We live in a world where we talk to people, and they understand us and respond to what we say. This happens with such regularity that it is difficult to imagine it any other way. It is therefore natural to apply this pattern (wrongly) to non-humans. We talk to the dog, and we think the dog understands us. We talk to plants, and we imagine that they ‘respond’ by growing better. We talk to empty space, and we take any unusual happenstance as a sign that the empty space is talking to us.
We live in a world of designed objects. All around us are things that someone made. It is therefore natural to think that someone made the world.
We live in a world where we go to sleep and wake up again. In our experience, this has always happened. It is therefore natural to think that when we die, we will wake up again somewhere else.
Religious belief depends on these natural but unexamined assumptions.
16 March 2006 at 10:29 pm
I think early religion was an attempt to control the weather for agriculture. I heard a nice take on eternal life from a astrophysics perspective yesterday – I wrote about it on my blog (lazy and tired sorry!)