[ExI] de Waal

[William Flynn Wallace]

genes that tend to make children believe what authority figures tell them
propagate through the gene pool faster than genes that don’t.   john

I grant you the facts you cite, but you have not come close to proving the
statement above.  Pressure to stay with the community, the family, is
great.  I am sure you can agree that there are many who go to some church
who don't believe a word of it, but don't want to act like a rebel or
unbeliever.  That includes the parents as well, of course.

All you have to posit is a tendency to stay within a group, and that is a
certainty.  You don't have to posit a genetic tendency to believe what
authorities are saying to explain the facts.  It could easily be
environmental.  Ockham.

There is some resistance to persuasion in all of us - contrarianism.  We
don't like to feel manipulated.

What happens when you present conflicting views to a person?  Most (?)
people encounter in their lives religions and beliefs different from their
own - what they were taught.  The outcome of this is often that the person
is swayed, especially if his training can be be characterized as a one
sided communication.  Presenting the other side(s) often knocks the person
for a loop - he has no defense or counterarguments.  This is usually the
case in 'instant' conversions.  If a person has been raised with numerous
sides presented, he is often immune to any attempt to change him unless
arguments are presented that are unfamiliar.

If your position is that it is genetic, then you have a hard time
explaining the world-wide decline in church attendance.

bill w



On Sun, Feb 25, 2018 at 9:12 PM, John Clark <johnkclark at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Sat, Feb 24, 2018 at 11:50 AM, William Flynn Wallace <
> foozler83 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>> *​> ​Have you heard of the terrible twos?*
>
>
> Yes, two years olds have been known to vigorously debate with their
> parents about the optimal number of cookies to receive or when bedtime is,
>  but I am more interested in the political and religious views of 22 years
> olds than two year olds
> and how they compare to that of their parents. There is a reason there are
> very few Mormon children in Saudi Arabia, its because there are very few
> Mormon adults in Saudi Arabia.
>
>
>> *>Teenage rebellion?*
>
>
> Same story, they'll rebel against the small stuff but they almost always
> end up teaching their children the same old time religion their parents
> taught them in infancy. ​
>
>
>> *> I also wonder what the statistics are about children growing up and
>> following their parents' religion and other beliefs. *
>
>
> Take a look at this color map of world religions:​
>
> http://www.geocurrents.info/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/
> Wikipedia-World-Religion-Map-2.png
>
>
> ​Notice the blocks of solid color, why do you suppose that is? If children
> didn't almost always follow the religious views of their parents​ the color
> a individual pixel has should be random and have no relation to nearby
> pixel, and instead of seeing solid blocks of color it would all blend into
> white. But that's not what we see.
>
> However I admit their are exceptions; I didn't end up with the religious
> beliefs of either of my parents, my mother was a Catholic and my father was
> a agnostic but I am a atheist.
>
> John K Clark
>
>
>
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