Hypothesis: the more educated you are the less likely you are to be religious

faetal on 7/2/2012 at 18:32

I was waiting to find out more about your cock and balls. I felt you were just getting to the crux of the narrative.

Goldmoon Dawn on 7/2/2012 at 18:58

Quote Posted by Independent Thief

Piglick-the best reason why comm-chat should be canned for good.:rolleyes:

Piglick-the best reason why comm-chat is good. :ebil:

zombe on 7/2/2012 at 19:23

Quote Posted by faetal

I kind of miss Beleg.

This thread sure turned to shit the moment Independent Thief felt the need to grace us with his presence.

mgeorge on 7/2/2012 at 20:39

I find this a fascinating subject. First off, let me state that I’m not very educated and barely made it out of High School. I just went through pretty much every page in this thread and while I understand the general gist of the thread, half the things being discussed are theory’s and dissertations I’ve never heard of or had any inclination to learn. Maybe sometimes it’s a blessing not to be very educated.

Anyway as to the OP’s original question, I’m not sure if an educated person is more likely to be an Atheist but I suspect it may be true simply because a person more learned is going to question a book and teachings that can’t be validated.

On a personal level I don’t consider myself Christian, (including any religion), or an Atheist. I’m kind of in the middle and believe that something had to get this whole humanity thing off the ground. What it is I have no clue, and I try not to ponder it very much, but as I get older I find it’s something I think more and more about.

Here’s what bothers me though. I know many so called religious people that go to church every week and consider themselves good Christians. (I have no knowledge of other religions so I’ll just relate to what little I know of Christianity here). Yet many of them don’t follow the “rules” made up by “God”, if there is such a thing. Many of them cheat on their wife’s, drink in excess, screw over family members and are generally NOT good Christians, at least according to His teachings.

But you know what? Just show up for church every Sun. and you’re good to go. No problem. God forgives all doesn’t he? I just fucked my best friend’s wife, but hey I confessed to God and He’s OK with it. I need that inheritance cash from our Dads estate more than my brother so that’s OK. Right God? Right my son!

I may sound like an Atheist but I’m not really. I just have a hard time swallowing that some good looking dude with a beard is going to forgive me for any sins I may commit. Especially when this dude has let so many bad things happen to so many people spanning thousands of years. People still kill each other over religious beliefs and I find it hard to fathom that anyone in this day and age can be that fucking moronic. Is that God’s fault or humanities stupidity?

Sometimes in general conversation with people I’ll make jokes about God. I’ll tell them I asked God for some cash as I’m broke, but he didn’t come through for me. What a dick! They then look at me horrified as though I’d just murdered someone.

The way I look at it, if God can’t take a joke, who can?

faetal on 7/2/2012 at 20:44

If you did, for any reason want an umbrella term for your state of belief, might I recommend this: (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deism)

Meaningless to a lot of people not interested in theology, but could save you time if you wanted to sum up in future.

Beleg Cúthalion on 7/2/2012 at 21:56

Quote Posted by faetal

I probably shouldn't as I feel like I am essentially wrangling with cognitive dissonance rather than points, but here goes (it's amazing how you'll let anything distract you when you have to write a thesis)...

The distraction is indeed amazing but since your dismissal of ANYTHING disagreeing with your view of religion as the crusades/creationism/annoying-parents-in-law-at-dinner thing is remarkably persistant, I cannot help but assume that cognitive dissonance is exactly what you suffer from, despite your constant claims to fully base your observations on empirical evidence. Like memes for instance, hahaha...

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The dying out of religions is linked to their stickiness as ideas. Do you think missionaries travel the world killing tribal leaders? No.

No, they (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Boniface#Early_missionary_work_in_Frisia_and_Germania) felled trees. But missionaries don't exactly lay out flysheets at the village center either. Christianity was established with a legal backup. Islam spread with conquest and social benefit linked to conversion. Fatimid Ismailism spread from a new state and its missionary network planning more conquest. Charlemagne enforced violence to baptise the Saxons (so violently in fact that his clerical advisors became really concerned). Blaming all this on memes and their habit of taking over the planet is like claiming that one wolf pack wipes out another because the first pack's tapeworms were superior. Plus, it's throwing Occam's Razor out on the compost.

