The title is a 3rd attempt as the previous titles generated opprobrium from two Christians. 1st attempt (Reason is the Greatest Enemy that Faith Has) was allegedly a misrepresentation of Martin Luther. A creationist gave me a modified version (Reason can be - and often is - the greatest enemy that faith has) but became angry when I used it. Latest attempt is from Mark Twain.
The posts here describe conversations with Apologists & what I regard as their fallacious arguments.
This is a transcript of Alan Watts’ lecture about Jesus Christ & Christianity. All the credit for this transcript goes to Scott Lahteine for writing it up in 2012. Click hereto visit his blog.
I have put together a video syncing in together this transcript along with Watt’s audio lecture, which you can find here. (please pardon any editing errors in the video)
Most of these were tried here before, although some of the cruder tactics have generally been dropped in more recent posits on this board:
1. Scanning for Christian articles and comments – once new articles are posted, they jump on immediately, hard and fast, night and day.
2. Working in “packs” – there appear to be many of them, but they are actually mostly a fixed group of individuals.
3. Outright mocking and ridicule, shock tactics – be it your name or username, your article, your comments, your Biblical statements, scientific statements, etc. They can be outright vicious and nasty.
4. They attempt to provoke vicious and nasty comments back, then try to use it against Christians, by saying something like, “Not very Christian of you.”, etc.
5. Using, in their packs, the thumbs up for their own and the thumbs down against their opponents very consistently.
6. They dispute every argument with their side/opinions, and absolutely reject/ignore decent/correct responses.
7. Accusing their opponents and the Christian scientific community at large of being ignorant and stupid in scientific matters.
8. They purposefully use real science and flawed logic to advocate non-real science and ideas.
9. They use exaggerated, far-fetched and offensive terms – like “buy bull” for Bible, xian for Christian. They talk of sky daddies, FSM (flying spaghetti monster), etc. They are careful, humanistic and politically correct regarding other things, but NOT with Christianity. This is a big tactic they use.
10. They focus on specific scriptures in a twisted and out-of-context way to bring confusion concerning God’s Word. They refer to God as murderer, etc. [Yet I wonder how many of them are all for the death penalty and abortion.]
11. They harp on about the same thing in all their posts, in every article. Even when Christians respond to them on their “issues”, they ignore it and continue posting said “issues”. It then appears as if Christians cannot answer them on their “issues”, when the truth is that they were already answered, but now strategically just post the same “issues” over and over, while Christians ignore them. To the onlooker though, it seems as if Christians cannot answer them.
12. Where they have been successfully debunked, they use diversion tactics – by focusing on petty issues, like saying, “the Bible says CIRCLE, not SPHERE, hahaha!”, by using the gish gallop technique (that in all fairness was not their tactic initially but they love using it now), by bringing up long responses with many issues all at once, etc.
13. Ensuring that in their packs, at least one or more of them post after a Christian post, giving the impression/illusion that they had the last say and that their word is true.
14. Claiming victory when there was none.
15. When cornered and feeling the heat, resorting to INSULTS full-on, accusing the Christian of being a Poe or a troll. These are again diversion tactics.
The article notes that there are other tactics as well--would be interesting to add to the list as we see them employed here--but basically it's all about attack and trying to keep focus away from their justifying their beliefs on their own bases.
Perhaps it will get to the point where I will just respond with numbers to most atheist posits as they come up and the context will be clear before wasting any more time with them!
[He never did, which is a pity]
The source in full: https://www.news24.com/MyNews24/Militant-Atheist-Strategies-Exposed-20120815
What are the odds that you exist, as you, today? Author Ali Binazir attempts to quantify the probability that you came about and exist as you today and reveals that the odds of you existing are almost zero.
