The Brain Creates Religion

I agree.
To get to the point with steadiness I believe I need to write perhaps 3-5 books for each premise to get the point across.

Making noises in not equivalent to presenting any justified counters. I noted the points raised by Phyllo and Karpel but they are very flimsy. I would definitely welcome counter arguments [good for me and philosophy as a whole] that are solid and rigorous.

In my argument all the premises are deductive and follow to 4, the brain creates religion which produce soothing juices to relieve the existential brain pains.

There are lots of research on the relation between various religions and the production soothing juices in the brain, e.g.

I suggest you do your own research [just google] on the above subject.

I have spent a lot of time doing proper research on the subjects I participate in and I am a very voracious and responsible knowledge seeker.

Why should I research a fable about what brains do?

  1. Is the potential to suffer existential pains proof that everyone experiences them? If not this is a special case about which universals cannot be claimed.
  2. What majority? This has not been proved. Are there some who do not suffer in this way and yet their brains produce feel good juices for various reasons?
  3. Not all seek solutions to something as complex psychologically as existential angst.
  4. If the brain can create both God and no God as religious solutions to the problem ,it has little to do with creating religion except in the special case as noted above.
    Your theology is akin to Milton’s who claimed God allowed us to be sinful in order to give us a redeemer–all part of a cosmic salvation plan based on felix culpa. So, apparently our brains are constructed in such a way that their chemical activities can be seen as giving theistic solutions to existential problems.
    Looking at the brain with its neurons, neurotransmitters and endocrines, it seems almost comical to suggest that Some God has emerged from the hardwire and software interplay of mental/chemical activities. Nice fable, but no real proof. A good atheist will not accept your spurious proofs from googled ideas.
    As one critic neatly put it, there is nearly a 100%correlation between storks and babies arriving at the same time in Stockholm. So beware of the ramifications of supposed correlations such as between neurochemical activity and psychologized theology.

Fable??
I gave you links to scientific evidence and it is not practical to provide you every thing there is on this research. I know there are lots of research going on re this topic thus my suggestion you research on it to establish its truth.

The potential is a universal one because it is embedded in the human DNA.
That the majority of humans are religious i.e. 6+ billions out of 7 indicate they had to rely on religion’s soothing juices to relieve those existential pains [majority subliminal and otherwise].

Note my point above re majority.
As I had stated the brain has an independent function that produce feel good juices for various reasons, i.e. sex, food, security, existential, etc. Religion is related to the existential reason.

The potential of the existential angst is universal and it is active in the majority of humans. The majority of these tend towards religions while others resort to secular work, etc. and many turn to various drugs, hallucinogens and this is why there is an abuse of opioids to relieve the brain pains which cannot be pin pointed precisely.

The brain creates God and the related feel good juices to relieve the existential angst. The brain do not create a no-God state but rather it is just indifferent to a God-solution. Those who are indifferent to a God idea turn to other means as stated above to relieve their mental pains.

The point is there is no pre-existing real God waiting out there for humans to believe and cling to it.
The real thing is humans invent the idea of God to relieve their inherent and unavoidable psychological pains.

Note it is very common for people with mental discomforts to invent imaginary beings to relieve the discomfort [children imaginary friends] or promote pleasure [sexual fantasies in the mind] and also cling to various beliefs and ideologies.

Note your alternative, i.e. God exists as a real being out there and for a majority, God is a being who can promise them eternal life in Paradise and for some with a bonus of virgins thrown in. From there the claims for God get more and more ridiculous, irrational and absurd.
Top it all no one has been able to prove God exists convincingly since the idea of God emerged.

As I have shown with proofs and evidences the idea of God was conjured to trigger soothing juices to relieve the inherent existential pains.

Angst causes feel good juices. Feel good juices cause religions. There is nothing to connect these two as cause and effect. You have presented no real proof that these conditions rely on each other in these singular ways. How do the studies you’ve presented as research fare before scientific peer scrutiny? Have you read any counter arguments to the ones you’ve pieced together? They appear to be a random collection of pseudoscientific assumptions with about as much authority as National Enquirer articles.
You have no idea about what my alternative is so why state it amounts to the tripe you suggest. My beliefs are not on trial here.

