Brin-l Digest, Vol 369, Issue 6

[Dave Land]

On Feb 24, 2008, at 8:43 AM, Ronn! Blankenship wrote:

> At 09:48 PM Saturday 2/23/2008, hkhenson wrote:
>> At 01:00 PM 2/23/2008, William T Goodall wrote:
>>
>>> Religion has a vested interest in discouraging critical thinking.
>>
>> I think it's *much* worse than that.
>>
>> In "Evolutionary Psychology, Memes and the Origin of War" I make a
>> case that the psychological trait(s) for religion arose as part of
>> the  complex set of traits for wars.  Religions are seed xenophobic
>> memes. In times where the population sees a bleak future, they become
>> more influential.  Eventually they served to synch up the warriors
>> for a do or die attack on neighbors.  Even though the warriors may
>> have died, the genes were always better off than starving.
>>
>> One of the effect of this complex of traits is to shut off rational
>> thinking.  It's not rational at the personal level to go out and try
>> to kill neighbors, but in some circumstances the interest of a person
>> and their genes diverge.
>>
>> Religions give "reason" to take such chances.
>>
> So where in this hypothesis do #s 5 through 10 of the Ten
> Commandments, the Second Great Commandment, and the Golden Rule fit?

Ronn! seems to think that there is some internal logic or rationality to
the anti-religion rants that periodically hijack otherwise reasonable
discussions on this list. I am glad for Ronn!'s question, but I'm not at
all sanguine about his getting any answer that does not involve some
random act of lunacy by a person religious.

<snark>Because we all know, deep in our hearts, that the only people who
ever do anything evil in the world do so because religion has addled  
their
minds.</snark>

Dave