H.A.D.DOUKEN

Look at ancient egypt. It seems very interesting the shift from animal gods to human gods. It seems that human based gods emerges when complex urban society develops. Extrapolated, it could be that humans in urban settings naturally just assume the most dangerous thing around them is not an animal predator, but another human.

Plot twist: there WAS a spirit haunting Darwin's umbrella

The vsauce of religion right here. Even kinda sounds like him.

"It was only the wind. You've been hadd!"

This is a great channel, and very underrated. I've always been interested in religion and I'm glad there is someone who makes such high quality videos on these subjects.

Never have I wanted to subscribe and like a KZfaq channel more than I have yours. I know you are also an academic with all of the demands that come with it (lectures, classes, research, publication, dissertation students), but you are doing good work here. Bringing religious literacy to the table is essential for us to claw our way out of this mess. Please continue! And at an alarming rate!

An excellent video as always! I love how you're able to explain things in an understandable way for the general public without sacrificing the complexity of these topics. Usually people on youtube focus just on one side of the argument, but you always give an explanation of both sides, even in such a short video. I really appreciate all the work you do!

From a believer's perspective HADD fits with the idea that there is intentionality on the part of God to be known by us. "You have made us for yourself o God and our hearts are restless until they rest in You" (Augustine)

Oh! This was very interested! I myself have no actual knowledge in regards to the cognitive sciences inspired religious studies field, this has been very fun to watch.

YOU ARE SO UNDERRATED TO THE POINT WHERE I FEEL BAD

i love how you updated your avatar with a beard

I love this theory because I'm a simultaneously spiritual and highly analytical person.

I don't think Durkheim can really account for religion either, though. Religion is not just a communal experience; in some ways it is deeply individual. Durkheim certainly explains much of how organised religion and religious communities develop, but he doesn't have any way to account for religious Inspiration, which often flies directly in the face of organised religion. The basic intuitions that often guide religion do seem to have something more than a purely social origin.

Brilliant! This is a deep and useful subject for all of our species. Excellent job, I would love to see videos with further research

Great channel, definitely deserves more subscribers. Here are my views on what you said. I agree with you that HADD isn't the end of the story but it definitely is an important part. I think HADD + Abstract Thinking, together with some other social facts (like social identity) can easily explain how religions can develop.

This is awesome!!! Thanks so much for exploring religion in the mind as well as in the brain. I hope you'll find a way to BRIDGE the social and hard sciences to show where in the brain and in the genes our loyalty to community, rituals, etc. play out. Eg., amygdala and DRD4 gene.

I've heard of this one before I liked your retelling of the lesson I also liked your personal touch, as you mention your own persuasion that Religion is a social construct. Good to enter the dirt and stake your own claim!

Great work! It shows you enjoy what your doing.

This channel is a real gem!

Love that you are back doing videos again! Could you please cover the Genetic Fallacy??(Morality defined by genetic adaptation)

Loved this video! Could you do a video on the history of marriage in religion? I read an article for my sociology class that claims for the first 500-1000 years of Christianity the religion rejected the concept as "tainted and secular," and didn't adopt it as sacrament until 1215. I don't know if there is any truth to this, but I thought you might have some knowledge on the subject. Thanks!

*+ReligionForBreakfast* A point of criticism about 8:48-9:10 Yes, obviously..cultural learning mechanisms are VERY important in shaping the content and place where religious form. That's not the claim of HADD either (i.e. it doesn't claim to describe how it happens, just suggests that HADD is at the forefront for the entire process, it allows it 'to go'). That's not a real argument against what HADD. That counter argument to HADD is, I think, akin to saying: "the shape, slope, and surrounding features of the land (like reefs, rocks, islands, etc.), the trajectory of the ocean currents, and the force and direction of the wind are the factors that determine what the waves will look like, what direction they go, the height they will have and other things. Therefore we can brush away the moon and tidal currents as contributing to the explanation of the movements of seas and oceans." I think it's missing the point entirely. I see it as HADD opening the door for personal/chance interpretations and other larger social forces (both in the moment and over looong stretches of time) to either discount/explain away or run with those HADD experiences. We certainly don't know how it all works, and I think focussing too much on those neuro-studies is going to be a red herring. We might see where it starts to happen, but locking people up in an ƒMRI for the entirely of belief-forming that can take quite long it's going to be practical. And to some extent, even if/when those devices become tiny and portable, you can only see where it happens - that doesn't necessarily tell you (why or) how it happens _like_ that.

