religion and human breeding question..

if you could place a genetic indicator for belief or faith i don't think it would naturally point to religion

we may have an inherent trigger that makes us need a belief system but what that belief system is has matured as we matured, science has been the biggest change to belief patterns in human development, we know what causes lightning, we know how people are conceived, we've learned to control most diseases, these things are no longer belong only to god or gods

most of faith and belief now, seems to be concerned with making sure we have somewhere nice to go when this life ends

Good original thought, Ogionik. Good one. I love it.

Whatever ganja you were doin' when it hit you musta been aces!

!

"Religion" could be viewed as the "price" we pay for our inherited cognitive faculties which we use to predict and control "the world". Since such control is limited we invent the Big Controller(s) "who passeth understanding" and insure us against all uncertainties even "beyond this life".

So to some extent "religion" is genetic but only in so far as it being a natural irrational adjunct to the "evolutionary advantages" of a species with a " control fixation".

I remember a Science Channel story about a particular crab found in Japan...one that has what appears to be a picture of the Buddha on its carapace. Apparently it is the result of this kind of thing. Whenever a crab was caught that had a Buddha like appearance to the markings and indentures of the carapace...it was thrown back. Eventually, the trait was passed on...and the crab now has a carapace that looks like the Buddha...and does not get eaten.

Many have been forced to convert to the religion of one's conquerors or face execution so, yes, many submitted. That doesn't necessarily mean that they were inclined to believe in religion so much as they were inclined not to get executed.

i couldnt tell if u were being sarcastic, lol!>

but ive been sober for like 2 months.. i drank some rum like 2 glasses of rum n coke and i had some shots of whiskey but thats about it.


i rather miss blocking out everything and everyon with weed tho.


im really erratic when i dont smoke and everyone, talks to me, and i cant ignore them as easily.


its ******* HORRIBLE.


im in the store my dads rambling about evolution not being real and i just explode

'you believe in random mutations *and* the survival of the fittest you fuckhead, thats evolution!!!!!!! GODAMNIT NO MATTER WHAT YOU SAY THATS EVOLUTION, NOW YOUR GONAN COMPLETELY CHANGE THE SUBJECT AND SAY "A HOUSE CANT BE BUILT BY A ******* TORNADOE!! whatever the **** that means, but go ahead keep fusing origin of life, the universe, and evolution, three completely SEPERATE ******* SUBJECTS."

i was yelling pretty loudly, i had told him numerous time i didnt feel like debating a subject if the person was going to ignore facts and use illegitimate arguments, he refused. so i returned in kind.

he finally stfu.

if i was high i woulda just played music in my head.

No sarcasm...it really is an interesting new take on something I think about a lot.

Something has got to account for the...superstition...and one would like to hope fear alone isn't the reason.

This thought of yours might have more validity than you think!

It's just that original thoughts like that usually come to me after a bit of "the weed of crime."

Actually, the carapace of the crab was thought to look like the faces of Japanese soldiers who died in a sea battle in the inland Sea. Otherwise, though, you are correct--crab fishers, spooked by their superstitions, threw back the crabs whose carapaces most resembled (to them, the crab fishers) human faces, and as a result, they tended to select for crabs the carapaces of which appeared (to them, at least) to resemble human faces.

From Inventor's Spot-dot-com:





What strikes me most about them is that they resemble the classic Japanese artistic representation of a human face, rather than a human face per se. Superstition, religious or otherwise, is all about self-fulfilling prophecy.

i wish i was high.


i have been thinking about this alot. people someti9mes refuse to compare themselves to animals, they cant or wotn comprehend the fact they can be bred jsut like them.

taller, shorter, stronger, whatever.


i just thought religion has been bred into our genes.

well im actually certain it has, or we have been bred to accept relgiion without thinking or using logic.

Not me! And it sounds like not you either.

Maybe we are just lucky.

Good info, Set. Wasn't sure where I had seen the bit...but it must have come from the Cosmos series...which was a long time ago.

Glad I got the correct poop...so when I bring it up again, I can use it.

I greatly enjoyed the television programs which Carl Sagan was able to produce because of his justifiably high reputation as a scientist. He got his doctorate based on his thesis, which had important implications about the inferences on the data recovered by Soviet automated missions to Venus. His thesis was on the greenhouse effect on Venus. (Venus has the most nearly circular orbit of any planet, hardly "wobbles" at all, so there is almost on "seasonal" change in the atmosphere; when the water which it is hypothesized was originally plentiful on the surface evaporated, a run-away greenhouse effect was started which makes for the present hellish conditions on that planet.) He hypothesized that the surface of Venus was actually a good deal lower than the Soviets had assumed (which is to say, his hypothesis contradicted Soviet assumptions). He held that the atmospheric pressure at the surface of Venus would be about 90 times greater than that at sea level on Earth, and later suggested that the Soviet probes were being crushed by atmospheric pressure before reaching the surface. For political reasons, of course, the Soviets were unable to admit that the "party line" on the implications of the data they had recovered might be wrong, but subsequent probes were built much tougher, and they eventually acknowledged that the surface was roughly where Sagan's hypothesis implied it would be found. Of course, they also released the data in a matter of fact way which suggested that they had always thought that this is what they would find, never admitting that they had once been wrong. More important than this, though, was his assumption that the surface temperature was very high (in excess of 900 degrees F) and that the "climate" was dry, rather than the hot, moist, tropical conditions which had previously been assumed to obtain on Venus. The NASA Mariner missions to Venus confirmed his hypothesis as did later Soviet missions, and he was long an adviser to NASA, and had helped to design the Mariner missions (among many others). In all honesty, though, the real nitty-gritty work on Venus and its atmosphere and surface was done by the Soviets. Americans were no more willing to admit that the Soviets had done anything right than Soviets were to admit that they had initially been wrong about conditions on Venus. In addition to being a brilliant astronomer and astrophysicist, he worked in a genetics lab while he was still an undergraduate, and had a good grounding in sciences other than astronomy.

The right-wing nuts rabidly hate Sagan, although i could never exactly see why, except perhaps that he met with and exchanged information with Soviet scientists. He collaborated with them on the project to get the information out to the world about the consequences of nuclear war, which is to say that even a limited nuclear exchange would lead to "nuclear winter," and the destruction of most if not all of mankind. That's probably why the right wingers foam at the mouth about Sagan. His popularization of scientific themes to the public was arguably his most important contribution. You can learn more about him by clicking here.

I suspect his pithy and intelligent comments about gods might play a part in that nonsense, Set!

Yeah . . . he was definitely unpopular with the bible-thumpers . . .