Science a GoGo's Home Page Forums General Discussion General Science Discussion Forum A Glimpse Into The Origins Of Life

Indeed. In fact, the very existence of the God Module implies an evolutionary advantage - or else it would have been selected out or gone vestigial long ago. A species able to experience religion must have some advantage over one who cannot - otherwise our God Modules wouldn't be so powerful when activated, if they were even still around. And the fact that it is still around means that we use it. If it's around in other animals then it must be a fact that they use it too or else it'd have gone away in them as well.

There are those who will say that the capability of religion afforded us by this section of the brain probably gave us more motivation to band together as tribes and other types of civil groups. Perhaps it gave an edge in fighting over those who didn't have it as acutely developed (by giving a greater motivation to the fighter). You, Dan, I would guess would explain the evolution of the God Module either in this way or in a very similar one.

It is also possible that God really does exist and the ability to commune with him and recognize his presence allows us to better reap the gifts He gives us, and so he set things up from the beginning in such a way that we would eventually evolve this portion of the brain and awaken to His presence.

I happen to believe both of the above explanations are true. I can certainly understand why an atheist would take the first and not the second. What I can't understand is why a religious person would accept the second and not the first.

But did God/evolution/both also grant this to other primates? To other vertebrates? I would sincerely love to know. If so, what evolutionary advantages has it created for them? Do dolphins click and screech to watery gods? Does whalesong have a religious connotation? If so, wouldn't that be truly amazing and wonderful? It would indicate a deep commonality between us and the other fauna of the earth. I seriously doubt that an earthworm can recognize the presence of god. But what if we find that dolphins have an even more developed God Module than us? What would that mean? These are questions that fill me with wonder and curiosity. That they haven't been looked into yet just seems tragic to me.

w

Wayne wrote:
"A species able to experience religion must have some advantage over one who cannot...."

But of an over-stretching there methinks. Let me rephrase your statement and see if that helps.

Members of a species able to experience religion must confer upon their group some advantage over members that same species who cannot.

It may well be that a pair of canines beats a god module every time. But it may well be, too, that those willing to face death and save their children are the one's whose DNA survives long enough to figure out how to throw rocks and then spears.

I'm largely in agreement with Wayne on this although I'm one who doesn't believe God actually exists. My bet would be that social animals are more likely to have a god spot than are non-social ones. But on the other hand I'd be surprised if any animals other than humans have it. I suspect an ability to believe in the supernatural provided an advantage for those groups with it once modern humans had expanded around the earth and exterminated the large grazing mammals. Survival became suddenly tougher and the god spot meant fairly large groups could act in cohesion. Groups unable to do this died out.

My take: The discovery of the 'God Module' should change nothing. Any experience must have associated brain activity. The discovery of the specific location of this particular activity is interesting, but although the point about its possible presence in animals is food for thought, the discovery is inconsequential with regard to humans. For example, it changes nothing concerning the social consequences of religion. The rest is a chicken and egg argument.

Whist the God Module does seem to encourage the formation of groups, tribes etc: there is also another factor of religious faith that you are ignoring. The promise of some sort of life after death is part of most religions. This then encourages the tribe to fight with little thought of survival as they are doing God's bidding and so will live for eternity. Further the certainty of their belief encourages many religious people to spread the 'truth' of these beliefs and conquer other lands to ensure that their god wins. Religious fervour has been responsible for many nasty moments in history, and lighting up the God Module should be approached with caution and the sort of inspiring approach that Wayne Zellor is advocating, rather than the roaring fervour of a crusade. The former apprach suggests an advantage for the module, the latter does not!

What Ellis said is what I was referring to.

In order to sacrifice oneself for one's children ... it certainly helps to be able to rationalize it.

My point wasn't about the specific evolutionary advantage granted by this piece of biology, but rather that atheists would explain it in exactly the ways you all are doing, while fundamentalists would go the second route and completely discount the first, while a discerning theist will take both explanation types as equally and simultaneously valid.

The advantages of any evolved trait must be many - especially in the brain where it takes so much energy to develop. You could pick just about any region of the brain that is unique to a species (or genus, or phylum, or whatever) and come up with a laundry list of all the ways it may be advantageous. The God Module is a little bit unique, though, in that it forces one to consider that religion itself is important to a species even if one doesn't believe in it. It's existence indicates that either it is useful for an entire species to suffer from delusions, or that there is a cosmic intelligence of some sort. I'll admit that it's possible that delusions grant some sort of advantage (and I fully expect atheists to justify it that way and give examples of useful delusion, and I'll think nothing less of them for it), but my personal opinion is that it is far more likely that this little piece of wetware is an intentional design feature.

