Perhaps the Greatest Irony

Lazarus · Posted: Sat Mar 01, 2008 11:49 am Post subject: Perhaps the Greatest Irony

Perhaps the greatest irony, to me, is that Christianity owes it's existence to precisely the same mechanism that so feverishly tries to dispel... natural selection.

Most of the themes of Christianity are found in earlier religions. That much is obvious. But what gets forgotten is that those religions borrowed from previous, and so on and so on...

The best ideas (or the most effective Cool

) were carried on. Then the next wave of interpretations and variations sprang up and the best suited of those ideas make it to the next version and it all starts again.

I know this is touched on in the essay; The Mind Virus, does anyone know of any books or research on this "evolution of religion" that is specific to religious ideas?

Perhaps this is the real reason religion opposes natural selection!?

Care to discuss? If this has already been covered, I apologize, I did not find it in a search.
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"Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful." - Seneca, the Younger

Dawkadoodle · Posted: Sat Mar 01, 2008 12:03 pm Post subject:

You either don't fully understand what natural selection is or you're desperately trying to make an irrelevant parallel between two unlike things in an attempt to make an even more unrelated point seem relevant. The third option really doesn't seem possible given your structure.

Eyedunno · Posted: Sat Mar 01, 2008 1:25 pm Post subject:

Based on previous threads, I feel like I might be feeding a troll here, but...

The way it works is like this:
Ideas of the sort that people will want to pass them on (and teach them to their children, and have more children to teach them to) ARE the ideas that get passed on to larger numbers of people. Also, like genes, ideas change subtly through many tellings (analogous to errors in the copying of genes) - this is the mutation mechanism that, in order to produce ever-more-effective viruses of the mind, goes along with the natural selection mechanism of how well suited an idea is to spreading.

Christianity and Islam in particular even seem intelligently designed for the purpose of spreading to everyone in the world - both forbid contraception and abortion on a large scale, both contain obligations to spread the word and penalties for apostasy, and both appeal to humanity's fear of death and suffering (both through promises of eternal bliss, bevies of virgins, etc. and through threats). In actuality, it's more likely the above mechanisms that are to blame though.

There is definitely an analogy to be drawn here with biology, and meme theory is one of the things Richard Dawkins is most famous for.

Dawkadoodle · Posted: Sat Mar 01, 2008 1:40 pm Post subject:

"Perhaps the greatest irony, to me, is that Christianity owes it's existence to precisely the same mechanism that so feverishly tries to dispel... natural selection. "

We're not talking about analogies, the OP made the idiotic claim that it was due to the same exact mechanism. Not a like mechanism, the same one.

Your post trying to justify an analogy which doesn't exist is pointless. Don't waste my time with anymore tautological statements.

josephpalazzo · Posted: Sat Mar 01, 2008 3:11 pm Post subject: Re: Perhaps the Greatest Irony

Shiranu · Posted: Thu Mar 06, 2008 9:50 am Post subject:

Eh, it might be worded a bit wrong, but Christanity is defi. a mixture of the best things ripped out of older religions mixed into one giant ball of crap...

...at least, I think thats what the interweb said, and we all know the interwebs are correct.
_________________
"I never really wanted you to see, The screwed up side of me that I keep...Locked inside of me so deep...It always seems to get to me. I never really wanted you to go, So many things you should have known. I guess for me there's just no hope, I never meant to be so cold..."

"Life feels quite like Hell should, but this Hells so cold...Pull another knife out, stick it with rest of them... when my back is full, turn me around to face it." Trivium

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