Interesting question.

I'm not sure if I would draw the same conclusion regarding the 'purposeless' of our species.  I feel joy, sadness, awe at a deeper level now that I don't believe there is an afterlife where everything will be enhanced.  Since I've realized this is the only life I get, I try to make the most of it.  I haven't read Ernest Becker, but from what you're describing he seems to believe that without the symbolic buffer delusion (we'll call it god for the sake of the argument) I would fall into a depressing realization of our ultimate futility.  Perhaps he lacks imagination.  In this context, the 'purpose' that religion provides us with is so superficial, banal and ultimately idiotic that I choose to not exist than to exist to serve a cruel's god capricious sense of humour.  

As for this line of thinking influencing evolution, I think that this kind of depth of searching and understanding is a relatively recent development in our evolutionary timeline.  Until recently (a few millenia) humans had no time to ponder such questions to the point where it would cause them to 'not be able to function', seeming how mere survival would take up 99.99% of your time.  I believe that the inquisitive mind would search for an explanation and never even assume the option of our 'purposeless' existence.  It would not have been a major driving factor.  When considering all the contemporary knowledge and evidence, there would be a point where we sort of 'give up' and just say god( or symbolic buffer delusion) did it.  The knowledge and evidence for us to get to the point where god is not necessary hasn't been available that long.  

Of course one could have argued god out of existence by logic alone such as the ancient Greeks, but they would have had nothing to fall back on.  At this point in our social development things like natural selection don't really work the same anymore.  You can have none of the physical qualities that would give your offsprings an evolutionary advantage, yet have a lot of money and you still get to reproduce.  

I'll leave it at this for now. 

P.S. if you haven't already seen 'Science saved my soul' check this out.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r6w2M50_Xdk

Purposeless doesn't imply that it should be joyless or devoid of awe. We understand, intellectually, that the existence of our species has no purpose whatsoever, beyond existence itself. We assign purpose to our lives and to our actions because that makes us feel good and it gives us direction. We decide that our lives are meaningful because of our children, hobbies, careers, etc. But if a purpose is not arbitrarily assigned by us - none exists.

If we were to allow ourselves to obsess on this absence of "true purpose" we might have some difficulty functioning. This is why we give ourselves a purpose as well as assigning purpose to our immediate environment (whether it likes it or not).

This insistence on assigning purpose is what I would use as a form of evidence for his argument. We seem to absolutely need this buffer, whether we use god or some other social symbol which gives our lives a kind of intangible value. Some still take the extreme leap of believing in Santa Claus but even those of us who reject the obvious fantasies still need our protection. Either way, the mere assertion that our species is "purposeless" brings about strong reactions from us, and that is an interesting thing to me.

I, for one, love the idea of pantheism; I generally consider myself to be a natural pantheist in most discussions. It gives me an outlet for my awe of my surroundings and my underlying sense of longing for purpose. Perhaps this is what keeps me from being inundated with fears about my impotence to combat the fury of nature or the knowledge that my cells are slowly beginning to die and I will, soon enough, no longer be here.

I can't argue that our conscious examination of this kind of philosophical topic is VERY recent. However, our ancestors needn't be aware of which traits are beneficial to their ultimate survival and which ones aren't. They didn't obsess on their fear of nature and death because they were busy with other things. I would argue that, when they stopped working long enough to consider these things that they quickly built these imaginary buffers around them. Rather, those who had a tendency to build these buffers were more successful in surviving than those who did not. After all, who could sleep if they allowed these kinds of fears to penetrate their concussions mind all of the time?

It seems to me that the idea of what exactly a purpose is and which things have purposes would have come quite late in our development. Assigning this kind of label to the feelings and drives, however, would not be required for the feelings and drives to exist. We simply gave it a name and thus began contemplating it further (to whatever end).

Certainly an interesting predicament our species is in. We are effectively immune to natural selection at this point, at least a gigantic portion of the human population is. Now our genes are only picked by sexual selection - nothing more. Nature no longer has a vote as to whether or not we pass on our genes; only our female has that right now.

Well, any behavior a human displays is natural.  Both religion and atheism are natural, because they appear in all cultures.