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Also, many religions have survived conquest too, albeit some have had to carry on in secret despite threat of death. It is ALL about the strength of the idea rather than any old idea being transmitted by force.

So you think that those little elements of polytheistic paganism in Christian Europe remained because they were still better than monotheism, despite monotheism being superior in the first meme story? Or that the superior socialism meme wiped out religion in eastern Europe but was in return overcome by even more superior capitalism/still-somehow-Christian-thingy afterwards? Shouldn't selfish memes avoid syncretism (like in...say... the Caribbean or Indonesia) instead of letting one's own superior ideas drown? As I said, there is nothing wrong with the general idea of good things overcoming bad things, but it isn't necessarily related to thoughts with socialising problems.

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The idea of memes has been around since the '70s and has only become stronger as it is more intensely researched. Even from a basic mechanistic viewpoint, it is very sound, as DDL aptly showed (and you failed to grasp).

Creation is very sound as well, with respect that we have the luxury of having debates on the internet and banana juice. But wait, didn't you ask for evidence when I threw in a transcendent layer? Glad it's not just me noticing that memetics is like a wooden brick set compared to the instruments of cultural sciences or semiotics. The idea is fascinating, just like with evolution, but if it doesn't meet the e.g. historical evidence, one must either cut it back to something we already have (and the basic idea of memetics is even older than the 70s I think) or abandon it in favor of something more fit. Keeping it for the sake of the funny parasite analogy is understanable but....

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The memetic tendency to encourage larger families in religious teaching is more about trying to increase the number of The Faithful.

Yes of course, it's not about survival per se, it's about the bug. :rolleyes: Do you know any example of when and where a religion evolved (this means I'm not talking about contemporary people claiming that hundreds of years old scriptures are still verbally valid) which encouraged having and [evil laugh] indoctrinating more children (which is a pejorative ex post assessment, in case you didn't notice, will you dig up the earth as a disc thing next?) than the social context would suggest?

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The actual discussion in other words, took some turns which you didn't much like, so now you want to talk about something else. Got it.

From the human point of view indeed I do. You gave some interesting insights for which I thank you and in fact I didn't want to argue for the sake of argument. You like to see me as someone who argues out of sheer fear for his own beliefs and has stopped understanding your superior themes long ago. Well, I'm pretty sure I've understood them all, and concerning the evidences I mostly agree with what you came up with. It's the... scope of it all which is my main point of concern, the cognitive science part (or "view from the outside" which doesn't exist for you) as it were.

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We justify a system of law and order primarily based on what we as humans find to be wrong, based on our basic evolved morals and ethics. Surely it can't be ignored that most basic laws (the obvious ones) are very well superimposed onto the dove-hawk game dynamics. The more complex stuff, such as copyright law, litigation etc.. are based primarily on frequent occurrences of trends which law makers, businesses and occasionally the public decided needed dealing with. Religion and the supernatural has nothing to do with, and should never have anything to do with the writing of laws (though that doesn't stop religious idiots trying to ban abortion, gay marriage etc...).

Now we're talking...more or less. I mean, not the idiot parts of it, but I think the polemics are too deep into the discussion anyway. Religion is an attempt to reinforce the "good" aspects of evolution that guarantee e.g. survival of the group. If you look at old religious laws they usually go along with survival tactics, even the ones we'd consider old-fashioned which deal with confinement. At the expense of more quick evolution thanks to harsh selection, it considers the community (and evolution itself does that as well, as we've already discussed). As you said there is a need to deal with it, so what's so freaking obscure about a view on evolution or life in general which maybe even tries to avoid the perils that come with evolution's trial-and-error system? Of course there is no "personal need" to add in a transcendent layer if we can all live and die as we like, but if we think about how life works on this planet, we MUST consider evolution as... and this is indeed difficult to put in words... as a thing to deal with, even if it happens around and through us all the time.

