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Religion
In reply to the discussion: Our brains have evolved to look for patterns and assign meaning, even when none exist. [View all]Jim__
(14,045 posts)44. In the first place, I didn't give an argument.
I gave an example of a situation where the OPs claim doesn't stand up:
... Souls, spirits, ghosts, gods, demons, angels, aliens, intelligent designers, government conspiracists, and all manner of invisible agents with power and intention are believed to haunt our world and control our lives. Combined with our propensity to find meaningful patterns in both meaningful and meaningless noise, patternicity and agenticity form the cognitive basis of shamanism, paganism, animism, polytheism, monotheism, and all modes of Old and New Age spiritualisms.
I merely presented a counter-example to this argument. That means the argument the OP is making is not universally true.
Simple statements seem to confuse you. In your previous post, you confuse an argument with a counter-example. I explicitly stated:
... Am I claiming to know why people believe in ghosts? Only the people I've spoken to and only the reasons they've given me. But that does not support the contention about attributing agency to nonexistent patterns. ...
It's really not that complicated. I'm not sure if you're being deliberately obtuse; or if you have problems with elementary logic. But, you should make some effort to understand what is being said.
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Our brains have evolved to look for patterns and assign meaning, even when none exist. [View all]
cleanhippie
Mar 2012
OP
So basically saying science can be used to study the brain and the evolution of it is...
Humanist_Activist
Mar 2012
#5
The simplest example of this would be the constellations and looking for shapes in clouds...
Humanist_Activist
Mar 2012
#6
Exactly. And unfortunately, people still assign agenticity as seen in horoscopes.
cleanhippie
Mar 2012
#10
I don't forget that we live in groups, your explanation didn't have anything to do with groups.
Jim__
Mar 2012
#19
Anecdotal evidence: Astrology columns in newspapers. Useless gambling systems.
Jim Lane
Mar 2012
#21
Your answer indicates that you are far more prone to see patterns than to be overly skeptical.
Jim__
Mar 2012
#24
All it takes for overzealous pattern recognition to be an evolutionary advantage...
Silent3
Mar 2012
#50