Atheists and Evolutionists, Line Up for Some "New Light!"

by DarioKehl 22 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  ziddina

  "If evolution is true, what roll does religion play in human adaptation and natural selection and why would humans fight, kill, invest, deprive themselves and expend vast amounts of material and energy into building giant cathedrals and embarking on lengthy missions throughout our history??? Remember, nature selects AGAINST waste and extravagance. Environmental pressures should have weeded out the "god gene" long ago, or so it would seem..." OP

  Several other people have already mentioned this, but here goes....

  I suspect that religion emphasizes or strengthens "herd" mentality - er, "cooperation".

  In other words, if a leader wants to get his group roused to act as a single unit, whether it be warfare or hunting or building a stone monument [which would also serve as a sort of 'territory marker'...] or farming or building roads or....

  You get the idea.

  Anyway, using religion as a means of stimulating the whole group to pull together, would make 'Religion' a useful adaption to improve the survival rates of human groups.

  Did I win? Do I get a prize???

  Zid
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  sizemik

  Remember, nature selects AGAINST waste and extravagance. Environmental pressures should have weeded out the "god gene" long ago, or so it would seem..."

  Evolution is all waste and extravagance . . . that's why more than 95% of species are gone-burgers. For every beneficial mutation there are millions of mistakes. Environment changes constantly, as does the inventory of occupants along with it. It's when you try to give it a purpose that it may not actually have, that you run into trouble.
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  King Solomon

  Remember, nature selects AGAINST waste and extravagance. Environmental pressures should have weeded out the "god gene" long ago, or so it would seem..."

  Evolution is all waste and extravagance . . .

  Remember that "evolution" includes two processes: 1) RANDOM mutation of genes, followed by 2) NATURAL SELECTION, the step where Nature determines which remain in the gene pool. Natural selection is also an inexact and inconsistent judge, but over the long haul the verdict tends to be correct, even if it results in what seems extravagant and wasteful.

  If evolution WERE perfect, we wouldn't have genetic diseases, i.e. they'd have already been toxic to the organisms that carried them, self-correcting the problem. Obviously that's not the case, as conditions like sickle-cell anemia are with us today (and interestingly, sickle cell may have conferred afflicted individuals with resistance to malaria, an infectious disease: hence it may have been an adaptation because it offered some benefit to those with the condition).

  Remember, too, that there's not any ONE correct answer at which factors explain religious belief: ALL of these MAY be factors that have played a role, with each offering a varying degree of contribution at different times in history. But fact is, there are multi-factoral elements at play that vary in their contribution with time.

  There's the old saying how you could be killed for being a Xian at one point in Rome's history, and 100 yrs later you could be killed for NOT being a Xian. That's perhaps as good an example of any as to how cultural values/beliefs change with time, and hence the environment can quickly change. It's "natural selection", if you include man's attempts to intervene in that manner as part "nature".