The Harm of Belief in God

[Oskuro]

Minor comment, I think atheism does market itself through education. A decent education increases the chances of the individual making rational choices and realizing when things don't add up.

No wonder that religious groups target education so fervently.



As for the harm of religion itself, I'd generalize it as any belief being harmful when it is taken to extremes, that is, when all decision making is based on blind faith with no rational thought in between.

As an example, take Justice. It is a creation of humanity with no objectively measurable quality, and something you have to believe in. But if you were to blindly believe in justice and The LAW, without rationally thinking about why something is just or unjust, you'd end up becoming an inflexible monster that will make no exceptions, nor allow any evolution of the idea.

In other words, dogmatism is what makes religions harmful.

[Simon_Jester]

The harm can also be measured in terms of mental health. There are lots of culture bound disorders around the world that are clearly influenced by the region's particular spiritual, supernatural, or superstitious beliefs like spirit possessions and such. Though religion isn't the only factor, it often is found somewhere on the chain of cause and effect.

Here, too, I'm not sure we could make the problem go away by removing belief in supernatural entities from the equation. People still fall for all sorts of damn-fool ideas that are totally secular (like homeopathy), and for ideas that are "supernatural" only insofar as they posit the existence of something, anything, not known to conventional science, with no real religious overtones (like astrology).

[Formless]

Simon, the question for the thread is "IS Religion Harmful" not "are human beings prone to believing stupid shit that's bound to harm them" or even "what can we do about religion". You are biting into a red herring argument without realizing it.

[Simon_Jester]

Thing is, if religion isn't a cause of harm, if there isn't more harm going on than there would be without religion... the answer to the question for the thread is "no."

And I'm not sure religion is a cause of harm, except in a very abstract sense that relies overmuch on arguments from opportunity cost.

[Formless]

I and others have already given examples of how it can cause harm, and how yes, religion is part of the cause. What more are you after? So far, your objections are like a smoker saying "its not tobacco that's hurting society, its the smoke". Just because other belief systems can tap humanity's potential for superstition * doesn't mean religion is harmless, it means we should be on the lookout for any belief system that triggers irrational responses from humans. So what if that covers more than just religion? No one said it couldn't or doesn't. In fact, people often compare religion to things like conspiracy theories and folklore, and my own posts in this thread reference mysticism and "spirituality" even though they are qualitatively different from organized religion.

* And yes, I consider homeopathy to be little better than a superstition wrapped in scientific language. Even a casual study of its history and claims reveals this to be true.

[Zinegata]

So my question is: Why was superstition naturally selected for?

Superstitions are our defense mechanism against the fact that we are not omniscient. We do not know everything.

Rational thought does not always lead to the "correct" answer if the information is incomplete. For instance, let's say a group of five people are stranded on an island. One member of the group is injured and cannot contribute to gathering food and water. They all decide (including the injured member) that they should let the injured person die to keep the group strong. Unfortunately, the day after the injured member dies the group is found by chance by a passing merchant ship, and the four remainng survivors are saved.

In this case, the rational choice the group made was clearly wrong - if they had let the injured person live for another day, they would all have survived. But the group didn't have perfect information. They simply made the best rational choice based on the information they know.

Superstitions exist to shield us from thse gaps in information. In the above example, I'm sure that any argument that involves euthenazing a group member will illicit debate. Some will argue that the dead person's spirit will "haunt" them forever. Some will argue that killing another person is against God's will. These are totally irrational arguments, but they serve to give voice to the (at the time) irrational argument that maybe it's better to let the injured person live, because we're not entirely sure when circumstances may totally change.

Similarly, religions revolve around shielding us from having to confront what happens after death. Instead of making us worry, religion simply says "We'll go to a better place". It's irrational, but it fills a nagging gap in our information.

That humans are more superstitious is simply the result of us knowing more about the world around us - and realizing there is more that we don't know yet. I mean, yes, we have now sort of figured out that the universe was created by a Big Bang. But why was there a Big Bang in the first place?

[open_sketchbook]

Minor comment, I think atheism does market itself through education. A decent education increases the chances of the individual making rational choices and realizing when things don't add up.

No wonder that religious groups target education so fervently.

This.

