08.02.09
Archive: Axial Age and the evolution of religion
March 12, 2007
Sunday, Bloody Sunday.
Scientists have boxed themselves into a corner making their studies of religion exercises in nullity. One problem is that atheism is as poorly founded as theism, and leads to a perspectives that are false. The best example is the Dawkins style connection between atheism and selectionist evolution. There is no real connection, and in any case the selectionist position is probably false.
To pontificate on religion without a shred of study of religion as this appears in world history is almost bizarre. Biologists on the subject of religion have lived in the closed environments of funded research projects, peer review spectres inducing narrowness of vision, and ‘ra ra’ pep rally Darwinian promo.
Sit down and consider the Old Testament. We can point to the emergence of a mythology, but this mythology of a Canaanite people is actually a very remarkable record of one part of the Axial Age. Anyone trying to figure out how some historical dynamic can act globally to produce changes in whole cultures just might think it an act of God!
Darwinists might put that consideration into their gas tank.
Readers of the New York Times were treated, with their morning coffee, to a lengthy piece in the New York Times Magazine by Robin Marantz Henig titled “Darwin’s God.†Henig explored the scientific community’s attempt to understand “an inherent human drive to believe in something transcendent, unfathomable and otherworldly, something beyond the reach or understanding of science.†The article focuses on Scott Atran, a man who “no longer believes in God†and questions why so many people around the world do.
Studying the evolution of religious belief is a field gaining momentum, according to Henig. It is less about whether God exists but why belief in God exists.
The presupposition underlying the entire 8,000-word piece is that evolution is the only lens through which to look at the issue. Henig never allows an argument to be made for theories like creationism or intelligent design, which would explain the Christian belief that man was created in the image and likeness of God, and therefore predisposed to believe in his Creator.
Henig concludes the piece this way: “No matter how much science can explain, it seems the real gap that God fills is an emptiness that our big-brained mental architecture interprets as a yearning for the supernatural. The drive to satisfy that yearning, according to both adaptationists and byproduct theorists, might be an inevitable and eternal part of what Atran calls the tragedy of human cognition.â€
James said,
August 2, 2009 at 12:20 pm
“No matter how much science can explain, it seems the real gap that God fills is an emptiness that our big-brained mental architecture interprets as a yearning for the supernatural.”
Maybe they should also learn to ditch the term “supernatural.” These incoherent, schizophrenic attempts to define “naturalism” by creating a sausage out of incompatible theories/worldviews such as Newtonian mechanics (the real parent of Darwinian thinking), relativity, and QM seem preposterous to anybody who has some knowledge of the history of science. These “scholars” of religion simply discredit themselves from the start.
The Axial Age | Evolution of religion in the Axial period said,
August 2, 2009 at 12:52 pm
[...] Axial Age and the evolution of religion [...]
Lisa A. Shiel said,
August 3, 2009 at 7:08 am
In his article Robert Wright also says “Natural selection built the conscience, hence guilt, into our brains.”
This is an utterly absurd statement, since no one can possibly know this. How or indeed if natural selection (the engine of evolution) brought about such mental processes remains untestable and, therefore, unprovable. Evolutionists adore making these kinds of statements, with the implied addendum that we should believe them because they say so.
Evolution requires as much belief–and blind belief at that–as any religion.
Lisa A. Shiel
author of The Evolution Conspiracy
http://EvolutionConspiracy.com/
Darwiniana » Absurd claims for natural selection said,
August 3, 2009 at 12:09 pm
[...] Comment on Axial Age and the evolutio of religion Lisa A. Shiel said, August 3, 2009 at 7:08 am In his article Robert Wright also says “Natural selection built the conscience, hence guilt, into our brains.” This is an utterly absurd statement, since no one can possibly know this. How or indeed if natural selection (the engine of evolution) brought about such mental processes remains untestable and, therefore, unprovable. Evolutionists adore making these kinds of statements, with the implied addendum that we should believe them because they say so. [...]
Darwiniana » Log of recent posts, plus ‘mini-archive’ said,
August 3, 2009 at 12:57 pm
[...] of scientism on Fifty years after CP SnowDarwiniana » Absurd claims for natural selection on Archive: Axial Age and the evolution of religionLisa A. Shiel on Archive: Axial Age and the evolution of religionStephen P. Smith on Infants: [...]