What is the evolutionary advantage to religion?

errr ya many things that we evolved actualy bite us in the ass but hey what can you do about it... every positive is balanced with a negative... so quite ur bitching control is good to a certain degree, till the absoulute power corrupts absolutly.

Read what I stated again. The whole point was that religion was a quick and easy way to get a society going. Even though I never said that there were times when it was absolutely horrible, to our standards at least, you jumped to the conclusion that I stated such. It says something about how you approach someone else's statements.

I did not realize that this was how the history of civilizations worked. We can visualize some leaders of some group getting together and one of them saying,"Hey, I got an idea. How about a God? Let's pretend that there's a God on the nearby mountain--we'll call him Yahweh--and that he has all these rules and regulations we got to follow. That way we can control the people, stick it to the poor, and justify slavery. Because otherwise we would have to spend all this time thinking about philosophy and science, and that would take too long. We need a quick and easy system."You think that's how it went, Lam? This sounds like a rant against religion to me rather than a comment on the topic. Religion might have justified a few other things as well. Not that I'm religious. And the generalizations you make about the people who post on this forum are rather offensive.This message has been edited by robinrohan, 12-30-2004 08:32 AMThis message has been edited by robinrohan, 12-30-2004 08:33 AMThis message has been edited by robinrohan, 12-30-2004 09:24 AM

I'm just wondering if there is a need to distinguish between cultural evolution and biological evolution.Or does that not matter? It's a little confusing to me.This message has been edited by robinrohan, 12-30-2004 12:42 AM

I'd say: Of course there is a need to distinguish between them. They are very, very different processes.

Actually, no. I think it was something like:Person A: What's fire?Person B: Um... uh... it must be beyond our comprehension.Person C: Hey, you're right. There must be a "supernatural being" of some sort to maintain the fire.Person A: Ok, let's all worship the fire "god".*Some time later*Person D: Killing each other is not going to get our society very far.Person E: Hooga booga kooga shooga...Person F: I am the translater for the oracle. The oracle said that the fire god wants us to stop killing each other and start fighting off outsiders. It's a quick and easy way to justify a lot of the things that come naturally to people. People have the tendency think too highly of themselves. Putting black people down sure made a lot of them feel better. But sometime along the way, some must have asked a question like "why are blacks inferior?""Because they're descendants of Cain," said someone else. It made it a lot easier for people to swallow the concept of an inferior race.So no, it wasn't a rant about how bad religion is. I was stating my opinion that religion has an advantage over science and philosophy because it is easy to swallow and it justifies a lot of prejudice and hate that people tend to have.

Ned, you were saying in another thread that evolution is still taking place among humans. Is that cultural evolution (people with road rage killing themselves off)?

So, Lam, is your point that people were real stupid and lazy in the past?

Hi Ned. Although I agree that CE and BE are different, I would suggest that there are substantial similarities as well. I don't think your statement that "they are very, very different processes" is entirely accurate. This might be an interesting alternate topic to explore in another thread.

Quetzel, does cultural evolution involve the transmission of genes?

Short answer? No. BE is wholly dependent on generational transmission (i.e., genetic inheritance), whereas CE can be transmitted laterally as well as generationally. Some have proposed the term "meme" as the cultural equivalent of genes, but I have some problems with the concept. As I mentioned to Ned, it's pretty OT for this thread, and might be better served in a new thread. The topic of this thread seems to be more, "is there a genetic basis for religiousity" or maybe "is there a genetic basis for why humans seem to invent religion from very early on", or something.

Yeah, I'm totally confused by this topic. It sounds to me like "cultural evolution" is not evolution at all. The word "evolution" is being used metaphorically, I would think, if it doesn't involve the transmission of genes.I thought at first the topic was about whether or not certain genes carried a religious tendency. (This interested me, because I read that a certain type of epilepsy tends to make one religious).But later it seemed to be about whether a community that was religious tended to survive better than one that was not (I suppose this would be an example of "cultural evolution"?).

Heh. Yeah it is a confusing topic. "Religion" is strictly cultural, whereas a case could be made that "religiousity" or "magical thinking" that forms the foundation of all religion is based in biology."Cultural evolution" strictly speaking (as you noted) would not be "evolution" as we understand it in biology. OTOH, cultures do change over time (equivalent to biological evolution), can be eliminated (equivalent to biological extinction), can splinter (sort of like speciation), and can be "born" (sort of like the initiation of a new lineage). All in all, CE isn't a bad term for it, although probably misleading and open to confusion.

Thanks for the explanation, Quetzel.I don't like the term "cultural evolution."It makes it sound like it is more of a hard science than it really is.It's really just "cultural studies."Somebody needs to clarify what this topic is supposed to be about.

Yes and no. I wouldn't say lazy because they didn't have any choice. They didn't have the motivation or the equipments to investigate certain forces of nature. It was a lot easier just to say "Zeus bestowed the lightning upon thee...."