One argument I can foresee is that foreign stimulation to just about any part of the brain can cause delusions of one sort or another. But that is through the misfiring of neurons in a brain region normally responsible for something else more useful. This region, though, has no known function other than to grant religious experience. If it's just a biological coincidence, then it has evolved not only for the express purpose of deluding us, but of doing so in a very specific way. I have a hard time seeing that as a logical conclusion.

w

Wayne:

?it forces one to consider that religion itself is important to a species even if one doesn't believe in it.?

Perhaps it doesn?t suggest that religion is important. Perhaps it suggests that an uplifting of human psyche is an asset for survival. Rationalisation by various cultures would tend toward inventing a framework (religion) upon which to hang these experiences and build upon them ? particularly when shrewd members of the community learn to use it to advantage.

?Its existence indicates that either it is useful for an entire species to suffer from delusions, or that there is a cosmic intelligence of some sort.?

No grounds for either, Wayne:

(1) The delusions are simply the framework (see above) constructed by ?believers?.

(2) It doesn?t require a cosmic intelligence ? it requires a species survival advantage.

?This region, though, has no known function other than to grant religious experience.?

Does it produce any information specifically concerning a religion, or a god? Or, is that simply the interpretation of a mind that?s already been exposed to religion, or to the concept of a god? I suspect the latter, and that the experience, though probably very high on the emotional scale, in fact bears no direct relationship with religion.

Delusions are valuable to the survival of a species.

Imagine where we would be if parents could see their own children as the rest of the world does.

We'd all have been drowned shortly after birth.

Ha!!!

It's important to remember that the first life that evolved on earth probably did not resemble anything now living?because the composition of the early atmosphere was so radically different than what it is today. In fact, it may very well be that the conditions necessary for creating life no longer exist (unless we reproduce those conditions artificially). As life evolved, it changed the composition of the atmosphere into what it is today.

For further reading, I recommend this article: http://www.machineslikeus.com/articles/Creatures.html.

NLN. I agree. And I believe that's where the design argument falls heavily. Why would God go to all that trouble and take at least two and a half billion years before he (or she) designed us? Were earlier efforts experimental failures? It's also just not possible there will be no further change in the future. Therefore we cannot be the ultimate in God's creation any more than can an amoeba.

Terry.
"Why would God go to all that trouble and take at least two and a half billion years before he (or she) designed us?"

What was the rush? He wasn't going anywhere.

But seriously:

"Therefore we cannot be the ultimate in God's creation any more than can an amoeba"

Definitely right about that, but not only "Therefore".

Look at the number galaxies out there: ~ 200,000,000,000 observable - each with xxx,000,000,000 stars. That's an utterly inconceivable number. And we are the singular, ultimate lifeform in the cosmos? OK.

Sorry I'm late back. I hadn't thought of that. My day is much the same, but just today.

Sorry Rede. I hadn't thought of that one.

I never said (nor do I believe) that we are at our evolutionary dead end. If life continues to go on, then so will our evolution.

Or, if the "end is near" (so to speak) then it won't. Regardless, as long as there is life there will be evolution.

As for why it took so long, it's because that's how long it takes when you do it the way it was done.

As for whether or not the activation of the god module is specifically related to religion, I'll tell you what I know from my own first hand experience. This is not a conversion story, and is not an attempt to convince you of any higher power - it is simply an objective retelling of something that happened to me.

I grew up in an atheistic family. I knew very little about religions in general and wasn't terribly interested in them. And then, when I was about 19 (and having never taken an illicit drug in my life before that) my god module activated. Completely out of the blue, with no warning of any kind, I literally collapsed to my knees and KNEW that something so much greater than myself that it made me less significant than a puff of pocketlint was in my presence. A voice spoke to me, and then departed.

This isn't one of those "born again" stories. It was years before I started looking into different religions. (I didn't convert to Catholicism until I was 27 or so.)

I wrestled with that experience for months. Being an atheist, I just couldn't reconcile it. But I can tell you this: There's no way to classify that moment as anything other than a religious experience. I now believe that God (or a messenger of his) really did speak to me that day. I've had other experiences that I can only classify as religious experiences, but nothing even remotely as powerful as that one.