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Right, so prior to formal indoctrination of children, you are saying that religious parents just let their children go their own existential way? You're saying that there is no inherent expectation in Christianity to teach children the religion as an accepted set of truths? Were you raised to believe in god? With regards to fingers in ears, it should be worth noting that many successful religions pretty much teach that scripture should not be questioned and place HUGE importance on FAITH, i.e. the acceptance of truths in the absence of evidence. In fact, the stronger the faith, the better the acolyte. If you question the word of god, you are seen as being weak of faith.

Oh yes, now you're taking the very caricature of religion which seems to be the only one you are able to imagine, just like this:

Quote Posted by faetal

MATTHEW 8:21 A man sought to follow Jesus, but he wanted to bury his recently deceased father before he went. Jesus replied, "Follow me, and let the dead bury their own dead." Jesus ignored the man’s grief.

If you're not getting that the message of this line is most likely "If you do something important, do it with all your strength", I hardly doubt that you'll understand anything that goes beyond genes and very very basic elements of social life. Religion started out as an interpretation of the world, that's for instance the approach of Daniel Dennett (although he carefully enough adds that this might also be the case because there is indeed a deity) and think that's even what you are supposed to think, so why take the many instances in which evolving religion referred to plain worldly circumstances and hold them up decades later in order to make painfully anachronistic accusations? Strawmen, all of them.

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No it isn't. You don't get what survival of the fittest means clearly. The selection factors may have changed, but those who have children who are likely to go on to have other children are still throwing their genes into the future. The factors may have changed, but the mechanism remains intact.

I said it's not the SIMPLE survival of the fittest rule, hence referring to the complexity. Do you try to understand what I'm up to or merely waiting for the first wording to collide with your knowledge?

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How would I organise human life? Simple - people go about their business and think what ever they like, but wrong doing punishable by law as it is.

But law assumes an intent. It makes a difference between this and accident, so do we all every day. Guilt is related to both but if it was a "personal feeling based on epiphany" it wouldn't be congruent with the two. If my decisions, though, are based on the precast patterns of evolution and what I ended up being equipped with, my decisions are not only less intentional, but living or executing evolution might result in guilt that is nothing internal ("because I was right in doing it") but only in relation to others ("who deserved it from my point of view"). Can you judge the traits of evolution that favour certain attributes against those which drop them, in order to see which human actions deserve promotion and which penalty? Would your law, as I assume (and probably agree), always decide for the good of the community, even against local progress? I would present it with the example of a guy shooting a disabled woman (just because disability is a catchy illustration for what might be evolutionary "junk") and having no regrets about it, but the evolutionary disadvantage of having a guy who shoots persons in your midsts is easily understood. Maybe something else comes to mind.

Quote Posted by DDL

I think I almost spat my tea out reading this: Religion: not becoming obsolete, it's just that U GUISE KILLED ~~JESUS~~ SOMEONE
-actually which charismatic leaders ARE we talking about here? I'm very confused.

Have a look for instance at the many imam characters in Shii history. Every sect stood and fell with the rise and fall of its leader, some survived because of the circumstances, some disintegrated into orthodox Sunni islam, despite they had a meme which isolated them from them in the first place, according to memetics.

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And I kinda lost the will to care about debating anything with Beleg anymore. I mean, I tried, but if I have to clarify things like this, then it's pointless.
For the record, Beleg, there is no clearly defined delineation of "idea", no clean benchmark to say "that is exactly where that idea starts and ends, and THAT is exactly where that other idea starts and ends". It's an inherently loose term. Religion is an idea. It's also composed of other ideas, themselves composed of other ideas. Many of these ideas overlap and spread and also affect OTHER ideas, often ideas unrelated to religion itself (the idea of death as something to be feared, for instance, is a powerful aspect of religion, but you don't need to be religious to fear death). You can't just say "hah, religion is MORE TAHN ONE IDEAA!!!11 SO U LOSE", because all you'd be demonstrating is an inexplicably terrifying level of inappropriate attention to detail and total and utter lack of sense of context (unless that was the idea?).

I'm very sorry for the tea and everything, but your post read like you simplified it to that extent (left aside that memetics is already simplifying a lot of things, which is why I'd agree for now with the latter part of your post). For now I'd blame it on my rushed reading.

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Shit, what am I doing? You're not going to actually listen to this anyway.

No, I read it, computer reading voices usually sound crappy. But thanks for your kind words.