Amazing stuff! Please keep exploring neuroscience and cognitive psychology as it connects with religion. This is exciting! The big question that arises here is: where in the brain are "Cultural leaning mechanisms" happening? Also, agency detection might explain *adoption* of religious beliefs, but what about *maintaining* religious beliefs and doubling down when presented with conflicting evidence? How do the social sciences explore adherence and submission to group think? In neuro, it's all about the power of the amygdala..... Thanks again!

Well done, well put, and well, just really interesting. Thank you.

As an atheist who tried a catholic prayer practice, I have this hunch that there is utility in relating to the chaos of the world in an anthropomorphized manner. It felt strangely natural and it kind of made it easier to pay attention to subtle "responses of the world" to your own actions.

Thank you. This is a topic I’ve long considered and wondered about. I have my own theories that are too long to express, but it’s good to learn about other people’s concepts.

Love the deviation into neurotheology! Hope to see more :) Btw how’s the Shinto videos coming along?

A fine video! Excellent introduction to the concept.

People who have never had a paranormal experience cannot fathom what it's like to have one. I can tell you from years of experiences that these phenomena exist. I consider myself an educated person, a pretty rational one at that (and, no, I do NOT do drugs). My encounters with the paranormal on numerous occasions rocked me to the core, and made me realise that whatever I was denying existed is not only real but quite earth-shattering. My whole outlook on this subject has completely turned my world upside down.

I find that psychologists and other scientists often overlook aspects of culture which are integral to understanding things like religion. This is why it's important for people discussing these theories to be deeply grounded in religious studies and history more generally. I'm glad you pointed to that in this video

I’ve had this question for a while so it’s cool to see it being discussed

I also wonder how this theory might relate to the tendency for young children to invent "invisible friends" or pretend that their stuffed animals and dolls have personality and are talking to them and the children talk to these inanimate objects? Basically, belief in invisible supernatural beings (spirits, ghosts, gods, angels, demons...) is an extension of the tendency of young children to have "invisible friends". Freud's theory holds that this is exactly what is going on: belief in a god is an "infantile neurosis" - adults acting like children, being attached to God as an invisible friend. So, question of cause and effect: is the idea of God merely an extension of the childhood tendency to invent imaginary friends? Or do chidren "invent" these imaginary friends because the mind of a child actually is more open to perceiving the real existence of these invisible beings? Might it be that religious skeptics lose this childlike innocence due to an overly logical mind?

We live in a model of the outside universe we build in our minds, like a mini-matrix. Of course we see personality. We're seeing our own egos.

Great topic and I really appreciate it.

Love you and your channel. Sounds to me that cultural forces amplify the inherent individual HADD neurophysiological tendencies. Greetings from Ireland. ❤️👍🏻👌☘️🇮🇪

ALways thought that the need to believe in the afterlife as a way to cope with death anxiety in recently self-aware primitive humas and common practices like talking to the dead after they´ve passed were the "why" and the "how" at the bassis of the formation of early religious rituals and beliefs and the first deities. This video is more about the pre-dispositions that enabled those practices and the creation of deities that would explain forces of nature and random uccurrences. So interesting.

I live in New Orleans and Practice Voodou, I'm looking forward to your videos about the Orisha and Lwa at some future point.

I am so glad I happened across this channel! Great information and great presentation!

Gosh we've come a long way since Gordon Childs. Thanks for the upload.

I was just listening to Daniel Kahneman cite the theory of biologically wired religion tendencies in Thinking, Fast and Slow last week. Thanks for giving this idea some more context!

