If I understand you correctly, what you are asking is whether a mind that is not supplied with rational answers to uncertainties in times of stress or curiosity, will attempt to make good the deficiency with whatever material it can scavenge or generate, or have supplied by acknowledged authorities such as religious or educational leaders?

Obviously I cannot give you a definitive answer, partly because I don't know, and partly (if I am right)  because no one else knows either, but I understand that it has been claimed that subscribers to mainstream religions tend to be less susceptible to fringe beliefs and quackery than people who have no such emotional sheet-anchor in life.

It also seems to me that people of limited mental aptitude are in fact very uncritical about the content of whatever beliefs they do subscribe to; they will contentedly accept the most amazing non-sequiturs, inconsistencies, and unfounded, or even meaningless, assertions. They will regurgitate them not only happily and confidently on demand, but virtuously as well, even if they have to add that they do not understand them themselves, but that they are known to be true. Even polite questioning to elicit the logical underpinnings is likely to lead to accusations that one is attacking them, or even to furious rages at the blasphemy of the doubt, particularly because one is in league with the enemy.

The earlier in life the formulae are instilled, the more passionate and automatic the reaction is likely to be. "Give me a child till the age of seven and..."

Conversely, if an adherent does in fact undergo proselytisation, the violence of the reaction seems to correlate with how extreme or how traumatic the conversion has been. Part of the need is to belong, belong, belong. The greater the wrench the more panicky the adherence to the new anchor.  Part of the comfort is being able to be righteously condemnatory and violent to those beyond the pale.

Interestingly, all this seems to apply whether the foundation for the accepted beliefs is religious, pseudo-religious, fringe, or hard science. (Examined any good blown whistles lately?) Unexamined convictions are hazardous mental, ethical and emotional foundations.

Unfortunately, I doubt that one percent of the population has an intellectual and doctrinal basis reasonably buttressed against such vulnerability. That reality is the basis for every political, dogmatic, quack, cult, and mob parasitism on the planet.

And if you dare argue with me...

Many years ago, in an Eastern country, heavy rainfall in one area caused landslides that wiped out crops and destroyed homes killing a number of people. The people asked their religious leader why God had done this to them and what they had done wrong. He explained to them that it was not their fault but the fault of the Americans who had been firing rocket into space and knocking holes in the sky which let the rain in. They all hired a bus, went to the capital city and threw rocks at the US embassy.

There always comes a time, in a lot of cultures, when a child says to a parent "Santa isn't real is he?".

The point is that it is always possible to get people to believe the strangest things if they do not have a sufficiently broad and deep knowledge to say "Hang on a minute, that doesn't sound right". Think of April fools jokes, people can be persuaded of almost anything. When I was a kid, the BBC ran an interest piece on the Italian spaghetti harvest with film and everything. If the stories are told by authority figures then belief is even easier.

Humans have learned to form hypotheses based on almost no facts as a survival trait. If you eat a red berry and get very sick, that's a reasonable reason to avoid all red berries, even though there are 99 different kinds.

However, life is never that simple. If you eat a red berry, hear a green bird sing from a pink bush, walk through a cold stream, see a cloud shaped like a cross, and then get very sick, what are you going to do? The most striking or unusual circumstance will become the new belief.

The catch-all is "I have sinned and made the gods angry". Or, as (I think) Lord Chesterfield said: "Beat your son every day. You won't know why, but he will."

What is literally most incredible is that parents are perfectly happy to KNOWINGLY lie to their children when it comes to Easter bunnies, Santa Claus, tooth faireys and I won't even get near talking snakes, loaf multiplication, magic fermentation of water, virgin inhabited clouds.

Hypocreligion!

Hi PS3,

Thank you for your trouble, but could I request that when in future you wish to elaborate on a question to which people have already responded, you either formulate and present a totally new question (with clear reference to the previous version of course) or present the new question as an "answer", thereby continuing the thread as a coherent discussion. I am sorry if my response thus far seems ungrateful, but anyone reading this thread as it stands now might well have difficulty making sense of the questions and answers out of context as they stand. If you still happen to have the text of your original question it might be a good idea to reinstate the question and present the new version of the text as an update to the heads-up that you posted, telling us that you had done the update.

Just a suggestion!

In turn, I apologise for my own lack of insight and specificity in my most recent reply to you. I had overlooked the need, in urging you to tighter discipline in formulating your questions, also to urge you to observe appropriate care in formulating your assumptions. Consider:

>Atheïsts have this invalid notion that not believing in a God equals not having a religion. Their standard answer is easily disproved by creating the following equation:

Amount_of_Gods = Amount_of_Religiousness ???<

Forgive the question, but is this a joke? I was just about to drop the thread, when after reading on, I was left in doubt. I know some atheists, but I cannot offhand remember meeting one who said or thought anything of the kind.

Could it be that you were thinking along the lines of the popular quote: "I contend we are both atheists, I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours  ...Stephen F Roberts." It is a thought-provoking contention of course, but if that really is what you have in mind, don't you think that you rather mangled it in translation? I cannot remember ever seeing anyone quantifying religiosity in any meaningful sense, and certainly not by the cardinality of the godhead. Feel welcome to disentangle my confusion, but this time please do not do it by changing the question!

>That equation would state that someone with a poly-deity religion would be more religious than with 2 or only 1 God. Actualy, intuitively as i do not have any numbers on that, I would say that if I draw a graph on that, I would get a line where the overall religiousness would be the same accross any amount of Deities believed in. Or ... believing in no deity at all would make the assumption that you are not religious unlikely. The amount of religiousness should fall within the graphs expectations.<

Fortunately or unfortunately the mathematical incoherence of that statement is so profound that I feel it unnecessary to address such questions as whether your confusion emerges from the apparent difficulties in mathematics, science, or theology.  

>So the question would end up to be: What does define and what causes religion and believes etc and what is the (social) function of it. <

It is a pity that the question ends that way; don't you think that you should have done better if you had begun with something like that? 

However, even the improvement compels me to admonition: you have immediately conflated questions instead of dealing with in turn and in appropriate context. Each could be stated validly in its own right, but by combining them you simply muddy the waters.  As stated, that particular challenge entails a great deal of question begging.

>Is it valid to assume that its function is to span the bridge what you can't know and can't spend the effort or energy to know?<

I am not sure what you mean by the "validity" of "assuming" things, especially in context. Again I smell question begging. "Function"? Maybe religion does have a "function" in some sense notionally related to something of that kind. But then you haven't got anywhere near defining what you mean by "religion", much less "a religion". This is not a quibble; it is fundamental to all subjects related to this field. If you don't get that straight, then there is not a single question that you have asked, nor a single assumption that you have proposed, that is sound enough to base any discussion on. For example, by any reasonable, functional definition, atheism not only is a religion, but a textbook example.

Unless you know different? Hmmm?

So forgive me (coals of fire and all that!) if I do not proceed on the basis of your questions so far, but await your clarification. When you can supply cogent, functional, definitions of science and religion at least, and give some indication of the relevance of such definitions to what it is you are asking, I think we will find that we can proceed far more easily and with far less confusion and frustration.

Just please make any adjustments to your questions in a separate entries, either in this thread or a new thread as you prefer, but not by changing the original question again.

Cheers,

Jon