Higher level education eventually dispenses with the bullshit and teachs people the important lesson of how to properly question things, to ask "How do you know" to everything they are told and to learn when to accept an answer. People who go into scientific fields learn it, which is why you get a lot of atheist scientists; it's hard to proclaim a belief in anything when your day job is structured around trying to disprove your own theories.

I just wish they'd teach that sort of rational thinking earlier, and to everyone instead of just the future scientist type. I remember having an utterly useless "Civics and Careers" course in grade 10, a course that had so little content that we finished the entire course a month early and spent the rest watching movies. That would have been a nice place to slot in a manditory "Rational Thinking" course teaching people about how to question, the concept of burden of proof, the basics of proper debating, logical fallacies, that sort of thing. Unfortunately, it'd be impossible to create such a course because it fundamentally challenges the nature of religious thought and could be presented to the media as an attack on religious beliefs. (Which, to be honest, it would be...)

[Formless]

Similarly, religions revolve around shielding us from having to confront what happens after death. Instead of making us worry, religion simply says "We'll go to a better place". It's irrational, but it fills a nagging gap in our information.

I'm not picking on you, Zinegata, but I've got to differ here. There is no gap of information, at least not anymore. Dying is (presumably) like falling asleep. There is nothing to experience, because you are physically in no state capable of experiencing anything-- you are dead! Your brain is rotting with the rest of you six feet under the soil! Hell, there are other states like this as well that aren't so permanent as death or commonplace as sleep. take the seizures I've had in the past. I can only take other people's words for it that I was alive at all; I have no memory of the events. Not till about thirty minutes after the fact, at any rate. I just wasn't capable of remembering it. I won't be capable of it next time, either (though hopefully there won't be a next time). And keep in mind that one of the times it happened while I was definitely awake (they've mostly happened at night, mind you, when I'd be deep asleep anyway) I was taking a walk. Somehow I managed to walk home-- something I don't remember doing. I even walked up a flight of stairs, no problem... but my conscious mind wasn't there to witness a thing. There is no "soul", just your brain, and your brain is a physical thing governed by physical rules. There is no other explanation that satisfies, not after that. On the upside, death doesn't seem so scary (boring even) when you've been there and found out there was nothing to see.

Of course, your last few moments before kicking the bucket might be a little more interesting, if all those people who've had near death experiences are to be believed.

I mean, yes, we have now sort of figured out that the universe was created by a Big Bang. But why was there a Big Bang in the first place?

I've heard two answers: either time itself was created during the big bang (thus making the question as meaningless as asking what is south of the south pole) or there is the idea Steven Hawking and a few other guys have that the universe was a statistical anomaly rather like a quantum vacuum fluctuation (which would mean that the universe we see may not be the only one that might exist). Note though that you could combine the two answers, as time as we know it could still be a dimension tied to this universe's fundamental constants. I'm not knowledgeable enough in cosmology to quite follow any but the layman's explanations of any given theory.

That said, this is why science is so great: it actually gives us answers to questions, even those that seem like they shouldn't be humanly possible to answer! Even more exciting still is the fact that once you start seeing questions as answerable and refuse to be intimidated by the unknown, its actually exciting rather than frightening that there are so many questions to ask. It makes you want to never run out of them! Superstition and magic invisible friends in the sky who reserve the right to dictate the nature of your relationship with them (rather than how a healthy relationship with a real person should work) just don't hold a candle to that. Skeptical inquiry is a wonderful thing.

[Zinegata]

Hence why I say superstition (or rather religion) protects us from the awful truth of oblivion, allowing us to function without the spectre of oblivion over us, and giving it a reason why it has persisted via natural selection.

[Channel72]

Hence why I say superstition (or rather religion) protects us from the awful truth of oblivion, allowing us to function without the spectre of oblivion over us, and giving it a reason why it has persisted via natural selection.

The answer is certainly more complicated. Atheists frequently claim that religion was developed as a way to protect us from our own fear of mortality. Historically, this simply isn't true. While modern religions like Christianity and Islam promise us all sorts of eternal pleasures in the hereafter, the earliest known belief systems were a lot more morbid. Even in the Old Testament, there is no concept of a Resurrection and an afterlife until the later prophets; people just died and that was that. Going back even earlier to Sumerian/Babylonian mythology, we find that the afterlife is a depressing underworld where souls roam aimlessly in a semi-conscious state. (This is also, of course, the origin of the Greek concept of Hades.) Even in early Egyptian mythology, the idea of Paradise after death was reserved for royalty; the common folk were pretty much out of luck. Of course, the role of the underworld also eventually evolved to double as a means of punishment/justice.