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Fuck it. Ok, let's have a quick (and hilariously specific) question: why does muscular dystrophy exist? Why would any being capable of empathy and with the power to intervene be content to sit on the sidelines in his/her/its transcendent layer (see, I can use the buzzwords, who said I couldn't?) and watch young boys progressively lose their ability to walk, and then their ability to breathe, before dying in their mid-twenties from either heart or respiratory failure after a life of muscle weakness and constant pain? What kind of shitty god would let this happen, and why?
I know, I know, it's a theodicy question, but I note you haven't really provided an answer to any of those yet.
(and the nice thing about "why is god such a fucking dick" questions is that us evolutionary biologists have totally sensible, non-handwavy-'moves in mysterious ways' answers)

As soon as you answer why your totally elegant evolutionary system cannot exist without having unlucky suffering bastards with muscular dystrophy for the "error" part of trial-and-error... but is still awesome, I'd probably care to tackle theodicy again. ;) If god allows them and evolution does, why would god be less awesome if he even offers eternal life for everyone? :p

Quote Posted by faetal

I kind of miss Beleg.

Hey, I might be coming to London this year to check a certain Arabic manuscript. You're not accidentally around to have a chat and drink apple juice?

Nicker on 7/2/2012 at 23:12

Quote Posted by Independent Thief

Actually all of human history is humans going on 'violent, looting, raping and killing free-for-all' blood and madness sprees whether inspired by religious or secular ideas (or simply for the fun of it in some cases). Now we just go about it with better weapons.

Oh FFS!!!! If that's all we ever did there would be no libraries to burn or cities to loot. The majority of us would have died in infancy and there would be no internet on which to spew bland, insulting generalities about humanity.

As to your previous assertion, that in adversity the majority of people revert to an animalistic state, I call bullshit. Rather descend into chaos after a disaster the exact opposite happens. Our genetics kick in and we spontaneously organise brigades of first responders. We form bucket brigades, dig people out of the rubble, care for the injured and defend the weak. In fact, time and time again, it is the well intentioned but misguided interventions of government agencies that exacerbate the suffering rather than relieve it.

It's not a fuzzy fantasy. Watch images from the Arab Spring. People routinely braving live fire to rescue the fallen and transport them in makeshift ambulances to impromptu field hospitals

Despite wars, despite disasters, despite despots and despite ideologically enforced ignorance, human society recovers and returns to the very path of sharing liabilities and benefits, which built the cities and created the art and composed the music and created all the other sublime expressions we are capable of.

DDL on 7/2/2012 at 23:14

Ok, I'll bite. Dystrophin, the gene, is HUGE. It makes up about 0.1% of the entire human genome. That's an awful lot of nucleotides to depend on remaining error-free. While the vast majority of that sequence is 'intronic', i.e. stuff that gets spliced out when you're actually expressing the gene, that very intronic structure is excessive: it has more than 70 exons (or snippets of DNA that actually code for stuff, interspersed with the introns). This in itself is a major risk factor, since it's not just errors in actual coding that could ruin things, it's errors in splicing too (and with 75-odd exons, you need a LOT of splicing).

Add to this, the most important muscle-related bits of the protein that the dystrophin gene codes for (called, unsurprisingly, dystrophin) are at the beginning and the end of the gene: the middle is less critical. Of course, errors in coding sequence (either derived from a mutation directly, or by incorrect splicing changing the 'reading frame' of the coding sequence -both eminently possible here) very frequently lead to premature stops, either chopping off the end, or flagging the whole transcript for breakdown.

Consequence: no dystrophin.

Dystrophin is like a ..shock absorber for muscle, and if you don't have it, your muscle fibres simply break down every time you stress them. And by stress I mean "walk downstairs". This leads to a cycle of breakdown and regeneration (painful the whole time) that lasts throughout most of the boy's childhood (it's X-linked pseudo-recessive, so mostly found in boys), until the regeneration system simply can't cope anymore, and then it's just the breakdown from then on. Wheelchair, gradual loss of use of most limbs, then either your diaphragm packs in or your heart does.

