Religious people find it very annoying that people don't need God to be good, as science has now incontestably proved.
For millennia, we've been brainwashed into believing that we needed the Almighty to redeem us from an essentially corrupt nature. Left to our own devices, people would quickly devolve into beasts, more violent, tactless, aggressive, and selfish, than we already are.
Today, we know that this isn't true. With the discovery of mirror neurons by Italian neuroscientist Giaccomo Rizzolatti in the 1990s, we now have physiological proof of why -- and how -- our species became hard-wired for goodness. Mirror neurons are miraculous cells in the brain whose sole purpose is to harmonize us with our environments. By reflecting the outside world inward, we actually become each other -- a little bit; neurologically changed by what is happening around us. Mirror neurons are the reason that we have empathy and can feel each other's pain. It is because of mirror neurons that you blush when you see someone else humiliated, flinch when someone else is struck, and can't resist the urge to laugh when seeing a group struck with the giggles. (Indeed, people who test for "contagious yawning" tend to be more empathic.) These tiny mirrors are the key to most things noble and good inside us.
It is through mirror neurons -- not God -- that we redeem ourselves, achieve salvation, and are "reborn" in virtuous ways once co-opted by religions. Evolution knew what she was doing. A group of successful cooperators has a much higher chance of thriving than a population of selfish liars. In spite of what we read in the headlines, the ratio of bad to good deeds done on any given day across our planet holds at close to zero any day of the year. Although we are ethical works-in-progress, the vast majority of us are naturally positive creatures -- meaning not harmful to our environments -- most of the time in most of the ways that matter. And God has nothing to do with it.
Spirituality does but God doesn't. Evolutionary psychologists tell us that our brains are hard-wired with a five-toned moral organ that focuses on a quintet of ethical values -- one of which is purity, or sacredness. In a world that can sometimes be disgusting, we evolved an upper tier of emotional longing -- the aspiration for purity -- to keep us balanced in this satyricon of carnal delights (where animality beckons and frequently wins). Our need for sacredness is part of our ancient survival apparatus, and manifests in what we call faith, the need to connect with that sacred dimension. This has been the primary purpose of religion, of course -- to congregate people for the Greater Good -- but God has been, in fact, the divine carrot. The important part was communion, a context in which to transcend ourselves, if only for an hour on Sundays. Without this ability "to turn off the Me and turn on the We," moral psychologist Jonathan Haidt tells us, our species would still be wandering around as groups of nomads, unable to create a civilization.
Aside from mirror neurons, there's oxytocin, the molecule of connection (also known as the molecule of love). It's fascinating to learn that the vagus nerve produces more oxytocin when we witness virtuous behavior in others that makes us want to be better people ourselves. That is why people like Oprah Winfrey and Barack Obama are known in neurological circles as "vagal superstars." We are wired by nature to be elevated at the sight of other people's goodness, mirror neurons and oxytocin conspiring to improve the species. Miraculous though it is, this natural human phenomenon has nothing to do with theology. We are born to be beamed up, Scotty.
For agnostics like me, this is the good news -- however it may rankle true believers. Original Sin is a thing of the past.
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David R. Hamilton, Ph.D.: 5 Beneficial Side Effects of Kindness
And those who must despise men, and put them on a level with the brutes, yet wish to be admired and believed by men, and contradict themselves by their own feelings; their nature, which is stronger than all, convincing them of the greatness of man more forcibly than reason convinces them of their baseness.
Define your god and I'll tell you why I don't believe in that god, either. (Most people decline to do this, I believe out of a vague fear that their god will vanish in a puff of logic.)
Honestly, I think this is going just a little too far. Is BHO a "vagal superstar" because people intentionally ignore behavior that is not virtuous?
We all know instinctively right from wrong. It comes down to how we make others feel. We know when we hurt someone that it will hurt. In many cases, that's the point of the action. But we also know how to treat each other right. How to be kind and loving. The only obsticle in the way, is our own prides and egos. Once one can master their own self, then one can do anything.
So, no, we don't need a god to do good. But, in the same thought, it doesn't hurt anything either.
this article further validates the existence of God. From a single cell, a fertilized egg, a single strand of DNA, the cell manufactures this most-complex machine called a human. Somewhere in the DNA are the instructions for manufacturing motor system, pumping systems, optical systems; saline machines and hydrochloric acid machines; healing and self-correcting systems. The brain can auto-correct the visual hole caused by the blind-spot in our eyes and filter out sounds so we can hear a baby sighing down the hall, even in a noisy city.
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and this article says that the single strand of DNA has the blueprints to assemble "mirror neurons" so people experience sympathy / empathy (among the many psychological systems built into the brain)
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I think it takes a tremendous amount of faith to believe that all this was assembled by luck and chance. The more we understand the body, the more it exhibits complex design.
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'Evolution of morality'
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_morality
... comes up top of the list when you google "origin of morality".
"Mirror neurons are miraculous cells"
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- Thanks for giving God a plug by acknowledging the "miraculous"
So let me follow their unassailable logic for them. Consider this:
If it's true we are merely hard-wired for moral behavior, it's equally true that we are intelligent beings who will eventually discover that we are so hard-wired and will realize that, absent any real higher purpose (God, for instance) it is advantageous for any individual to take advantage of the cooperation and morality of others and game the system in favor of ourselves. In other words, the only rational choice for any individual agnostic or atheist is to be a sociopath.
Except it's worse than that. Because if nature is predetermined, as they insist, we cannot have any free will. It's just as much an illusion as God; in fact, it's impossible to posit free will without some acknowledgment of a god or creator of some sort. And without free will, there is no reason to care about anything. Therefore, if you truly follow the logic of the agnostic/atheist, joy becomes impossible, despair is inevitable and suicide is the logical outcome. I'd say it's the logical choice, but there is no such thing under atheistic reasoning.
Its a massive, 5-alarm logic fail