Is belief in god essential?
In my opinion probably not... but it is predictable in animals like us...
If I designed a computer to look for patterns and make assertions to tr and understand th world around it would a computer assume there was a god?
The world around us appears complex and functional, everything we know that is complex and functional needed to be THOUGHT UP and DESIGNED and then CREATED. So we would assume the same of our universe around us, as would the computer. Now imagine you asserted that it was a human like creator (been as only humans create things) but due to the size of the universe and how complex it is, that human like person would have to be huge, and smarter, and better than us in every way, an unltimate being...a god. Been as this god creates ife, the computer would likely assert this being to be female as did the first religious people on earth. Until any of this was proved untrue it would make sense and be logical to ASSERT this based on the PATTERNS we saw.
Just as pack animals have leaders and like to be lead by alpha males/females, it would make sense to be complicit with anything this being wanted... the computer may decide to talk to this god and await resonse, guess what .... by chance on two occasions the computer 'prayed' that this it rain for the crops it did..... now look at my very first sentence about the computer again....
.......the computer is designed to LOOK for patterns and MAKE ASSERTIONS, just like humans, the assumption is now that this is evidence that god replied to the prayer....
Add to all of this the pack animal need for justice, reward and the fear of death, all issues this god can fix and the desire to believe is almost expected. Even animals seek these things, please watch this 70....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HL45pVdsRvE
Humans, like the computer example I gave DO use pattern recognition and this leads to superstitions and beliefs that are 100% not true. This has been tested in such scientific experiments as 'Pidgeon behvaiour boxes' by F Skinner, here discussed...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISz85ekl2ss
The brain uses pattern recognition because it is efficient. If the last thing with red stripes made you sick when you ate it, your brain says DONT eat the next thing you find with red stripes etc... It takes out the need for as much brain calculation, simply using pattern recognition and asserting. We evolved it alongside many animals and it works very well. It is hugely beneficial to us.......
BUT BUT BUT.... it has disadvantages too, some red stripes are perfectly fine....
Soooo....it is beneficial but it is NOT accurate to use our natural reasoning!
Hence we use the scientific method now for the last 150 years, we use 5 steps that removes human logic as far from our means of observation as possible... did it work ? :D oh yes it did and does ! We have learned so much in the last 150 years... arguably more than all human experience before hand. We went from no electricity to building 'big bang' machines within 3 generations of family...... that is a huge WOW !!!
So when people say belief is instilled with in us, be careful how you intepret that, I think religion and the idea of god is the hijacking of human nature to ask how and why. God is becoming more of a lazy answer now more than ever, with the unexplained proven over and over by science now to not need a god. In fact this is 100% the pattern with no exemption, there is now NO evidence for a god. All that remian is stll yet unexplained elements in nature that some people decide to likewise as before attribute to God. God has gone from the creator of animals and life and earth surrounded by sapce... to the god that started the big bang.... and now we even have that explained! In the last 20 years we have weighed the universe, worked out its shape, worked out what it is made of, worked out how it evolved, how it will end and recently possibly how it started....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ly6xDuwjLD8
God is being removed further and further away from our questions. No the rainbow is not a message that arises when it rains as a reminder that god wont kill all his children by drowning...next time. It is light protons interacting with a water prism ...... providing a spectrum of light. Rainbows existed LONG beofre 4000 years ago!
Every question we answer without the need for a bearded man in the sky, he becomes less and less relevant in our HOW and WHY questions...
But is it suprising humans created the concept....not at all..... you could oredict it...
Snare x