It was really only with latter Persian/Roman/Hellenistic mythological development that the idea of a Heaven/Elysian Fields/Paradise became a widely believed-in concept in the West/Near East.

It is more likely, anthropoligically speaking, that religion developed as a form of ancestor worship, well before the earliest known civilizations, centering around important tribal members who had died. A common guess among anthropologists (based somewhat on archeological evidence) is that a certain key tribal leader would die, and after his death the tribe would attempt to seek his advice through rituals. They probably didn't have any sort of elaborate mythology or the concept of an eternal pleasure-filled Paradise; they just vaguely believed that important deceased tribal members were somehow contactable through spiritual means. This belief was probably reinforced through dreams; it's often the case that some deceased person you knew well makes an appearance in your dreams. It's not much of a stretch to imagine how this universal experience ultimately led to the belief in an other-wordly realm of the dead - well before human history and perhaps well before the existence of H. sapiens.

[Zinegata]

I'm trying to focus a bit here to answer the question "Why did superstition survive the process of natural selection among humans?". Hence my statement is a bit oversimplified

That's a fascinating summary though. Thanks! This is why I love this place.

[Rye]

While many other animals have minor capacities for superstitious behavior, humans do it best. For the life of me, I will never understand why people who claim critical thinking and rationality as some of the most important values in their lives fail to comprehend the fact that we have evolved to be more superstitious, not less. I can only conclude that - even though I might not fully understand why - there is evolutionary value in superstitious behaviors.

So my question is: Why was superstition naturally selected for?

Pretty obvious, really. Pattern recognition. Take the following example:

You are walking through a forest and hear twigs snapping, uncaused by you.

If you hear twigs snapping in the forest and there's nobody there, but you suspect you're being followed, you're fine.
If you hear twigs snapping in the forest and there's a predator there, and you suspect you're being followed, you stand a better chance.

If you hear twigs snapping in the forest and there's nobody there, but you do not suspect you're being followed, you're fine.
If you hear twigs snapping in the forest and there's a predator there, and you do not suspect you're being followed, your survival chances drop dramatically.

Superstition is just primitive induction, really. False positives make incorrect associations of causation. Much of the human brain is dedicated to second guessing members of our own species in communication, so naturally the brain will apply anthropic principles to the world and natural phenomena where it doesn't belong. You know a guy hates you if he keeps coming after you throwing sticks and stones, shouting at you. What if every time you go out in a boat, the sea destroys your ship and others survive? The sea hates you.

[Sinewmire]

Hence why I say superstition (or rather religion) protects us from the awful truth of oblivion, allowing us to function without the spectre of oblivion over us, and giving it a reason why it has persisted via natural selection.

Right! Oblivion is so much scarier than the prospect of eternal torment at the hands of fiendish monsters of pure evil.

[Oskuro]

Of course it is, because the proponents of said torment are convinced they won't be suffering it.

[Maj]

Electricity can cause harm - both by getting electrocuted and by the environmental damage incurred by acquisition of the raw materials needed to produce it. And like religion, it's being spread to every corner of the globe.

Does that harm mean that electricity does no good? Does it mean that we need to give it up?

Seriously, this thread is full of the belief that since Religion has harmed people through history, that it therefore should not only be eliminated, but that it's the cause of bad behavior.

People are assholes who don't like to be shown that they're wrong once they've formed a conviction (this thread is a good case in point). And they will do everything to remain right to prevent having to face the bleak, stark, cold reality that something they believed to the core may not be true (because rational people don't make such gross errors, and they're rational...).

Fortunately, this is a messageboard and not a situation like the medical establishment versus Semmelweis, so it's not like people are actually going to die as a result of the obstinacy.

Higher level education eventually dispenses with the bullshit and teachs people the important lesson of how to properly question things, to ask "How do you know" to everything they are told and to learn when to accept an answer. People who go into scientific fields learn it, which is why you get a lot of atheist scientists; it's hard to proclaim a belief in anything when your day job is structured around trying to disprove your own theories.

