[ExI] What is religion? What is god was The Meaning of the Universe

[Keith Henson]

On Thu, Jun 16, 2016 at 2:36 AM, William Flynn Wallace
<foozler83 at gmail.com> wrote:

>> Then what good is God?  Why not eliminate ?the middle man, go with the
>> causal process, and kick God to the curb?
>>
>> ?God is a useless fifth wheel. ?
>
>> ? John K Clark?
>
> Have you read any Joseph Campbell?  Every tribe has a set of myths.  These
> are ways of making sense of the world. men, women, war, everything (also
> check out Carl Jung and the contents of the collective unconscious).

What is religion?  Why do humans have them at all?

I make the case from evolutionary biology (or evolutionary psychology)
that religions, every damn one of them, are xenophobic memes.  The
evolved human capacity for religions is a side effect of wars being
"better" for genes at times of ecological overshoot than the
alternative of starving in place.  From the viewpoint of genes, on
average wars, due to population in excess of current ecological
carrying capacity, turned out to be 37% better in a simple model.
Since population growth and ecological variation created this
condition roughly once a generation, that was a hell of a selection.
It's no wonder that wars are close to universal among human cultures.

>From Wikipedia:

"The chronicler Robert the Monk put this into the mouth of Urban II:

... this land which you inhabit, shut in on all sides by the seas and
surrounded by the mountain peaks, is too narrow for your large
population; nor does it abound in wealth; and it furnishes scarcely
food enough for its cultivators. Hence it is that you murder one
another, that you wage war, and that frequently you perish by mutual
wounds."

So far this is orthodox EP.  Tribes make all sorts of distinctions to
dehumanize those they kill in organized attacks.  These xenophobic
memes are the origins of our religions and religious practices.
Simple rules for the last millions of years; If the future looks good,
you can trade women with the different ones.  If it looks bleak, try
to kill them and take their resources.  He goes on:

"Let therefore hatred depart from among you, let your quarrels end,
let wars cease, and let all dissensions and controversies slumber.
Enter upon the road to the Holy Sepulchre; wrest that land from the
wicked race, and subject it to yourselves ... God has conferred upon
you above all nations great glory in arms. Accordingly undertake this
journey for the remission of your sins, with the assurance of the
imperishable glory of the Kingdom of Heaven."

> An increasing number of people don't seem to need the old myths.  I am one
> and apparently you are another.  But some people will go with tradition
> rather than thinking and reasoning because of the strong social support
> they get from it (and the possible inadequacy of their thinking and
> reasoning processes).  They also get a free 'get out of Hell' card, so
> death is not a problem now.  If people in this group had one they'd quit
> thinking about getting iced.
>
> Many have said that you cannot understand people until you understand their
> myths.

More fundamental than the particular local set of myths is why people
have myths at all.

> I tend to agree.  Worth study if not worth believing.  Most of
> Mississippi's trouble come from most of us being Baptist, and I am dead
> serious.

"Mississippi came in last in our ranking of state economies. "
http://www.businessinsider.com/state-economy-ranking-july-2015-2015-7

I think this is a bigger factor, but it's hard to tell how much
culture, including religion, influences income per capita.  It is more
obvious how low and falling income per capita influences people's view
the future being bright or bleak.  The Arab Islamic culture, with high
population growth and low to negative economic growth is a recipe for
war and other violent behavior because people sense bleak futures and
that turns up the spread and intensity of xenophobic memes.

Keith