Thursday, May 23, 2019

How Religions Got Started - The Secular Humanist Viewpoint

Secular humanist believed that religion got invented because men appeared to be evolutionarily predisposed to religion or religious like behaviour. Below are quotes from this article, "The Human Brain Evolved to Believe in Gods - The Crux":

QUOTE
Leading scholars propose a two-phase hypothesis (here, here): First, our ancestors evolved certain mental abilities, useful for survival and reproduction, which predisposed them to religious beliefs. Then, from the multitude of beliefs that emerged, particular religions spread and persisted because their deities and rituals promoted cooperation among practitioners.
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Evolved features of our brains, such as Theory of Mind and over-imitation, likely caused the emergence of religions in human societies. It doesn’t take supernatural beings to explain why so many people believe in them - just natural evolutionary processes.
UNQUOTE

As such, to secular humanists, all religions are equal. There is no special revelation in any of them. And science has been able to prove that many of the religious practices are mere superstitions. Because of this, secular humanists refused to give Christianity as special preference. They said if we were to look at the 6 days creation seriously, then we also have to look at the Hindu view that the world is supported by four elephants on a big turtle seriously.

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