Some people seem far more exploitable than others froma religious angle.

Some people,raised in a religious home leave all religion, and some raised in a nonreligious home become cult followers.

Siblings certainly have different degrees of religious exploitability.

Obviously many people are religious due to religious “scare tactics” instilled by parents and local culture.

I think it's more of a transmittable disease.

Exactly. Transmitted by people that are supposed to protect you. In mormonism, your parents indoctrinate you since before you are born. They set you up for a lifetime of bullshit, even though many know it's bullshit. They send their kids to the temple, without warning or a clue. They throw their kids to the vampires knowing that themselves are already vampires.

Spread by missionaries.

When a host builds up an immunity, it moves on to other hosts.

So it’s a little ironic that Mormonism now shares a geographic region with Ebola.

I'm voting for the existence of a 'rebellion' gene; in some people it's turned on, in others it is not.

Studies of brains have found that there's a area in most brains that centers on religion. Like all body parts, it varies from one person to the next.

It's like noses, they can be tiny or huge. Only surgery can change appearance or size.

I'm not so sure this is correct. The brain changes quite a bit over a lifetime due to many factors. Not the least of which is the brain adapting to the various inputs. So someone who is religious might have a physical manifestation in the brain because they are religions. Instead of being religious because of the physical manifestation.

Every time there is a causation vs correlation discussion I wonder.

jacob Wrote:
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> Every time there is a causation vs correlation
> discussion I wonder.

Me too!

So with the judicious use of a melon baller, could my brain be adapted to Mormonism again?

They talked about surgeries to remove tumors which they did while the patient was awake. This way they could stimulate different parts of the brain and know what might be damaged if they excised the area.

They showed a surgery where the patient experienced religious messages when his brain was stimulated in the religion area.

I think that part of my brain must be smaller than it is for others.

I talked to my brain surgeon about this and he said that's probably right.

"Studies of brains have found that there's a area in most brains that centers on religion. Like all body parts, it varies from one person to the next."

COMMENT: This is nonsense. If you site the "study" I would be happy to explain why its conclusions are false. There are, of course, areas of the brain that correlate with emotion, e.g. the amygdala. But even here one has to be careful about overly modularizing the brain (language like "centers on"), particularly regarding beliefs--religious or otherwise.

Well, there's this to back up your point, Henry:

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/20/god-spot-in-brain-is-not-_n_1440518.html

:)

I know, I know, that's "so old and last century," at least from the "practiced putdown crowd." However, "Cognitive Psychology" is still a viable school of thought and theory, and that's where I like to park my taxi (when I'm not being even worse of a reactionary and resorting to "behaviorist explanations").

In terms of "psychological Darwinism," beliefs have "survival value," i.e. allowing people to "reduce their cognitive dissonance" by giving "understanding" to something that isn't or is only poorly understood. Children who are exposed to trauma--from any source--"make up beliefs" in order to "process" what happened. Their "level of psycho-social" development at the time of the incident is a factor. Those beliefs are "incorporated" into the subconscious as way of "accommodating the trauma").

Survival is what is "genetic," honest. Religious beliefs function to give people "meaning for this life," and in addition to providing a common "social framework," they serve as a means of "addressing" one of our oldest demons, "thanatotopsis," i.e. "fear of death."



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 10/19/2018 11:16AM by SL Cabbie.

I continue to be amazed at the ease of exploitability conmen have with the religious sorts.

We see examples of the televangelists pleading for their empires and private jets funding-all secretive and tax exempt.

We see it Mormonism through, of course the tithing, but also volunteering exploitation as well as elder abuse with the high pressure sales pitches to will their estates to LDS Inc.

I for one am not sold on the idea of LDS charitable financial streams being so separate from their investment holdings.

Again, LDS culture is designed to not question, do more, with nearly DPRK propaganda and family motivations.

These actions are truly sickening.

Greed could be the saving grace in the LDS case. Properties worked by religious dupes may be exempt from property taxes, for example. Obviously there’s a good reason the church wants its books closed. To TSCC, greed is a perfectly good reason.