IF any man after legal conviction shall HAVE OR WORSHIP any other God, but the LORD GOD: he shall be put to death. Exod. 22. 20. Deut. 13. 6. & 10. Deut. 17. 2. 6. 2. If any man or woman be a WITCH, that is, hath or consulteth with a familiar spirit, they shall be put to death. Exod. 22. 18. Levit. 20. 27. Deut. 18. 10. 11. 3. If any person within this Jurisdiction whether Christian or Pagan shall wittingly and willingly presume to BLASPHEME the holy Name of God, Father, Son or Holy-Ghost, with direct, expresse, presumptuous, or high-handed blasphemy, either by wilfull or obstinate denying the true God, or his Creation, or Government of the world: or shall curse God in like manner, or reproach the holy Religion of God as if it were but a politick device to keep ignorant men in awe; or shal utter any other kinde of Blasphemy of the like nature & degree they shall be put to death. Levit. 24, 15. 16. 4. If any person shall commit any wilfull MURTHER, which is Man slaughter, committed upon premeditate malice, hatred, or crueltie not in a mans necessary and just defence, nor by meer casualty against his will, he shall be put to death. Exod. 21. 12. 13. Numb. 35. 31. 5. If any person slayeth another suddenly in his ANGER, or CRUELTY of passion, he shall be put to death. Levit. 24. 17. Numb. 35. 20. 21. 6. If any person shall slay another through guile, either by POYSONING, or other such develish practice, he shall be put to death. Exod. 21. 14. 7. If any man or woman shall LYE WITH ANY BEAST, or bruit creature, by carnall copulation; they shall surely be put to death: and the beast shall be slain, & buried, and not eaten. Lev. 20, 15. 16. 8. If any man LYETH WITH MAN-KINDE as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed abomination, they both shal surely be put to death: unles the one partie were forced (or be under fourteen years of age in which case he shall be seveerly punished) Levit. 20. 13. 9. If any person commit ADULTERIE with a married, or espoused wife; the Adulterer & Adulteresse shal surely be put to death. Lev. 20. 19. & 18. 20. Deu. 22. 23. 27. 10. If any man STEALETH A MAN, or Man-kinde, he shall surely be put to death. Exodus 21. 16. 11. If any man rise up by FALSE-WITNES wittingly, and of purpose to take away any mans life: he shal be put to death. Deut. 19. 16. 18. 16. 12. If any man shall CONSPIRE, and attempt any Invasion, Insurrection, or publick Rebellion against our Common-Wealth: or shall indeavour to surprize any Town, or Townes, Fort, or Forts therin; or shall treacherously, & persidiously attempt the Alteration and Subversion of our frame of Politie, or Government fundamentally he shall be put to death. Numb. 16. 2 Sam. 3. 2 Sam. 18. 2 Sam. 20. 13. If any child, or children, above sixteen years old, and of sufficient understanding, shall CURSE, or SMITE their natural FATHER, or MOTHER; he or they shall be put to death: unles it can be sufficiently testified that the Parents have been very unchristianly negligent in the eduction of such children; or so provoked them by extream, and cruel correction; that they have been forced therunto to preserve themselves from death or maiming. Exod. 21. 17. Lev. 20. 9. Exod. 21. 15. 14. If a man have a stubborn or REBELLIOUS SON, of sufficient years & uderstanding (viz) sixteen years of age, which will not obey the voice of his Father, or the voice of his Mother, and that when they have chastened him will not harken unto them: then shal his Father & Mother being his natural parets, lay hold on him, & bring him to the Magistrates assembled in Court & testifie unto them that their Son is stubborn & rebellious & will not obey their voice and chastisement, but lives in sundry notorious crimes, such a son shal be put to death. Deut. 21. 20. 21. 15. If any man shal RAVISH any maid or single woman, comitting carnal copulation with her by force, against her own will; that is above the age of ten years he shal be punished either with death, or with some other greivous punishmet according to circumstances as the Judges, or General court shal determin.
I'd like to introduce you to an emerging area of science,
one that is still speculative but hugely exciting, and certainly one that's
growing very rapidly. Quantum biology asks a very simple question: Does quantum
mechanics -- that weird and wonderful and powerful theory of the subatomic
world of atoms and molecules that underpins so much of modern physics and
chemistry -- also play a role inside the living cell? In other words: Are there
processes, mechanisms, phenomena in living organisms that can only be explained
with a helping hand from quantum mechanics? Now, quantum biology isn't new;
it's been around since the early 1930s. But it's only in the last decade or so
that careful experiments -- in biochemistry labs, using spectroscopy -- have
shown very clear, firm evidence that there are certain specific mechanisms that
require quantum mechanics to explain them.
01:17
Quantum biology brings together quantum physicists,
biochemists, molecular biologists -- it's a very interdisciplinary field. I
come from quantum physics, so I'm a nuclear physicist.
01:28
I've spent more than three decades trying to get my head
around quantum mechanics. One of the founders of quantum mechanics, Niels Bohr,
said, If you're not astonished by it, then you haven't understood it. So I sort
of feel happy that I'm still astonished by it. That's a good thing. But it
means I study the very smallest structures in the universe -- the building
blocks of reality. If we think about the scale of size, start with an everyday
object like the tennis ball, and just go down orders of magnitude in size --
from the eye of a needle down to a cell, down to a bacterium, down to an enzyme
-- you eventually reach the nano-world.