Excellent job and man, you did this 3 years ago... The temporal and amygdala; it sounds like identifying (agency) to mediate a fear, gain control, as you summed up in the beginning. The ability for agency I think is a value free judgement. I mean, would our neurology be particular whether you imagine someone behind a tree or a god in the sky? Great examination... Thank you

Fascinating, thank you!

Great channel!

I ~ H.A.D.D. always enjoyed your videos -- but these new animations are a real plus!! I really mean it!

I think HADD explains the physical basis for religion pretty well, it's a mechanism that became useful for society building reasons and made it more likely that people believe in certain flavours (like personalised gods rather than generic power)

I have been trying to find a way to say this without people feeling like I am attacking their beliefs. This is very clear. Thank you.

It's good to know about this theory, because it makes sense in a way, even though doesn't hold much water... Creates a really great discussion!

The beard is coming in quite nicely I know this isn't the point of your videos but I HADD to say it.

Great video. I always follow every video you make. What microphone model you are using? Thx for your answer

Also, pareidolia and our ability to have imaginary conversations with others( often times arguments we have in the shower) definitely add to the picture.

These actually sound like 2 different things. Like when people do stuff together in a community with a sense of belonging. That would be interesting to study biologically because it can happen even in the absence of belief in the supernatural.

Hello sir. Please make a video on why our ancestors pray or pay tribute to some unknown powers they felt that are above them.. Thanks 😊

This is such a Materialist & Empiricist Viewpoint

Thank you your video(s). I think you should look also into sociality theory, which is a much more elegant way of understanding the concepts of supernatural beings. Basically human brain is hardwired to interact with other brains which are not directly accesible (one cannot mindread). So even in very basic and common interactions in everyday life humans are constantly looking for agency, applying intentions and believes to others. This is not a huge step to understand how this process is applied to the world around us. Dialogue is also to consider and Esther Goody for instance claims that the religious practice of prayers is a dialogue. of course for such mechanism to work in a social group, culture (as you mention in your video) is fundamental and channel to way we believe and act "religiously".

Spinoza had a similar theory about organized religion as being caused by improper identification of final causality in natural phenomena. Although Spinoza never implied that judging natural events as having finality is part of some natural human cognitive behavior, he sees it as a vice that ultimately leads to moral servitude.

I believe the paintings and other depictions of human/animal beings made by early humans are better explained by trance states, dreams, etc. And I agree with your friend: religion is a complex issue and I believe complex issues have complex origins. Both biological and cultural influences must play a part in it. On a personal note, I anthropologize my computer, and he definitively has a mind of his own. I talk to him often, shout at him and shake my fist at it, but he still does his own thing. Maybe a nice offering would change the tide in my favor? Here's a thought!

In my experience, everyone I've ever come across always seem to a 'religious' connection towards something, whether it's in a God, something material, or something else, despite them being religious or not.

I can't find the original source, but I recall seeing an article that said that organized religions tend to form when the population of a group exceeds one million people. This would seem to fit with the social aspect proposed here.

As a curious coincidence (Or maybe not), the analogy of the ghost being the coats' rack is very similar to a Buddhist one. This one is about being in a house without light and seeing a snake on the floor. But you take a candle and see it was just a rope. The analogy is to illustrate that nothing in Samsara can hurt us and hence we are just mistaking a rope with a snake. I am a Buddhist, but i do have to say that if we try to apply this from a secular-practical point of view then it's not only useless, but kinda dangerous. I find that funny.

Maybe as humans moved into settlements in the Neolithic, those cultural methods slowly changed from fear of predators to storytelling which was passed down over the millennia. Pantheons usually reflect the social status of society. So if you have a hunter-gatherer tribe of a couple dozen people, spiritualism might make sense; likewise, if you have a budding empire from a city-state with a king, it makes sense that the gods would have particular identities with control and hierarchy. This would also explain the slow formalization and stratification seen in religions and the usage of kings to represent themselves as divine as they likened themselves to gods.

time stamp 7:45-8:00: Problem of cause and effect: which came first? (sorry for all the multiple comments. This one really got me thinking!)

