This is a test article taken from one of my notes in my zettlekasten. It will be updated and expanded upon later. Para aqui, pero, it is to see how content looks on the web.

The tendency to anthropomorphise is one of the most fundamental cognitive biases we humans possess, and is one that has shaped how we understand the world around us. Guthrie argues that this is an evolutionary adaptation that allowed human beings to better predict threats and carefully survey their environment. Anthropomorphising the world – from animals to natural phenomena – allowed human beings to be prepared for threats or opportunities. In recent investigations into this phenomenon (Heider and Simmel [1944], Scholl and Tremoulet [2000] to name two), we’ve managed to observe this predisposition, and strengthen the consensus within cognitive science of the human tendency to anthropomorphise, as well as detect agency and intentionality. This same predisposition leads to the anthropomorphising of spirits and gods. Humans (from as early as children) will project these anthropomorphic traits onto deities and ‘unseen things’, and may later abstract them.

A link I’ve found interesting is the anthropomorphised deity in the second creation account in Genesis (2:4b-24). Unlike the more abstract, transcendental deity in the first account (1:1-2:4a), the deity in the second creation account has an interesting alignment to what we understand about human cognitive biases. In the first account, God is more of an abstract ‘thing’ that creates via speech and will, generally attributed to a priestly source that may have wanted to represent God this way. However, the second account, attributed to non-P, presents a carpenter God that forms ‘man from the dust of the ground’ (Genesis 2:7), a gardener that ‘planted a garden in Eden, in the east’ (Genesis 2:8), a surgeon that ‘caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, … took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh’ (Genesis 2:21), and someone that walked ‘in the garden at the time of the evening breeze’ (Genesis 3:8). Presenting God this way may have, perhaps unintentionally, allowed the narrative to tap into our cognitive predispositions and makes God seem more approachable and relatable.