and conspiracy theories.
In any conversation about faith, a logical question always arises: let people believe in what they want, even in unicorns, what's the trouble with that? But the herbalist's belief that his decoction cures cancer is by no means harmless. Like the belief that “our nation is better”, or “all the troubles are from the Jews”, or the belief that pushed people to shoot Pentagon guards in order to find out the “secret of 9/11”.
Faith is so stable because the brain is extremely deftly looking for an explanation for the found pattern, so it is easy to believe that aliens exist: Texas housewives are being stolen, crop circles are multiplying, UFOs are flying in two lanes. When we try to explain and rationalize a belief, we make another common cognitive error: as soon as we see a match (even a remote one) with our theory, we immediately shout “I told you so!” We ignore inconsistencies. So, if one prediction of the soothsayer came true, we will immediately forget about a hundred that did not come true.
To believe is the natural state of the body, and people can only make every effort to separate real connections from fictional ones so as not to harm themselves and others. So far, there is only one universal and extremely effective method for this - science.
Lesha Ivanovsky
T&P
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If a pigeon is closed in a cage and given food only after he pecks at the button, he will quickly understand what is required of him. But after some time, he will think: why are they feeding him? Apparently, something is required of him in order to receive food. He will begin to flap his wings before pressing the button. And he will believe that they give him food for flapping his wings ...
Belief in the inexplicable is understandable. Why are we strong in hindsight, believe in spirits, and can easily explain the causes of the economic crisis? With the beginning of the cognitive revolution in psychology (and social sciences in general), many researchers began to ask themselves the question: is it possible to use discoveries in the field of human consciousness in order to explain religious thinking? One of these discoveries was just the moment of truth.
Pashkovsky V. E.
This book is a brief clinical guide that outlines modern ideas about mental disorders associated with the religious-archaic factor. Until now, such guides by domestic authors have not been published in Russia. The book provides a clinical description of mental disorders of archaic and religious-mystical content: religious-mystical states, delusions of obsession and witchcraft, depression with a religious plot of delusions, delusions of messianism. A separate chapter is devoted to the problem of psychiatric aspects of destructive cults. The book contains data on the history of religion, introduces the reader to the course of modern religious ideas, which should help in working with believing patients.
Nikolai Mikhailovich Amosov (December 6, 1913, near Cherepovets - December 12, 2002, Kyiv) - Soviet and Ukrainian cardiac surgeon, medical scientist, writer. Author of innovative methods in cardiology, author systems approach to health (“method of restrictions and loads”), discussion papers on gerontology, problems of artificial intelligence and rational planning of social life (“social engineering”). Academician of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR (1969) and the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Hero of Socialist Labor (1973).
Faith, Hope, Love… I wonder if anyone has ever wondered why we always use these meaningful names in this and not in any other sequence? What is it - an accidental consonance, harmonious rhyme, or is it really for Russians that faith always stands ahead of hope and even love? Scientists from the Institute of Sociology of the Russian Academy of Sciences do not take anything for granted and check any harmony with their algebra: shares, percentages, statistics, margins of error. That is what happened in this case as well. Sociologists of the Institute of Science of the Russian Academy of Sciences have tried to measure the "level of religiosity" of Russian citizens and have drawn very interesting conclusions.
Psychologist Justin Barret compares believers to three-year-olds who "think other people know almost everything." Dr. Barrett is a Christian, editor of the journal Cognition and Culture, and author of Why Does Someone Believe in God? According to him, children's inherent belief in the omniscience of others decreases as they grow older due to experience. However, this attitude, which is necessary for the socialization of a person and productive interaction with other people, is preserved as far as faith in God is concerned.
With the help of belief in the irrational and supernatural, people cope with stress and danger, scientists say. In the short term, small things like wearing a talisman can boost performance and give you a sense of self-confidence. That is why, the researchers emphasize, under adverse economic conditions, the number of articles on astrology and other parapsychological phenomena is increasing.
