DreamOn,

Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibiters are used to alleviate depression, which is fairly well known: Also, obsessive behaviours, which is my point. My citation is Susan Greenfield, the neuroscientist.

When I studied neuropharmaceutology and behaviour, as part of a Pych. degree, in the early 80s, earlier generations of drugs were used. I claim know special knowledge of SSRIs, but have read a little about that class of pharmaceutical.

I understand that survival centres of the brain are also closely aligned to olfactory responses. It is intersting incense or fires are burned during the reinforcement (Skinner) of the indwelling (Polanyi) of religious rites.

Some of what is happening in the basement of the brain needs to be rationalised by higher centres. The neocortex has the capacity to confrabulate a subsistence (religion). Confabulation, rather than fabrication, because real inputs and survival instincts are involved. Subsistence,rather existence, because the sign stimulus, is a real-fiction, e.g., like, James Bond and Lucy in Peanuts, are not non-existent nor real, yet these have a subsistence as characrters in a performance. Both 007 and Lucy are a part of real culture and even have pesonalities "commonly" known to millions of people.

In there is truth in the above, perhaps, Philo, might suggest that it is the work of a spirituality from an external divine entity? Just the same, rites can be programmed into chickens via the use of (feeding) reinforcement schedules.

O

So, if I asked the following you wouldn't think it was insulting?

Is atheism a product of an active imagination?

Or is it a result of a lack of imagination, especially within the masses that allow atheism to gain credence and prominence?

Or is atheism just an inevitable product of the evolution of the human brain, with our expanding powers of observation and the resultant curiosity about everything around us always proceeding well ahead of our ability to explain it all, leading directly to the invention of the idea that everything must be material not spiritual in an attempt to explain and understand supernatural events which exceed our personal experience?

Ludwig mate.... you said:

"So how have they come to believe in something for which they have not only no proof but not a shred of real evidence?"

You are missing a most important point (as are most others from the tabernacle of cyncism:)

The EARLY disciples...those who were WITH JESUS.. during His ministry.... THEY were the ones on whom the growth of the faith depended.

It was THEY who went here and there proclaiming the risen Christ....
It was THEY who were crucified, hacked to death.. killed in various ways FOR that belief.

THUS.. for them to proclaim something they KNEW was not true.. and then to die for it.. makes absolutely no sense psychologically!

Once they passed on..and the Church was established.. THEN.. you can ask the question 'why' regarding people who died for their faith..
ANSWER: Whether or not they have sufficient evidence is not the issue.. BELIEF is the issue.. they actually believe that their faith is true..that the events did occur...that Christ rose from the dead....

BUT... they no longer have access to the living witnesses. That period only applied to those who were with Jesus..

The difficulty for you and others is not appreciating or attributing the correct weighting to the fact of the Apostles from Jesus own period dying for their faith in the resurrection of Christ... which, if, the Cynical Tabernacle Choir here is to be believed .. didn't happen.

Such Cynicism is utterly absurd and does not hold any rational basis whatsoever.

So...I end this post with the most rational, valid and historically reaonable fact: 1Cor 15:3ff

that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures,

that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures,

and that he appeared to Peter,

and then to the Twelve.

After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers at the same time, most of whom are still living,

We obviously think in a fundamentally different way mj. I can’t see the slightest undertones of insolence in my questions or in your inverted questions.

In fact your questions are interesting:

“Is atheism a product of an active imagination?”

For those who have been brought up in cultures with strong religious beliefs, it would indeed require an active imagination, or a very broad-minded attitude, for them to embrace atheism.

“Or is atheism just an inevitable product of the evolution of the human brain…”

I think that atheism WILL be an inevitable product of the evolution of the human brain, when we en masse realise the folly of the god delusion. I see religion as a phase that we have to go through in the evolution of intelligence and the accumulation of knowledge, and that eventually humanity will do away with it entirely.

A curious complaint from mjpb, but I think I see the root cause Ludwig.

At the moment there are two threads coming from opposite directions. One explicitly asks us to assume there is a God, and so if such an entity exists, then what would it be like?

The other (this one), implicitly asks (or takes the authors point of view), that if there is no God, whence religion? Why do we have religion?

Only one has drawn a complaint. I believe it was because the premise wasn't EXPLICTLY stated, and therefore was deemed insulting. Nevertheless, I don't think it really matters, most premises that start with God not existing are usually going to be offensive to a believer, as it will always imply that they are either stupid or irrational, and most of the time they are neither

A somewhat unfortunate rationale, Boaz.

>>The EARLY disciples...those who were WITH JESUS.. during His ministry.... THEY were the ones on whom the growth of the faith depended. It was THEY who went here and there proclaiming the risen Christ... It was THEY who were crucified, hacked to death.. killed in various ways FOR that belief.<<

Such self-destruction has been known in more recent times.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/november/18/newsid_2540000/2540209.stm

"The bodies of 914 people, including 276 children, have been found in Guyana in South America. Most of the dead - members of the People's Temple Christian Church..."

So being with Jesus or being with Jim Jones doesn't seem to make a great deal of difference where religious fanaticism is concerned.

People do the strangest things, Boaz, for their own reasons.

To me, BASE jumping is a ridiculous way to spend one's time, but I can readily envisage its appeal to some.

Steve Fossett's belief that courting death through high-altitude ballooning is a better way to spend millions of dollars than reading a book came to a predictable end, but is also totally understandable.

And the guy who stood in front of that tank in Tienamen Square with his shopping bags gets my vote for selflessness in the face of imminent death, every time.

So the antics of some first-century religious extremists, and their possible fate, shouldn't be too surprising.

Incidentally, who were they? And is there any actual evidence that they were "were WITH JESUS.. during His ministry"?

Or is this just hearsay too?