[ExI] de Waal

Wed Feb 28 18:08:48 UTC 2018

john clark - if the devout didn't think the very young didn't have such a
tendency they would not place such emphasis on having religious grade
schools and even religious kindergarten.
---
I'd say that that was a good argument for the opposite: believing that
environment had to install the values.  It's indoctrination, of course, or
the attempt at such, and I'll bet it doesnt' work very well.  People are
not sheep.

I fail to see how all those statistics you gave about the Muslims support
your case for genetics.  You don't see nearly that kind of unanimity among
followers of other religions.  I admit Iran is a special case of a secular
society in a theocracy.  Keep in mind that in very homogeneous societies
there is a lot of pressure to say or do the expected thing.  That produces
a response set in people who then don't tell you what they think;  they
tell you what is popular or socially accepted.  This is a big problem in
surveys:  have women become much more open about sex, or have they just
changed their survey responses as a function of greater acceptance of
women's sex by society?  Frustrating to the social scientist.

You could be right.  I don't even doubt that it is possible.  I just say
that you don't need genes here except for those involved in learning, esp.
social learning - who tells who what to do is noticed by tots and up.  The
Kohlberg moral development level here in pre-school is "If I get rewarded
it must be good.  If I get punished it must be bad."  That's all until
several years later.  It is to be noted that in Kohlberg's scheme, most
adults don't get to the level of 5 or 6 and thus view all rules and laws as
sort of optional.  So, to contradict myself, some of us are a bit ovine.

Some of those statistics are fooling us into thinking that something will
take place if enough people are for it.  Look at us:  most of us favor gun
control.  Congress, no.  Plenty of other differences between what people
say they want and what the lawmakers will do.  Even in Egypt.  Leaders in
Egypt are terrified of Islam and keep it out as much as they can, like the
Muslim Brotherhood.

bill w

On Wed, Feb 28, 2018 at 10:42 AM, John Clark <johnkclark at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Tue, Feb 27, 2018 at 11:49 AM, William Flynn Wallace <
> foozler83 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > **
>> *Yes, it's ALWAYS both genetics and environment.  That should go without
>> saying.  But your claim is much more specific - obey adults. *
>>
>
> Not a gene to obey  adults, a gene to believe what adults say is true, or
> at least probably true. It's not difficult to see why there would be
> evolutionary pressure for such a gene to develop, or why a gene with the
> opposite tendency would be lethal. And if the devout didn't think the very
> young didn't have such a tendency they would not place such emphasis on
> having religious grade schools and even religious kindergarten. Yes
> sometimes children rebel but if such actions wasn't rare (compared with the
> times they didn't rebel) it wouldn't be revolutionary.
>
> > 
>> Society is changing
>>
>
> A gene that predisposes a child to believe what adults tell them will
> slow down the rate of social change but it will not slow down the rate of
> technological change, in fact technology itself would not exist without it.
>
>
>
>> > 
>>  read the Pinker book
>>
>
> I've read all of Pinker's books except for his newest "Enlightenment Now",
> and I'll get around to that before long.
>
>
>> >* *
>> *you are stereotyping badly - taking a few thousand (depending on if you
>> count Boko Haram and such) terrorists and making claims about the rest of
>> the billion or so followers.*
>>
>
> Stereotyping? I provided some hard data in my last post, you didn't. I'll
> give you some more, according to Pew research almost all Muslims in
> Afghanistan (99%) want barbaric sharia law imposed, and most in Iraq (91%)
> and Pakistan (84%) and Egypt (74%) .  Even in Ottawa, the capital of
> Canada,  62% of Muslims in that city think the country should be ruled
> by sharia law. These statistics may not be politically correct but facts
> are facts and there is something rotten in the heart of Islam . There is
> one bright spot, although 22% of Egyptians  have  a favorable opinion of
> Osama bin Laden that is better than what it was in 2007, back then it was
> 27%.
>
> >* *
>> *Penalties for nonobservance in Islam are great.*
>>
>
> True, thanks to good old sharia law. 
>
>
> >* *
>> *Genes simple?*
>>
>
> Compared with the environment very simple indeed.
>
>
>> >* *
>> *Do you know (of course you do - you can do the math) how many
>> interactions are possible among 20k genes,*
>>
>
>  I know it would take far FAR *FAR* more than 20,000 variables to define
> the environment.
>
>
>>
>> >* *
>> * Are you crazy? *
>
> I don't think so, but then crazy people usually don't. Perhaps that's
> probably a question best left to others to decide.
>
>  
> John K Clark
>
>
>
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