Animals has HADD too, but I don't think they are religious. But we differ from other animals that we have a much deeper understanding of the future and the past, so we can ask ourselfs "What hapens after we died?" etc. Then we make up answers which becomes a part of our culture.

This was fascinating, and it is clear that religion can be mostly explained as a social construct. However, it would be interesting to study some of the cross-cultural similarities in religion. Are they also just byproducts of how we interact socially or are there some inherent individual aspects of ourselves which universally influence and exacerbate the development of religion on a personal level?

2:40 - There actually is the major downside of just loss of potential energy (your senses & co-ordination device - i.e. your brain, are power hungry). Then you also just have the lack of ability to think of other things. Think of novellists or engineers, etc. going for a walk in the woods to clear their heads or just walk & think. I can easily imagine the probably thousands of times someone has wanted to/just gone to walk in the woods to think through something, from couplings & children & marriages (forced or proposed) to how can I plant my crops better.

This reminds me of Theo Jansen, a kind of contemporary Da Vinci, who makes wind powered walking machines out of pvc pipe structures. The randomness of the wind creates the illusion that those machines have agency, that they walk or stop on their own will, it's easy to adopt the utterly irrational idea that they're living beings.

Cool vid thanks

Hypothesis: Religion began as a recursive psychosocial phenomena starting with HADD in a small group of humans, but continued into cultural learning mechanisms when these humans taught other humans, like their children, which evoked HADD and informed how later humans experience and understand it. Transferred or was connected from threat detection to anthropomorphizing via placation behavior- leaving or offering a predator meat to avoid becoming its prey. This relationship influences the CLMs of the society, and is anthropomorphized as rational behavior on the part of the predator since it appears to be following a social construct like trade. This again enters the CLMs and the idea of placating or bargaining with other HADD instances not so directly attributed to predators begins to manifest in the psychological conditioning of the society.

As for the sociological model- there would have to be causation as to the origins of what formed religion. Religion and or other ideals need some sort of causation

Thank you for exploring this topic. I found that some of the rebuttles a bit lacking, although I am no expert. Saying that some espect of life is a sociological construct (i.e. religion) misses the fact the a society is made out of people who all have similar neurological pathways. So if a tendency to think in a similar way is prevelant across a population, culture will arise. Also, saying that a person's views is shaped by his upbringing is just moving the issue one generation backwards - Someone still had to come up with the idea, using their brain, and the idea had to make sense to the people around that person, inside their own brains. Not to mention that a decendent will have similar genes, and so similar neurological pathways, to their parents, and therefor be similarly suspicious to the same types of thoughts (I'm not saying that, for example, Christianity itself is hardwired, but religiosity maybe is).

So, I understand that this video is a bit dated, but it just showed up on my feed after I discovered your channel. So, first of all, really interesting discussion. I have some thoughts about this, actually. If there was an "original religion," wouldn't it have interpreted all observable phenomena as the distributed actions of a single monistic universal agency? I always thought that this is the reason for all of the world's various sacrifice/replenish cosmologies (e.g. that which is common in Hinduism, Mesoamerica and other regions). Secondly, I would argue that global religions/cosmologies really started to change after the advent of farming. One of the most interesting things that I think resulted in a kind of ontological change, concurrent with a practical change, is the emergence of a kind of materialism that would have followed agriculture. If we were to posit that paleolithic hunter-gatherer societies followed a similar sacrifice/replenish cosmology as many modern and ancient societies (which one could interpret as an extension of human exchange models to the cosmos), the decision to suddenly take something and make it "mine" could indicate a significant departure from the previous ideology. That is, that this previous integral part of the world cosmos is now suddenly an object that "I" can control and whose reproductive cycles I can manipulate to my own benefit. However, in order for such a manipulation to be possible, Neolithic populations have to understand the rules and the mechanics of it all. This would result in a kind of "medical gaze" that anatomizes objects that would have been previously associated with mysticism. Similar concurrent developments also point to this direction, such as the development of pottery, which shows an understanding of clay mineralogy and the types of temperatures needed to produce pottery with adequate thermal properties. All of these changes are in full force by the Chalcolithic, where we even start seeing metallurgy and other pyrotechnically transformative crafts. This, to me, signals the emergence of increased analytical thinking about natural objects, which may represent a significant departure from previous notions about the same objects. Moreover, as these objects are given a new social life as chipped, molded and pyrotechnically transformed objects, new objects may not even remotely resemble the original raw materials in terms of ontology. For a comparison, in modern English, we use the word "chicken" to refer to both the farm animal and the meat that we purchase in the store, but we have become so far removed from the production process that we often do not regard these two things as being even remotely similar. So, basically, I do agree with your thesis that religion is socially constructed (as are all worldviews), but I would further this by stating that it also relates specifically to the ways that people engage with their surroundings and the social role that specific aspects of our environments take as we interpret them. I suppose that in this way, it creates a kind of feedback loop between perceptions by members of a group and the social structures that interpret and make sense of these perceptions.