02:09
Now, nanotechnology may be a term you've heard of. A
nanometer is a billionth of a meter. My area is the atomic nucleus, which is
the tiny dot inside an atom. It's even smaller in scale. This is the domain of
quantum mechanics, and physicists and chemists have had a long time to try and
get used to it. Biologists, on the other hand, have got off lightly, in my
view. They are very happy with their balls-and-sticks models of molecules.
02:38
(Laughter)
02:39
The balls are the atoms, the sticks are the bonds between
the atoms. And when they can't build them physically in the lab, nowadays, they
have very powerful computers that will simulate a huge molecule. This is a
protein made up of 100,000 atoms. It doesn't really require much in the way of
quantum mechanics to explain it. Quantum mechanics was developed in the 1920s.
It is a set of beautiful and powerful mathematical rules and ideas that explain
the world of the very small. And it's a world that's very different from our
everyday world, made up of trillions of atoms. It's a world built on
probability and chance. It's a fuzzy world. It's a world of phantoms, where
particles can also behave like spread-out waves.
03:30
If we imagine quantum mechanics or quantum physics, then, as
the fundamental foundation of reality itself, then it's not surprising that we
say quantum physics underpins organic chemistry. After all, it gives us the
rules that tell us how the atoms fit together to make organic molecules.
Organic chemistry, scaled up in complexity, gives us molecular biology, which
of course leads to life itself. So in a way, it's sort of not surprising. It's
almost trivial. You say, "Well, of course life ultimately must depend of
quantum mechanics." But so does everything else. So does all inanimate
matter, made up of trillions of atoms.
04:08
Ultimately, there's a quantum level where we have to delve
into this weirdness. But in everyday life, we can forget about it. Because once
you put together trillions of atoms, that quantum weirdness just dissolves
away. Quantum biology isn't about this. Quantum biology isn't this obvious. Of
course quantum mechanics underpins life at some molecular level. Quantum
biology is about looking for the non-trivial -- the counterintuitive ideas in
quantum mechanics -- and to see if they do, indeed, play an important role in
describing the processes of life.
04:54
Here is my perfect example of the counter-intuitiveness of
the quantum world. This is the quantum skier. He seems to be intact, he seems
to be perfectly healthy, and yet, he seems to have gone around both sides of
that tree at the same time. Well, if you saw tracks like that you'd guess it
was some sort of stunt, of course. But in the quantum world, this happens all
the time. Particles can multitask, they can be in two places at once. They can
do more than one thing at the same time. Particles can behave like spread-out
waves. It's almost like magic.
05:27
Physicists and chemists have had nearly a century of trying
to get used to this weirdness. I don't blame the biologists for not having to
or wanting to learn quantum mechanics.
05:37
You see, this weirdness is very delicate; and we physicists
work very hard to maintain it in our labs. We cool our system down to near
absolute zero, we carry out our experiments in vacuums, we try and isolate it
from any external disturbance. That's very different from the warm, messy,
noisy environment of a living cell. Biology itself, if you think of molecular
biology, seems to have done very well in describing all the processes of life
in terms of chemistry -- chemical reactions. And these are reductionist,
deterministic chemical reactions, showing that, essentially, life is made of
the same stuff as everything else, and if we can forget about quantum mechanics
in the macro world, then we should be able to forget about it in biology, as
well.
06:27
Well, one man begged to differ with this idea. Erwin
Schrödinger, of Schrödinger's Cat fame, was an Austrian physicist. He was one
of the founders of quantum mechanics in the 1920s. In 1944, he wrote a book
called "What is Life?" It was tremendously influential. It influenced
Francis Crick and James Watson, the discoverers of the double-helix structure
of DNA. To paraphrase a description in the book, he says: At the molecular
level, living organisms have a certain order, a structure to them that's very
different from the random thermodynamic jostling of atoms and molecules in
inanimate matter of the same complexity.
07:13
In fact, living matter seems to behave in this order, in a
structure, just like inanimate matter cooled down to near absolute zero, where
quantum effects play a very important role. There's something special about the
structure -- the order -- inside a living cell. So, Schrödinger speculated that
maybe quantum mechanics plays a role in life. It's a very speculative,
far-reaching idea, and it didn't really go very far.
