[extropy-chat] 'a process of non-thinking called faith' 2 (2)

[Acy Stapp]

Human children naturally believe most everything their parents tell them.
This is obviously adaptive as it is something of a prerequisite for the
transmission of human culture and also allows children to learn from rare
experiences their parents or tribe have had (eg 'Call for help if you see a
lion') before they have had a chance to experience things for themselves.

Religion is a memetic virus which rides on top of this. Faith is the
component which teaches that to question the nature of things is bad and
that to accept what you are taught is true and complete. It's basically an
immune system for religious memes.

Dawkin's new book "The God Delusion" is quite informative and well written
and I recommend it to all here.

Acy

On 11/17/06, Robert Bradbury <robert.bradbury at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> On 11/17/06, Keith Henson <hkhenson at rogers.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> > Faith is a manifestation of the psychological mechanism that (in
> > appropriate conditions) leads to wars.  Wars were the evolved hunter
> > gatherer mechanism for keeping the human population in bounds that could
> > be supported by the ecosystem.
> >
>
> Keith, I think the evidence for prehistoric "population control" were slim
> to none.  As the dominant and migratory population in ancient times if
> humans exhausted the local resources they just got up and migrated (which is
> why we are all over the planet).  Wars are more fundamentally about
> spreading ones genes.  You can cite everything from the current situation in
> the Sudan where the Arabs are specifically raping the non-Arab women to (a)
> impregnate them with their genes and (b) make them undesirable to non-Arab
> men.  Men do not like to dedicate resources to children which are clearly
> not theirs or at least not closely related to them (children of brothers or
> sisters).
>
> Another example is the recent evidence that American Indians may have
> engaged in hunting parties for the purpose of capturing women.  Indeed in
> war one general outcome for the losers is that the men are killed but the
> women are broubht back to make *more* babies.  This is entirely a
> consequence of the fact that men have greater abilities to go out and get
> resources and making babies is cheap while for women making babies is both
> resource intensive and tends to diminish their ability to care for children
> they already do have.
>
> Wars are due to the desire to get resources to have more sex and produce
> more children thus spreading ones genes.  If one has ever watched two males
> (elephants, lions, etc.) fighting for dominance one realizes its all about
> who gets the harem.
>
> Robert
>
-- 
Acy Stapp

"When I'm working on a problem, I never think about beauty. I think only how
to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not
beautiful, I know it is wrong." -- R. Buckminster Fuller (1895 - 1983)
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20061117/8f867cc4/attachment.html>