[ExI] Rick Warren on religion

[William Flynn Wallace]

So be
> careful what you tell very young children because they'll probably
> believe you, possibly for life.
Or at least until they reach the teen years, or possibly before.  Have you
two never heard of teenage rebellion against adult ideas?  Show me a
generation that bows and scrapes to the ideas of their elders and I will
show you a generation that, if it ever existed, existed in a very closed
society.  Aside from some places in the Amazon and the islands around Java,
closed societies no longer exist, no matter how much the Chinese wish they
were.

bill w




On Sat, Dec 8, 2018 at 11:12 AM Stuart LaForge <avant at sollegro.com> wrote:

> John Clark wrote:
>
> >> Religions are directly selected for or against based upon their
> >> teachings.
> >
> >
> > I think a religious meme (not gene) can be directly selected for.
>
> Memes, like genes, do not exist in a vacuum. Either can only selected upon
> when they are actively being expressed by organisms capable of expressing
> them. Naked DNA in test tube is merely a relatively stable repository of
> information as is a bible or a software DVD in drawer. It is only during
> "runtime" that the gene, meme, or software is actively being selected for
> or against.
>
> > The
> > meme that infected the 911 hijackers, that its a good idea to kill
> > yourself if by doing so you can kill lots of disbelievers, has been very
> > successful;
>
> Has it? It certainly succeeded at its political agenda of attracting media
> attention but I don't see it as very successful as a "replicator". Sure
> out of the billions of Muslims, a few dozen perform suicide attacks every
> year. But compared to the Islamic memes of washing your hands before you
> eat or facing east to pray? Not so much.
>
> Incidently, since the intent of facing east is to face Mecca, do the
> Muslims in Asia face west? In the age of GPS you would think that Muslims
> would be allowed or able to precisely face Mecca no matter where they were
> on the globe.
>
> > from the meme's point of view crashing a airliner into a
> > skyscraper was a wise move in that it increased its chances of being
> > reproduced in other minds.  A meme that says "if you believe in me you
> > will get 77 virgins when you die but if you don't God will torture you
> > for a infinite number of years" has obvious potential for reproductive
> > success in other minds.
>
> Part of allure of the "77 virgins" is due to the Three Wives Law in many
> Muslim countries. If the richest men are entitled to three wives, that
> seriously depletes the mating pool of Muslim women for the poorer males.
> Those males must either resort to consorting with infidel women or endure
> a great deal of sexual frustration and resultant aggression.
>
> >> How is it not obvious that religion is a trait selected for by
> >> increased reproductive success?
> >
> > Increased reproductive success of the meme not the gene, biological
> > Evolution works so much slower than cultural Evolution I don't see how it
> > could play a significant part.
>
> Memes are like retroviruses in that they can replicate directly on their
> own or piggy-back on the replication of their host. Religion, like wealth,
> is a heritable trait that does not have a genetic basis. Therefore
> Catholics largely give rise to more Catholics.
>
> > The only important gene involved would be
> > one for a tendency of very young children to believe what adults tell
> > them, and that goes far beyond religion, without that we wouldn't have
> > science or art or any of the other good things civilization brings. So be
> > careful what you tell very young children because they'll probably
> > believe you, possibly for life.
>
> I agree 100% with this.
>
> >> Therefore any religion that makes it a sacred duty to procreate is
> >> certainly no spandrel.
> >
> > The reason Saudi Arabia is almost entirely Muslim and Israel is almost
> > entirely Jewish is not because the two populations have radically
> > different genes  (70% of Jewish men and 82% of  Arab men inherited their
> > Y chromosomes from the same paternal ancestor) but because they have
> > radically different memes. John K Clark
>
> The religious memes of Jews and Muslims are not that radically different
> either. In fact correcting for translation, a significant portion of their
> content is shared. The biography of the common ancestor you speak of is
> explicitly described in both Torah and Quran. Abraham is Ibraham, Isaac is
> Ishaq, and Ishmael is Ismail but the story is the same. The Jews hold
> themselves to be the descendants of Isaac(Ishaq) and the Muslims claim to
> be the descendants of Ismail(Ishmael).
>
> Islam clearly evolved from Judaism just as Christianity did. A similar
> pattern of religious speciation complete with violence is seen in the UK
> with Catholics of Ireland and the Protestants of Northern Ireland.
>
> Perhaps religion operates as a spoiler for genetic kin-selection allowing
> closely related individuals to be in separate tribes and consequently go
> to war with each other.
>
> Stuart LaForge
>
>
>
>
>
>
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