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Evolutionary advantage of religion?
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Yes, we are all individuals. Yes, we are all different.As robindsch and Wicknight and nozzferrahhtoo have pointed out.................
I'm perfectly open to an argument that we live in a world surrounded by organisms with features that owe little or nothing to evolution. I'm not sure where that exactly leaves us, but we'll continue with the meme idea.As Wicknight and nozzferrahhtoo have pointed out, your question incorrectly assumes that there is an evolutionary answer, or at least, an answer which includes some measure of first-order selection advantage which accrues to holders of religious beliefs above those who don't. Which I don't think generally happens to be the case.
Fine, so religion is, in meme evolutionary terms, a very robust formula.ideas will be subject to natural selection and over time, the ones which propagate best will outbreed those which don't, and will eventually come to dominate the idea pool.
And, put simply, I'd guess that we could confirm that religious folk have larger families, giving them a head start, and that folk raised in religious families tend to pass that religion on to their children.
Surely they're all meme-carriers, its just some of them have a meme that makes them more united.meme-carriers will be more united than non-carriers
Indeed, its a miracle.I think it's quite amazing that there are any of us atheists on this planet at all.0 -
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Taking the USA, for example, I see no "turning the other cheek" in mainstream christianity there. It's an aggressive and political heavyweight of a religion if ever there was oneSoul Winner wrote: »If that's true for Christianity then why does Jesus (the founder) tell us to love our enemies? And when struck on the face to turn the other cheek etc???
Anyhow, phrases like the ones that you quote simply increase, not decrease, the number of people who find christianity attractive. It's a bit like the phrase "compassionate conservatism" -- bilious conservatives will like the second word, while decent people will like the first -- one phrase captures both markets. As do instructions both to kill your neighbor, while loving him.
With religion, you really can get it both ways, or at least, the religious think they can.0 -
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Taking the USA, for example, I see no "turning the other cheek" in mainstream christianity there. It's an aggressive and political heavyweight of a religion if ever there was one
I agree, most mainstream "Christianity" has long since departed the true message of real Christianity. Which is "Grace and Peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ" both salutations they seldom extend to other Christians never mind the world in general, so to hold them up as representative of the Christian message is indeed a tragedy for the faith.Anyhow, phrases like the ones that you quote simply increase, not decrease, the number of people who find christianity attractive.
Did you mean that the other way around???
It's a bit like the phrase "compassionate conservatism" -- bilious conservatives will like the second word, while decent people will like the first -- one phrase captures both markets. As do instructions both to kill your neighbor, while loving him.
I'm lost now
With religion, you really can get it both ways, or at least, the religious think they can.
Well as long as Jesus was performing miracles (whether you believe that or not), feeding people, healing people He was thronged by crowds, but as soon as He told them to take up their cross and follow Him, they all left Him (which said crosses meant to leave family and friends etc and follow Him). The true message of Christianity which involves bearing your cross has never been a popular message and never will be, because it involves denying oneself. I rarely see that displayed amongst the religious right tin America. Catholics are probably the closest to it but even they serve self over God in many respects also. What people think Christianity is these days (especially in America) is not Christianity at all. They seek out a version of it that they can approve of and find likeminded people and then set up or join that Church. A true Church takes all of what Jesus said on board and shouldn’t cherry pick the parts they like best and only do them.
Here's how it should work: God gave some Apostles, Prophets, Evangelists, and Pastoring Teachers to perfect the saints to the work of the ministry. This outlines some important points. 1. You start out as a saint. 2. It shows that saints are not perfect when they do start out contrary to what tradition would have us believe. The word for saint in the Greek is 'Hagios' and it has to do with commitment not performance, the word 'holy' is also traced back to this word, something that is given over to the use of something or someone in commitment, not restricted to religion, could be anything.
But anyway there is always two ways to look at religion. They way the founder wants it to be, or the way the followers want it to be. It’s called objective and subjective opinions. The only opinion that should count is the founder’s objective opinion. So if you are truly following that religion then you will do what the founder says. If you are not doing what the founder says, then you are not a real follower of that religion and this is the case for most of Christianity in the world, especially in America. They are not doing most of the things that the founder (Jesus) said to do, especially denying self and following Him.0 -
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This is the thing, and one of the reasons why the Christianity meme has been so successful, there is no true message of Christianity, at least not one revealed through the New Testament. God might know it, but we don't.
So memes when related to religion has suddenly gone from hypothetical to hard fact all of a sudden? Handy that.Jesus' stories and parables are so vague that the have no actual substance, again like a phrase such as "compassionate conservatisim". It means 10 different things to ten different people.
That’s why when it comes to these sayings you’re better off taking what they are actually saying as what they actual mean in the context of how and when they were said. For instance Jesus tells the Pharisees that the if you sin against the Holy Spirit then there is no remission. He said this in the following context: The Pharisees had said amongst themselves that no man could do the things Jesus was doing unless God be with Him. Then a few verses later they say to Jesus that He does these things by the power of Beelzebub. They willfully went against what they believed to be true in order that their position could be respected. When you read the context of the sayings you can get the general intended meaning, if you don’t you can get any meaning you like.A phrase like "turn the other cheek" can have a million different interpretations based on the context that one wishes to apply it.
