I love religion!

[lukec]

That's not Dawkins is it? It looks familiar to me, and sounds like something I read of his not so long ago. It's a good point whoever said it!

Yes, I think it was Dawkins who coined the "meme" in name at least. What I was saying up there was just paraphrasing and consolidating the way I understood what he and others have explained.

Whilst I'm sure that there is a social element in the development of religion, and it could indeed play a part in tribes' or groups' survival, I think there are probably other elements too. I actually think hallucinogens have a part to play as we see them in primitive tribe cultures, and there's no real reason that I'm aware of to consider our cultural ancestors to be that different. The general social construct could be as the theory you said suggests, but the initial trigger could be more substantial than merely a way to hold a community together.

Interesting point to flesh out, that a trigger would probably be necessary. What exactly do you mean? In my mind I was just figuring that most "tribes" or cultures would just start with some form of animism, as it would've been their only explanation for things we take for simple- eg. movement of the sun, moon, and stars.

Regarding the selfish gene bit, there are always exceptions to the rule, and that’s something that has begun to interest me lately. If religion is a survival issue, then why does celibacy come into it? Mother Teresa didn’t pass on her genes, yet her actions as a result of her religious beliefs helps the passing on of others’ genes; people she wasn’t even related to. Maybe on a human scale it’s just larger and we subconsciously look after our species rather than simply our genes? I think there are examples of altruism in apes too, but I’ll have to look into that.

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That's exactly the point of the Meme idea of religion- it's actually HIJACKED our sense of "same" or the part of human behavior which causes us to care more for those which are like us.

This, if you look at it from a gene's point of view, is an excellent evolutionary "strategy"- the gene which causes a family member to care for another would be passed on to many generations- think if apes had no tendency to care for their young. They do not bear enough young/litter for this to be an effective technique to have many surviving offspring. So religion as a meme has taken this sense of "caring" (which is actually just gene selfishness) . It's an idea gene- one which is very very good at spreading. I mean look at one of the central tenets of Jehova's Witness- you're not allowed into heaven unless you've converted a certain amount of people. Brilliant!!! How could that not spread?

This is explained fairly well in Selfish Gene- a book i strongly recommend you reading if you haven't. It's actually got many of the ideas we're talking about here, but Dawkins is a little bit better at explaining than I am . It also has many examples of "altruism" in the animal world (down to birds, antelope, etc) and explanations for them.

If you think religion is wonderful, why are you an atheist?

Probably for the same reason I am not a Jedi- no matter how much he wishes it were true he can't make it so. And I actually can see what he means. There are definitely some positive aspects to religion; it's kind of like the facebook before internet. The original social networking. Obviously not all church members are good people (nor are all atheists), but there are many church funded and spearheaded projects which do good.