Platt, I have long thought that God is a conditioned associative response to bonds with parents in the early stages of developmental growth.
A study of children with little or no ties to parents or parental figures vs.children with strong ties would be interesting as to a which would be more inclined toward religion. -Ron ________________________________ From: X Acto <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Wednesday, March 4, 2009 11:46:13 AM Subject: Re: [MD] S/O Divide - Universal and Innate? Platt, Very interesting, something to consider is how does one jump to why a baby make distinctions? how do they know it makes this kind of distinction of people/inanimate objects? it could be a nurture/recognizability reflex, the associative qualities of identification with the mother in terms of care food and attention that inanimate patterns are not associated with. Perhaps the baby responds to people more because the form of a human is associated with food warmth and feelings of pleasure and contentment. Making the associations to the patterns of humans stonger than the association of other patterns. -Ron ________________________________ From: Platt Holden <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Wednesday, March 4, 2009 8:23:54 AM Subject: [MD] S/O Divide - Universal and Innate? Hi All, Paul Bloom, a psychologist at Yale, believes that the S/O, mind-matter duality happens very early in life. An article in "New Scientist" entitled "Born Believers - How your mind creates God." relates Bloom's ideas: "So how does the brain conjure up gods? One of the key factors, says Bloom, is the fact that our brains have separate cognitive systems for dealing with living things - things with minds, or at least volition - and inanimate objects. "This separation happens very early in life. Bloom and colleagues have shown that babies as young as five months make a distinction between inanimate objects and people. Shown a box moving in a stop-start way, babies show surprise. But a person moving in the same way elicits no surprise. To babies, objects ought to obey the laws of physics and move in a predictable way. People, on the other hand, have their own intentions and goals, and move however they choose. "Bloom says the two systems are autonomous, leaving us with two viewpoints on the world: one that deals with minds, and one that handles physical aspects of the world. He calls this innate assumption that mind and matter are distinct "common-sense dualism". The body is for physical processes, like eating and moving, while the mind carries our consciousness in a separate - and separable - package. "We very naturally accept you can leave your body in a dream, or in astral projection or some sort of magic," Bloom says. "These are universal views." " The full article is at: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20126941.700-born-believers-how-your- brain-creates-god.html?full=true Platt Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/ Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/ Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
