[ExI] Do you have a secret family pass phrase?

[Keith Henson]

My experiences with the scientology cult and at the same time running
into evolutionary psychology gives me an odd view of why humans are
susceptible to religions at all.  In the view of EP, human behaviors
are either directly selected or are a side effect of something that
was selected.

Capture-bonding https://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Capture-bonding was
directly selected.  As I put it, women who bonded to their captors
became our ancestors, those that did not become breakfasts (or did not
reproduce).

The model of war which includes taking the young women of the defeated
tribe is a case where genes for war behaviour survive better than the
people with such genes (when the alternative to war is starvation).
It is a strange business where a person can be in conflict with their
genes.

Anyway, genes for irrational thinking/behavior were selected in the
past.  The behavior/irrational thinking are still expressed when
people think they have a bleak future.

The psychological mechanisms that give us capture-bonding give rise to
a number of otherwise hard to understand behaviours, "Partial
activation of the capture-bonding psychological trait may lie behind
Battered-wife syndrome, military basic training, fraternity hazing,
and sex practices such as sadism/masochism or bondage/discipline.
[11]"

Selection for war has provided humans with irrational thinking modes.
Religions are certainly irrational.  They propagate in human culture
because we have been selected for irrational thinking as well as
rational thinking.

(Unless the tribe is facing starvation, rational thinking is
evolutionary favored.)

Keith

(This is a preliminary draft and may be expanded.)

On Sun, Dec 29, 2024 at 9:11 AM Ben Zaiboc via extropy-chat
<extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>
> On 27/12/2024 14:45, efc at disroot.org wrote:
> > The mormons often seem more afraid of me, than I of them, when we
> > start to discuss philosophy and they soon tire of the conversation. ��
>
> I've had a similar experience with Jehovah's Witnesses. It's odd that
> the god squad seem most reluctant to talk to people who seem to actually
> know something about religion! It's like mathematicians being leery of
> anyone who shows any knowledge of maths.
>
> This may be my cynicism showing, but I suspect that it's because they
> are more interested in compliance with their particular viewpoint than
> understanding. If you want to understand things, you're obviously not
> good convert material!
>
> I think it was Luther who said that reason is the enemy of faith. Seems
> he was right.
>
> --
> Ben
>
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