This is such a rose colored view of education.

For starters, the separation between the spiritual and the physical is a relatively recent development. And our view of exactly when and how that occured in our history is equally rose-tinted. For most of history, it's been the religions that have invested in teaching people how to read, write, do math, and generally get educated. In the US, almost all of the first instututions of higher learning were begun as religious colleges. Religion influenced the first text books and the push for public schooling.

We have our school system because religious people thought that literacy and learning were a good thing, not because some areligious scholars got together and pursuaded the government to do it.

As for targeting education in the US today, it doesn't matter who you are - if you want to influence people's thinking, you're going to target education. Duh. Read your own paragraphs - you want to influence people's thinking and get them to be more rational (as though rational is somehow the opposite of religious) by teaching it in school.

Despite the fact that in this thread I've seen multiple reasons for superstitious behavior to develop and continue existing in the human animal - pattern recognition, mental survival, coping with trauma, dealing with oblivion - the over-riding opinion is still "get rid of it, it's harmful."

I don't get it.

[Rye]

Electricity can cause harm - both by getting electrocuted and by the environmental damage incurred by acquisition of the raw materials needed to produce it. And like religion, it's being spread to every corner of the globe.

Does that harm mean that electricity does no good? Does it mean that we need to give it up?

Electricity is not ideological (and thus the analogy isn't really great), but at the very least, your example shows we should be careful about how we generate it and should have safety laws to make its use appropriate. We would be stupid to not look at the bad consequences of any technology or ideology in evaluating its net worth and work out how to nerf its bad side.

Seriously, this thread is full of the belief that since Religion has harmed people through history, that it therefore should not only be eliminated, but that it's the cause of bad behavior.

It is a cause, not the cause. If I follow a sincere belief in god to kill homosexuals, like the holy books of Christianity and Islam command, my religious beliefs have caused bad behaviour.

Do you think Aztec beliefs had nothing to do with the daily sacrifice of people to make the sun rise? Upon the destruction of Aztec culture and religion, did the daily sacrifices continue unabated? Of course not.

Hammers and electricity do not have in built commands and attitudes, religions do.

Despite the fact that in this thread I've seen multiple reasons for superstitious behavior to develop and continue existing in the human animal - pattern recognition, mental survival, coping with trauma, dealing with oblivion - the over-riding opinion is still "get rid of it, it's harmful."

I don't get it.

You're not going to get rid of it completely, but the simple fact is that it's not necessary for a prosperous, ethical society and frequently has negative consequences that do not happen in its absence. It is rightly viewed as a negative force that should be combated by giving people the means to see flaws in their own reasoning.

[Formless]

Electricity can cause harm - both by getting electrocuted and by the environmental damage incurred by acquisition of the raw materials needed to produce it. And like religion, it's being spread to every corner of the globe.

Does that harm mean that electricity does no good? Does it mean that we need to give it up?

Are you really this stupid? Electricity and religion are not comparable in the slightest. Electricity doesn't cause harm unless you stick a fork in a wall outlet. Something most of us were told as kids, but apparently you didn't get the memo.

On the other hand, not only do we not warn kids about the dangers of religious belief and superstition, we actually try and convince their young and impressionable minds that its a good thing!

Seriously, this thread is full of the belief that since Religion has harmed people through history, that it therefore should not only be eliminated, but that it's the cause of bad behavior.

The Crusades. The Inquisition. Galileo. "Intelligent Design". The KKK. "Manifest Destiny". The Holocaust. You really want to deny that religion can, has, and will continue to cause harm to people? You, sir, are living in denial.

Furthermore, apparently you missed all the references to superstition in general, which causes harm quite directly simply by believing in it. All those poor saps who think that all disease is caused by vitamin deficiencies for example. Do you think that doesn't cause harm? That causes harm directly, not only by causing sick people to take absolutely useless medicine when they need real treatments, there are people who have seriously hurt themselves by overdosing on vitamins (which are toxic past a certain point).

[Formless]

Ghetto edit:

Despite the fact that in this thread I've seen multiple reasons for superstitious behavior to develop and continue existing in the human animal - pattern recognition, mental survival, coping with trauma, dealing with oblivion - the over-riding opinion is still "get rid of it, it's harmful."

I don't get it.