07:45
But as I mentioned at the start, in the last 10 years, there
have been experiments emerging, showing where some of these certain phenomena
in biology do seem to require quantum mechanics.
07:55
I want to share with you just a few of the exciting ones.
This is one of the best-known phenomena in the quantum world, quantum
tunneling.
The box on the left shows the wavelike, spread-out distribution of a
quantum entity -- a particle, like an electron, which is not a little ball
bouncing off a wall. It's a wave that has a certain probability of being able
to permeate through a solid wall, like a phantom leaping through to the other
side. You can see a faint smudge of light in the right-hand box. Quantum
tunneling suggests that a particle can hit an impenetrable barrier, and yet
somehow, as though by magic, disappear from one side and reappear on the other.
The nicest way of explaining it is if you want to throw a ball over a wall, you
have to give it enough energy to get over the top of the wall. In the quantum
world, you don't have to throw it over the wall, you can throw it at the wall,
and there's a certain non-zero probability that it'll disappear on your side,
and reappear on the other.
08:57
This isn't speculation, by the way. We're happy -- well,
"happy" is not the right word --
09:02
(Laughter)
09:04
we are familiar with this.
09:06
(Laughter)
09:09
Quantum tunneling takes place all the time; in fact, it's
the reason our Sun shines. The particles fuse together, and the Sun turns
hydrogen into helium through quantum tunneling. Back in the 70s and 80s, it was
discovered that quantum tunneling also takes place inside living cells.
Enzymes, those workhorses of life, the catalysts of chemical reactions --
enzymes are biomolecules that speed up chemical reactions in living cells, by
many, many orders of magnitude. And it's always been a mystery how they do
this.
09:43
Well, it was discovered that one of the tricks that enzymes
have evolved to make use of, is by transferring subatomic particles, like
electrons and indeed protons, from one part of a molecule to another via
quantum tunneling. It's efficient, it's fast, it can disappear -- a proton can
disappear from one place, and reappear on the other. Enzymes help this take
place.
10:08
This is research that's been carried out back in the 80s,
particularly by a group in Berkeley, Judith Klinman. Other groups in the UK
have now also confirmed that enzymes really do this.
10:21
Research carried out by my group -- so as I mentioned, I'm a
nuclear physicist, but I've realized I've got these tools of using quantum
mechanics in atomic nuclei, and so can apply those tools in other areas as
well. One question we asked is whether quantum tunneling plays a role in
mutations in DNA. Again, this is not a new idea; it goes all the way back to
the early 60s. The two strands of DNA, the double-helix structure, are held
together by rungs; it's like a twisted ladder. And those rungs of the ladder
are hydrogen bonds -- protons, that act as the glue between the two strands. So
if you zoom in, what they're doing is holding these large molecules --
nucleotides -- together. Zoom in a bit more. So, this a computer simulation.
The two white balls in the middle are protons, and you can see that it's a
double hydrogen bond. One prefers to sit on one side; the other, on the other side
of the two strands of the vertical lines going down, which you can't see. It
can happen that these two protons can hop over. Watch the two white balls. They
can jump over to the other side. If the two strands of DNA then separate,
leading to the process of replication, and the two protons are in the wrong
positions, this can lead to a mutation.
11:43
This has been known for half a century. The question is: How
likely are they to do that, and if they do, how do they do it? Do they jump
across, like the ball going over the wall? Or can they quantum-tunnel across,
even if they don't have enough energy? Early indications suggest that quantum
tunneling can play a role here. We still don't know yet how important it is;
this is still an open question. It's speculative, but it's one of those
questions that is so important that if quantum mechanics plays a role in
mutations, surely this must have big implications, to understand certain types
of mutations, possibly even those that lead to turning a cell cancerous.
12:22
Another example of quantum mechanics in biology is quantum
coherence, in one of the most important processes in biology, photosynthesis:
plants and bacteria taking sunlight, and using that energy to create biomass.
Quantum coherence is the idea of quantum entities multitasking. It's the
quantum skier. It's an object that behaves like a wave, so that it doesn't just
move in one direction or the other, but can follow multiple pathways at the
same time.
12:54
Some years ago, the world of science was shocked when a
paper was published showing experimental evidence that quantum coherence takes
place inside bacteria, carrying out photosynthesis. The idea is that the
photon, the particle of light, the sunlight, the quantum of light captured by a
chlorophyll molecule, is then delivered to what's called the reaction center,
where it can be turned into chemical energy. And in getting there, it doesn't
just follow one route; it follows multiple pathways at once, to optimize the
most efficient way of reaching the reaction center without dissipating as waste
heat. Quantum coherence taking place inside a living cell. A remarkable idea,
and yet evidence is growing almost weekly, with new papers coming out,
confirming that this does indeed take place.