So yes: The God Module grants religious experience - not just general heightening of emotion or anything like that. It tells you that it's time to recognize your complete and total insignificance compared to the being which is now here.


w

Wayne Zeller wrote:
"As for why it took so long, it's because that's how long it takes when you do it the way it was done."

Of course you are correct. But you have to admit it is also an artful dodge of what you knew to be the intent of the question.

What I read into what you wrote is that a god might exist without a god module. A god module might exist without a god. Both might not exist or both might exist.

Which would lead me to the likelihood that there is no relationship between the two.

Wayne

"it's because that's how long it takes when you do it the way it was done"

Perhaps that's just a little bit artful, don't you think, Wayne? <g>. The captain tells the squaddies they're taking too long to paint the barracks. Reply: "Captain, sir, that's how long it takes when you do it the way we're doing it!". Very humourous.

"The God Module grants religious experience - not just general heightening of emotion or anything like that."

I doubt it. Seriously, Wayne, I'm not being contentious. I do doubt it. You had prior knowledge of religion, and about your concept of God. You did, for example, go to a school that had a daily religious service and gave lessons about religion, didn't you? You know that you have a great deal of mental activity beside that of which you are conscious. Under the circumstances it could be quite possible to put 2 and 2 together and make 5.

Heh. That's pretty funny. And no, that's not how I meant it. It's like the Anthropic Principal. Why are things the way they are? Because if they weren't, we wouldn't be here to ask. God made the universe the way he made it. When making it that way, it takes some time for things to be ready for the formation of life, and once life forms it takes more time for it to evolve to the state where it can ask, "What took so long?" Time is just a dimension. Why does it take 2 hours to watch a movie? The whole film exists in the VCR tape and you can look at the whole tape in an instant, but it takes a couple hours to watch it. Why so long? Because that's how long it takes when you watch it that way. If you confine yourself to the watching of each frame at a certain number of frames per second, you experience the film in two hours. If you step outside the film and look at it in the VCR cassette, you see the whole thing in the time it takes for the light to bounce off the cassette, hit your retinas, and get translated by your brain.


I did? That's news to me. I was raised in an atheist family. Why would they send me to a religious school? I went to public school where religion was practically banned. The school board was so scared of getting sued for violating the separation of church and state that a classmate got suspended once for prayer. That caused a big hoopla, but me and most of my classmates were just confused as to why somebody would make such a big deal just because they weren't allowed to talk to themselves.

I was as likely to attribute an experience to God as I was to attribute .... well, I thought about this simile for a while and couldn't think of anything as preposterous as the idea of attributing something to God was to me at the time.

I recognize now that the experience I had was due to brain chemistry and that module being activated, but I heard the voice and felt the presence. It didn't matter that I could see I was alone in the room. I knew, knew as well as I know I'm sitting here, that an inconceivably powerful persona was there. Whether you want to call it God or call it Squiggy doesn't matter: When that part of your brain lights up, you can't help but know that you are dust.

Is it conceivable that it lit up for no apparent reason? Sure. I'll admit that possibility. (I only wish that others would be so honest as to admit the other possibility.) However, as I said, I was on no drugs and there was no apparent trigger of any kind. A seizure effecting that part of the brain? Perhaps. But it came with a coherent message in a voice that didn't sound like my own (as most hallucinated voices do), and it was never repeated as you would expect if it was a seizure.

It was at least a year before I finally admitted to myself that it must have really been something other than me going crazy. A couple years after this incident I hit my head and went to the hospital with a concussion. They gave me a couple MRI's and a few CT Scans and more than a few EKG's as I healed. None of these tests showed any abnormailites at all, anywhere in the brain, other than in the very localized region of my concussion. All the bleeding (and there wasn't a lot) was at the back of the brain and was affecting my vision more than anything else. The God Module is located on the left side, towards the center, and there was nothing wrong anywhere near there. (At the time, the God Module hadn't been discovered or I would have asked them to check that area specifically. As it is, I just have the information that they looked at the whole brain seeking any tumors or other damage and found nothing other than in the right occipital lobe.

Knowing that I apparently had no cause of seizure or mental illness, I soon started looking at various religions to see if I was missing anything in my life. Eventually I met a Catholic Priest who had previously been a true "Man of Science" and had made that conversion. He had no conflicts between science and religion, and he taught me a lot about both. Catholicism, when viewed properly and not through the eyes of a Fundamentalist, fits everything I know.

w

Rede. I see you're listed as making the last reply on this thread. Can't find it unless it'e yesterday's. Wayne. Thanks for baring your soul like that. Very interesting.