[ExI] Religion

[Keith Henson]

The interesting question is why do humans have religions at all? I
make a case that it is a side effect of selection for war.

Religion is a class of mutually exclusive memes. I.e., it is seldom
that a given person has more than one of them, so you don't expect
someone who identifies as a Catholic to also be a Methodist. This
brings you to the interesting conclusion that communism is a religion
since being one makes it unlikely to have any of the common religious
memes.

This classification does not help with the question of why humans have
(or are infested) with such memes. From how common this is, religious
memes (or something related) must have been important to survival in
the Stone Age.

Religious memes seem to be descended from xenophobic memes.

Xenophobic memes are the first step in the path to war. I think
genetic selection for war is the origin of susceptibility to religious
memes.


Keith