That’s where the Catholics were wrong with their seven deadly sins. A mouthful of cash obviously didn’t choke Mitt Romney. And porn shoulders somehow slipped past the nuns.



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 10/22/2018 02:01AM by babyloncansuckit.

Over the years I have changed my thinking on this. I use to be pretty cut and dried on how I viewed religious fanatical people. I leaned toward to thinking it was mostly environment that shaped them. Now, as I observe generations of families, I am becoming convinced DNA plays a stronger role. I am seeing depression as inheritable. Sometimes it skips a generation but if one parent suffers from it, the more likely that some of their children will also suffer from it.

My sisters have been on antidepressants,some from their teens. All are fanatic TBM. Now their children, grand children and great grand children (who have not left the cult) are all on some form of antidepressant. In some cases, even the one's who have left the cult are on them. Same with wife's family.

It has become easier for me to not judge them so harshly by simply accepting the idea that it's in their DNA. I don't understand it and am okay with that. I just try to love them where they are and where they are.

It's hard to tell. My mother's parents were pretty smart, and then she gets sucked in by the foolish, naive, cunning missionaries-church [who made her leave her family-husband for 'church' related servitude, brainwashing and foolishness]. And then there's me, I never bought into this empty logic, threadbare and rusty brand, this hate and separation cult. So, it's not all genetic.

There is the internet today, which levels/ should level the playing field, where the LDS can't have the truth and share it too. That would be honest, and people would take notice [and it would be the fist time].

M@t

I bought this book, years ago. I've misplaced it.

The "God" Part of the Brain: A Scientific Interpretation of Human Spirituality and God
Book by Matthew Alper

My observation: our beliefs aka World View -- very often religious -- is predominately the result of the geography of our birth, including the time period.

The "God" Part of the Brain: A Scientific Interpretation of Human Spirituality and God
Book by Matthew Alper

COMMENT: This book has no scientific credibility. There is no "God part of the brain." I have numerous scientific books on Cognitive Neuroscience, and none of them mention this book, much less cite it. The same is true of the book, "The God Gene" by Hamer (as I recall) All nonsense.

Lack of intelligence can be genetic, but gullibity is more a function of nurture.

That doesn't seem intuitively obvious to me. Can you provide research or flesh out your argument a bit?

Lot's Wife Wrote:
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> That doesn't seem intuitively obvious to me. Can
> you provide research or flesh out your argument a
> bit?

No. It's just what I've picked up in thirty-four years of observing asinine behavior and almost ten years of dealing with patients, some of whom are gullible and some of whom are bona fide stupid.

Lot's Wife Wrote:
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> That doesn't seem intuitively obvious to me. Can
> you provide research or flesh out your argument a
> bit?

https://www.123test.com/is-intelligence-hereditary/

https://www.thecut.com/2017/05/genetics-intelligence.html

Here are a couple of studies indicating that a sizable portion of intelligence is genetically determined. Gullibility, on the other hand, is more subjective. That's just my own take on it.

I completed only the required number of clerkship rotations in psych and neurology, but the school of thought from the profs and attendings was that there's not so much a parent can do to improve upon one's genetic predisposition for intelligence but a great deal that a parent can do both prenatally and neonatally to make things worse for the poor kid. One can never discount the value of great pre- and post-natal environments for a child, however.

I hope I added this before you responded again, LW.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 10/22/2018 02:16AM by scmd1.

No, that is useful, SCMD.

I'm not sure I agree, though. There are a number of twin studies that show that religiosity is in large part (40%? 60%?) genetic. That is, separated twins imbibe the religion in which they are reared and adopt it in roughly the same degree. I don't think neurological and genetic research has shed much light on that fact, but fact it is.

My surmise is that the brain is hardwired to accept religion for a few related reasons. First, the complexity of life is so overwhelming that humans need simplifying assumptions. That tendency to find, or seek, larger frameworks that answer questions (correctly or incorrectly) free people from existential paralysis and enable them to function reasonably well even in incomprehensible environmental circumstances. Another survival advantage comes from the social and familial impulses that arise from the religious instinct.