I’d love to hear more about these type of theories in a series/ miniseries

There is also a hardwired tendency to discern faces in a jumble of visual features, or even static. It causes us to see patterns, even though we know there is no face and no organization actually present. Look at a cloud, haven't you ever seen a bunny rabbit? This evolved in the same way as the HADD you mentioned, and is further enhanced by social pressures to see and understand expressions. The "face" of the Man in the Moon is a perfect example, and the Moon was often regarded as a god in early societies. So, there is the mechanism needed to go from fearing sneaky tigers and ghosts to fearing capricious gods. None of this, however, can disprove the notion that a God actually does exist, and has created a finely tuned Cosmos, designed to evolve intelligent life with religious tendencies.

I like your job. Really.

Psychology and Religion - two areas which need to mix more.

I'm just gonna put this out there I swear my cat is plotting against me but then again I might just be anthropomorphising her actions :P

I think pareidolia also helped our ancestors to see what is not there. pareidolia works in all of us, all the time. I would like to know your thoughts. Love your videos, congrats

Well made!

I always understood that idea as an explanation of how belief in the supernatural got started, NOT as an explanation of why we have world religions. At best, how we got beliefs in the first gods. Everything after that is clearly a social (and sometimes even intentional) phenomenon, that may get bolstered by the original thing, but involves much more (especially childhood indoctrination). Though I have to say, arguing that religious people are more likely to make this misattribution is a counter-argument seems to me a bit absurd, as that is exactly what I would expect to see if the theory is correct. People more likely to commit this misattribution would thereby more likely to assume they had found support for their religion, thus making it more likely for them to commit to their religion. Now I wouldn't expect a huge difference there, but that's certainly the result I'd expect.

I'm not very religious but the Lord's prayer helps me calm down when my anxiety is at its worse. It is very interesting how that is hard wired into my inner self. Probably has something to do with me learning it as a child and me finding comfort in it now that I'm older. Either way I'm glad it works when I need it the most.

Okay, funny thing, I was watching the HAD bit and was just about to type in a comment abt the role social interactions had in our evolution when the video went to the part about the brain scans. Maybe this whole thing *could* have started as a way to detect predators but as soon as humans depended more in cooperation, I’m betting our ability to “read” the emotions and thoughts of others built on that base and just became increasingly complex as our social environments did. It’s a pattern I’m noticing in evolutionary theory actually. Regardless of how any given trait started out evolutionarily speaking, changes in that trait have impacts on other traits and aspects of our evolution, with pressures increasing and decreasing at different times, even different intervals and rates. Aka, nothing evolved in isolation ever and many changes in one thing will affect everything and everyone in the network, for better or worse

There's substantial scientific evidence that how religious or spiritual someone or a group is largely boils down to genetics. Of course culture and upbringing influences what particular religion you tend to believe in, but whether or not a person is religious/spiritual at all mainly comes do to genetics.

