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Forums - General Discussion - Why don't other animals have religion, or do they?

Well, in skinnerbox experiments, Pidgeons developed superstitious behavior.

About how advanced humans were when they invented religion. At the very early times, religion were simply stories that were passed on among generations, it was inseparable from culture at the time, and when they got passed on and grew more fantastical, people took them more seriously. That's how I rekcon it emerged.



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Because they're not as big a idiots as mankind...

Hey, you asked...



Well, according to the Bible, God created man in his image, to reign over all other creatures. But the question is: Why?



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All animals have a religion. It is called mother nature.



mysticwolf said:
Well, according to the Bible, God created man in his image, to reign over all other creatures. But the question is: Why?

Because he knew we would fuck shit up.



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Religion requires high level communication skills and the ability to understand (and disseminate) logically consistent abstract thought. We know that dolphins, as an example, meet both those criteria, but we don't really know what they're communicating to one another. They might be praying aloud that these humanoid demon things will one day be washed into a watery hell by the Great Ocean God. Their lifestyle is obviously very different than ours, however, so they might not make the same kind of associations that our ancestors did in terms of personifying natural events.

Also, there is the fact that I was taught in Sunday school that animals don't go to heaven. I was devastated, so I can imagine how they would feel. They're all probably really, really pissed off and spend a lot of time making rude gestures toward the heavens.



Animals are not evolved enough to have complex thought. Lets look at the smartest great apes, at best they can point to a red truck or say they want food.



Griffin said:
Animals are not evolved enough to have complex thought. Lets look at the smartest great apes, at best they can point to a red truck or say they want food.


Maybe when they are only babies! Great apes are highly intelligent animals that can preform some cognitive tests even better than humans.



JoeTheBro said:
Griffin said:
Animals are not evolved enough to have complex thought. Lets look at the smartest great apes, at best they can point to a red truck or say they want food.


Maybe when they are only babies! Great apes are highly intelligent animals that can preform some cognitive tests even better than humans.

The tests they perform better in are short term memory tests or other ones of a similar nature.  They are able to recognize an order based on memorization not on complex thought of the situation.  From what i have heard,  humans could do many of the tests at the same level if given the same testing over time that was given to the apes.

Other tests given to the apes are just to be repeated the same way they were just shown to get to some food.  They then label this is solving a complex problem when nothing of the sort happened.  Other tests are solved by giving the apes two tools where only one tool can be used to get at the food, and many times they fail.  Example being a long stick or a useless block, the stick needs to be used to reach inside of a tube.

The smartest of the great apes that were taught to recognize 100's of shapes in order to form what could be labeled as a sentence only form basic ones and show no form of complex thought.  Example, Charles hungry apple.  They try to label this is the ape proving he knows his name"charles", what he is"hungry" and what he wants"apple".   The entire thing is a joke basically to get money so they can continue on this pointless research.



JoeTheBro said:
Lots of animals are self aware. In fact I'm kinda disappointed at how primitive society thinks animals are. Most animals have an understanding of their coming death and it is defiantly not exclusive to humans. Elephants for example mourn their dead and have ritualistic behavior about it.

Animals have many complex rituals for mating and the like so why is it so far fetched that they'd have religious rituals? If we can prove animals naturally develop religion we can prove human religion is wrong.

No they don't have any understanding of their coming death. Absurd, unsubstantiated claim with not a modicum of evidence. Elephants mourning death doesn't mean they understand that it is going to happen, it means it happened and now they mourn. Same with dogs. It's simply causality.

Proclus said:
Because they're not as big a idiots as mankind...

Hey, you asked...

Worst post in the thread. Congrats.