okay, laymen, let's learn some evo-bio. start with [URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_inheritance_theory"]dual inheritance theory[/URL]. evolution and DNA are not conjoined at the hip (is that funny? i was trying). multiple studies have confirmed that whale cultures evolve, particularly in response to whaling (migration patterns are transmitted culturally). neat, huh? now you see the agricultural revolution for what it is: humans and a variety of plants and animals became a species complex, like a lichen (algae+fungi). we need each other to survive. *that's* evolution. so is this:
religion is a product of cultural evolution - it exists because he had a survival advantage at one point (transethnic identities, mostly). that will never go away. people *like* rituals and ceremonies, and if you don't let them have theirs, they'll make shit up. most of it is self training - there was an experiment where pigeons where trained to peck colored buttons. later, a mechanism was added to randomly drop food in the cage. the pigeons developed 'rituals' of pecking certain colors, trying to get the food, even though it was dispensed randomly. do you understand the implications?
dude, i never called you a stalinist. i was using the way by which the ussr and prc turned their ideologies into something like state religions (people leave offerings at mao's tomb). i called you a fanatic, because it seems to me that you hate religion for some personal reason and are using 'logic' to justify your hate. that doesn't fly. your premise seems to be that religions are invalid because they are bundled groups of ideas/memes that originated with actual humans instead of falling out of the sky. so?
consider - nuclear apocalypse, afterwards. there's no way you can teach your kids all of science - whatever you tell them, they will have to accept it as divine revelation. it may be true, but they can't prove it and don't want to. plus, you have to make up shit to keep them away from radioactive stuff and other poisons, and you do what you can. when they grow up, thinking 'isotopes' are evil spirits, but still knowing a fair bit of our knowledge (heliocentric, physics, etc) - are they religious or scientific? now, what are you?
Quote:malaria and world government
i had the honor of working near a brilliant dutch epidemiologist named jaap. one day we were discussing the evolutionary pressures on diseases, and he told me about a study he did with malaria in mice. see, in the long run, it benefits a parasite to evolve to non-virulence, as killing your host isn't a good plan. yet we still have killer diseases. jaap's experiment involved infecting mice with different strains of malaria, with known virulences, at the same time. it turns out that if a mouse has a mild strain and a virulent strain at the same time, the virulent strain wins outs, even if it kills the host. virulent diseases are more capable of coverting host to new germs. he told me this, just in normal conversation, then asked why i was looking at him with an expression of horror. i said disease:host::nation:earth. he said, oh, well, uh, yikes.
yikes is right. human societies function like parasites in the body of the earth. even though it is suicide to kill the world, so long as there are mutlple nations competing for resources, the one that best converts those resources to copies of itself will win, even if it kills the host. that's what america does - we turn petroleum into americanness at a catastrophic rate. and we're racing towards a brick wall. look how the usgov crushed the ussr. this isn't going to end well.
religion is a product of cultural evolution - it exists because he had a survival advantage at one point (transethnic identities, mostly). that will never go away. people *like* rituals and ceremonies, and if you don't let them have theirs, they'll make shit up. most of it is self training - there was an experiment where pigeons where trained to peck colored buttons. later, a mechanism was added to randomly drop food in the cage. the pigeons developed 'rituals' of pecking certain colors, trying to get the food, even though it was dispensed randomly. do you understand the implications?
dude, i never called you a stalinist. i was using the way by which the ussr and prc turned their ideologies into something like state religions (people leave offerings at mao's tomb). i called you a fanatic, because it seems to me that you hate religion for some personal reason and are using 'logic' to justify your hate. that doesn't fly. your premise seems to be that religions are invalid because they are bundled groups of ideas/memes that originated with actual humans instead of falling out of the sky. so?
consider - nuclear apocalypse, afterwards. there's no way you can teach your kids all of science - whatever you tell them, they will have to accept it as divine revelation. it may be true, but they can't prove it and don't want to. plus, you have to make up shit to keep them away from radioactive stuff and other poisons, and you do what you can. when they grow up, thinking 'isotopes' are evil spirits, but still knowing a fair bit of our knowledge (heliocentric, physics, etc) - are they religious or scientific? now, what are you?
My book, a setting for fantasy role playing games based on Bantu mythology: Ubantu