I mean, what can one say when someone just keep celebrating things they have not done as if they have. He is presented with logical problems with the OP argument. Repeats OP arguement. He is presented with other hypotheses held by the scientific community. He repeats his assertions as if he was not presented with anything. It is disingenous, dishonorable participation.

He does not understand the difference between correlation and cause.
He does not understand that since brain juices are released in relation to things already accepted by sciences, the presence of brain juices when people think about God, proves absolutely nothing. It is not even evidence of anything except that brain juices get released.
He confuses absence of proof with proof of absence.
He uses the term ‘proof’ incorrectly, since proofs are relevent in math, but not in science.
He believes there is no mind independent reality WHICH 1) completely undermines his brain juices argument - I mean, are the brain juices real or only when he thinks about them? If there is a no mind independant reality ‘real’ means something other than what he argues God is not and 2) goes against mainstream science consensus.

He thinks that by asserting ‘God is not real’ in an argument he does not need to justify this.

The logic is as follows;

Psychological angst causes brain pains.
Feel good juices relieve brain pains.
Religions generate feel good juices.
Thus feel good juices from religions relieve brain pains.

Note I have spent years researching on this subject.
Since I can only produce a few links in a post, I have suggested you do some research on the subject.

The main subject is religion, i.e. theistic and non-theistic.
The main point for you is you are a theist [correct me if I am wrong] and the basis of your belief is psychological and not that there is a pre-existing God waiting out there for believers to believe.

Unless you address the specific points I raised, your accusations above are merely babblings.

Note, whatever I stated in here and in such a limited forum cannot be conclusively proof.
Whatever links and references are merely indication to the wider available evidences, this is why I suggest one should do further research to understand [not necessary agree yet] to my point. If one do not research and understand the point then one’s view has no credibility.

What I listed i.e.

Brain Scans on Mormons Show Religion Has a Similar Effect to Taking Drugs
sciencealert.com/brain-scan … king-drugs

tandfonline.com/doi/full/10. … 16.1257437

is qualified with a limitation.
I did not state specifically the above is a conclusive proof.

My the other ‘God is an impossibility’ is a deductive proof based on reason.

It must be nice to be privy to such logical understandings that seem denied to us ignorami. Tweak and fudge, the squirming of one caught in an enormous lie, is all too evident in your repetitive defenses. You ask of us to research a thesis that is illogical. Where is the rigor produced by peer approval on this topic? Why does it smack of tabloid presentations? You seem to know little about how brains work and less about cause and effect. Your thesis is defended by reference to folk theories, not by scientific rigor. So if this is all babble to you, I doubt you could learn from your mistakes even when they are pointed out to you. The “scientists” you quote or would have us read would be better off sticking to basic science than opining about God or religion.

Note at least I have provided some links to justify the lead [not necessary conclusive.] I have no problem providing more references if necessary.

OTOH, what you have stated is pure babbling to defend your existential psychological problems. You have not even provided any link [even as a clue] to give me an idea of the integrity of your claims.

What is most obvious of the theists’ claim, God exists is pure conjecture and without any inkling of direct proofs since the idea of God emerged.
The root cause of theism is fundamentally psychological and all the defenses given by theists is to secure this very flimsy barrier to the truth within the theist.

What have been pointed out to me by theists are merely ‘shooing’ and hand waving against my arguments and has no substance at all, e.g.

you seem to know little about how brains work and less about cause and effect.
Where are your arguments?
Re cause and effect - are you claiming you are a better philosopher that Hume or Kant?

The only point re the brain was I avoided to state endorphins are from the body rather than from the brain. I have done very extensive research on the various aspects of Neurosciences. I don’t believe you have done much?? What books and areas of neuroscience have you research into?

On a minimal list I have read Crick, Cosmides and Tooby, Damasio, Changeaux, Ricoeur, Dennett, Dawkins, Wilson, Humphry, Rorty, etc., etc-- all first hand, not in splices of podcasts or googled excerpts. This is a minimal list which includes dozens of works on neuroscience, post analytic philosophy, comparative religions and genetic evolution. This extensive reading does not make me an authority on any of these matters, but it does serve to help me detect pseudoscientific fables such as those you propose.