Now there are perfectly sensible strategies that lead to this situation: the dystrophin gene is composed of various elements found in various different genes: many of these are coded on distinct exons or groups of exons, and in fact the prevailing theory is that splitting each gene up into subelements like this enhances potential diversity, random repositioning of a stretch of DNA (that happens from time to time) might place a bunch of protein-protein interaction exons next to a DNA-protein interaction stretch, and now you have a novel transcriptional regulator protein. A whole ton of time you'll get a random repositioning that produces nothing (the human genome is riddled with inactive 'pseudogenes' from exactly this sort of thing), other times you'll get a fatal mutation. Other times it'll simply be a useless protein. Sometimes, however, it's useful...and we all know how evolution selects for useful stuff.

Furthermore, the dystrophin gene actually is responsible for about five or six proteins, each with different combinations of particular exons, and starting from different points. It's like a book of blueprints where the brain protein is "read from page 4 to the end, skip pages 7 and 9", whereas muscle protein is "read the whole book". The most likely explanation is that the shorter proteins are the more 'ancestral' elements and they got added to (see above) to produce, every once in a while, a newer useful protein.

So, this arrangement of 75 exons over 3 million bases of DNA is a random assortment of separate elements, combined over millenia, that produces a very useful shock-absorber for muscle. When it works, it works beautifully (and that's exactly why it's been selected for). When it doesn't work, however, it doesn't work in a truly, monstrously horrible fashion.

And why is it still here, when it's so deleterious? Well, it's X-linked. In the majority of cases, women carrying the mutation are essentially unaffected. Any female children they have have a 50% chance of also being a carrier. And of course, THEY WILL WANT TO HAVE FEMALE CHILDREN, because all their male children will die. Horribly. Over the course of 20-30 years.
Worse, remember when I said that it was a huge gene? Well, that means that it has a concommitantly huge chance of spontaneous mutation (spontaneous mutation is more or less simply a given percentage chance per nucleotide, so more nucleotides == greater aggregate mutation rate). Over 30% of muscular dystrophies reported turn out NOT to be inherited, they're spontaneous.

It kills about...1 in every 3500 boys. And it does so in a truly awful fashion.

Oh, and there's basically no cure. We can make a sufferer live to 30 rather than 20, but with heavy side effects and again: most of that is still in a wheelchair.

So. I am entirely happy to accept that in a universe that follows natural rules, where god does not exist and no divine interaction occurs, truly monstrous things can and will happen. The godless universe does not care two shits about you, me, or anything, because it has no will. Great things will happen to awful people. Awful things will happen to good people. Shit has happened. Shit happens. Shit will continue to happen.

This makes sense, because it doesn't introduce any unprovable foreign entities allegedly concerned with our wellbeing (spiritual or otherwise), and because it puts absolutely no onus on the universe to be a nice place. Or a terrible place. The universe is just a place.

The alternative god-based view has to address why all the above should be allowed to happen, when potential fixes would be SO DAMN EASY if we just had a "build a human genome toolset". You're left with

A)God doesn't know
B)God doesn't care
C)God is incompetent
D)God is actively malevolent

And note that these are not even mutually exclusive options.

So the MOST sensible, occams razor explanation is simply "there is no god", with the personal corollary that if god could be proved, he would be demonstrably an utter shithead.

Your turn.

(Also, regarding religions dying out, I was referring to modern times, with the increasing lack of religiosity. I'd already addressed religions dying out in olden times, indeed often with the exact same examples you did -religion encouraging annihilation of all other religions...via the 'kill all that is not this faith' meme. I really don't think you quite get memetics. Or, possibly, genetics too. We'll see with your response to the above ^^)

Nicker on 7/2/2012 at 23:27

Quote Posted by Independent Thief

In the former Soviet Union religion wasn't given power over societal matters-I doubt most of us would have found that a joyous place to live either.

Stalinist Russia still functioned exactly as it did under the theocracy except that Stalin became the tyrannical god king, instead of the Tzar. It was a coup, not a revolution. Atheism had nothing to do with it. Nice lie. I mean, nice try.

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I've never said atheists couldn't do any good at all.

Your admission is noted. Come the revolution your death will be quick and painless.

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First, I am going to heaven so I don't worry about it too much, second we are all sinners-some repent and turn from their sin, others don't.

