What is the evolutionary advantage to religion?

Religion gives hope of an after life. Nobody wants to cease to exist.But the evolutionary advantage?This would mean there would have to be a genetic tendency toward religious belief in certain people, and that this tends to be carried on through the generations.Perhaps I don't understand the topic.

Yes, yes, but what has this to do with evolution?That communities that produce these stupid religious people tend to survive while the smart ones don't?

Hey Lam, I thought this thread was supposed to be about whether or not there was any evolutionary advantage to being religious, not how horrible being religious is.

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

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?

Quetzel, does cultural evolution involve the transmission of genes?

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"?).

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.

You know, Lam, you might want to think about what history is before you start criticizing the people of the past.History produced YOU--this nice, open-minded young man with the great education, this 21st century paragon.It's not like knowledge started developing around 1985 or so.The people of the past made YOU.What you know is what they found out.

Your last two posts.

Shouldn't "Lord" be translated as "Yahweh"--the God of the mountain?

What you've said makes sense to me. Better than anything that I've been able to come up with.Welcome.

Well, Lam, you are mighty ignorant.