[extropy-chat] Transhumanism: Teilhard de Chardin - Truth or Dare

[Eliezer S. Yudkowsky]

CurtAdams at aol.com wrote:
> 
> I really liked Boyer's book and the idea that many characteristics of religion
> arise from how human minds are geared up for survival.  But I was very
> unconvinced that religion is *entirely* an accident of how we're geared up.
> First, people usually get profoundly attached to their religions in a way
> I don't expect from such accidents.  Second, religious belief is very strongly
> influenced by genes, more so than any other human behavior I'm aware of.
> Third, many of us are quite irreligious even though we have the systems
> Boyer was talking about in perfectly functional form.  
> 
> I think religion per
> se serves some kind of function - I'd guess a social one - which is very 
> important to successful human reproduction in a premodern context.  I'm
> inclined to the idea that it serves as a mechanism for irrational (in a strict
> personal cost-benefit sense) group identification.  As with many interactions,
> sometimes it can be beneficial to commit oneself to a course with no way to
> get out later even if it becomes beneficial at that time. 

Nonreligious people tended to get burned at the stake until very recently. 
  Figure that sometime way back in human history religion started as an 
epiphenomenon, and shortly thereafter it became extremely nonadaptive to 
start asking nosy questions.

-- 
Eliezer S. Yudkowsky                          http://singinst.org/
Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence