Actually the instinctual nature of spirituality was not completely unevidenced before we found the god module. Psychologists have known for a long time about it, in an indirect way. From about 3 to 5 years old, babies go thru what is called the "magical thinking" phase, when they still don't understand cause and effect and therefore attribute causalities to important entities or beings in their lives. Adults who adopt magical thinking (like religion, the paranormal, and other such complexes) are said to regress to this stage of life. It is also interesting to note that parents are usually considered by the small child as more or less "supreme beings". Freud thought that belief in gods was a remnant of this childhood impression, that gods were nothing more than supernatural father-figures. In a sense, he may have been correct : he just got it the wrong way around.
The discovery of the god module is probably the most important for atheism to acknowledge, and perhaps the one that will shape our understanding of spirituality the most in modern times. If we start from the premise that religion is a strictly learned phenomenon, one would think that education would un-do this concept. However, this is obviously not the case : even when people are snapped out of their faith-based viewpoint, we find that they are still motivated by the basic principles of spirituality.
We observe this phenomenon in modern society. Many people search actively for a purpose in their lives ever since the influence of religion has diminushed, and have fallen back to various belief systems like New Age egotheism, homogenous cult environments, and such. I am not saying, by the way, that everyone who is in cults or religions is there because of his impulses given by the God Module, or vice-versa, but that this instinct is a very powerful factor.
| Here's the follow-up discussion on this article: | View all related messages |
For a complete listing of article comments, questions, and other discussions related to Francois Tremblay's Atheism topic, please visit the Discussions page.