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 _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
