[lbo-talk] The atheist delusion

[John Thornton]

Miles Jackson wrote:
> John Thornton wrote:
>   
>> Religion can easily, and in my mind more plausibly, be described as a 
>> by-product of human minds.
>>
>>   
>>     
> Or more precisely: a by-product of social interactions.  A mind cannot 
> build a church or conduct a baptism; it is through social interactions 
> that religion becomes an important social institution.  (A banal point 
> once it occurs to you, but an important thing to keep in mind when 
> people bring up the ever-popular "let's explain social conditions in 
> terms of individual psychology" trope.) 
>
> Miles

A church or baptism are not religion.
Religion is a by-product of human minds but it manifests itself through 
social interactions. It isn't, strictly speaking, a by-product of those 
interactions.
The examples I gave like memory illusion or source monitoring defects 
are mental by-products that manifest themselves through our social 
interactions but they are not specifically by-products of social 
interactions.
Everyone in every society will experience source monitoring defects 
because it is a by-product of how the mind functions. What you do with 
that source monitoring defect will be socially constructed but it's very 
existence isn't itself socially constructed.

John Thornton