Hong Kong Liberal Religious Forum

Religion as byproduct of useful cognitive processes
Posted on April 25, 2009 by PZ Myers
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009 ... _usefu.php

This is an excellent talk by Andy Thomson on the biological and psychological origins of religion.

...Thomson is explaining how religion's origin is indirect, as a byproduct of properties of the brain that we find useful in modeling our world and social interactions…and religion is a parasite that hijacks these traits to promote a caricature of these properties.

(via Richard Dawkins)



Discussed on Church of the Churchless
http://hinessight.blogs.com/church_of_t ... n-god.html

Brian quoted Thomson's gold verse:
"Secular morality means doing what's right regardless of what we've been told; religious morality means doing what we've been told regardless of whether it's right."

Brian has his own gold verse too:
I've always wondered why religions so often say that "simple folks" are more attuned to God. What this really means is that uneducated gullible people are more likely to accept dogmas uncritically than question them.