What are the causes of religion?

[sman]

Noam Chomsky once remarked (something like) that an extra-terrestrial observer, studying the way humans communicate & cooperate, would quickly conclude that we all speak the same language, even if in various mutually unintelligible dialects. Since then Chomskyan linguistics, by comparing unrelated languages, has all but unraveled a Universal Grammar which underpins all human language, and it’s not the most obvious code of conduct by which language could accomplish what it does. Further, the idiosyncracies of this grammar belie universals in human cognition.

I am suggesting that this model of study be applied to religion. Religion is very much like language. For instance, by comparing the diverging features of Christianity, Islam and Judaism (cognates, if you will), in the spirit of comparative linguistics, we can come up with a bifurcating tree of common ancestry.

Of course this tree is no mystery. But by comparing Judaism with (let’s say) Animism, and pulling out the commonalities, rather than the differences, we may gain access to some insight into religious universals, assuming there are any. There are many eclectic candidates for this kind of investigation.

Maybe it’s a wash…maybe religions diverge randomly and indefinitely (as was the pre-Chomskyan view of language). I am asking for falsification here, more than affirmation. I have other ideas as well. The main point I want to make here is that I think it’s time for science to investigate this world wide phenomenon. I think we have the tools now, and I think some of the barriers of the past are lifted.

Any input at all here I think would be progress towards a humanitarian goal.

[Turtle]

Originally Posted by x-man

Noam Chomsky once remarked (something like) that an extra-terrestrial observer, studying the way humans communicate & cooperate, would quickly conclude that we all speak the same language, even if in various mutually unintelligible dialects. ...
Any input at all here I think would be progress towards a humanitarian goal.

i love noam. fo shizzle we got a lot o' threads trying to hit this nail on the head, so i'll just link you to my own attempt at landing a square blow.
>>Biotheology
by all means if you find something there of merit, bring it on into here. for god's sake, ifn you go over there though, wear eye protection!! we got more blind folks gropin' our elephant than you can shake a stick at.

[sman]

Originally Posted by Turtle

... i'll just link you to my own attempt at landing a square blow.

Yeah, we really did have the same thoughts here, didn't we? I'm embaressed I didn't see this before. Good reading though, thanks.

Originally Posted by Turtle

... we got more blind folks gropin' our elephant than you can shake a stick at.

Well, don't turn turtle on me just yet. We need you in the ranks, man.

Biology...genetics...evolutionary psychology...neuroscience...we're all grasping in the dark, really. Best we can do is pool our data - maybe the only way to glimpse the whole animal.

[Turtle]

i'll leave off the quotage as at this point there's no mistaking my addressage. not to worry as i won't go anywhere because as we all know from the prophets of yore, the earth rests on my back and i wouldn't want her & yer destructions on my conscience. (just yet. )

now the fact jack, is that the animal is behaving beastly, else we wouldn't all be flocking to measure its mettle. not only do we have more eyes on the varmint than in all human history & herstory, we have all these technology-derived-enhanced-spectrum eyes that enhance & reveal what we call real. one must wonder what plato would have thunk of FLIR.

much to learn, but there's plenty simple already known that finds religious experience is beneath intellectual experience in interpreting our reality. (let's not start quibbling with my terms here as we have threads ad nauseum on just those terms.) anyway & to whit: while a knock in the head can either cause a non-religious person to become extremely religious, or cause a religious person to become non-religious, there is no such parity documented with intellectual ability, i.e. a knock in the head can make a smart person stupid, but knocking a stupid person in the head will not make them smart. (yes; that's a pun. )
that's all i got for now.