Do you think there is some innate feature of a person that can predispose them to certain belief patterns?

if intelligence derives at least partly from genes, which I think it does, then yeah. Leary with his Eight Circuits model, Ken Wilber and his integral theory and the theory of Spiral Dynamics (which Wilber did not invent, but has adopted) (I urge you to look into it) have talked about more literal and simplistic levels of belief and higher levels of belief. intelligence could act in part as a sorting mechanism to see what level of belief a person eventually adopts. (you can’t adopt a belief if you can’t understand it, for starters.)

Of course. Their intelligence level predisposes people to be able to grasp certain ideas.

@Ria777, I’m not sure I consider your last comment self-evidently true. Don’t a lot of people claim to hold religious beliefs that they don’t really comprehend at all? In fact, aren’t some religious beliefs inherently mysterious? And don’t many people also hold scientifically based beliefs (such as Relativity or the Big Bang or black holes) that they simply do not comprehend?

Also, I think there’s a difference between adopting a belief, which seems to be an act of conscious choice, and holding a belief that was taught to you from a time before you had the discernment to choose it. How many people believe in things they’ve been taught or heard all their lives but of which they have little understanding? I would think that number would be very large, taking in as it would not only religion and politics but cultural values, prejudices, assorted cosmologies, superstitions, and popular misconceptions.

Yes.

It has been pretty much proven, as far as I understand, that intelligence and temperament are partly under genetic control. I would find it very surprising if those two did not also affect both our preferences (as far as beliefs go) and the ability to understand certain concepts.

That said, while there is not (cannot?) be conclusive evidence on this, I believe culture and individual experiences play a bigger role than biological predisposers.

Intelligence might be a factor especially when it comes to the capability of critical thinking. This capability can lead to both the belief in God or not, but normally rules out blind faith.

A more important factor seems to be our upbringing. According to attachment theory developed by John Bowlby there are mainly three forms: secure attachment, avoidant attachment and the anxious&ambivalent attachment. Some studies suggest that there is some correlation with religiosity and the form of religiosity (patterns of belief). Avoidant attachment might lead to more belief in a personal interacting God for example, see

http://www.jstor.org/pss/1386461

The first thing to be determined is if there are patterns of beliefs and, if so, what the patterns are. I believe there are belief patterns, but that there is some flexibility in them. For example, there seem to be definite conservative and liberal belief patterns, but there is much variation within these patterns. As to the comparative influences of nature and nurture, I am not sure. The current view is that it can be rather difficult to separate environmental and genetic influences, since something in the environment can trigger something in one’s heredity that had not been previously active.

A few of you have raised the issue of intelligence, but I’m not sure that is part of what I am getting at here. In my example, I have a presupposed stance on an issue that the world’s greatest philosophers are still debating. It is not a matter of being more intelligent and therefore reaching a more correct solution, it is a matter of being biased towards a certain belief before the facts are counted. I think that in itself shows @Ria777‘s last sentence to be inaccurate (thanks @Jeruba, GA).

@Janka and @mattbrowne I tend to lean more towards nurture than nature too, but I was given a good Christian upbringing by parents who I am still great friends with. They were quite startled when I told them of my atheism. This makes me wonder about the degree of effect nature has, even though in most things I would consider nurture to be a bigger factor.

Studies have shown those with a greater fear reaction to lean more conservative.

I do not think in most cases it makes sense to talk in an abstract, general way about “the degree of effect of nature vs nurture”. How much of a particular trait is under genetic control depends on environment, after all. Example: when there are regular famines, the adult height of individuals is controlled strongly by environment – those with more food tend to grow taller. When food is abundant, almost all height is controlled by genetics. Similarly, whether or not your culture in general is tolerant for different views probably affects how strongly you are influenced by the views around you.

@Janka Great point. In my original example then, how would nurture be able to influence a person towards one or the other model? It isn’t exactly an issue like politics or religion where every person alive has some sort of opinion, so tolerance shouldn’t be an issue (although religious groups do tend to favour dualism because of the idea of a soul).

I am not sure if I understand your question correctly, can you attempt a rephrase?

What environmental factors would be able to affect a person in such a way that they favour one model over the other?

When you are very young, really think your environment, etc. plays a big part in religious beliefs, etc, but as you get older, critical thinking, education, and other factors play a huge role in religious makeup.

Some of the real amazing things about the human body ability to recover from illnesses, the protective coloration of animals, the beauty of the World, and personal experiences has made a huge impact on my beliefs. There has to be a God in Heaven.

On the negative side, is man. The hypocrisy of some church, the TV evangelist trying to take your money, etc. but those situations will never alter my belief there is a God and a Jesus in Heaven. Being a spiritualist, taking personal accountability for my choices, and being kind to all people, if possible, is my walk.

