HADD Turnaround: It's evidence of God

Anders Lisdorf "Evolutionary Psychology attributes the origins of religion to something they call the hyperactive agency detection device" (HADD). https://www.researchgate.net/publication/233684268_What's_HIDD'n_in_the_HADD

The consensus in the cognitive science of religion is that some sort of hyperactive agency detection in the human mind is responsible for the origin and spread of beliefs in superhuman agents such as gods, spirits and ancestors among human populations. While it is expressed differently in different authors, they all agree that hyperactive agency detection is a basic function of human cognition. Most well known perhaps is the formulation of this by Justin Barrett as the Hyperactive Agency Detection Device or HADD. Problems, however, arise when we begin to consider the neural basis of this: It doesn't add up, or more precisely the HADD does not work that way. Like the magician pulling rabbits from the hat this explanation may be a "self"-conjuring trick, only for us the hat is a HADD and the rabbits are superhuman agents (no reference to were-rabbits intended). This paper will try to point to a more parsimonious explanation[1]

Elizabeth Palermo tells us:

"HADD is the mechanism that

lets humans perceive that many things have 'agency,' or the ability to act of their own accord. This understanding of how the world worked facilitated the rapid decision-making process that humans had to go through when they heard a rustling in the grass. (Lions act of their own accord. Better run.)"[2]

HADD is seen by many in evolutionary psychology as the origin of religion. Religious ideas emerged as a side effect. Humans began to extrapolate to attribute agency to things that don't have agency such as the wind perhaps.[3] Then of course they went on too attribute meaning to the "actions" of supposed agents such as wind and rain.[4] This reduces religion to a naturalistic origin and is being touted by some atheists as a good probabilistic disproof of God.[5] "When debunkers of religious belief appeal to hyperactive agency detection, they are already assuming that the agent that is being detected (e.g., God) is of the false-positive kind, the sound in the dark room. But I don't see how they can assume this in a non-question begging sense.”[6]

Anthropomorphism, operationalized as the tendency to project human-like attributes to non-human entities, was not related to belief in God in our model. In our adult sample, it was not related to belief in God even in a zero-order correlation. This may be surprising given theories that argue that anthropomorphism and hyperactive agency detection are an underlying feature of all supernatural belief (Barrett, 2000, 2004, 2008; Guthrie, 1993, 1996)[7] …

Anders Lisdorf finds that HADD doesn't work according to what we know about the adaptive process:

 

supplying  an  evolutionary  explanation about how a stipulated cognitive function would have been adaptive is some-times detrimental to understanding the phenomenon at hand. Because of the eagerness and easiness with which an adaptive function was supplied, reflection on the phenomenon. Further reflection and research into philoso-phy and neuroscience would have revealed the insuffi ciency of the argument, and led to what I have presented here. In short, we should be wary of supplying ultimate explanations  for phenomena whose proximate explanations are not sufficiently worked out.[8]

Helen De Cruz:finds the atheists are begging the question:

…sometimes agency detection does go awry, as when we hear wooden planks creak in an old house and form the belief that there's a burglar in the house. But many more times, we form the belief that there is an agent, when there actually is an agent (e.g., when you see someone walking across the street from you on a clear day. When debunkers of religious belief appeal to hyperactive agency detection, they are already assuming that the agent that is being detected (e.g., God) is of the false-positive kind, the sound in the dark room. But I don't see how they can assume this in a non-question begging sense.”[9]

Even if we assum, HADD is correct there i no way they can prove the phenomenon is not placed in us by God so we can intuate his presence. The atheist is merely begging the question. their circular reasoning says there is no God therefore any evidence for God must be false.Then they assert God can't effect nature things so any naturalistic effects must be just naturalistic in origin. Bit HADD is a natural God argument. What are the odds that this accident of the neural net would produce so powerful it leads to a mistake that 90% of humans swear by? Agency detection works well enough to get primitive humans out the jungle so to speak, why not assume it's there by design?

End Notes

[1]Anders Lisdorf,"Evolutionary Psychology attributes the origins of religion to something they call the hyperactive agency detection device" (HADD). Research Gate, (sept 2007) https://www.researchgate.net/publication/233684268_What's_HIDD'n_in_the_HADD

IT University of Copenhagen [2] Elizabeth Palermo,"The Origins of Religion: How Supernatural Beliefs Evolved." Live Science,(October 05, 2015) https://www.livescience.com/52364-origins-supernatural-relgious-beliefs.html

[3] Ibid. [4] Clark quoted in Palermo (James Clark, a senior research fellow at the Kaufman Interfaith Institute at Grand Valley State University in Michigan.) [5]Helen De Cruz, “Thoughts on Evolutionary Debunking Arguments Against Religious Belief” (Sept 2012): Online. https://www.newappsblog.com/2012/09/thoughts-on-evolutionary-debunking-arguments-against-religious-belief.html

[6] Ibid. [7] Aiyana K. Willard and Ara Norenzayan, "Cognitive biases explain religious belief, paranormal belief, and belief in life’s purpose," Cognition

no publication date given, Article history: Received 4 March 2013 Revised 25 July 2013 Accepted 27 July 2013.6.2 https://www2.psych.ubc.ca/~ara/Manuscripts/Willard_Norenzayan_Cognitive_Biases.pdf

They site the orignal article: [Aiyana K. Willard, Ara Norenzayan “Cognitive biases explain religious belief, paranormal belief, and belief in life’s purpose.” Cognition 129 (2013): 379-391.] [8]Anders Lisdorf op cit 350 [9]Helen De Cruz op cit