OK, noted and I will take those readings you have done into account but I think you will be quite defensive with many of the above authors.

Other than Changeaux, Humphry [which, Davy?] I have read all the above.
I agree my reading of the above do not make me an authority of their views.
I only claim a very reasonable expertise where I have spent full time 2-3 years on certain philosopher and philosophies, e.g. Buddhism, Kant, Islam and some other minor areas.

I would suggest you read Kant [to understand not necessary agree], which I believe represent the center core of Philosophy.

Besides depth, to widen to the side on neuroscience, try Oliver Sacks, V.S. Ramachandran, Ledoux, Andrew Newberg, and many others, especially note the Human Connectome Project.
humanconnectomeproject.org/

What I have presented is not “pseudoscientific fables” but proper research and that paper qualified its limitations. I have provided a lead here and if we are to get more serious [I don’t have the time] then we can do a literature review and try to exhaust all research that has been done in this area.

I’ve read Sacks and more. Humphrey =Nicholas Humphrey, Other than comparing each other’s reading lists why not come to grips with the basic problem of the OP, that of seeing correlation as cause and effect.
I. brains create religion
2. there is a correlation between certain brain activities and belief in religions.
Do these two sentences appear the same do you? If so, you have just claimed to understand consciousness enough to know how brain/body influences affect mental content. Brain activities are among the influences that determine what kinds of thought one can have, not any specific thought content. Endorphins affect moods; they are not the underpinnings of some positive belief system. If they could do this AI would be far more advanced now than it is.

  1. brains produce soothing juices that address existential angst.
  2. there is a correlation between experiencing existential angst and the brains emission of endorphins., etc.

‘Consciousness’ the hard problem is too grey at present to be able to lend credibility to any conclusion.

The point is brain/body influences and effect mental contents [Candace Pert’s Molecules of Emotion] but at the same time mental thoughts can also influence and effect the physical state of the brain/body [Beliefs, NLP, etc.].

Note this syllogism;

Psychological angst causes brain pains. -Fact

  1. The brain/body produces feel good juices to relieve brain pains. -Fact
  2. The feel good juices to relieve brain pains are triggered by religious beliefs and practices. -Fact - see below
  3. The Brain creates religion -OP

Note I have read lots of articles supporting my point but due to time constraints, I am doing a quickie job to pick a few references.

How the syllogism fails to produce the OP you have concluded from its parts is that each is not a special case, excluding other possibilities. Each could express a simple correlation between two activities. They seem derived from the OP, not the OP derived from them.

Brain/body produces endorphins to offset chemicals that indicate malfunction thus prompting stability of mood.
Stability of mood does not indicate that it has anything to do with religion.
Endorphin activities maintain stability of body/brain functions.
Understanding the mechanics behind brain functioning does not reveal the presence therein of some homunculus or ghost in the machine or subconscious preference for any known theological system.

I can’t make any sense of your points 1 and 2 in the above.

Note my syllogism;

Psychological angst causes brain pains. -Fact

  1. The brain/body produces feel good juices to relieve brain pains. -Fact
  2. The feel good juices to relieve brain pains are triggered by religious beliefs and practices. -Fact - see below
  3. The Brain creates religion -OP

The syllogism is deductive, therefore the conclusion is true.
All the premises are based on facts [supported], therefore the conclusion is logically & factually true.

As such you need to be more precise with your critique for each premise.
If you cannot produce any of the above premise is false and non-factual, then my conclusion is true.

You can even work backward and it is true i.e.

Re Conclusion: Why do the brain creates Religion? -3
Asnwer: Because The feel good juices to relieve brain pains - 2
Why 2?
Answer: Because to relieve brain pains (1) from an existential crisis.

Show me where any of the above is wrong?

