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

[Samantha Atkins]

On Saturday 01 November 2003 17:55, CurtAdams at aol.com wrote:
> In a message dated 11/1/03 14:06:56, david at lucifer.com writes:
> >An excellent book on religion from an evolutionary psychology perspective
> >is Pascal Boyer's "Religion Explained". Boyer does a great job of showing
> >where more simplistic theories of the origins of religions fall short, and
> >explains how religions and supernatural beliefs evolved with human
> > inference systems.
>
> 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.
>

Religion serves as a way of making sense of what cannot yet be made sense of.  
It serves as a means of idealizing how things should/could be beyond the 
ability to make them so, yet.   It serves as a lens for focusing highly 
charged desires and refining visions of what the ultimate best is.    Of 
course it also serves as a lens for sactifying and focusing a lot that is not 
so positive at all.   

But all of this is cold and removed from the fire of what a living 
spirituality is.

- s