[ExI] Rick Warren on religion

[William Flynn Wallace]

Not sure who wrote this - Keith or Stuart

There cannot be a "self" without an "other".

I don't know what this means.  Our identity is totally tied up in our
relationships?  If I am alone on the planet I lose my identity?

??   bill w

On Fri, Dec 14, 2018 at 12:01 PM Keith Henson <hkeithhenson at gmail.com>
wrote:

> On Thu, Dec 13, 2018 at 10:44 PM "Stuart LaForge" <avant at sollegro.com>
> >
> > Keith Henson wrote:
>
> > > On Sun, Dec 9, 2018 at 9:47 AM "Stuart LaForge" <avant at sollegro.com>
> > > wrote:
> > >> In so far as the brain is our fastest evolving human organ, having
> > >> tripled in size in the last two million years, I would think that
> > >> evo-psych would be one of our fastest evolving traits.
> > >
> > > I can't parse that.  Please try again.
> >
> > What I am saying is that in the last two million years our brain has
> > physically changed in size by a factor of 3. Assuming that behavioral
> > complexity is function of larger brains and more neurons, I would
> > therefore expect that our evolutionary psychology should have changed at
> > least as much in the same time period.
>
> Humans don't possess "evolutionary psychology."
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_psychology  EP can't be
> possessed.  It is an approach to understanding which human
> psychological traits are evolved adaptations.  We do have a long list
> of psychological traits.  I suspect your intent here is to say those
> human psychological traits changed about as much as the expansion of
> the brain.
>
> Could be I suppose.  There would be severe measurement problems even
> if you had a time machine to go back and get the data.  Take
> capture-bonding, a psychological trait where the evolutionary driver
> is fairly obvious.  http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Capture-bonding
> "The percentage of females in the lowland villages who have been
> abducted is significantly higher: 17% compared to 11.7% in the
> highland villages." (Napoleon Chagnon quoted at Sexual Polarization in
> Warrior Cultures).
>
> Translating into something that could be measured, your expectation
> would be that the percentage of captives (almost all women) who
> adapted to being captured would have gone up over the period where the
> brain expanded.
>
> > > I am not talking about religion, no matter how you want to define it.
> > > I am talking about the human *capacity* to have religions.  It is so
> > > widespread among human populations that, like capture-bonding, it is
> nearly
> > > universal.
> >
> > How do you distinguish this capacity for religion from any other cultural
> > phenomena that allows memes and social constructs to override genes? It
> is
> > certainly more sophisticated in humans but it occurs across the spectrum
> > of social animals.
> >
> > In wolves for example, typically only the dominant pair of alpha male and
> > female breed.
> >
> > Why would the average (non-dominant) wolves in the pack allow this? Why
> > would these average wolves cooperatively hunt, protect, and help feed
> pups
> > that are unrelated to them effectively throwing their own genes under the
> > bus?
>
> > Sure one could argue that they are related so this is some kind of kin
> > selection going on but this is typically true only of the females who
> tend
> > to be siblings. The males are typically completely unrelated and randomly
> > get adopted into packs.
>
> Can you provide a URL for these statements?  It's been a while since I
> read up on the subject.
>
> snip
>
> > The upshot of the Nature article is that humans are about six times more
> > likely than the average mammal to die by the actions of a member of our
> > own species. Based upon paleontological and archaelogical evidence during
> > the Stone Age about 3.5% of humans died by the hand of another human.
> This
> > fluctuates throughout history, with a maximum during the middle ages
> where
> > approximately 12% of humans died by another's hand.
>
> Some places much higher
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Before_Civilization
>
> > For comparison, in chimps about 4.5% die from attacks by another chimp
> > making them, humans, and baboons the bloodiest primates. But surprisingly
> > we are nowhere close to being the most murderous mammals.
> >
> > That distinction goes to meerkats which are social weasels that live in
> > southern Africa with 20% of all meerkat deaths are attributable to other
> > meerkats. Usually in dominance disputes with meerkats in the same colony
> > or territorial wars with other meerkat colonies.
>
> You might note that meerkats have a high reproductive rate and not
> much predation.  The environment can only support so many of them so
> they have to kill each other.  It's the same problem humans have.
>
> > As a general rule, social mammals are more murderous than solitary
> mammals
> > and territorial mammals are more murderous than nomadic mammals. The most
> > murderous mammals of all are those which are both social and territorial.
> >
> > So warfare among our hunter-gatherer ancestors was rarer than I had
> > assumed. It wasn't until we settled down and became territorial that
> > warfare truly became a human preoccupation.
> >
> > >> Does the model account for the benefits of genetic out-breeding as a
> > >> result of war?
> > >
> > > No.  Do you have a way to put numbers on this benefit?
> >
> > Unfortunately most of the hard numbers I can find are from recent wars:
> > The book GIs and Fr?uleins, by Maria Hohn, documents 66,000 German
> > children born to fathers who were soldiers of Allied forces in the period
> > 1945?55:
> >
> > American parent: 36,334
> > French parent: 10,188
> > British parent: 8,397
> > Soviet parent: 3,105
> > Belgian parent: 1,767
> > Other/unknown: 6,829
>
> Those are not useful numbers.  You need data on how the children were
> better in some genetically significant way as a result of outbreeding.
> >
> > >>> So you would expect genes to get this judgment for "a time for war"
> > >>> correct, and genes that get the tribe into "attack mode" when needed
> > >>> would be positively selected.
> > >>>
> > >>> The major religions where we know something of their historical
> > >>> origins seem to have started as a set of xenophobic memes.
> >
> > Cultural identity may not be possible without some measure of xenophobia.
> > There cannot be a "self" without an "other".
>
> This is in conflict with outbreeding.  Very often the people a tribe
> got their wives from where the same as the ones they fought.
>
> Keith
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