[ExI] Function of religions

[Darren Greer]

Keith wrote:

"In that case you missed the main point of the article."

That is very likely. It was when I first joined this group and I was (and
still am) on a pretty steep learning curve. Not just for transhumanism, but
for the science in general. But I've developed this nascent love affair with
evolutionary psychology. It makes sense to me and explains a lot that prior
to my discovery of these ideas remained a kind of mystery, even in the
context of the basic principles of evolution as I was taught them in school.
Any good books to recommend on the subject? For a newcomer? I've been
reading stuff on the Internet but I still prefer a real book in my hands for
dedicated reading.

I do appreciate the time people take on here to add their ideas and correct
obvious errors. I make a lot of them, I know. But I process stuff by writing
things down, and even if I'm wrong, it helps to express them and be
corrected and asked to reconsider in light of new information than to keep
it locked up in my head and take it as gospel.

I will revisit the Clark study.

Darren

On Mon, Sep 27, 2010 at 12:53 PM, Keith Henson <hkeithhenson at gmail.com>wrote:

> On Mon, Sep 27, 2010 at 8:00 AM, spike <spike66 at att.net> wrote:
>
> snip
>
> > We have seen a religion become considered almost as a race, so that
> > criticism of it has become the practical equivalent to racism.  How did
> that
> > happen?
> >
> > So the temptation is to get one's philosophy redefined as a religion,
> even
> > if it really isn't one.  I recognize the temptation, but my ethical
> > intuition tells me this is wrong.
>
> Spike, we need to consider why humans have religions at all.  But
> first it is a feature of top predators that their numbers are
> ultimately limited by self predation.  Lions are a good example, they
> evolved the pride social organization as a response to lions killing
> lions.  Chimps are largely immune to predation and their numbers are
> limited by group on group war.
>
> The line that led to humans escaped predation by the big cats a long
> time ago so there has been plenty of time for evolution to act.  Human
> populations grow till they stress the ability of the ecosystem to
> support them.  Then a behavioral switch flips, they organize and and
> kill "the others."
>
> Religion, even if it isn't always easy to see, is based on xenophobic
> memes that are part of the organizational process leading to wars.
>
> Since a lot of populations around the world are under
> ecosystem/economic/ecological stress, mostly from accumulated
> population growth, it's no wonder that religious memes have become
> more of an influential factor.
>
> Now the logical thing would be to strongly restrain the birth rate and
> make ever effort to grow the economy in a way that did not depend on
> rapid depletion of resources.  But for reasons involving the
> conflicting interest of genes and the persons they are in, "war mode"
> makes people irrational.
>
> I think it is possible to get economic growth ahead of population
> growth and shut off the drift of so many populations into "war mode."
> As you know, I work on ways to solve the energy/carbon problems,
> trying to keep my own ego out of the analysis.  Unfortunately there
> are very few people trying to solve the problems.
>
> I don't hold out a lot of hope for the intermediate future (before the
> singularity).  Chances are the world will see a really drastic
> population reduction in a lot of places over the next few decades.
>
> Keith
>
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