Cancel my previous promise. Martyrdom it is. Before your wish is granted though, could you clarify - is hubris a sin or just a character flaw?

faetal on 7/2/2012 at 23:58

Be careful what you wish for...

Quote Posted by Beleg Cúthalion

What? I accept that religion is about a billion different things depending on who you;re talking to. Am I not allowed to draw from any experience?

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Like memes for instance, hahaha...No, they (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Boniface#Early_missionary_work_in_Frisia_and_Germania) felled trees. But missionaries don't exactly lay out flysheets at the village center either. Christianity was established with a legal backup. Islam spread with conquest and social benefit linked to conversion. Fatimid Ismailism spread from a new state and its missionary network planning more conquest. Charlemagne enforced violence to baptise the Saxons (so violently in fact that his clerical advisors became really concerned).

Yes, those are some of the vectors through which religion spread, but memetic theory describes how they take root in the brain. Not surpirsing, but you have again (again, again, again) misunderstood how it works despite some very elegant explanations.

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Blaming all this on memes and their habit of taking over the planet is like claiming that one wolf pack wipes out another because the first pack's tapeworms were superior.

No, it isn't. Wolves are not capable of language in the same way as we are, so memetic concepts do not apply.

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Plus, it's throwing Occam's Razor out on the compost.

No it isn't. If you disagree, explain why.

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No. Just like genes, superior memes don't need to wipe out 100% of competitors to be more successful than them or to thrive in abundance. I seriously think you should learn about genetics and certainly about statistics, as they are clearly a blind spot for you.

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Or that the superior socialism meme wiped out religion in eastern Europe but was in return overcome by even more superior capitalism/still-somehow-Christian-thingy afterwards?

Again, it isn't quite so binary as this. Please read up on dynamics and equilibria, you might learn something.

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Shouldn't selfish memes avoid syncretism (like in...say... the Caribbean or Indonesia) instead of letting one's own superior ideas drown?

No, because memes are not conscious - they thrive like genes do, but having a combination of properties which allows them to thrive.

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As I said, there is nothing wrong with the general idea of good things overcoming bad things, but it isn't necessarily related to thoughts with socialising problems.

It's not about good or bad, it is about more successful and less successful. This applies to ideas as well as genes. In fact, you can even view genes as pieces of information with a physiological outcome, much like memes are pieces of information with a neurological outcome. One transmits in the form of nucleic acids, the other in the form of language, which can be considered part of the extended phenotype of humans. It's fascinating, I highly recommend reading up on it.

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Creation is very sound as well, with respect that we have the luxury of having debates on the internet and banana juice. But wait, didn't you ask for evidence when I threw in a transcendent layer?

Yes. Yes I did. Or how about a plausible mechanism, like the one for memes which DDL provided. Give me the workings of your transcendental layer and I'll consider it on equal standing to memes.

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Glad it's not just me noticing that memetics is like a wooden brick set compared to the instruments of cultural sciences or semiotics.

If by "noticing" you mean "misunderstanding" then yes and if by "not just me" you means Independent Thief, then yes. And that is some fine company you have there.

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The idea is fascinating, just like with evolution, but if it doesn't meet the e.g. historical evidence, one must either cut it back to something we already have (and the basic idea of memetics is even older than the 70s I think) or abandon it in favor of something more fit.

What historical evidence? Are you confusing evidence with accounts again? Also, quite hilariously, you are saying we should dismiss an idea, in favour of allowing a stronger one to be upheld...which is part of the fundamental basics of MEMES.

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Keeping it for the sake of the funny parasite analogy...

You do realise that using dismissive language "funny" as if to mean "oh, how quaint", just makes it look like you are running out of discourse and instead trying to use psychological sleight of hand to belittle something before you've made a case. It only works on idiots, so you can save it for elsewhere, yeah?

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...is understanable but....Yes of course, it's not about survival per se, it's about the bug.

Sorry, what does this even mean?...

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Do you know any example of when and where a religion evolved (this means I'm not talking about contemporary people claiming that hundreds of years old scriptures are still verbally valid) which encouraged having and [evil laugh] indoctrinating more children (which is a pejorative ex post assessment, in case you didn't notice, will you dig up the earth as a disc thing next?) than the social context would suggest?