13:45
My third and final example is the most beautiful, wonderful
idea. It's also still very speculative, but I have to share it with you. The
European robin migrates from Scandinavia down to the Mediterranean, every
autumn, and like a lot of other marine animals and even insects, they navigate
by sensing the Earth's magnetic field. Now, the Earth's magnetic field is very,
very weak; it's 100 times weaker than a fridge magnet, and yet it affects the
chemistry -- somehow -- within a living organism. That's not in doubt -- a
German couple of ornithologists, Wolfgang and Roswitha Wiltschko, in the 1970s,
confirmed that indeed, the robin does find its way by somehow sensing the
Earth's magnetic field, to give it directional information -- a built-in
compass.
14:37
The puzzle, the mystery was: How does it do it? Well, the
only theory in town -- we don't know if it's the correct theory, but the only
theory in town -- is that it does it via something called quantum entanglement.
Inside the robin's retina -- I kid you not -- inside the robin's retina is a
protein called cryptochrome, which is light-sensitive. Within cryptochrome, a
pair of electrons are quantum-entangled. Now, quantum entanglement is when two
particles are far apart, and yet somehow remain in contact with each other.
Even Einstein hated this idea; he called it "spooky action at a
distance."
15:12
(Laughter)
15:14
So if Einstein doesn't like it, then we can all be
uncomfortable with it. Two quantum-entangled electrons within a single molecule
dance a delicate dance that is very sensitive to the direction the bird flies
in the Earth's magnetic field.
15:26
We don't know if it's the correct explanation, but wow,
wouldn't it be exciting if quantum mechanics helps birds navigate? Quantum
biology is still in it infancy. It's still speculative. But I believe it's
built on solid science. I also think that in the coming decade or so, we're
going to start to see that actually, it pervades life -- that life has evolved
tricks that utilize the quantum world. Watch this space.
The two slit experiment dates from the 19th
century when it was used to demonstrates the wave property of light. In recent
years it has been used to illustrate a very weird aspect in quantum mechanics.
PART 1 – THE BASIC
TWO SLIT EXPERIMENT
Step
Description
Notes
1
Imagine a source of light shining against a screen with two slits in
it.
2
As the light hits the screen, it passes through the slits. These act
as two sources of light which then shine onto a second, solid screen.
3
When the light hits the second screen, we observe an interference
pattern, made up of light and dark fringes.
4
The light spreads out from the slits in the first screen (diffraction) and the two sets of waves overlap. As they overlap, they interfere with other, creating the fringe pattern that we observe on the second screen.
5
This demonstrates that photons behaves as waves.
Not just photons, but any quantum-sized particle, such as atoms or electrons.
6
The same effect is observed with water waves, using ripples in a
water tank instead of light.
PART 2 – A TWO SLIT
EXPERIMENT WITH PARTICLES
Step
Description
Notes
7
Imagine the screen with two slits is turned so that it is horizontal
Particles of sand will always behave as particles, and never as waves, because they are not quanta, like atoms, electrons or photons.
8
This time we use grains of sand to represent particles. Each grain
will run through one slit or the other.
9
Two piles of sand are observed to form, one pile beneath each slit.
10
Now let’s repeat the experiment but using atoms instead of sand. The atoms are streamed through the two
slits, just like the light source in step 1. We instinctively think of atoms as being
particles, so we would expect to observe two bands on the back screen (like
the two piles of sand)
11
What we actually observe is an interference pattern, identical to
step 3. This demonstrates that the atoms have gone through the slits,
behaving as waves, not as particles.
PART 3 – A TWO SLIT
EXPERIMENT WITH INDIVIDUAL PARTICLES
Step
Description
Notes
12
This time, instead of sending a stream of atoms, we send the atoms
one at a time. We wait until we
observe a spot appears on the back screen where the atom has landed, then
fire the next atom and so on. In this illustration, six atoms have been
fired. No obvious pattern is observed yet.
13
When we have eventually fired millions of atoms, one at a time, over many hours, we observe the same interference pattern that we saw in step 11, gradually appear. The atoms arrive on the back screen as localised points, but each atom behaves as if it is part of a wave.
