Is English your second language? Because it is a bit hard to read your responses, I'll soldier on though.
Velthuijsen wrote:You forgot the and recognizing people in the tribe you live in as friendly and the tribe on the other side of the river as rivals to be exterminated because they are laying claim to the same resources as your tribe. That is why removing a single way to group people won't work, people will just find other groupings to do the same in.
So, ummm are you trying to argue that tool use was not the reason we became dominant, or not? I can't understand how this statement has anything to do with the point I brought up.
Belief in that humanity is good is worse then believing in God. Since it blinds you to daily reality that shows that humans are not intrinsically good, nor intrinsically evil but just try to survive. Something so hardwired into the system that we've for eons now been trying to tell each other that death isn't permanent (AKA religion). Your statement about Stalin seems to me nonsensical since I did write down that belief caused some of the greatest atrocities.
How is that worse than believing in a Vengeful God, or that by blowing yourself up you will be rewarded with virginal sex in the Afterlife? It's easier to put to the test? Gosh, now that's horrible isn't it. People will always find something to believe in, whether it's in their children, a rock, the government, whatever, you won't be able to remove humanity's need to believe in something. My bringing up Stalin and his purges was to show that even in a system without a belief in a higher power, humans will still commit atrocities on one another.
Now you are putting things into my mouth I never said. I'm willing to take you up on those arguments though.
You're right, I jumped ahead a bit with that, sorry.
Killing ourselves was a strength for a single tribe in a time when that tribe could starve to death if it didn't have access to resources and other tribes occupied those resources. These days where (it looks to me that) we are managing to produce more then we need it is a liability since this mentality combined with greed (aquisition and hoarding of resources is another survival trait if done in moderation) causes wars, unrest, theft, etc.
Ok, another pile of bullshit. There have been wars, unrest, theft, etc since, well, shit, who knows, all of recorded history at least.