Learn to break your sentences up. I know German is a more conjugative language than English, but it will help, trust me. Do I know of any religions which evolved. Ok, let me see, do I know of any religions which have evolved...

Let's see. This is what evolution looks like:

Inline Image:

http://www.inhs.uiuc.edu/research/FLYTREE/images/flyphylogeny.jpg

This is what evolution of Christianity looks like:

Inline Image:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8b/ChristianityBranches.svg

So yeah, I do know of religions which have evolved. All of them frankly.

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A brave concession. I can't help but feel that you haven't grasped memes though. I recommend some in depth reading about it, as you are likely to at least find it very interesting, even if you don't agree with its logic.

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It's the... scope of it all which is my main point of concern, the cognitive science part (or "view from the outside" which doesn't exist for you) as it were. Now we're talking...more or less. I mean, not the idiot parts of it, but I think the polemics are too deep into the discussion anyway.

Doesn't exist for me? It either exists or doesn't, regardless. There is nothing in science which suggests that there is a view from the outside. Nothing whatsoever and I guarantee there have been studies. There have been studies into our free will which show that it is almost certianly purely neurological, which is what one would expect from a being made only of muscles, bones, organs and a nervous system. Read this interesting piece on how free will can be subject to purely physical changes: (http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/07/the-brain-on-trial/8520/)

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Religion is an attempt to reinforce the "good" aspects of evolution that guarantee e.g. survival of the group.

No it isn't. It may contain some parts which do that, but likely not exhaustively and likely includes other things which are not for that purpose at all. Discovering these things through scientific research into our behaviour and then saying post facto oh yeah, that's what religion was reinforcing is fatuous. Religion has also been the cause of some very disgusting behaviours in people (note the homophobia above, plus in the past all kinds of torture, murder, rape, subjugation of perceived minorities...)

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If you look at old religious laws they usually go along with survival tactics, even the ones we'd consider old-fashioned which deal with confinement.

All old laws were religious pretty much, unless you can point to an ancient non-religious society which was devoid of laws? There was nothing else but religion "back then" so it is hard to separate the religion from the nature. Everyone was religious to some extent and they made laws. Just because laws were encoded into religion, does not make them divine in origin. Religion plagiarised nature in this respect - took humankind's natural tendencies for good and proclaimed them to be religious.

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At the expense of more quick evolution thanks to harsh selection, it considers the community (and evolution itself does that as well, as we've already discussed).

That's not how evolution works.

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As you said there is a need to deal with it, so what's so freaking obscure about a view on evolution or life in general which maybe even tries to avoid the perils that come with evolution's trial-and-error system?

Nothing. Humans do it naturally anyway, with or without religion.

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Of course there is no "personal need" to add in a transcendent layer if we can all live and die as we like, but if we think about how life works on this planet, we MUST consider evolution as... and this is indeed difficult to put in words... as a thing to deal with, even if it happens around and through us all the time.

Sorry, you've lost me again. Where does this transcendental layer come from again?

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Oh yes, now you're taking the very caricature of religion which seems to be the only one you are able to imagine, just like this:If you're not getting that the message of this line is most likely "If you do something important, do it with all your strength", I hardly doubt that you'll understand anything that goes beyond genes and very very basic elements of social life.

Please, leave the straw man arguments alone for a moment. You assume that because I don't believe in the existence of the supernatural, that I can not imagine it? Or various forms of religion? That is very conceited.

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Religion started out as an interpretation of the world, that's for instance the approach of Daniel Dennett (although he carefully enough adds that this might also be the case because there is indeed a deity) and think that's even what you are supposed to think, so why take the many instances in which evolving religion referred to plain worldly circumstances and hold them up decades later in order to make painfully anachronistic accusations?

Because it is suspect that there have been thousands of religions, all like Christianity which have been binned in favour of something more successful, but which has exactly the same level of evidence of existing, i.e. none. It is RELEVANT, therefore not a straw man argument. You don't believe in the scores of gods which preceded yours, I just believe in one fewer god than you.

