[ExI] Islamic culture (current) was Religions and violence

[Tomasz Rola]

On Mon, 2 Aug 2010, Keith Henson wrote:

> I am surprised that people on this list put such a large importance on
> religions as moving forces in the world.  In my estimation the horse
> collar or invention of Watt's steam engine, or the Newcomen engine
> that proceeded it was more important than religions.

Myself I am not much surprised (just a little), but I think that it's 
people who move the world. So whatever moves them, moves the world too.

As of religion giving excuse for predatory practices, there are a lot of 
other philosophies doing this as well (including atheistic or 
antireligious one). So let's not blame religion alone, especially if what 
we care about is improving something. But I suspect the real culprit is 
greed, or even more it is evolution-related wish to spread our genes at 
the expense of other beings.

IMHO we can go to great lenghts trying to hide from ourselves that what we 
really care about is to eat and to fsck. I find this fascinating.

Regards,
Tomasz Rola

--
** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature.      **
** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home    **
** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened...      **
**                                                                 **
** Tomasz Rola          mailto:tomasz_rola at bigfoot.com             **