Delicious LiveJournal Links for 7-12-2008

[andrewducker]

• Why do we believe?
  Fascinating piece looking at the evidence that human beings come into the world with a predisposition to believe in supernatural phenomena, and they they do so as an incidental by-product of cognitive functioning gone awry. Highly Recommended.
  (tags: religion philosophy psychology science)
• The State of the Web - Summer 2008
  Very funny image. Especially the bit about the internet being under attack
  (tags: 2008 web2.0 funny art internet)

Comments

[0olong.livejournal.com]

Starting out with the claim that 'nearly everyone in the world believes in the same things: the existence of a soul, an afterlife, miracles, and the divine creation of the universe' really rubs me up the wrong way, but I guess I can stand to read on anyway...

[khbrown.livejournal.com]

Seems like a lot of conjecture to me.

How would you find two groups of infants to do a properly controlled experiment with, rather than just picking studies which suit your case.

Reading the article, we might say people have a predisposition to look for meaningful patterns in the world, but that you might have a group of infants / children for whom these patterns were then explained without reference to divine / supernatural phenomena, and which would then lead to the formation of a different understanding and culture / society that could become ingrained in the way religions have. (Then again, isn't this what civil religions of the state or party try to do anyway, but usually finding it easier to co-opt already existing belief systems.)