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Strawmen, all of them.I said it's not the SIMPLE survival of the fittest rule, hence referring to the complexity. Do you try to understand what I'm up to or merely waiting for the first wording to collide with your knowledge?

I try to understand, but you don't make it very easy. I see what you are trying to say, but I disagree with it, because the balance of evidence points to something else.

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But law assumes an intent. It makes a difference between this and accident, so do we all every day.

What?

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Guilt is related to both but if it was a "personal feeling based on epiphany" it wouldn't be congruent with the two. If my decisions, though, are based on the precast patterns of evolution and what I ended up being equipped with, my decisions are not only less intentional, but living or executing evolution might result in guilt that is nothing internal ("because I was right in doing it") but only in relation to others ("who deserved it from my point of view").

Read that back to yourself and try to realise how little sense it makes. Guilt is an emotion, which means in neurological terms that it is a chemical process in the brain, which links certain stimuli to certain qualities designed to provide you with additional information on the "colour" if you will, of the stimuli. It helps us to decide what to do next, or if to avoid doing something again. This is very well understood in neuroscience, I don't get why you are positing new theories about it.

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Can you judge the traits of evolution that favour certain attributes against those which drop them, in order to see which human actions deserve promotion and which penalty?

Explain this, it makes no sense.

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Would your law, as I assume (and probably agree), always decide for the good of the community, even against local progress?

No. If this was the case, we'd hang paedophiles. There has to be philosophy and logic behind laws because they need to be applicable universally. If you let society decide the outcome of trials, we'd end up killing everyone accused of anything who also happened to look a bit shifty. Law should be backed up with logic, because it takes the place of mob rule, which is closer to how we'd have dealt with things as hunter gatherers, but is not conducive to living in the numbers that humans now do.

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I would present it with the example of a guy shooting a disabled woman (just because disability is a catchy illustration for what might be evolutionary "junk") and having no regrets about it, but the evolutionary disadvantage of having a guy who shoots persons in your midsts is easily understood.

*Sigh* you are mistaking evolved traits with conscious decisions again. It is not about whether an individual *thinks* someone else is evolutionary junk, it is to do with whether there has been an evolutionary advantage in giving us the urge to do such a thing. Please read some books on evolution, I'm begging you.

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Maybe something else comes to mind.Have a look for instance at the many imam characters in Shii history. Every sect stood and fell with the rise and fall of its leader, some survived because of the circumstances, some disintegrated into orthodox Sunni islam, despite they had a meme which isolated them from them in the first place, according to memetics.

Don't say "according to memetics" as if you understand it, when you clearly don't. Memes, like genes exist in fragments and have various aspects which shuffle around some take, others don't, some end up unrecognisable from their beginnings (think Chinese whispers), some travel only as part of something else - it is not one big complex polished idea which gets passed around intact.

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If you think memetics is simplifying anything, then you haven't learned enough about it. DDL was just simplifying memetics.

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For now I'd blame it on my rushed reading.No, I read it, computer reading voices usually sound crappy. But thanks for your kind words.As soon as you answer why your totally elegant evolutionary system cannot exist without having unlucky suffering bastards with muscular dystrophy for the "error" part of trial-and-error... but is still awesome, I'd probably care to tackle theodicy again. ;)

Muscular dystrophy is homozygotic recessive. You do know what that means right? [EDIT: got this slightly wrong, but DDL has more than filled it in, so no loss]

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If god allows them and evolution does, why would god be less awesome if he even offers eternal life for everyone?

Sorry, by what justification do we include god as an option? Because he is one of a few hundred deities thought to be responsible for the universe? Sorry, but you'll have to join the queue - a lot of other people also want their deity to be considered. I don't need to deal with the concept of god, because other than some mention in some morally vile bronze age books about genocide, torture and murder and rape, I see no reason to include such a concept in a discussion about the workings of nature, unless you can justify it with some kind of evidence.

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Hey, I might be coming to London this year to check a certain Arabic manuscript. You're not accidentally around to have a chat and drink apple juice?

I could be, remind me nearer the time. Mine's a Guinness. [EDIT - I have only now just realised that this whole response was intended for DDL, I'll just go sit in the corner with my hands in my lap and learn not to knee-jerk in future - apologies]