Still another is the sense of transport that religion often inspires. The probability that something structural is going on arises from the observation that that sense of the numinous is shared by people in nature, those who listen to music or appreciate art, or even by the occasional golfing dog. There are, in short, other experiences trigger religious transcendence, which would presumably not be the case if religion and religious emotion were a product solely of nurture.

So intelligence is in large measure genetic, religiosity is likewise largely genetic, and the two can be mutually reinforcing or mutually contradictory. Some people undergo no contradiction and live religiously; some people live with the contradiction and even grow more fanatical as a defense mechanism against the concomitant cognitive dissonance; and still others encounter the contradiction and emotional discomfort but then forsake religion and learn to experience the numinous without it. That is how someone like Bohr or Einstein or Hawking can feel the presence of eternity when contemplating what they described as a godless universe.

So my hypothesis is that the religious impulse is really a cluster of genetic and environmental patterns that manifests in faiths and political movements but can also appear on an individual level across a range of symptomologies from fanatical religion and/or politics, through moderate religion and insouciant agnosticism, to an atheism that sees the sublime in mundane life. I like this hypothesis because, in particular, it explains religious or emotional impulses that inform lots of different human institutions and practices.

I'd have to read the studies to have a strong feeling one way or another, Lot's Wife, though without having read any of them, I find it a bit of a stretch that such a major portion of religiosity could actually be hard-wired. I really don't know much about it, though. It's conceivable that a whole lot of traits previously written off to nurture have strong genetic basis.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/22/2018 03:23AM by scmd1.

I reckon the answers to your surmises are yes and yes. There is a genetic element to religion, and there is a genetic contribution to all sorts of human behaviors.


https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn7147-genes-contribute-to-religious-inclination/

http://midus.wisc.edu/findings/pdfs/744.pdf

https://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/15/weekinreview/12wade.html

https://www.apa.org/monitor/apr04/beliefs.aspx



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/22/2018 03:40AM by Lot's Wife.

What concerns me is the correlation between the Religious gene and the Asshole gene.

I hope every single human has the latter, since the alternative would be most uncomfortable.

That's a lot of jeans.
Some simply prefer pants.

"There are a number of twin studies that show that religiosity is in large part (40%? 60%?) genetic. That is, separated twins imbibe the religion in which they are reared and adopt it in roughly the same degree. I don't think neurological and genetic research has shed much light on that fact, but fact it is."

COMMENT: Citation please. This sounds like more psychological pseudoscience--unless you define "religiosity" in some very broad sense that encompasses very general psychological dispositions. There is no gene for "religiosity" per se.

Henry Bemis Wrote:
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> COMMENT: Citation please.

Already provided. Did you miss them?



--------------
> This sounds like more
> psychological pseudoscience--unless you define
> "religiosity" in some very broad sense that
> encompasses very general psychological
> dispositions.

That is what I am suggesting, subject to the limitations in scientific understanding of the topic. As I wrote, there appears to be what you call a "psychological disposition."



--------------
> There is no gene for "religiosity"
> per se.

If you read the rest of my post, I think you would see that I agree with that.

A brain adapts to what it is exposed to.

The more you practice the piano the better you get at it.

You avoid something and you lose the ability. I used to play the piano beautifully and after forty years of not playing I can't even play at all now. Could probably be resurrected with some effort ,but whatever, because it's still in there somewhere.

If your parents make religion a priority in your young life some part of your brain is going to provide a compartment to deal with that---the religious department.

But.... our brains aren't imprintable with the ideas of others for the most part. They take in the information and then we assess it using the genetic codes we were born with--each of us having our own unique set of cells and stuff.

It's more complicated than being born religiously gullible.

I wonder more if it has to do with one's ability to gain complete autonomy which may be a tendency we are born with.

Isn't autonomy the opposite of religion, of needing a savior, of needing someone else to make everything not only better, but make you the winner?

But I'm an artist, so what do I know? Can't back any of this up. But I'm sure I'm right. :)

It's a sensible answer.