Think I would be called a “liberal spiritualist!” Love to live life, have fun, be happy, but, draw the line when it comes to being faithful, accountable, loyal, and nice to every human being regardless of who they are or are not.

@FireMadeFlesh btw, great question….

Hunger and the desire to feel loved. Either or both are tremendous motivators to do just about anything.

“What environmental factors would be able to affect a person in such a way that they favour one model over the other?”

Um, well, obviously, what they have been taught. If you are only taught of one model, and everyone you know subscribes to it, it takes an exceptionally bold person to think and believe against it.

If you are taught a model by cruelty or kindness, how you are predisposed to react to either will affect the way you think about it. But the cruelty or kindness are still environmental.

Your tendency to believe your own reasoning or trust authorities is affected by your experiences of authorities before.

Such things.

There are many psychologists who think that very few of our choices are “free” in the sense that we really analyze things with complete logical discourse. Most of us are predisposed to certain paths that appeal to us for a variety of reasons.

No one is purely intellectual.We’re all, in some sense, influenced by our subconscious and our conscious pre-dispositions. Our experiences and our understanding of them influence who we are. The oft-travelled parts of the brain are the strongest.

Consider conservative parties throughout the world—they largely prey on people’s fear of the unknown by promising to avoid changing things away from what they are or what they know. This is a tactic that is incredibly successful and always will be. This isn’t a political/ideological argument. Fear of the unknown is universal and this fear exists in conservatives and liberals alike.

I wonder how the Fight-or-flight response: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fight-or-flight_response can be worked into this discussion? Particularly, in relationship to cognitive dissonance: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance.

Maybe we can theorize that that the environmental factors are the presentation of belief and cognitive dissonance while the innate feature is one’s flight-or-fight reaction.

It might stand to reason, as Jeruba points out, that growing up we tend to hold certain beliefs unchecked. When our unchecked beliefs are presented with a differing belief cognitive dissonance ensues. In response to the perceived threat one’s innate response of freezing, retreating, or engaging plays a hand in one’s ability to grasp a belief.

Thus, the phenomena that laureth and noyesa point out: people innately lean into what doesn’t threaten them. What threatens and secures people is as various as what plays into nature and nurture.

No

@liminal I really like that idea. I’ve noticed that compared to several of my friends who are theists I tend to want to learn more about the unknown as opposed to being concerned or afraid of it. It could very well be that early on in my childhood I was thought to be interested rather than afraid. I haven’t fully overcome this, I still tend to favor things as they are, but I always give the unknown a chance.

It may simply be due to teaching critical thinking early on in childhood development. My parents were really good at explaining things to me but also teaching me how to find out myself.

@liminal I had completely forgotten about cognitive dissonance, thanks for bringing it to my attention again.

@FireMadeFlesh said: “Do you think there is some innate feature that can predispose people to certain beliefs, or make them more able to conceptually grasp certain ideas?”

you may not like my answer, but.. 1) if a person is born with a sensitivity to light so that they get headaches more often than others, they might be predisposed towards refusing invitations to go to the beach when all their other friends think it’s a great idea.

2) if a person believes he is out of shape, he might be predisposed to refusing to go to the beach.

in both of these cases, the predisposition is created by (a set of) beliefs the person holds to be true. in the second example, the person might not actually be as out of shape as they believe, perhaps they simply have low self confidence, but because they happen to believe it, they are predisposed to the belief that beach visits are shitty.
..

in the first case, the person was born with their condition. so, you could say that their predisposition was innate from genetics/birth i suppose.. somehow i don’t like to think of it that way. i’m more comfortable with the idea that people are predisposed to certain beliefs depending on what they already believe or don’t believe.

@Jeruba: I didn’t mean “know and understand in every detail”. I meant more simple axioms like “science provides us with knowledge and knowledge with understanding” or “God exists even if I can’t understand God”. that kind of thing.

How many people believe in things they’ve been taught or heard all their lives but of which they have little understanding?

if you someone gave to me a statement in a language I didn’t understand, though, I couldn’t deny it or accept it. I would have no opinion on it. they have to grasp at least part to accept it even if their poor little brains couldn’t understand all of it.

so, more precisely, I meant understanding memes versus understanding memeplexes. you can accept and believe part of the memeplex even if not all of it.

@FireMadeFlesh: It is not a matter of being more intelligent and therefore reaching a more correct solution, it is a matter of being biased towards a certain belief before the facts are counted.

really, look up the references that I provided. to simplify a bit, the theories say that some models map better than others, depending on the circumstances. (Spiral Dynamics does say, though, that once you get beyond the Green vMeme that you can apply any of the previous vMemes to the issue under consideration. though that may sound like la la koo koo gibberish, it will make sense to you if you read through the theory.)

ummm…okay!

@Ria777 Thanks for the clarification. I will add the references you provided to my reading list.