I don't know where to put it in "religion" or in "philosophy". We discussed it already in the long thread about the benefits of religion...at least I discussed it I suppose with Temperance...btw Temperance, WHERE ARE YOU?...that is just a topic for you and nordmann...I guess...
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20190529-do-humans-have-a-religion-instinct
"Brandon Ambrosino has written for the New York Times, Boston Globe, The Atlantic, Politico, Economist, and other publications. He lives in Delaware. This is the second of a two-part special examining the evolutionary roots of religion."
But looking on google: the first pages with that name...
https://truthwinsout.org/opinion/2014/01/39225/
I would better stop with this thread...when one even the BBC...

Kind regards from Paul.

Paul - I deleted the extra copy of this thread for you.

Also, when it comes to articles like the one you found I could offer some advice to you, just so you don't waste too much of your time in future lending credence, time and brainpower to material, especially stuff found on news sites re-using syndicated "science" articles, which probably isn't worth it.

Firstly, any author of an article who bases its content almost entirely on someone else's "research" which has not as yet undergone peer-review is normally not being objective. If this was also someone who chose to blend anthropological and psychological jargon without sufficient explanation as to why the latter had to be employed at all (it indicates a deliberate confusion between wider anthropological and narrower personal psychological "motivation" and "transmission vectors", for example), and then popularly published their "research" without even trying to submit it for peer-review, then this also calls into question the true motivation behind the journalist's own dissemination of the same material. If the popularly published material was immediately criticised by other more trustworthy actors in the same branch of science as a travesty of the respective disciplines apparently employed (the internet is useful for quickly finding such reviews), then this also tends to confirm any such suspicion concerning both the original author and the journalist's own reasons for uncritical dissemination.

Secondly, if the same author quotes anyone else in the course of their article, especially a philosopher, out of context in order to make it appear that the cited "research" has a popular validity beyond that which it actually does, then this is almost certainly confirmation that they are indeed being subjective. Also, if this is not the only such article they have published then the exact nature of this subjectivity, including any personal agendas they might have, is also normally not too hard to ascertain in these days of internet accessibility to published material.

Thirdly, if an article hyperlinks to apparent external corroboration in the form of academic journals etc, only to find that they actually link to material published by the same cited "research" source, then this is almost certainly proof of ulterior motive on the journalist's part. It is a technique used by less than honest authors on the internet - knowing that most people won't actually avail of the links but will see their presence as indicative of objective corroboration. Even if this is done "accidentally" it still indicates that the author then cannot distinguish between subjective and objective source, and as such anything else he has claimed as corroborated or objective must be immediately distrusted.

In this case the author, who has recently had material published in several conservative but otherwise "respectable" organs in the USA (normally as optioned material sourced from rather less august internet publishing organs), doesn't seem to have much of an agenda beyond trying to make a living from freelance opinion dressed up as journalism, and is therefore rather indiscriminate in his subject matter and less than careful when citing "sources", at least when compared to what most of us might expect from "proper" journalists. The two things he seems to know most about and which therefore often appear in conjunction in his articles, are his homosexuality and his religious upbringing - admittedly a combination which in some parts of the USA certainly will prompt a requirement for analysis and debate. The author however is attempting to make a career out of it, which is probably why he has now strayed into desperately grasping at any and every potential "source" that might justify further output from him related to these matters in the form of "journalism". However the article you linked to seems to indicate that he has, like a lot of such journalists of limited intelligence and interests, already gone beyond the point of entertaining serious credence or interest from others wishing to actually understand the issues he pretends to address.

"Click-bait" is what they tend to call this stuff these days.

PS: For what it's worth - for many years now anthropology has actually tended to avoid the treatment of "religion" as a valid thread worth pursuing purely in anthropological terms. The term is too diffuse in meaning and expression to lend itself to serious study on that basis. If you ever see any such article again which uses words such as "recent findings", "new research" and - of course - "evolution" when pretending to address a "human instinct" with respect to "religion" then you know you could be better employed using the time to make yourself a nice cup of coffee and listening to a Bach cantata. Neither will advance your knowledge of anything much either, but at least it's a chunk of time in your life that you'll never get back again but which at least has been to put to some satisfactory use.

nordmann,

thank you so much for the wise recommendations. I will when I do research on the internet, pay even more attention on the "about us" and the wider ramifications of the site. But some subjects as I read about it are more "dear" to me that others. For instance, from the time I entered the fora (first the BBC now some 17 years ago), as for instance "nurture versus nature" and for instance "eugenism" later included in the Nazi doctrine...
Some days ago I read in a Belgian daily about a new academic study about DNA and intelligence...
I found the article a bit controversial, especially as the author would have said that he had waited till recently, while this studies had in the past a lot of critics.
And I was especially alerted when at the end of the article stood that a lot of academici didn't agree with him, including a Belgian one, I forgot the name.
With all the fuss about the Brexit, Europa and the elections I had no time to search it on the internet.
And as eugenism is perhaps something for the philosophy forum?
With some terms on google I came to a site where I recognized the name and the subject
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/225784354_DNA_markers_associated_with_high_versus_low_IQ_the_IQ_Quantitative_Trait_Loci_QTL_Project
And yes I supposed that it was controversial, when I read it...

And for instance, what could an average "secondary school student" (baccalaureat) especially from the far-right (and about the "general education stuff" I too have only such a diploma), whe he read this stuff?

