crashfrog writes:
I guess I give ideology the benefit of the doubt. After all ideology doesn't kill people. People kill people.
Honestly as many people were killed by polytheists as monotheists. How many gods you believe in - if any - is no indication you're about to go kill some other people.
Well, I think that historically monotheists killed much more people than polytheists, but it is only my estimate. I do not have any data to support it, so I will not argue about it. But in my post I was after something else:
Monotheistic religion just needs to be intolerant and hostile to remain monotheistic. Just imagine YHWH saying instead of: "I am the God who loves jealously" something like: "Well, I am the only God, but if you feel comfortable worshipping other gods as well, OK. I have no problem with it. They do not exist anyway, so what's the point?" Aggressiveness is secondary, but it is logical result. If you are intolerant and hostile, you feel threatened. And the best defense tactic is assault...
crashfrog writes:
So, the only answer to "who's the fittest human?" is "the one with the most kids." It's true - the fat guy in the trailer park with no job or education, but who's the father of 20
My apology for oversimplification. I was not talking about physical survival of one individual, of course. Your example is also oversimplified, because it is only about survival in one generation. You can have as much as children you can, but they must survive and beget children as well. And than their children and their children...
So the best definition is that the fittest is the one whose genes will survive. Because selfish genes are what matters, not man - am I right?
But if we went so far, it seems appropriate to say that in human society survival of genes is not always primal. Sometimes it seems that survival of one's memes is more important in the life of individual. Let's take a variation of you example - who is genetically more successful - housewife or female top-manager? Housewife, of course. So what is the point of feminism? It is quite "anti-darwinistic". But top-manager has much greater chance to spread her memes than housewife. And it is quite understandable that for women especially memes are sometimes more important than genes. How many children can average woman have? Not too much. But she can spread her memes to millions of people if successful enough (take Madonna - the singer, not Jesus’ mother - as an example).
And by this meme principle we can explain also the aggressiveness of monotheistic religion. The only objection here would be why polytheistic religions are not that aggressive? They also want to spread their memes Well, there is actually just one polytheistic religion with many cults. In other words — all polytheistic cults are memes within one huge memplex. There might be competition between cults, but there is always also a cooperation. Monotheistic memeplexes are exclusive — either one or the other.
------------------
Life has no meaning but itself.