I can fit the above into my syllogism;

Psychological angst causes brain pains. -Fact

  1. The brain/body produces feel good juices to relieve brain pains, i.e. stability of mood [one purpose]. -Fact
  2. The feel good juices to relieve brain pains, i.e. stability of mood [one purpose] are triggered by religious beliefs and practices. -Fact - see below
  3. The Brain creates religion -OP

Note endorphins are mere one of the feel good juices produced from the body that reaches and penetrate into the brain to effect stability of mood to counter brain pains, i.e. angst, despairs, anxieties, hopelessness, depression and the likes.

The other feel good juices are serotonin & dopamine which are triggered by religion [various ways] which work in various neural interactions to counter the existential brain pains.

I did imply any homunculus or ghost at all, besides these are straw man, falsehoods and thus off topic.

Hi guys, I’m a new poster, but have been following the discussions for a while. I’ve had an interest in philosophy for a few years now. I used to be a theist, but I’m now agnostic. I may not be as well read as the rest of you so please bear with me :slight_smile: . These are my thoughts on this topic.

I think that the brain produces feel good juices in response to certain stimuli that accord with a person’s frame of reference/point of view. For example, finding out that someone you’re attracted to is also attracted to you will produce feel good juices, among many other causes of feel good juices being produced. I think that religion does create feel good juices for individuals that are of a religious mindset, but for an atheist or agnostic it doesn’t have the same effect. So to say that religion causes feel good juices in all cases may be incorrect or even presumptuous. I don’t think that feel good juices being produced gives us any indication of whether religion is based upon reality or fiction, it may just be how the brain reacts to a person’s religious beliefs being reinforced (qua positive reinforcement). Does the brain create religion? I’m not sure. If religion was purely a creation of human-beings without being divinely influenced, then there are many reasons why it could have been created (aside from pure brain chemistry), including socio-political and psyhosocial reasons. I think that isolating a single cause for religious beliefs is problematic, because even if the evidence shows correlation, that may not imply cause. If religion is a cause of feel good juices as a fact of brain chemistry, wouldn’t it cause feel good juices in everyone and not just theists?

The ideas you considerer fact are part of the current psychiatric theories about the interactions of mind and matter. To claim they are fact is to claim some esoteric knowledge the theorists cannot at present know. All you have presented to me as fact is theoretical supposition. The need to make sense of pain, which brains detect, is not exhausted by a simple left brain induced syllogism. If you cannot understand how a correlation between two activities is not evidence of cause and effect, you will not understand why I criticize these “myths from the cortex”. The “ghost” is that part of your brain that insists on applying logic to existential angst and mythology to mechanical functions. If you are right, all mental illnesses may be treated with a heavy dose of religion.

Note Scientific theories where scientists considered as scientific facts and accepted by many as facts are merely ‘polished conjecture[s]’ from another perspective [Popper].

Thus what I considered as ‘facts’ are not absolute facts like what is claimed by theists for their dogmas [which is based on faith].
As such the credibility and confidence level for what I claimed as facts come in degrees.

In my case I would claim the confidence levels for the following are;

  1. Premise 1 - confidence level of 8/10
  2. Premise 2 - confidence level of 4/10.

Note the above are scientifically-based i.e. via empirical evidence with rationality and are not based on faith. While Premise 1 is based on well established research[s], Premise 2 is not so established.

In the above sense what I am claiming, i.e. ‘The Brain Creates Religion’ [deductively] has a higher credibility [qualified in degrees of confidence levels] than the theists’ claim of ‘God exists’ which is merely based on blind faith.

Thus you cannot claim ‘God exists’ with absoluteness. My credible [5/10] counter would erode the credibility of your claim to 0/10 when coupled with my thesis re ‘God is an Impossibility’.

What you are left for real, the only possibility why God arise within human consciousness is due to psychological reasons [confidence level 5/10].

Your above is bad logic. How did you arrive at such a conclusion?
The point is, existential angst is not a serious mental illness as those in the DSM-V [official manual of mental illnesses].
Thus while religions can relieve the existential angst it cannot cure whatever [all that] is in the DSM-V.

My thesis still stand;
There is no pre-existing real God waiting our there to be believed and clung to.
The idea of God arise within psychological factors within the self and this God-idea is wrapped with a theistic religion which is created by the brain.