RE: Evil Atheists
September 16, 2011 at 5:51 pm
(This post was last modified: September 16, 2011 at 6:06 pm by The Grand Nudger.)
You seem to be ignoring the fact that most societies did not, in fact, survive. Most times, some other "theistic society" had a hand in their demise. Guess it doesn't always work out after all eh? Just how far back do you think religion extends into the record? Guess you don't mind worshiping booby dolls as long as it works right? Satanists are theists too btw (though I'm sure some would disagree). We don't have any evidence of "theistic" systems of morality beyond the neolithic, which leaves us with about 95% of our time here unaccounted for, and in fact we have plenty of evidence for animism in it's place. That's 95% of our time as Homo Sapiens btw, with about 2.5million years where god seemed to lack any sort of representation to our genus. That's an unimpressive 0.5% left to theistic morality, and yet here we are. Haven't even considered the "morality" of social animals, which have existed since at least the Cambrian, half a billion years ago. At this point the space left to theism isn't even worth mention.
"Value of religion
Organized religion emerged as a means of providing social and economic stability to large populations through the following ways:
Organized religion served to Justify the central authority, which in turn possessed the right to collect taxes in return for providing social and security services to the state. The empires of Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia were theocracies, with chiefs, kings and emperors playing dual roles of political and spiritual leaders.[9] Virtually all state societies and chiefdoms around the world have similar political structures where political authority is justified by divine sanction.
Organized religion emerged as means of maintaining peace between unrelated individuals. Bands and tribes consist of small number of related individuals. However states and nations are composed of thousands or millions of unrelated individuals. Jared Diamond argues that organized religion served to provide a bond between unrelated individuals who would otherwise be more prone to enmity. He argues that the leading cause of death among hunter gatherer societies is murder."
Control, short and sweet.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_religions
"Value of religion
Organized religion emerged as a means of providing social and economic stability to large populations through the following ways:
Organized religion served to Justify the central authority, which in turn possessed the right to collect taxes in return for providing social and security services to the state. The empires of Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia were theocracies, with chiefs, kings and emperors playing dual roles of political and spiritual leaders.[9] Virtually all state societies and chiefdoms around the world have similar political structures where political authority is justified by divine sanction.
Organized religion emerged as means of maintaining peace between unrelated individuals. Bands and tribes consist of small number of related individuals. However states and nations are composed of thousands or millions of unrelated individuals. Jared Diamond argues that organized religion served to provide a bond between unrelated individuals who would otherwise be more prone to enmity. He argues that the leading cause of death among hunter gatherer societies is murder."
Control, short and sweet.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_religions
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