If you’re saying whether or not somebody gets soothing brain juice rewards for what they believe or espouse is irrelevant, and we should instead examine whether or not their claims are true, I certainly agree. But of course the next question is what then is the purpose of this thread?
For theists the origin and essence of religion is from God. This thread provide an alternative view to the above.
Crick, among others, believed that the Earth was “seeded” with organic matter that came down in comets (panspermia). In any event, regardless of origin ,cells were formed in the primal ooze that was a mix of organic chemicals. I’m surprised to hear that somebody nowadays can claim that serotonin or its precursors was not available for the mix from which cells sprang. Maybe at least something like tryptophan was included.
I also suspect that whoever made those statements about serotonin as being among the “feel good causing chemicals in the brain” was mistaking serotonin with the basic endorphins. As a sufferer of major depression I take serotonin re=uptake meds, not opiates to create a balance of mentality, not necessarily a feel good therapy.
Not necessarily. What about the terrorists or those others who kill and destroy in the name of God or religion?
What kind of soothing juices do they have?
How can this be an alternative to theism if we just agreed that whether or not you get brain juice for your beliefs is completely irrelevant to whether or not they are true? It seems to me you and I just agreed that this thread isn’t actually disagreeing with theism in the slightest.
Mine are orange and sarsaparilla flavored.
It’s not, but Prismatic gets his soothing brain juice rewards by making everyone else feel miserable.
how did they create it to begin with, or was it waiting in some phantom zone of the mind and created in them the desire to create it? What part of the mind, or does the mind roam reality and its not a part of the mind at all, but the mind a tool?
I just don’t agree with the thesis and I don’t feel like going out of my way to disprove it.
I agree endorphin is the more notable neurotransmitter that enable one in inhibiting pain and feel good, but note,
For any living thing to feel the effects of [as you stated] “feel good causing chemicals in the brain” it must have the neural system to feel, in this case the emotional system.
The primates has an emotional system [limbic] in the brain but not the reptiles. Animals just below the primates would have some degree of emotions but definitely not those nearer to the reptilians and least likely for single-celled living organisms.
Note drugs addicts use artificial ‘soothing juices’ to feel “good” [relieve pains and induce highs]. To maintain and sustain their relieved pains and highs, drug addicts commit evil acts like the terrorists [religious-based] are doing.
DNA wise ALL humans has the potential to suffer existential pains and rely on various methods to relieve those pains to feel good.
Theists rely on theistic religions which induces “soothing juices” to relieve their existential pains.
DNA wise SOME theists are evil prone [the terrorists] and like the drug addicts they will do whatever it take to maintain and sustain their religion-leveraged feel good state.
The threat to their feel good state is this, God [certain religions, not all] issues threats in the holy texts that if they want to sustain a theistic feel-good-state, the theists has to kill or be violent to non-believers and commit other evil acts sanctioned by their God.
This is how religion and its soothing juices is related to religious-driven-terrorists and others.
- The theists’ dogmatic view is, religion is from a God.
- This OP view is, NO, religion is not from a God but from the brain of humans.
So 2 is a counter [alternative] view to and disagree with 1.
It is the same with the game of football, any sports or any other ideology which is created by human brains collectively and not from a God out there.
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Thanks Warrior 
For me, your thought … expressed as a question … may drive this thread into a more meaningful perspective … maybe?
The operative word in expressing your thought(s) is “mind” … most people use the word “mind” and “brain” interchangeably.
OTH … many people see brain and mind as distinctly separate entities.
If so, the brain as a tool becomes intuitively correct … and Prismatic’s endorsement of “soothing juices” in the brain is rational.
Hmmm!
I. endorphins --plural- more than one. See Candace Pert’s research on endorphins. She discovered their existence. From “The Three Pound Universe”–endorphins activity was the first neuroscience to appear on a tee-shirt.
2 serotonin–despite wiki’s “Popular Opinion” serotonin is a mood stabilizer, not an opiate. Of course mood stabilizations may lead to feelings of well-being, but they do not affect the brain as does morphine. Serotonin is made in small vesicles near the axon end of a neuron. When the neuron fires the vesicles are broken and neurotransmitters are spread across the synapse, affecting the electrical message a dendrite will receive. A neurotransmitter is not an opiate!
3. If religion is based on beliefs caused by feel good juices in the brain, this is not evidence that the beliefs are wrong or somehow misguided.
4.the brain also creates philosophy and science. Does that fact make religion and science somehow illegitimate concerns?
If religions are created by the brain, then theistic religions are not created nor triggered by a God which is illusory and an impossibility.
There are many religions, i.e. theistic and non-theistic.
All religions has their negative baggage of different degrees, so priority must be given to those religions who has a high degrees of negativity that hinder the progress of humanity, e.g. Islam = very high, Christianity - moderate. In the future humanity need to wean off all religions in phases to avoid religious-based evils.
The brain creates religions, but SOME religions are inherently evil, e.g. The Religion of Peace which has evil laden elements in their holy texts that inspire evil prone believers to commit evils and violence in the name of their God as a divine duty.
Note the following statistic that involve deaths;
There are loads of other evils acts by evil prone Muslims around the world.
This is evidence the belief itself is wrong. Can you dispute this?
Christianity is a pacifist and a not violent religion, but the ethos of Christian like Islam hinder the progress on humanity in term of scientific knowledge re its insistence of Creationism and deny of evolutionary theory.
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36,000,000 people will die of hunger this year in a world where 792,104,920 people are obese.
You must be talking about Christianity as practiced in the Middle Ages. The 20th century was noted for advances in science and technology without hindrance from religion. We got nuclear weapons and used them. Even the Pope does not dismiss evolutionary theory, just the unsubstantiated idea that evolution is without teleology. Religion should have been a check on science, limiting or hindering the use of bombs or toxic chemicals on people. And science should serve to limit the extravagances of religion.
You did not include his point 4 when you responded. You skipped over that point while, oddly, quoting it.
Don’t take this as my being a fan of Islam, but here you are saying that YOU know what evil is. You are an objective judge of what evil and I presume good actions are. That’s problem 1, just like the theists you know what objective good and evil are. Problem 2 is that you say that if some Muslims perform evil acts then the belief is wrong. Islam is a complicated set of beliefs, so it is sloppy to refer to it as a belief when it is many. It is also many believers.
The statement: in any given belief X, if some believers of X commit acts of violence, that belief is incorrect. That just does not work. It would undermine every system of belief including those underpinning science. In fact it is used by Muslims in relation to many Western beliefs and it is also fallacious when they use it.
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OK, In my universe this is not correct. Do you have any idea, for example, how many Muslim children have been killed by Christians? A little history going further back in time also might be useful. Though you don’t have to go back in time far at all to answer my question about kids.
Failure to address points 1 and 2, Prism, shows your ignorance of how the brain actually works; and yet you would tell me what it is capable of doing. The old anthropologist you quote should stick to his field of expertise.
1.) Yes.
2.) Those two things don’t conflict. If religion was from God, it would still produce positive brain chemicals when believed, because that’s how brains work. You just finished agreeing with me about this: we just finished agreeing that atheism and theism both have to demonstrate the truth of their points irrespective of positive brain chemicals.
I’m sure mathematicians get positive brain juice rewards when they solve a complex equation. That doesn’t mean the brain creates math or that math is bullshit or any other cynical baloney you want to extrude from it. It simply means that a part of how humans work is that we feel rewarded when we discover the truth.
So no, 2 isn’t a counter to 1 at all. It’s an ignoratio elenchi.