But I was so happy to find at least a heavy critique in a "serious" publication as "Nature"
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-06784-5

But to come back on the nowadays situation. What will a nowadays average right wing youngster make of it, when he read that in a journal as "The Guardian"? Perhaps not the Guardian, as the Guardian is not right wing...and yes when I read this with all my studies I did for the  fora in the last 17 years, it is as if I am back in the Thirties, as I heard it from my parents and as I read about Galton and all that...perhaps Dirk born before WWII and hearing perhaps more from his Dutch neighbourhood of the time,  will confirm it too...?

Kind regards from Paul.

I hope this is an acceptable place to put this.  I searched for "Notre Dame" under topic, post and tag and found nothing.  Four months or so after the Notre Dame de Paris fire I found an article about the cathedral's history in a website which is mainly centred on the life of Louis XIV.  I used to refer to it when the Versailles TV series was airing to try and suss out what was historically factual and what was dramatists' flights of fancy.  I decided to put the link here because the cathedral apparently was built on the site of a pagan place of worship,  http://partylike1660.com/notre-dame-de-paris/

Lady in Retirement,

Try :

 Google Advanced Search

 and  you will be given quite a number of links about the Paris Notre Dame



Dirk

LadyinRetirement wrote:

I hope this is an acceptable place to put this.  I searched for "Notre Dame" under topic, post and tag and found nothing.  Four months or so after the Notre Dame de Paris fire I found an article about the cathedral's history in a website which is mainly centred on the life of Louis XIV.  I used to refer to it when the Versailles TV series was airing to try and suss out what was historically factual and what was dramatists' flights of fancy.  I decided to put the link here because the cathedral apparently was built on the site of a pagan place of worship,  http://partylike1660.com/notre-dame-de-paris/

Lady,

I put "notre dame" into google and received 211.000.000 entries and the first one was about the fire of the Notre Dame...I don't know how that google works on your computer...if you mean other media? I know only the search robots of internet and nothing else, certainly not about the other media and only a small simple GSM with a number that only the relatives know and they have to call me...MSMs I don't read and they know it...

Kind regards from Paul.

Paul and Dirk, I didn't explain myself clearly.  I was searching for terms on the Res Historica site and not the worldwide web in general.

LadyinRetirement wrote:

Paul and Dirk, I didn't explain myself clearly.  I was searching for terms on the Res Historica site and not the worldwide web in general.

Lady,

I had already the experience that the search robot on Res don't work. Perhaps if you know the exact title of the thread? In any case on "words" only it don't work. Perhaps nordmann can search as he has the "keys of the kingdom"...?

Kind regards from Paul.

LadyinRetirement wrote:

Paul and Dirk, I didn't explain myself clearly.  I was searching for terms on the Res Historica site and not the worldwide web in general.

Lady,

I had already the experience that the search robot on Res don't work. Perhaps if you know the exact title of the thread? In any case on "words" only it don't work. Perhaps nordmann can search as he has the "keys of the kingdom"...?

Kind regards from Paul.

Please tell me this is a joke - I came across an article about robot priests.  I know in the Automata thread there was mention of the automaton in the shape of a friar in the Smithsonian but now is someone suggesting losing the human touch in matters of faith?  https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7481249/Robopriest-Catholic-church-ordain-ROBOTS-sophisticated-AI-priests-sister-proposes.html

Sacerdos in machina rather than Deus ex machina?

I wonder what the choirboy programming does ..........

LadyinRetirement wrote:

Please tell me this is a joke - I came across an article about robot priests.  I know in the Automata thread there was mention of the automaton in the shape of a friar in the Smithsonian but now is someone suggesting losing the human touch in matters of faith?  https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7481249/Robopriest-Catholic-church-ordain-ROBOTS-sophisticated-AI-priests-sister-proposes.html

Lady,

yes robots and sister Ilia Delio from the Villanova University
https://www1.villanova.edu/villanova/artsci/theology/about/facultystaff/biodetail.html?mail=ilia.delio@villanova.edu&xsl=bio_long
If I have understood it well she is from a theology and religious studies department and as you know me and especially nordmann, we don't see this as science, and nordmann even not as philosphy, if I recall it well. nordmann?

But yes, we can see it also as a more general statement, for instance the psychologist be replaced by a robot. 
My critique would be that in my humble opinion there is nothing (up to now I agree), that can replace the human interaction between two people (perhaps one with more knowledge than the other), who try to understand each other and learn with trial and error (and yes error is perhaps more human, but it is just by that error that the human learns and with that fine tuning of that human interaction both the intereacting humans learn and I am not sure if the robot will be able to do that once, while the human has a feed back from his human life and yes his common sense.
No I am afraid, that the robot will use the algorithms from his data from earlier consults and make a mathematical decision not based on human common sense...

It seems nowaday to be a hype to speak about robots and artificial intelligence. And especially the Japanese seems to be favourites of it and the madder? the more excentric,  the better. But I don't say that robots haven't their role in modern life, especially as help in the study of complicated processes or even as a help to  kids in a hospital for their entertainment and to feel comforted in a new traumatising environment.
And certainly as help in scientifical research, where the enormous data amount needs a robot classification.
And even in such fields as processes to make artificial "real" beef
It has a bit the "Israeli stamp, bias?" but nevertheless...
https://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-startups-join-firms-making-lab-grown-clean-meat/

Kind regards from Paul.