[extropy-chat] Uses of Religion

[Lee Corbin]

I had written

> > But now we know the main reason that religion exists and---pace
> > singularity or other fast tech improvements---will never leave humanity alone:
> > Religious people have more children.

By the way, surely this thought is not original with me.  Anyone seen it
before?  Someone mentioned Dennett's new book---any mention there
of this explanation for the ineradicability of religion?

Damien responded

> But do they have more *effective* children? If the intelligent and 
> clear-sighted have one child or two, or none but enhance the chances 
> of those smart parents and their offspringen, while the duller, more 
> gullible and acquiescent have many children who do little more than 
> provide cannon fodder to low-grade employment tasks...

Good point.  But the genes win in the end.  As Dawkins wrote, "if
contraceptives grew on trees in the EEA, by now women would recoil
from them in horror" (or words to that effect).

> and old-fashioned war, which moiety will win Darwin's race?

Yes, the elites can simply manage to send off the non-brights to
the trenches, I suppose. That would happen in Mexico, for example,
where a small corrupt white elite  lords it over the mestizos.  The
same little brown mestizos that they are so anxious to dump on the U.S.

But you have to (again, as in Mexico) get rid of democracy, else the
large numbers of brown people simply every so often take over again.
(They they become blonder as their brighter types too select blonde
women and it starts all over.) So your country ends up with a lower
average IQ (by about ten points), and zillions of religious people.
Again, may the Second Coming (oops, I mean singularity) save us
in time.

> It's been a long time since 
> mere fecundity gave a human gene line the prize. (This is brutally 
> simplified, obviously; at some tipping point, the demographics 
> doubtless shift so that bright members of underclasses will be 
> coopted or bull their way in to the higher levels of opportunity--but 
> I doubt that such entrists or their children and grandchildren will 
> retain their "faith" for long, except as a sentimental affectation or 
> manipulative tool, in a modern and postmodern economy.)

Quite right. Lower IQ may or may not *cause* religious belief,
but the correlation is undeniable.  I just hope that the smarter types
in the U.S. retain control (only possible, obviously, by corruption)
long enough to defrost my sorry ass.

Lee