[ExI] Nobel laureates tell Greenpeace to stop, opposing GMOs

[William Flynn Wallace]

Why do people even *have* the capacity to be infected by a "religious
mind virus?

Do the projected environmental conditions affect the rate or depth of
the "infection"?

Keith

Capacity to deal with or even understand the idea of abstractions comes
with the big brain.  The capacity may be a normal curve.  Somewhere down
below the average person this ability gradually vanishes.

To my mind, this ability is a large part of IQ.

Those down the list have so much trouble with abstractions that to
understand, they must objectify the ideas.  So God becomes an old man or
woman or snake or cat .................Heaven is a real place with gold
streets.  Martyrs get virgins as rewards.  And so on.  Not dead but
differently alive.

Along with all of this comes the inability to deal with contradictions
between religions, between religions and secular thought.  You have to
admit that theology is a very difficult subject for most people.  So they
just reject all but one and hold onto it with all mental claws.  Everyone
else is, therefore, totally wrong and have to be forced to 'see the
light'.  Some, of course, don't force.  Muslims do.  Christians of several
centuries ago do.  I don't know of another religion that does.

All religions that I know of are highly authoritarian, and so the average
Joe or Aziz is rewarded for just accepting what the bishops and imams say.
Heresy can be fatal.  I don't have to tell you how bloody-minded the
Christian church has been historically.

Real morons, those below 70 IQ, do very little what we call thinking.  The
9-11 attackers were probably near average.

A Freudian interpretation:  being 'attacked' by heretical thoughts from
one's unconscious requires putting up ego defenses.  The conscious mind
feels danger but is hardly aware of the source, though it gets hints of
it.  These may make the person angry with himself for having such an
important conflict to deal with, and so projects it outward, not being able
to admit the problem.  Then the anger turns to aggression against those who
are different - who, in fact, represent the heretical ideas coming from the
unconscious.  So here is where all the anger comes from and where it goes
and who it attacks.  I do not find this a totally complete and plausible
interpretation, but it has its points.  The person is attacking his own
unacceptable unconscious ideas.  He is not, then, the total believer he
thinks he is.  Quite the opposite.  He has to do something very powerful to
prove to himself that he is what he thinks he is.  Martyrs are generally
quite conflicted people.  Viz St Augustine.

I am not sure what is meant by the second question above.  Do you mean,
like growing up in a religion?

​bill w​

On Wed, Jul 6, 2016 at 6:26 PM, Keith Henson <hkeithhenson at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Wed, Jul 6, 2016 at 2:46 PM, John Clark <johnkclark at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On Wed, Jul 6, 2016 at Dan TheBookMan <danust2012 at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >> >
> >> It seems clear to me that the 02001 attacks were caused by the US's
> >> interventions in the Middle East.
> >
> >
> > In 2001 the USA had no soldiers in the Middle East and yet the 19
> suicidal
> > hijackers hated the USA more than they loved life. Why? Because they were
> > Muslim dimwits who believed their particular variation of the invisible
> man
> > in the sky theory was the only path to truth and justice, thus the fact
> that
> > the USA was far richer and more powerful than they were could only be
> > explained if they made a pact with the devil. Or to put it another way,
> the
> > 911 attack happened because 19 people were infected by a religious mind
> > virus that made them both stupid and evil.
>
> You don't take it far enough back, nor go into the evolutionary origins.
>
> Why do people even *have* the capacity to be infected by a "religious
> mind virus?
>
> Do the projected environmental conditions affect the rate or depth of
> the "infection"?
>
> Keith
>
>
> >  John K Clark
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >>
> >>
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
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> > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
> > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat
> >
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