I agree and by the same token so can any saying made by anybody fit whatever you want it to fit. You must put it back into the context in which it was said in order to know the meaning that it was intended to convey.It has never stopped wars, and some Christians claim it should another claim it shouldn't.
Well you don't really know that it has never stopped wars in fairness. Maybe it didn't but you don't really know so arbitrary statements like that are hardly helpful.
What’s wrong with a just war?A "just war" is an accepted concept in the vast majority of Christian denominations.When and why and in what circumstances one turns the other cheek is left up to the person themselves.
But that doesn’t change the context in which the words “turn the other cheek” where uttered by Jesus does it?Same with something like love thy neighbor. What does that actually mean?
There are 3 words in the Greek for love. Eros, Phileo and Agapao. Eros is sensual. Phileo is brotherly love hence the city of Philadelphia is called the city of brotherly love, the you do for me and I do for you kind of love. Then we have Agapao which is the word used in this context. It is a selfless act of love in order to do for somebody else without any thought of anything in return. This is the kind of love that Jesus was talking about. Phileo sought is phileo never attained, because in order to get phileo you must first have Agapao. An example of Agapao would be like, lets say you are drowning in a river and you know that you are drowning and know that you cannot escape and somebody at risk to themselves jumps in and saves you and brings you to safety, you will not have to talk yourself into liking that person on the riverbank. That love you feel is phileo, you want to do something for that person now. The act that he or she did for you was the agapao kind of love. And this is the love that Jesus was talking about when He said love thy neighbor. Does that clear the ‘love thy neighbor’ thing up a bit for you?Again it has little actual substance, it means what ever the person wishes it to mean.
No it doesn’t, I’ve just explained what it means so it can’t have any other meaning other than the words that were used to say it. You see you need to learn a bit of Greek in order to understand the New Testament a bit better. It was written in Greek not English, so if the English seems somewhat ambiguous then that is just the way it was translated from the Greek. English does not have the words that the Greek uses so they used the same English to translate three different words in the Greek. English is a very ambiguous language. One word can have many meanings which is probably one of the reasons why God chose that in the fullness of time when He would send forth His son into the world that it would be dominated by a language frame like Greek. Probably the most precise language the world has ever known.Even the definition of neighbor Jesus answered with an vague parable. When a Christian solider is popped out of a helicopter in 'Nam such pleasantries are of little use.
To what are you referring?Christianity's strongest fitness as a meme, in my view, is its vagueness.
It might be many things but vague is not one of them. Learn some Greek and by a Greek New Testament and read that then tell us it is vague.Jesus' pleasantries appeal to people inner sense of good, while being so vague and abstract as to not really force them into any particular course of action or moral straight jacket. Reading through the New Testament is like listening to one of those Self Help Guru's going through his list of motivational phrases.
I can only point to the reply I just gave.Just remember, if you aren't a human being you are a human doing. Think about it. :pac:
Or a human being doing 0 -
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AtomicHorror wrote: »Posted this over in the creationism thread but I reckon it has a better home here.
Here's a nice article on superstition which would easily extend to religion.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn14694-superstitions-evolved-to-help-us-survive.html
It could extend to religion, and in a lot of cases the two do overlap but it is still sepreate and disticnt from religion.
I grew up as a Catholic. I always thought that I believed that there was a God but I never really knew anything about Him on a personal level. My mother always thought me to bless myself (make the sign of the cross) before leaving the house or when passing a church or a graveyard. For years I did these things out of fear of what might happen if I didn't. In fairness to my Mam she never said that anything bad would happen, she herself didn’t really know why she did these things, it was just implied that bad things might happen if you didn’t, so we both did them simply because they were passed down by older generations and no questions were allowed to be asked. I believe these habits are a good example of an extension of manmade superstition overlapping with religion, in this case it was with Catholicism, I’m sure every religion has its own versions.
But the distinction should be made that superstition and religion are different. Does that mean I’m against people having superstitions? Nope, I don’t care, just don’t tell me that I have to have them without explaining why adequately. And to this day my Mam still can’t tell me why I need to bless myself, or why I need to have my kids Christened and so on. Jesus said we make void the Word of God by our traditions. There is nothing in God’s Word that says we have to bless ourselves or that we have to get our kids Christened and make their communion and so on. Nothing about not walking under ladders, or eating meat on Good Friday and so on. They've just been added on by men through the centuries to the extent that they eclipse the original God intended message and therefore replaces it, until God raises up somebody like Martin Luther to shake it back to its foundations.
Anyway, years later and after I had learned a thing or two about my religion and about the Christ which is presented to us in the pages of the New Testament and the letters of the Apostle Paul, I grew out of those old habits. You could say that hearing the truth about Jesus delivered me from them. Now it doesn’t bother me at all that I don’t bless myself anymore because I’ve learned that I can’t bless myself, if God exists then only He can truly bless me. So yeah, these things can extend into religion, but when you study and read a few books about your religion, religion itself can deliver you from the practice of such things.
St Paul says, let no man judge you in meat and drink or in respect of an holy day, this also applies to superstitions. The thing about things like this is that you will always have people who hate religion wanting to make religion one and the same with superstition and as has just been pointed out you can’t do that, they are different even though they can overlap with the intrusion of man, even to the detriment of the religion in question which I’m sure was not their intention, it's just that Satan is very crafty
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