Its because you need to grow up and recognize that none of those things are particularly good just because they are natural, they just are what they are. Further, at least some of those things really aren't benefits in the first place-- they are at best comparable to a crutch *. I deal with "oblivion" by remembering that I have actually "experienced" it before (to stretch the meaning of "experience" to the breaking point, but you understand what I mean), thousands of times since I was born, and never was worse for the wear for it. In fact, I was actually better off the vast majority of those times (the seizures weren't one). I deal with loneliness by making friends and talking to real human beings. People cope with trauma in many, many ways, and supernatural belief is only one of them. Another way is, again, to make friends with human beings and seek solace in the community. Pattern recognition is in fact the opposite of good-- its the bane of scientists everywhere, because it causes us to come to false conclusions. Almost every step on the scientific method is meant to remove the errors it causes, and the results not only all the more useful, they are wonderful.

* I actually remember one sermon I heard where the priest admitted up front that religious belief was a crutch, only to say "but its a damn good one!" thus proving he completely missed the point.

[Maj]

You're not going to get rid of it completely, but the simple fact is that it's not necessary for a prosperous, ethical society and frequently has negative consequences that do not happen in its absence.

This statement cannot be proven and is completely ridiculous. There is no human society free of superstition, nor can there be. Further, you have absolutely no clue what the ramifications are of a lack of superstition beyond what you imagine.

Are you really this stupid? Electricity and religion are not comparable in the slightest. Electricity doesn't cause harm unless you stick a fork in a wall outlet. Something most of us were told as kids, but apparently you didn't get the memo.

Are you really this stupid?

Besides being a horrible oversimplification that completely discounts accidents (one tenth of job-related fatalities are the result of electrocution - 1,213 workers died between 2003 and 2007, and 13,150 workers during the same time period were severely injured enough to require time off from work) and natural events like lightning, you also completely ignored what I said about producing it. Coal mining, damming rivers, oil drilling... All of those demonstrate extremely harmful side effects of our desire to want electricity. Do I need to add to that pile the politics involved in cozying up to oppressive, but oil-friendly regimes? All so we can just duke it out on the internet.

Apparently you didn't get the memo.

The Crusades. The Inquisition. Galileo. "Intelligent Design". The KKK. "Manifest Destiny". The Holocaust. You really want to deny that religion can, has, and will continue to cause harm to people? You, sir, are living in denial.

I'm willing to bet that your version of history is just as oversimplified as your version if electricity. So I'll just ask instead: Are there any bad things in history that are not the fault of religion?

And for the record, I'm a ma'am.

Furthermore, apparently you missed all the references to superstition in general, which causes harm quite directly simply by believing in it.

Oddly enough, it's the people arguing against superstition who have largely come up with reasons why it was necessary at some point in human development. Personally, I find that they are compelling reasons to still have superstitious beliefs. Pattern recognition? Science couldn't happen without it. Helping retain sanity when feeling lonely? Given that depression and alienation are more prevalent in the "civilized" world, I think that it's needed more than ever. Help dealing with traumatic and mentally stressful events? Well, the day that humans don't suffer from war, abusive parents, horrible accidents, or whatever, then we won't need it. To combat the great, mysterious, and infinite oblivion? Once we unravel the phenomenon of death, then I guess that purpose is out, too. Even if you believe that your consciousness is lost to the universe for all time and your body is recycled into the fabric of the earth (or embalmed in a wooden box for archaeologists to marvel over in a few thousand years or whatever), the question of death is still there and still looming. And people still panic about dying.

So, while superstition can cause harm - just like any other tool in the shed - it still serves a purpose. Multiple purposes, it seems. Maybe when we stop being part of the world, we can break free from this horrible biology and rise above such baseless needs.

All those poor saps who think that all disease is caused by vitamin deficiencies for example. Do you think that doesn't cause harm? That causes harm directly, not only by causing sick people to take absolutely useless medicine when they need real treatments, there are people who have seriously hurt themselves by overdosing on vitamins (which are toxic past a certain point).

It also causes stuff like fortified rice and flour and milk and salt since there actually are diseases caused by wide-spread vitamin deficiencies. In fact, the RDA is the minimum amount of nutrients a given person needs in order to prevent major signs of nutritional deficiency. If you're going to place the blame, you've got to also place the credit.

