[extropy-chat] Edge: Thank Goodness! By Daniel C. Dennett

[Keith Henson]

At 10:39 PM 11/3/2006 +0000, Russell wrote:

snip

>Seconded. This sort of junk from people like Dennett is exactly isomorphic 
>to "it's a mortal sin to deny the existence of God" from religious 
>fundamentalists, only the labels have been switched around.

Besides, it's the wrong way to approach the problem.

Ranting against epidemic disease didn't save a single life.

What was needed was to understand what causes infectious diseases.

People have religions like they have chicken pox.  But unlike diseases, we 
don't understand why people have religions at all.  Rants against them are 
no more helpful than ranting against chicken pox.

Evolutionary psychology makes the case that every psychological trait was 
either directly selected or is a side effect of something that was selected.

I have a tentative origin for humans having religions at all, but it's 
awful paranoid.

Keith