Oddly appropriate for a discussion on mental illness and delusions.

Why do humans have this capacity to be delusional? And, how acquired is that?

I wonder if some of this isn’t due to our innate pattern-recognition and the (plausibly) evolutionary need to form quick judgments. In times past, that was surely a survival trait – if Ug the Caveman is unable to recognize that the creature with the pointy bits and the spotted hide is the same kind of creature that ate Oog the Caveman last week, Ug surely won’t be having many progeny.

Similarly, I suppose that if Bob the Evangelical* has become convinced that he needs The Blood of Jesus to Be Saved, especially if it’s accompanied by something that feels like a transcendent experience, he’s going to remain fixated on that notion for a very long time.

I have a nasty hunch that ratiocination is not the evolved trait here; rather, I fear it’s the acquired one. Thinking logically, being rigorously self-questioning, and – most importantly – being willing to be wrong are not behaviors that come naturally. They take work, and they take practice, and the results of these traits are a lifelong quest for more knowledge rather than a static certainty of one’s worldview.

That’s simply not comfortable; it takes getting used to. It’s more work than many people seem to want to put in, and especially since we (the US) have created a culture that mocks intellectual pursuit and lauds polar thinking, any child who possesses a tendency toward curiosity and introspection learns pretty damn fast that he or she had better keep it to him- or herself.

Add to this the (again plausibly) inherent xenophobia we appear to possess and the appeal of being a member of a group of like-minded individuals, and you’ve got a mix that strongly prefers an authoritarian model, steeped in received knowledge, possessed of a certainty of its own rectitude and the equal certainty that everyone else is just plain wrong. Many religions seem to pander to these traits, and that’s surely a significant part of the problem. You don’t have to use religion to stir these feelings, but it sure seems to help.

It’s very easy to feel normal in one’s delusions, if one is a member of a delusional group. There’s no objective perspective, so there’s just no way to recognize how delusional it actually is.

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*Yes, I am drawing a comparison of cavemen with evangelicals.

You wrote:

Think of religiosity as being like homosexuality. It’s biological in the brain, probably with a big genetic component, and it’s not obviously adaptive, although we keep breeding people like them, so there must be some adaptive value.

There is, as I understand it, at least some biological component to homosexuality, but I don’t think it’s necessarily limited to the brain, and I’m not sure that it’s entirely biological in basis.

There are plenty of examples I can think of regarding sexual behavior that don’t involve any sort of reproductive possibility, yet people still do them; and when asked why, the response basically always comes down to because I like doing it.

Same-gender intimacy can do a lot for individuals and, by extension, their society. Lovemaking can improve the tone and depth of friendship; it can serve to bond two or more people together; it can relieve tension. Thus same-gender intimacy, while it’s nonreproductive sex, doesn’t fit my idea of “non-adaptive”.

Looking at some of our closest primate cousins, we see same-gender play among bonobos being used to display affection – at least apparently – thus reinforcing group cohesion. There’s reason to suspect that similar behaviors observed in bottlenose porpoises produce similar results.

Additionally, human sexual behavior is complex enough that I don’t think it can be reduced to something so mechanically limited as protein codings. We have a tendency toward sexuality, of course; how that tendency is expressed might well be a function of our own social norms.

That said, I also know that kids brought up by gay couples are statistically no more likely to be gay than those raised by straight couples, so it’s obvious that there is also a biological component here, or so it seems to me.

I like to think of it as akin to language. We appear to be neurally hardwired to produce language, but the language we use relies almost exclusively on what our social influences are. We can (normally) learn other languages and may even become fluent in them, but we’re likely to always be most comfortable with our mother tongue.

I think sexuality is similar. While it’s conceivable for a gay man to engage in intimate relationships with women, possibly even to enjoy them, that doesn’t mean he’s where he actually wants to be – just as it’s possible for a straight man to engage in same-gender behavior while still having a definite preference for heterosexual contact.

In my own case I’m what most call “bisexual”, though I don’t care for the term since it comes with too much baggage (can’t make up your mind, untrustworthy in relationships, will hump anything that moves, etc). It took me a while to realize that I was, because my same-gender attractions – being the socially aberrant ones – dominated my attention for quite some time. I find that I can enjoy intimacy with both genders. I sometimes wonder if this isn’t more of a baseline state for our species than we realize.

My atheism is probably genetic, too, so while I do believe religious people are wrong, it’s hard for me to think I’m better them, just righter.

😀

My atheism is not genetic; it was acquired. I was born to religious (and heterosexual!) parents and moved toward atheism after a very long process of pulling away from Western religion, dabbling in the Eastern kind for a while, coming to the awareness that the gloss of most faiths is fundamentally the same, and eventually becoming comfortable with the notion that I was not merely agnostic any more.

One can argue, I suppose, that I was fortunate to have the kind of mind that prefers analysis and rational conclusion – but when you’re inside the religious envelope, the things you believe are every bit as rational, because of the insider’s perspective. I can see that now, because I got out of that envelope, but there’s no good reason for me to believe that I was somehow born to be an atheist, any more than I was born to be an English speaker.

I’m not disagreeing with your points; I’m just questioning some of the things you seem to take as premises.