[Maj]

Double Post?

[Serafina]

And the error in your latest rambleargumentpost:
You are adressing superstition, not religion.

The first part of your argument is "superstition can not be removed", which is true. But that doesn't mean we can't fight against it and try to reduce it. Thus, that point of your argument is, well, pointless.

The second part is an attempt to argue that superstition has it's advantages. However, you merely point at advantages of things related to superstition. Pattern recognition might be one reason why we are superstitious - but that doesn't mean that superstition itself is advantageous just because pattern recognition is.


I'll grant you that you point out one case where superstitious beliefs might have genuine advantages.
However, you completely ignore what i said about it earlier:
There are other ways to achieve the same benefits without any of the disadvantages of superstition.
And given that these disadvantages often cause the very same problems it's supposed to cure, that's a pretty serious problems. Religion can cause depression - you can be depressed because you can not achieve the (impossibly high) goals of your relgion. Or because your religion forbids something you would really want to do (say, not supressing your homosexuality). It can be mentally stressfull to fulfill the wishes of your imaginary friend. It can cause alienation because many beliefs seperate themselves from others. And it can certainly create mental traumata.

I'm willing to bet that your version of history is just as oversimplified as your version if electricity. So I'll just ask instead: Are there any bad things in history that are not the fault of religion?

Of course there are. Natural disasters, many wars, diseases.
However, those listed here certainly ARE the fault of religion. The Crusades were largely motivated by a desire to re-take the "Holy City/Land". The Inquisition was purely religiously motivated. Galileo was persecuted solely due to religion. Intelligent Design is purely religious and tries to destroy modern science. The KKK was religiously motivated. The Holocaust against the jews was based, motivated and justified by religion.

You could add things like the 30-year war, slavery, the near-extinction of the native americans and aborigines, dozens of religious persectutions in Europe. The supression of women, the supression of sexuality, the supression of individual freedom, the supression of the sciences.

You can even see that today. The "War on Terror" is mostly a religious issue. The Isreal-Palestine-conflict and the situation in Northern Ireland are largely caused by religion. India and Pakistan mostly seperated due to religious issues, and fought their own nuclear cold war.

Religion DOES cause trouble. Not only on a large scale - millions of people are held in ignorance about the real world solely due to religious issues. Parents neglect their children's sex education due to religious reasons, with damages from sexual frustration over pregnancies to STDs. They mistreat them due to religious reasons, which can get as worse as beatings that lead to death. And so much more.

[Formless]

Are you really this stupid?

Besides being a horrible oversimplification that completely discounts accidents (one tenth of job-related fatalities are the result of electrocution - 1,213 workers died between 2003 and 2007, and 13,150 workers during the same time period were severely injured enough to require time off from work) and natural events like lightning, you also completely ignored what I said about producing it. Coal mining, damming rivers, oil drilling... All of those demonstrate extremely harmful side effects of our desire to want electricity.

Apparently you didn't get the memo.

Fucktard, I know about accidents. The point was that we warn our kids against the dangers of electricity from as soon as they are old enough to understand, whereas (and I see you snipped this part out) we do the opposite with religion and superstition. All you are doing is nitpicking trivialities, like an indoctrinated idiot who refuses to see the obvious stupidities in their own rationalizations.

I'm willing to bet that you version if history is just as oversimplified as your version if electricity. So I'll just ask instead: Are there any bad things in history that are not the fault of religion?

And for the record, I'm a ma'am.

You, ma'am, are missing the point. Religion only has to be found on the causal chain somewhere for us to say it has caused harm. No one claimed it was the only thing that causes harm or has caused harm, but in fact if you read "Mein Kampf" Hitler made it very clear that the Holocaust was as much a religious thing as a racist thing. The Crusades were point blank a religiously motivated event. The Inquisition was mandated by the fucking Catholic Church. Etc. And you deny that religion is harmful? What world are you living in?

Oddly enough, it's the people arguing against superstition who have largely come up with reasons why it was necessary at some point in human development.

Fucking hell, you just don't understand what the anthropomorphic fallacy is, do you? Superstition was NOT necessary in the development of humanity, you stupid bitch. Its not a human engineer, it does not act like one, and it is certainly not a God to be worshiped *. The key points you are missing are

1) anything that doesn't actively decrease our genetic fitness isn't going to leave the gene pool. We still have vestigial tails, does that mean they are necessary to being human?

