[extropy-chat] Human Machinations

[Keith Henson]

At 11:23 AM 2/9/2006 -0800, Stuart LaForge wrote:


>--- ben <benboc at lineone.net> wrote:
>
> > Wow, i don't think i've ever had such mixed feelings
> > about such a
> > heavy-duty rant. On one hand, this IS obviously
> > foaming at the mouth
> > (and from a self-confessed raelian!), but on the
> > other, a lot of the
> > things presented are, afaik, true.
>
>It is a frustrating problem and obviously the time
>when one can safely bury ones head in the sand about
>the matter has passed. This one isn't going away on
>its own, folks.

snip

>That the Muslim leadership are machinating against the
>governments of the west, there can be no doubt. Why
>else would it take over a year for cartoons in Denmark
>to galvanize the Muslim communities around the world?
>
>http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/09/international/middleeast/09cartoon.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1&th&emc=th
>
>It was decided by the Organization of the Islamic
>Conference that this would be the time to rally
>Muslims around the world against Freedom.

I don't think you can make a case for them being opposed to Freedom with a 
capital F.  It is a good slogan to rally opposition though.

>And have no
>doubt, they will use the tools of Freedom like liberal
>moral and cultural relativism against it. The imperial
>march of Mohammed never stopped, it has only been
>waiting.

It does not stand a chance for exactly the same reason that chimpanzees are 
not a threat to men with machine guns.

>You can have freedom of religion and you can have
>separation of church and state, but all it takes is a
>religion that denies any separation between church and
>state and you have Freedom's Achilles Heel.
>These are dangerous times.

They certainly are.  Can you say why these times are dangerous and times 
10, 20 or 50 years ago were less dangerous?  Can you base your reasoning in 
biology and the environment in which humans evolved?

>The future is in motion and I cannot see it with any certainty.

Exactly what is going to happen is probably out of our reach.  But the 
broad outlines are obvious.  And it is not a pretty picture.  The western 
world may wind up as a party inflicting megadeath without understanding 
what happened.

>The loss of
>religious freedom, the loss of separation of church
>and state, or the loss of both are all very real
>possibilities.

I have come to see one of the evolved functions of religion as a xenophobic 
meme seed.  There are times in our evolutionary past when human populations 
survived better with a xenophobic meme seed.  They probably speed up the 
transition to war state and by inducing war behavior earlier, provided an 
advantage to those who had the mental machinery to carry the seed.

We can go into this in more depth if you can deal with a depressing model 
of reality or better, help come up with a less depressing model.

Keith Henson