[FRIAM] God

[Russell Standish]

The theory which makes some sense to me is that we humans (as social
creatures) have evolved to anthropomorphise. This make sense for
dealing with other humans, who might be competitors, or
compatriots. And the modelling makes use of a remarkable trick -
observe one's own mind, and use those observations to model somebody
else's mind. This explains why we have self-awareness, if not
consciousness.

The thing is, the same trick also works quite well with other animals,
who may be predators or prey, irrespective of whether other species
actually have minds or not.

So it makes sense that when some relatively rare phenomenon occurs,
perhaps a thunderstorm, that the alpha male stands up and makes
threatening noises. And it seems to work when the thunder goes away


eventually. And so the thunderstorm has been anthropomorphised. This
got extended to other phenomenon, eg famines get blamed on angry gods
who can be appeased by making the appropriate offerings. Eventually
con-artists exploited this with ever more elaborate stories that
leveraged this innate tendency to anthromorphise. I'm sure astrology
started out as a cunning plan to garner research funds for early
astonomers from ignorant kings.

Like most evolutionary stories, this is a "just so" story. But I think
it has a grain of truth.

Cheers, Russell

-- 

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dr Russell Standish                    Phone 0425 253119 (mobile)
Principal, High Performance Coders     hpcoder at hpcoders.com.au
                      http://www.hpcoders.com.au
----------------------------------------------------------------------------