PART 4 – A TWO SLIT
EXPERIMENT WITH INDIVIDUAL PARTICLES AND A DETECTOR
Step
Description
Illustration
14
If we repeat the above experiment with an atom detector next to the
top slit, we observe a different pattern gradually appear. We observe two
lines rather than the wave pattern (fringes). This is what we would expect to
see if the atoms behaved as particles (like the grains of sand in step 9).
15
This demonstrates that the atoms are behaving as if they are
particles, just because they are being
detected and measured.
16
The conclusion is that if we don’t detect the atoms, we observe the
atoms behaving as waves. But if we do detect and measure individual atoms,
they behave as particles.
There is currently no agreed explanation for this!
17
If we leave the detector in place but switch it
off, we observe the wave pattern as in step 11, because the atoms are no
longer being detected.
18
This demonstrates that we observe the wave
behaviour of the atoms (see step 11) as long as we don’t detect individual atoms. The detection device causes them to behave as particles
rather than waves.
"Religion is widespread
at least historically, perhaps universal, and human specific. So my question to
you is do you think religion or religious belief evolved in humans and if so
did it confer an evolutionary advantage?"
As a Darwinian, I am among those who believes that anything that
is very widespread in a species in some sense has an evolutionary advantage. It wouldn’t be there if it didn’t.
So yes, I think the answer is that it probably does have an evolutionary
advantage but having said that, we have to be a bit careful about what we mean.
Because very often when biologists look at something and say: “What’s the
evolutionary advantage of that?” it turns out that they are asking the wrong
question.
It may be that what we are looking at is some kind of a by-product
of something else which has an evolutionary advantage and we have chosen to
focus our attention on the by-product, which is not the thing that in itself
has the advantage, but which is a consequence of the thing that has the advantage.
The example that I use to introduce the idea of by-product,
is the question: Why do moths commit suicide by flying into candle flames, or into
electric lights? You could say, what is
the Darwinian survival value of suicidal immolation behaviour in moths and it
would be pretty difficult to think of what the survival value of suicide is.
However, it’s the wrong question. Flying into candle flames is a by-product of
something else. And probably what it is, is this. This may not be right but it’s
a good theory for what’s going on. Insects are well known to use distant light
sources as compasses. Day flying insects use the sun as a compass, night flying
insects use the moon or stars. The reason it’s a good thing to have a compass
is that it’s a good thing to be able to fly in a straight line, it doesn’t
waste time and so on.
The reason it works is that celestial objects like the sun
and the moon, being at optical infinity, the light rays from them are parallel
and therefore a simple rule of thumb in the brain that says “keep the light
rays at an acute angle of say 20 degrees” will cause you to fly in a dead
straight line, but only if the light source is at optical infinity something
like the moon. If the light source is a candle, then the light rays are not
coming parallel from the candle, they are radiating out at close quarters from
the candle. The rule of thumb “keep the light rays at an angle of 20 degrees to
your flight” will cause you to fly in a logarithmic spiral into the candle
flame. These moths are not committing suicide. They are doing a piece of behaviour
that would be sensible for all the millions of years when the only lights you
ever saw at night were celestial objects at optical infinity.
Now, I think that’s what religion is like. I think that
religion is a by-product of probably several psychological predispositions,
which in themselves have Darwinian survival value, but which have consequences (parallel
to the consequence of the moth flying into the candle flame), have consequences
which probably don’t have survival value. But just as the moth doesn’t know that the candle
flame is not at infinity but is close by, so those of us who have these psychological
predispositions which would have been a good thing in our ancestral past (may
still be a good thing) the consequence of leading to religious behaviour which
may not be a good thing, doesn’t occur to us.
The kind of thing I’m thinking about is a tendency to obey
authority in a child. It’s probably a good thing for a child to obey its
parents, to believe its parents indeed, when its parents tell it things about
the world, because the child is too young to know a lot of important things
about the world and would die if it ignored its parent’s beliefs, its parent’s
advice.
So good advice like “don’t jump in the fire”, has survival
value. But the child brain, just like the moth brain, has no way of distinguishing
the good advice like “don’t jump in the fire” from the stupid advice, like… “sacrifice
a mongoose’s kidneys at the time of the full moon or the crops will fail”.
So, I suspect that religion may be a complicated set of by-products
of psychological predispositions, each one of which itself has an advantage,
but the religious by-product is either neutral or… well we don’t even need to say whether it has
an advantage, it doesn’t matter. The Darwinian explanation is sufficient if we
postulate that the original psychological predispositions had survival value.
