[ExI] Islamic culture (current) was Religions and violence

[Keith Henson]

On Mon, Aug 2, 2010 at 3:44 PM,  Tomasz Rola <rtomek at ceti.pl> wrote:
>
> On Mon, 2 Aug 2010, Keith Henson wrote:
>
>> I am surprised that people on this list put such a large importance on
>> religions as moving forces in the world.  In my estimation the horse
>> collar or invention of Watt's steam engine, or the Newcomen engine
>> that proceeded it was more important than religions.
>
> Myself I am not much surprised (just a little), but I think that it's
> people who move the world. So whatever moves them, moves the world too.
>
> As of religion giving excuse for predatory practices, there are a lot of
> other philosophies doing this as well (including atheistic or
> antireligious one).

I have been talking about this subject for nearly 25 years now.  Here
is one from about 1988.

http://www.evolutionzone.com/kulturezone/memetics/henson.memes.metamemes.and.politics

> So let's not blame religion alone, especially if what
> we care about is improving something. But I suspect the real culprit is
> greed, or even more it is evolution-related wish to spread our genes at
> the expense of other beings.

And this subject for at least 5 years, including a mathematical
analysis that put numbers on how strong the selection in the EEA was.

> IMHO we can go to great lenghts trying to hide from ourselves that what we
> really care about is to eat and to fsck. I find this fascinating.

It's actually a good idea to hide it from yourself.  If you admit you
have evolutionary sensible goals, you could wind up like I did,
lambasted from the bench by a federal judge.

Keith