RE: IS RELIGION PART OF THE HUMAN NATURE?
Good thoughts. There's a study that came out in the last month or so that's relevant to this topic. The authors of the study were researching why intelligence is positively correlated with atheism. Said another way, the more intelligent (not necessarily the more educated) one is, the more likely one is to be an atheist. The authors concluded that religiousity shares certain characteristics with "instincts" and that intelligence is generally assocaited with overcoming or subjugating instinct to reason. So, if religiousity is instinctual, then it makes sense that the more intelligent among us would tend to second-guess it.
But, before we atheists get all haughty, other studies have shown that the religious among us generally score higher on levels of happiness, and intelligence is positively correlated with depression. So...there's that.
That's very interesting. ''Instinct'' is something typically used by people who frequently are emotional decision makers. So it does make sense that they would be more religious. Intelligence is something very difficult to define. I don't know how the researches defined it, but usually the mainstream methods to measure it have many flaws. Intelligence has so many multiple components that it is impossible to measure just by the ability of someone to solve number sequences and put shapes in the correct order. People who learn to practice their critical thinking, no matter what educational background they have, are the ones that as you said, overcome instinct to reason. The association with ''depression'' is truly interesting and I would love to read more about that!
"intelligence has so many multiple components"
I touched upon this here, if you're interested. (at the end)
https://steemit.com/life/@josephd/are-7-billion-people-too-much-for-the-earth-to-sustain