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ORIGINAL: Bettawrekonize

Just out of curiosity, could you tell me where these genes are located?

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Obviously that's not what I said.

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Obviously I wasn't referring to justifications when religion originated or justifications of early man, I was referring to possible modern justifications. But you apparently have a very short sighted view of religion which really shows your lack of understanding to begin with.

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I don't think the Bible teaches people to lie and it doesn't teach people to murder each other.

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Indeed, I would say that the lack of religion would tend to make people believe that Carma is false and people would be more inclined to lie and murder without Carma. If evolution made religion to cope with guilt then it would make much more sense for evolution to eliminate guilt altogether.

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If you accept that evolution is true.

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All of this simply demonstrates the unfalsifiable nature of evolution.

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If a trait is beneficial, that's fine. If it's not, that's fine too, because evolution has no problems producing and then spreading unbeneficial traits. But you also said

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It was you that was arguing that religion provides a survival advantage and hence evolution produced it.

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Evolution is so non sensual that a child could see the problems with it if he only tried. That's exactly why the secular community insists on brainwashing students with evolution and censoring criticisms and opposing views. That's exactly why critical thinking against evolution is discouraged by the secular community.

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You're the one that seems to have a narrow perspective on religion, one that you basically made up with no substantiative evidence to support it.

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Have you read Darwins book, On the origin of species (or any of his books)? According to Darwin, evolution operates by selecting beneficial traits. If religion is un beneficial, then there is no reason for evolution to select it.

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I think Jhud's and my tone are very calm in comparison to yours. We're dealing with the issues substantively and since you can't refute anything we say, you simply accuse us of arguing with an emotional attachment. You wouldn't need to make such emotional accusations if you could argue substantively.

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My comment didn't lash out against you. Just because I said something that disagrees with you doesn't mean I am lashing out against you. Just calm down, see how I'm calm. It is your emotions telling you that anyone that disagrees with you is lashing out against you, not your intellect.

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Appeals to authority, excellent logic. Evolution is so nonsensusal

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that it resorts to tax funded brainwashing and the censorship of criticisms and opposing views in public schools to maintain itself.

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If evolution wants to be taken seriously then it needs to stop resorting to dishonest tactics to maintain itself.

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It needs to be able to allow students to be exposed to both sides and survive in the face of scrutiny.

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If not even the worlds leading biologists can produce an evolutionary viewpoint that can survive in the face of criticisms and opposing views (and hence it resorts to the censorship of criticisms and opposing views in public schools), then I see no reason for anyone to take evolution seriously.

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ORIGINAL: wayward1
It's obvious that that is precisely what you said, "it would seem that people with this gene tend to be more successful than people without it (since there are more theists than atheists in the world) and hence it could be said that religion still helps survivability and is therefore good for society."

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Well then you were changing the subject

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I was talking about how early man invented justification for what he "wanted" to do but felt guilty about.

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Yes, these are common and unfounded creationist fears. It is no surprise you share them.

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We would expect a true thing to be unfalsifiable, just like an invented supernatural thing is unfalsifiable. Their comparability in this one regard does not make the equals in every regard.

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ORIGINAL: Bettawrekonize


I was merely pointing out that evolution can be used to justify atrocities just as religion can.

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My point is that there is nothing substantiating you views, it's mere speculation. You take a very narrow minded view of religion with little to no substantiation whatsoever, you're basically making up something to make religion look bad.

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ORIGINAL: wayward1
Yep it was and I stand by that assertion.

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I look at as my own efforts to look at all of life and history as it is reasonable to assume that it really is.

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I sure did say all of that because all of that is true. If evolution didn't produce other than beneficial traits then every species that has ever existed would still exist, but 99% of the species that have ever existed are currently extinct. What benefits the recipient will give the recipient longevity. We could very well snuff ourselves out because of this "intelligence" we have so greately benefited from, and mother nature will have won after all, as she always does.

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ORIGINAL: Bettawrekonize

You're the one saying that religion was invented because it justifies murder and I am merely pointing out that religion is more likely to prevent murder than to justify it.