I think the problem is using the words atheism and religion in this way...an atheist can still have that same sense of fear/awe and still be an atheist.  Rather, I think the question is, culturally, are non-religious systems able to meet the needs of this instinct?  Evidence seems to point to yes due to some cultures with mostly irreligious members.  So it is sort of mixing two things, a cause and an effect.  Religion isn't instinctual, fear/awe is instinctual and religion is a system some cultures have created to deal with that.

So, no, atheism is not un-natural.  Not having the emotional fear/awe response to certain concepts and ideas would be, not un-natural, but certainly less common in our species.  The way in which cultures and individuals deal with these emotions is really the issue...some resort to religion, some to science, some to apathy, some to secular philosophies, etc.

What has changed is we're (human civilization) now at the point where most of the phenomena that cause those responses are understood, and we have alternate secular ways of dealing with them without all the baggage religion brings, hence religious systems aren't actually relevant as anything but a relic of our cultural childhood.

The problem is you can't bring a culture out of theism until you raise them up high enough to implement those systems themselves.  For example, Iran isn't going to turn into Japan or Sweden without first having a society as harmonious and stable as those nations.

Valid distinction.

Seeing that this fear/awe response is instinctual, can we deduce that this trait has likely been with us all the way back to our earliest ancestors? If it is an adaptive survival trait, that would mean that it would have developed about as far back as when our minds started becoming advanced enough to comprehend our own deaths, for example. It is at this point where I would place the beginning of what some refer to as existential angst. Once the mind could be aware (on any level) of their inevitable dimise, the mind would also need to be able to protect itself from locking down in terror.

If that's correct, this would be the origins of our mechanisms of dealing with said fear; pretty much at our beginnings. That would be a hell of a long time of building this instinct and the mechanisms of dealing with it.

That would make supernatural belief as a method of coping with this an incredibly old and deeply ingraned trait. Pretty substantial hurdle, if so.

Thanks butter, that's pretty much the assumption I'm going for.

That, allowing ourselves to ponder the ever-presence of our doom would have been detrimental to the development of our species in its early stages. In order for us to have survived the rigors of our environment we could not have also been paralyzed with fear. I have been finding it difficult to get that into words. I'm pretty new to this exciting evolution madness but I'm trying!!

Since each culture has it's own pressures to believe in a particular deity(or at least pretend to). I think being an atheist is more about just being naturally inclined to not need a great deal of social approval. Also just being able to deal with the stress and worries of life without resorting to fantasy.

Being a theist is more about just submitting to the cultural/family norm. Most all theists can't explain what they actually believe or why the believe in religion, their so called belief is just a product of wanting to be socially accepted which is the way a lot of people are naturally inclined to be.

That second name is Boyer - thanks for the tip. The wish list expands...

I am struggling with your analogy.

I do agree with you guys that religion and god specific beliefs are just an end product and are not, on their own, some specific drive built into humans. I wouldn't argue against that, but what I am currently interested in arguing is that there is an instinctive drive to put *something* there. Considering our current degree of understanding of the reality of our universe it would seem to me that our species would be served well by unlearning that mechanism, but I am curious about exactly how difficult that is going to be.

The nature of this curiosity is rooted in my examination of how I view supernatural centric world views. Historically I have had a deep resentment for god belief and other similar world views but these days I am questioning how appropriate that is. I am not suggesting that I should be more tolerant or patient, just that what I might need to do is to temper my disdain with the understanding that weaning off of these kind of traits which protect us from the harshness of reality may be more of an undertaking than I am giving it credit.

If that is indeed the case, at least I can adjust my approach so that it causes *me* less frustration!

I agree with Brian that it isn't all about social pressure, but anecdotally it seems like atheists tend to be less conformist, at least in America.  If this were Sweden or Japan, maybe theists would tend to be less conformist simply because they go against societal norms a bit more?  EXC's general point makes a lot of sense to me, although I think there are other reasons that go along with it.  

It is demonstrably true that culture has a heavy impact on every belief we hold, so I don't see why religion and atheism would be different.  Since atheism is outside the norm in America, it stands to reason atheists are, on average, less likely to be conformist otherwise we might succumb to social pressure and be theists, even if only to say, "we're spiritual, not religious".  I wouldn't put any money on it though, there might be more elegant explanations.

To quote Sergent Shultz from Hogan's Heros, "I know nothing, I hear nothing, I see nothing".