From: Robert J. Bradbury (bradbury@aeiveos.com)
Date: Fri Sep 06 2002 - 16:38:56 MDT
On Fri, 6 Sep 2002 Artillo5@cs.com, in response to loreetg@yahoo.com wrote:
> Come now, don't start confusing genetics with religious beliefs! As far as I
> know, there has been no "religion" gene identified...
Actually, E. O. Wilson might disagree -- I think it was the Atlantic
article on Consilience (I think Anders posted the URL) that convinced
me that humans have a need to "believe" in explanations for unknown
phenomena. There may not be a "religion" gene, but there may be
a "rationalization" gene. Some rationalizations turn into religions.
As soon as you have a rationalization for why bad things happen (e.g.
people get sick because the gods cast a spell on them) then you soon
have a religion because people want to influence the gods.
And of course religion is used to promote the power of specific
individuals -- in which case we have at its roots "Alpha male" genes.
One way to "win" the game is to change the rules of the game being
played. I once did this in a very powerful way where 99 people
who had voted me into the position of the least "popular" person
in the group found a way to turn me into the most popular in spite
of the fact that the "rules of the game" should have prevented that.
I would agree that the genes may not have been identified.
Yet!
Robert
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