2) even those evolutionary traits that are improvements to our genetic fitness such as the eye or pattern recognition may prove to be poor designs, or unfit for surviving in a modern environment. Evolution is constantly tweaking these things for that exact reason. We easily submit to authority figures (see: the Milgram Experiment), does that mean that soldiers can use "I was just following orders" as an excuse to commit atrocities?

3) as an explanation for both numbers 1 and 2, the engine that drives evolution is random mutation and selection forces. Its literally as amoral as a thunderstorm or gravity. This same mechanism creates viruses and carnivores as readily as it creates humans.

Think before opening your mouth and spouting ignorant shit.

* Which, by the way, strikes me as idolatry. Last I checked your world view considers that a sin.

Pattern recognition? Science couldn't happen without it.

Utterly, utterly false. Do you know anything about science? I mean, anything at all?

Helping retain sanity when feeling lonely? Given that depression and alienation are more prevalent in the "civilized" world, I think that it's needed more than ever.

The solution is to make some fucking friends, you drooling retard. How many times am I going to have to say this? Losing the ability to recognize your own imaginary companions from reality is NOT the best way to cope with loneliness. I'm starting to regret even bringing that study up, you are taking entirely the wrong lesson from it.

Help dealing with traumatic and mentally stressful events? Well, the day that humans don't suffer from war, abusive parents, horrible accidents, or whatever, then we won't need it.

Again, this is completely the opposite lesson to take from what we've been saying. OCD is a mechanism for coping with stress too, but its still a mental illness. I'm getting tired of repeating myself only to be ignored.

To combat the great, mysterious, and infinite oblivion? Once we unravel the phenomenon of death, then I guess that purpose is out, too. Even if you believe that your consciousness is lost to the universe for all time and your body is recycled into the fabric of the earth (or embalmed in a wooden box for archaeologists to marvel over in a few thousand years or whatever), the question of death is still there and still looming. And people still panic about dying.

We have unraveled that phenomenon. I'm serious when I say you aren't missing anything. What people are afraid of is pain, blood, and corpses, the iconography of death. An aversion to that stuff kept our ancestors alive, not some abstract fear of oblivio and the unknown. The latter isn't something you can pass on, because as soon as you've experienced it its too late to pass it on. You're dead already!

Even if there were still a mystery surrounding what happens to you after death, the whole point of the scientific method is to stop seeing mysteries as something to be afraid of and start seeing mysteries as an opportunity for discovery and self improvement. To embrace our capacity for curiosity and reason (evolved traits, both of them!).

(Jesus, this is just stonewalling at this rate)

So, while superstition can cause harm - just like any other tool in the shed - it still serves a purpose. Multiple purposes, it seems. Maybe when we stop being part of the world, we can break free from this horrible biology and rise above such baseless needs.

Purpose is a human concept, not a property of the universe. You need to lay off the drugs. I mean, the armchair philosopher bullshit. (they are so hard to tell apart these days...)

It also causes stuff like fortified rice and flour and milk and salt since there actually are diseases caused by wide-spread vitamin deficiencies. In fact, the RDA is the minimum amount of nutrients a given person needs in order to prevent major signs of nutritional deficiency. If you're going to place the blame, you've got to also place the credit.

That has got to be the most deliberate red herring if I have ever seen.

[Formless]

You could add things like the 30-year war, slavery, the near-extinction of the native americans and aborigines, dozens of religious persectutions in Europe.

FYI, "Manifest Destiny" was an (oblique) reference to the extermination of the Native Americans.

[Formless]

Something just occurred to me. Maj, you're a Mormon, right? You do know the historical reason the LDS church is centered in Utah, right? So why is it so hard for you to grasp that religion can be harmful?

[Maj]

Last I checked your world view considers that a sin.

I don't have time to respond further than this today because I have other things to do, but you might want to take a step back before you make an assumption.

You have no idea what my "world view" is.

The ONLY thing I've said about any religious affiliation on these boards is that I'm an inactive member of the Mormon church - which just means that I have yet to be excommunicated.

So, while you can go ahead and call me names if it makes you feel better, don't go off telling me what I believe because you have no fucking clue.