What is the evolutionary advantage to religion?

My opinion? No. Religion if anything provides justification for genocide.edited to add: I'm not sure I understand what you were asking about group think. If I didn't answer what you asked, would you please clarify?This message has been edited by Quetzal, 01-02-2005 13:03 AM

Simply not true. The Nazis, including Hitler were Christians (specific quotes available to support that assertion if requested). They even maintained diplomatic connectioins with the Vatican throughout the war. As did most of the world. Anti-semitism was rampant world wide and as strong in the US as anywhere else. Read the writings of Henry Ford sometime. The great driving force of the Balfour Declaration was to help get the Jews out of Europe and anywhere else. As do all world leaders. Barely. Yes, as well as by Christians and even quite a few Atheists and Deists. Like Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong?

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

There is a big difference between simply "professing" Christianity as a political angle and actually being a Christian leader. Here in America, the last real Christian president was Jimmy Carter! IMHO.

Jar,To kind of reiterate Phatboy's point... This brings up an off-topic issue, "What makes a person or an organization Christian besides the person or organization making such a claim?"I think that would be a particularly interesting topic as regards the Vatican, Nazis, KKK, etc.My point is off-topic, but I did wish at least to place a question in peoples' minds that just because a person or organization CLAIMS to be Christian doesn't necessarily mean that the person or organization IS Christian.My off-topic 2 cents.

because it will certainly prove my point about salvation or will prove Hitler was a Christian.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

What is a True Christian?

Rather ironically backtracking to page one to get back on track, it may well be true that dumber is better in a species. Ernst Mayer speculated that it was better to be dumb than smart, in evolutionary terms at least - the most successful species ever include such academic luminaries as bacteria and beetles. Even felinidae's long run looks poor compared to their's.The upshot of this is that relatively stupid, unified people, fearing things and avoiding what they do not understand as opposed to taming them (in both physical and philosophical terms)may well be better equipped for the stoicism required for survival. This thusly gives religion an evolutionary basis, albeit a roughly composed one.

Hitler was an atheist. He despised Christianity which seemed to him to have a milksop morality. He used the church politically. They were planning on getting rid of Christianity later and changing the religion of the masses to make it fit the Nazi idea better. Some form of Nordic paganism.This message has been edited by robinrohan, 01-02-2005 17:21 AM

Nonsense. Take it to the correct thread and I'll be glad to support my assertions.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

you said and I classified this as "group think" and asked if religion was responsible for it (or is it a common non-religious trait).certainly I see a lot of the well established religions having a history of enabling this kind of behavior {{and you can see it even today in the various religious wars from ireland to the middle east to the current "crusade" in iraq, etcetera}}, but are they really the root cause of it?this is the {my group good your group bad} that can also be exhibited in highschool sports and similar competitions, and to me is not tied to religion, but to basic ingrained survival behavior patterns (defend my group from all attackers).or is the religious expression of this trait just a continued behavior pattern into the religious context?and is religion combined with government good for the survival of the society? what proportion of todays wll-off people live in a theocracy?enjoy.

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist
{{{Buddha walks off laughing with joy}}}

And what proportion of the world population is "the chosen" and what are the parameters for inclusion in "the chosen" eh?But is this really a survival trait of religion - the ability to wage world wars?

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist
{{{Buddha walks off laughing with joy}}}

and one could also say that keeping them in isolated factions also increases diversity so that when disasters (tsunami?) strike there are groups ready and able to carry on ...no other species has formed a world-wide social system.

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist
{{{Buddha walks off laughing with joy}}}

you said "But is this really a survival trait of religion - the ability to wage world wars?"
so religion lets us kill eachother... well know it does but religion was not developed for that sole purpose.
look at christianity a man is only allowed to have one woman. that can be tied to our aggressive behavior. for instance (in my opinion) we evolved on the african savana and because of that we did not have a stable niche... in order to survive with this unstable niche we needed a vast gene pool ;however, the females (forgot the name for the females) control who they mate with because of this if the majority of females liked a certain trait then that trait will pass on. but because males are so dominant and aggressive the males created ways to "share the wealth". religion helps to make our populations diverse. but because religions also cause us to group together the males tend to still be dominant and because of that groups form and WAR!!
so yes religion does also creat war but thats not the reason why we were able to survive, religion helped to creat restraints for females so the males wouldn't have huge blood baths for em.there's my rant.

heh. you are alluding to sexual selection with the female mate choice issue -- what traits are developed to earn a mate versus to survive.this may have caused the development of the human brain (to develop more creative courtship displays) and it certainly has had a role in the development in the size of human sexual organs compared to other apes ... but in humans you also see a slight sexual dimorphism: males are usually larger than females. this tendency is usually related to sexual dominance behavior (gorillas have a lot of both, while bonobos have very little of either)dominance behavior can lead to warlike behavior in other species as well as humans, just not to the extremes that humans have gone.religion creates restraint for females? a little sexist isn't that? I'd rather say that religion codifies behavioral acceptance in society as a whole. whether that codification has a survival or reproductive benefit is what the question of this thread concerns.my comment on world wars was a little tongue in cheek ...

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist
{{{Buddha walks off laughing with joy}}}

ya people are ALWAYS offended from what i say about sexes. I mean no offence by it and i tend to never word it right... can never win for losing... but still WE ARE SEXIST how long have females been considered "inferior" and still do in some areas? and part of the reason is because the religion choeses/promotes it. Thats just my opinion.but there are lots of influences for our sexual behaviours.