Most likely is a combination of these things

I think there is a bit of equivocation going on. Two different questions are being explored: 1. What is the best predictor of individual, specific religious beliefs? (culture, duh!) 2. Why do religions tend to develop among groups of people? (HADD seems like a good candidate)

I just realize watching this video that Creepy Pasta is the "modern" way in which we (humans) are interpreting the Ghosts, Monsters, Demons & Gods.

time stamp 9:00-9:25: that we LEARN to be religious (and more specifically, WHICH religion) clearly is linked to being raised with religion - people do tend to follow the religion that their parents taught them or to not be religious if their parents were not religious. HOWEVER, what might account for the exceptions to this? Especially when those exceptions occur in the same family - e.g. siblings raised the same way with regard to religion who end up going in the opposite direction as adults - they either convert to a religion that is very different from the one they are raised with or those raised with religion, become atheists or those raised without religion have some sort of "conversion experience" that results in them becoming religious.

i think... both of these theories make an amount of sense, but i don’t think either is the full story. life is hard. i think religion arose because it gave ancient people a way to understand and try to control the chaotic, mysterious, and often dangerous world around them, and because it gave solace and a sense of purpose in times of tragedy. it filled (and still fills) a need, and society and the human brain empowered it.

I think that to anthropomorphize natural phenomena was their scientific approach to stuff. e.g. Violence is like tiger, must beware of tiger, must beware of tiger in people (violence in people). Tiger as a 'god' would be actually a way of thinking of "a natural principle not binded by tiger..". I think the spiritual is a model for similarities between observable phenomena.

it's dark when i go by bicycle to work every morning. and today i saw at least three people on the road. they turned out to be a shrub, a switch board, and a garbage bin. But for a split second they me brain saw them as human figures, and drew my attention to them. this was H.A.D.D in action and i think the darkness supercharged it so conclusions about what shapes in the dark were was made before i had time to analyze them

Love the video, it was very interesting. One thing that bugged me though was how you slide the text off from right to left and not left to right, it doesn't go the way I would expect such as left to right or up to down. Just a small thing. Cheers

Ive posted in the past from a theological POV and practicing medium. HAD came after the chicken. HAD is the egg. Not the other way round. Moot point. I used to dog sit a dog and I once saw him reacting to a spirit that normally I only see. This dog also barks at certain moving objects but only to an untrained eye (and third eye) can one not tell the difference. Its like trying to tell the difference between light red and dark red by smelling it with your nose. There will not be a meeting of minds through intellectualism alone.

While attributing any object to the supernatural can be understood as having arisen from certain superhuman experiences, what can be a possible hypothesis to explain that everything belongs to a supernatural God? Also, considering the diversity of religious beliefs and their corresponding philosophies what can possibly serve as an explanation for that?

Until I saw your video displayed on the main screen, I never realized that the brain and the mushroom cloud have very similar shapes.

if we get our beliefs from the people around us, where did they get their beliefs then? There has to be some sort of basis in which these beliefs arose from rather than the "we got it from society" or it's a tradition thing. I'm far more convinced of the H.A.D.D. theory since it provides the foundation of the simple to complex evolution of religiosity. Though i may not communicate it well, i hope that anyone who's reading this will understand what im trying to ask. :)

Many people have HADD these experiences.

please note that the theory's proponent works at a conservative (evangelical) seminary - a remarkable bit of scholarship to emerge from such a place.

So it could be H.A.D.D + Abstract Thinking + Correlation.

Shalom, Aure!

Interesting theories and concepts. What i see it fails to address is the emerge of religions, at least the main ones we know. Every new religion emerged faced extreme resistance from none believers of that new belief although they are from the same social circles and system. It’s only until several years, decades or centuries until the surrounding community embraced the new beliefs which didn’t happen peacefully in most cases and lot of bloodshed and suffering was committed in the process. The question is what was the motivation and driver of the early devotees to promote the new beliefs despite of their weakness, vulnerability, suffering and horrifying events they had to face for many years but still they continued their efforts, activities and sacrifices for the sake of holding or spreading their belief. This kind of devotion cannot be explained by the suggested theories. Even if the motives behind such emerging new believes Nd religions was because of glory, power, political and spiritual circumstances, only few have survived from generation to another until today.

I do a lot of tech support and hear about inanimate things that hate or are mad regularly.