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Seien wrote:
<blockquote
cite="mid:7d6322030712100833o1994d8e0x5631d18f69bc013b@mail.gmail.com"
type="cite">
<div>Two points I would make on this email. Firstly, I would have
said that religion was a combination of two phenomena: antirational
memes, and the use of best available explanations. In a time when
people had barely any knowledge about How Things Work, the best use it
seemed they could put their creativity to was inventing mythologies to
explain the things they saw. In the absence of any real knowledge, this
<i>was</i> the best available explanation for the natural phenomena
they experienced. However, due to its obviously irrational qualities,
religion/mythology very quickly became an antirational meme, resisting
criticism through stubbornness rather than any kind of deep truth.
</div>
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This would work if religion were only about irrational and unreasonable
explanations for the world around you. But it is much deeper. Deeply
religious people will put the religion before everything else -
including their own lives and the lives of others. Faith is more
important than fact. There has to be some underlying benefit to this
behaviour or it wouldn;t have made it out of the first few people into
the general population. Maybe it's a side-effect - as an overdeveloped
sense of hope and there just happens to be a net benefit. <br>
<blockquote
cite="mid:7d6322030712100833o1994d8e0x5631d18f69bc013b@mail.gmail.com"
type="cite">
<div>Secondly, <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/11/14/ngod14.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/11/14/ixnewstop.html">
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/11/14/ngod14.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/11/14/ixnewstop.html</a></div>
<div><br class="webkit-block-placeholder">
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<div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana;">"<i>Growing
up in a religious environment was said to have little effect on belief.
Dr Hamer, who in 1993 claimed to have identified a DNA sequence linked
to male homosexuality, said the existence of the "god gene" explained
why some people had more aptitude for spirituality than others."
</i></span></div>
<div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="verdana"><i><br
class="webkit-block-placeholder">
</i></font></div>
<div>Like Ayaan Hirsi Ali, for instance.</div>
<div><br>
-- <br>
~Seien
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