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In order for something to be considered true from a scientific perspective (though science doesn't deal with absolute truth), it must be falsifiable and unfalsified. Otherwise, I can say that undetectable magic fairy dust is causing the earth to rotate. Such a claim is unfalsifiable, but one shouldn't argue that it's true because it's unfalsifiable. Now you convince me even moreso that you have no idea what you're talking about. Look up Karl Popper.

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I meant that it sures up the minds of the murderers who would have commited the murders anyway, and surely did, just as patriotism sures up the mind of the military murderer.

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Nothing is every considered utterly "true" from a scientific perspective because no such thing as "unfalsifiable" or "proof" will ever exist.

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ORIGINAL: Bettawrekonize

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ORIGINAL: wayward1
Yep it was and I stand by that assertion.

Then answer my question, "How does this help humans survive?"

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and why are your assumptions any more reasonable than mine, or anyone elses?

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Evolution eliminates unbeneficial traits

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. If religion is so unbeneficial to society, why is it that religious people have always survived (and still survive) better than non - religious people. But you you say sounds much like a tautology. If it survives, it was beneficial, if it doesn't, it wasn't. Evolution makes no predictions in terms of what should survive. Yet, you are claiming that an unbeneficial traits (religion) has lead to our survival, something that evolution does not promote.

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ORIGINAL: Bettawrekonize

To say this is how religion originated is mere speculation, there is no reason for evolution to produce any such thing since you claim that those people would have murdered for survivability regardless. In other words, this doesn't produce any survival advantage for evolution to select it.

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Which is why I said that science doesn't deal with absolute proof.

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ORIGINAL: wayward1
I meant that it sures up the minds of the murderers who would have commited the murders anyway, and surely did, just as patriotism sures up the mind of the military murderer.

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I didn't say religion made things more peaceful, oh no. I said it made it possible for the warrior to cope with the guilt of his terrible duty by convincing him it was not only GOD'S idea, but God's direct ORDER, that he go and decimate his neighbor. He was inclined to decimate his neighbor on his own, he just didn't have the psychological know how to do it without a little self deception.

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They had to figure it out on their own. I'm merely asserting that the natural tendency would have been to place the blame on someone or something else for their atrocities to survive the distressing psychological experience and not go insane.

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Now that we do understand our psychology a little better, continued indulgence in this automatic self delusion could prove quite detrimental indeed. That is all I have to provide justification for based on my initial assertion, and I've already done that.

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You need only imagine yourself in their shoes to get my point. Surrounded by a violent natural world, unaware of ANY of what we now know about our psychology, and absent the social interaction that teaches us all how to behave, a primative human would have been a virtual basket case. It's said that if God wasn't real we would have had to invent him. This is never more obvious than in these thought experiments. I'll freely admit they are nothing more than thought experiments, and challenge you to explain why they are flawed.

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ORIGINAL: wayward1

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and why are your assumptions any more reasonable than mine, or anyone elses?

They're not. Feel free to present your argument. Base it on logical induction alone, and I'll rebut refute or agree as appropriate. Eventually we'll either agree with each other or we won't.

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ORIGINAL: Method

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ORIGINAL: gluadys
Yes, separation of church and state is very recent in human history. In reading the biblical prophets, for example, one must always keep in mind that their agenda was as much political as religious for in their day no such separation existed.

And even separation of church and state doesn't really separate religion and politics.

I have always thought that separation of church and state is something that both theist and atheist agree on.

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ORIGINAL: Bettawrekonize

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ORIGINAL: wayward1
I meant that it sures up the minds of the murderers who would have commited the murders anyway, and surely did, just as patriotism sures up the mind of the military murderer.

Actually, what you said (in contrast to what you're saying now) was

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I didn't say religion made things more peaceful, oh no. I said it made it possible for the warrior to cope with the guilt of his terrible duty by convincing him it was not only GOD'S idea, but God's direct ORDER, that he go and decimate his neighbor. He was inclined to decimate his neighbor on his own, he just didn't have the psychological know how to do it without a little self deception.

In other words, according to you, without religion, they would not have done it (but now you're contradicting yourself). Which leads me back to my original question.

