If God does not exist, then praying and worship is a waste of time, and therefore an evolutionary disadvantage. However, we observe that most humans are religious. So, logically, God must exist.
Any person who rules with an iron fist can easily make a non religious society religious. After that, it can keep it religious by weeding out the resistors.
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Anonymous2007-07-06 0:43 ID:C0jYTf9r
#8 is still my favorite.
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Anonymous2007-07-06 10:16 ID:qq8dVFiq
>>1
Please take these threads to the Science & Math forums, because nobody reads that anyway
Why is it a disadvantage? Arguably, religion provided the cohesion that enabled cultures to form. The collective will of a society is preserved and propagated through ritual so that the group may endure even as individuals fall. That's actually a pretty huge advantage. It's similar to the power of the collective of Internet users; we are stronger together. We are held together by memes or whatever, and other groups are held together by rain dances or group prayer or whatever else they do.
>>49
Bullshit. The religious like to pretend religion is necessary for social cohesion, but it's pretty obvious any social cohesion it provides is based on an us-versus-them mentality and fear (exact proportions varying based on the religion itself), and the most peaceful and cohesive modern societies are also the least religious.
Religion is just superstition that got out of hand, and superstition is a result of our highly developed pattern-seeking abilities misfiring and seeing patterns where there is only coincidence.
All religious rituals are fundamentally cargo cult rituals, made both more absurd and more virulent through memetic evolution, all of which is only fundamentally advantageous to the religious memeplex itself.
It sure is funny to believe in something for which there's ZERO evidence, and there SHOULD BE a lot of evidence to support the existence of such a thing. The rational conclusion is inescapable: It doesn't fucking exist.
Those who insist on claiming some big Jew is sitting in the sky, has to AT LEAST provide some photographic evidence of that. You'd think that a huge Jew sitting in the sky would produce SOME visual indication upon photographic plates. Galaxies are pretty fucking large things, too, and we don't have any trouble imaging THEM.
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Anonymous2008-04-17 18:16
God is the ultimate troll.
Do you really think he's going to prove his existence to us Earthlings? That would end the limitless LULZ he's getting up there watching us.
>>52
Conclusions follow from evidence. Your assertion is being made without evidence. That's why it's an INVALID assertion. Find some evidence for this "god" and then get back to us, lulz or not.
P.S. "Up there"? UP motherfucking WHERE, chum?
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Anonymous2008-04-17 22:31
By "up there" I meant the Bering Strait. Everyone knows that's where God lives. DUH!
Assertions are made without evidence ALL THE TIME.
One just has to look at your previous posts on any number of subjects, for EVIDENCE OF THIS ASSERTION.
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Anonymous2008-04-19 12:20
IMHO,the evolutionary advantage of dogmatic belief is that it prevents you from going bat-shit crazy without any principles and an illusionary feel of purpose for you and everything around you.
And that belief could be anything-religion,science,magic cupcakes.
After all,you Believe that science explains the world perfectly,and base that on facts and evidence.Others believe that religion explains the world and base that on a book,which produces a sense of awe in the reader.
>>1
The social networks formed by a shared faith are the evolutionary advantage. Just because the belief in god has minor utility, it doesn't then follow that god exists.