[ExI] [Extropolis] Religion

[Keith Henson]

On Wed, Aug 7, 2024 at 4:33 PM Will Steinberg via extropy-chat
<extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>
> Mysticism is the basis of religion.  All religion starts with a ‘prophet’ type who realizes some kind of deep truth about reality or society.

Two recent US religions originated from women who had temporal lobe
brain damage.

> This truth is so compelling to people that they continue to listen and they spread the word.

As you well know, it is usually nonsense, not truth.  So why are human
minds susceptible to this class of memes?

Truth does not seem to be much involved.  Consider how many people
were deeply affected by the QAnon bs.  One of them was so affected
that he went there armed and insisted on being let into the (non
existent) basement.  I think he got 5 years in jail.  It was an
amazing story.

Keith

PS  I once spent considerable time on a picket talking to a
scientologist.  He noted that the members of this cult were subject to
scam after scam, particularly MLM scams.  I suspect this is due to a
genetic trait for gullibility, i.e., you are born with it, though I
have speculated that people could be trained to be resistant to cults
and other scams.  I would like to see someone investigate the genetic
backgrounds of cult members.  It seems to me that people with Mormon
family backgrounds are over represented in scientology, but I don't
have numbers.  (Mormons definitely sorted out the gullible.)


>  I can’t just say that a magic unicorn controls the world by pissing on a magic globe and make a movement—maybe a small cult of idiots.  But powerful religions are based on powerful truths.  As I mentioned, monotheism had incredible power based on the simple truth “everything looks different but it’s actually all one thing”.  Animism before that was based on the simple truth “different natural objects [gods] are different and have consistent patterns/behavior”.
>
> On Wed, Aug 7, 2024 at 3:46 AM efc--- via extropy-chat <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> On Tue, 6 Aug 2024, Dylan Distasio via extropy-chat wrote:
>>
>> > There are alot of additional directions I could go in as to why early, primitive religions exist in terms of explaining and
>> > controlling your environment (or rather the appearance of control) but I think the crux of my answer is in my argument above.
>>
>> I agree. My bet would be that the origin is safety/control and
>> explanation. Eventually it led to science, and hence the antagonism
>> between religion and science. Religion feels threatened.
>>
>> I'd also add that it's a nice tool to control society and
>> ensure a homogeneous culture and cooperation.
>>
>> But within the phenomenon of religion, you also have the mystics, which
>> I think started with the above, but found their way to an incredibly
>> strong internal experience, which kind of lessened the need for safety
>> and explanation for them, but they have always been a tiny minority so
>> perhaps not so relevant for the original question.
>>
>> > Memento mori.
>> >
>> > On Tue, Aug 6, 2024 at 7:58 PM Keith Henson <hkeithhenson at gmail.com> wrote:
>> >       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
>> >
>> >       --
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>> >
>> >
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