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Again, this is mere speculation. To claim that this would be the tendency is speculation. If it doesn't provide a survival advantage, then there is no reason for evolution to cause such delusions. If it does, then evolution might as well do away with guilt altogether. Better and easier to do away with guilt than to create religious systems that justify the lack of guilt.

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Then who's to say that people can't indulge in other delusions (like the ones I've mentioned). If evolution can promote delusions for the sake of survivability, then there is no reason for anyone to recognize anything as being a delusion as long as not doing so aids survivability.

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First of all, you are assuming evolution to be true. Outside of this assumption, there is no reason to believe anything that you say is true (which shows that evolution relies on speculation to explain things). Secondly, you are assuming that these conditions existed. Thirdly, none of this explains why evolution would have had to invent religion to justify killing others for survival. Like you are saying now, man was perfectly capable of killing each other to survive (which makes no sense, but it 's what you seem to be saying) without religion. But why would evolution produce something that causes us to kill each other when killing each other is not beneficial to our survival? You are merely appealing to imagination.

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ORIGINAL: gluadys
Well, I agree with it, but you would get a strong argument from some theists, especially Muslims.

But my point is that when we are looking at history, we need to remember this separation was not part of the way society worked back then. Therefore religion in those states was always political and politics was always religious. This was as true of the nations of Israel and Judah as of Egypt, Babylon and Rome. Reading the prophets as politicians (and Jesus as a politician) opens up a lot of insights into biblical literature.

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ORIGINAL: drj11

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ORIGINAL: gluadys
Well, I agree with it, but you would get a strong argument from some theists, especially Muslims.

But my point is that when we are looking at history, we need to remember this separation was not part of the way society worked back then. Therefore religion in those states was always political and politics was always religious. This was as true of the nations of Israel and Judah as of Egypt, Babylon and Rome. Reading the prophets as politicians (and Jesus as a politician) opens up a lot of insights into biblical literature.

In ancient history, it is really better not even to think of it as religion at all... it can tend to lead you into superimposing modern ideas of religion onto ancient beliefs... and there just really is no good correlation that I can think of, which really does make it difficult for someone in modern times to wrap their head around it.

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ORIGINAL: Aristocrat
One thing remains the same though. At the fundamentalist level, the religion powerbrokers and the government powerbrokers of ancient times were in an ongoing conflict.

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I think that maybe this is another good reason for the separation of church and state.

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ORIGINAL: wayward1
No, I absolutely am not. If religion made it possible for the warrior to cope with the guilt of the necessity of killing, it was not the REASON for his killing.

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Read more carefully and we won't have to keep going over the same things.

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I didn't say it was fact. How exactly would evolution "do away with guilt"?

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Religion, or more precisely, any idea that a being can imagine that makes it either dutiful or someone else's idea to take a life, or both, would be beneficial to a being who was both required to kill and aware of the value of life.

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A being that refused to kill to protect its family would quickly facilitate the extinction of its kind and thereby be "selected against".

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In the wild, killing comes easily. It truly is kill or be killed, and I believe this would be our nature if you could remove our self awareness.

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Religion and science so far share the burden of having "invented" things capable of massive harm.

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Wrong, and silly

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Well good. You just said that if evolution is true, everything I'm saying makes sense.

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ORIGINAL: gluadys

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ORIGINAL: Aristocrat
One thing remains the same though. At the fundamentalist level, the religion powerbrokers and the government powerbrokers of ancient times were in an ongoing conflict.

That's fairly true of the Middle Ages: Pope vs. Emperor and all that. It is not so true of ancient civilizations. Except for the brief monotheistic revolution of Akhenaton, the cooperation of religious and political power in ancient Egypt was pretty close and ensured a mostly stable society for centuries on end.

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I think that maybe this is another good reason for the separation of church and state.

I think both the conflict model and the co-operative model are good reasons for the separation. The tyranny of religious and governmental authorities working together is almost more frightening than when they are jousting for supremacy.

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ORIGINAL: Bettawrekonize

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ORIGINAL: wayward1
No, I absolutely am not. If religion made it possible for the warrior to cope with the guilt of the necessity of killing, it was not the REASON for his killing.

You said, "He was inclined to decimate his neighbor on his own, he just didn't have the psychological know how to do it without a little self deception."

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Read more carefully and we won't have to keep going over the same things.

Read your own words more carefully, then admit that you contradicted yourself.

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I didn't say it was fact. How exactly would evolution "do away with guilt"?

How exactly would evolution create religion? How exactly does evolution create guilt? You are the one saying that evolution created religion to cope with guilt, something that evolution allegedly produced as well. Why would evolution even create guilt in the first place if it was so detrimental for survival? Why not have natural selection select genetic traits that lack the guilt that causes people not to survive instead of selecting traits that produce elaborate religions to delude people with in order to cope with something that evolution produced in the first place? It would seem to be much easier and more probable for natural selection to simply destroy the guilt trait that it produced than to produce new elaborate traits to cope with an unnecessary and harmful trait that it produced to begin with.

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Religion, or more precisely, any idea that a being can imagine that makes it either dutiful or someone else's idea to take a life, or both, would be beneficial to a being who was both required to kill and aware of the value of life.

Why would it be beneficial if these people would have killed regardless of religion?

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A being that refused to kill to protect its family would quickly facilitate the extinction of its kind and thereby be "selected against".

Animals have been surviving for some time now without religion.

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In the wild, killing comes easily. It truly is kill or be killed, and I believe this would be our nature if you could remove our self awareness.

If evolution produced the guilt that causes murderers to feel guilty and if this guilt was detrimental to our survival, why not just select genes more similar to those animals that don't have the guilt that harms their survival?

If these people would have killed each other without religion (and, as you seem to be suggesting, somehow this killing is beneficial to their survival) then I still don't see how religion helped these people survive since they would have killed each other to survive regardless. Are you suggesting that those who murdered without religion died because they couldn't cope with the guilt and hence natural selection selected those that murdered in the name of religion? Then why don't animals produce religion to cope with their guilt? Clearly, religion is not needed for animals to cope with their actions, so there is no reason for it to be produced for us to cope with our actions. Why would evolution even produce traits that would cause people to die of guilt in the first place, if that is detrimental to their survival? How does evolution producing religion to cope with guilt help people survive? If evolution produced religion to cope with the guilt of murder, it would seem to be detrimental for our survival for evolution to produce murders to begin with. Why didn't evolution merely eliminate the traits that caused people to murder to begin with instead of producing murderers and then producing religion to cope with the guilt of murder?

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Religion and science so far share the burden of having "invented" things capable of massive harm.

If religion has caused massive harm, why would evolution select religious traits to begin with?

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Wrong, and silly

If evolution is capable of creating delusions (as you said) then I don't see how it is wrong or silly. You are the one advocating that evolution created delusions for the sake of survivability and that those who were deluded couldn't recognize that they were deluded.

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Well good. You just said that if evolution is true, everything I'm saying makes sense.

No. That's not what I said. I said that what you said assumes evolution to be true. If one were not to assume evolution to be true, then there is no reason to claim that evolution predicts that religion should exist and there is no reason for evolution to produce religion to begin with. You are basing your assumption that evolution should produce religion based on the fact that religion exists, but that does not show that evolution should indeed produce religion. That is, there is no reason to say that evolution would produce religion other than the fact that religion exists. It doesn't make sense that evolution would produce religion, but that's not to say that the existence of religion falsifies evolution (because UCD is unfalsifiable).

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ORIGINAL: wayward1
I don't think ANYONE can avoid exposure to the Christian "side" in this country

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ORIGINAL: wayward1
But my approach is unbiased to some important extent because it also has bad things to say about science on many levels, which you would know if you had access to the rest of the work that I've compiled.

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History would appear to report that they favored their killer side, usually out of pure necessity, and used religion to supress the self awareness that conflicted with it.

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I am talking about the ORIGINS of religion, as in very early stirrings of the soul that could almost only have been imagined to be from outside ourselves.

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ORIGINAL: wayward1
I've taken quite enough time away from my loved ones for you. If anyone has anything worthwhile to add to this discussion I'll be watching.