charles brough
Registered Senior Member
The religious faithful insist religions have no evolutionary function, claiming that their only function is of having "the Truth." And, of course, they believe their own religion is the only one that has it.
Karl Marx also believed religions have no evolutionary function. He believed they were some sort of a parasitic vice.
Then why does science (the anthropology consensus) think we humans have had religions for perhaps the last 100,000 years or more? It seems to me that the faithful and people like Marx are misled. It seems that we developed religion when we learned speech so that we could get along with each other!
In modern times, we are at each other's throats not because of "ethnicity" and "race" but because we believe differently. We see our origin, our goals, our moral means and what stands in our way, all differently. It makes it hard for the world to agree on things and hence to get along.
So, I say we have to have a common belief system. I say that religions bind people into "communities," that is, into "societies" which provide their believers with a sense of community. We always have and will always have to have common belief systems in the future. All we have to do is replace the many old divisive ones with a more modern, scientific one---one capable of binding together the whole human race.
charles
http://atheistic-science.com
Karl Marx also believed religions have no evolutionary function. He believed they were some sort of a parasitic vice.
Then why does science (the anthropology consensus) think we humans have had religions for perhaps the last 100,000 years or more? It seems to me that the faithful and people like Marx are misled. It seems that we developed religion when we learned speech so that we could get along with each other!
In modern times, we are at each other's throats not because of "ethnicity" and "race" but because we believe differently. We see our origin, our goals, our moral means and what stands in our way, all differently. It makes it hard for the world to agree on things and hence to get along.
So, I say we have to have a common belief system. I say that religions bind people into "communities," that is, into "societies" which provide their believers with a sense of community. We always have and will always have to have common belief systems in the future. All we have to do is replace the many old divisive ones with a more modern, scientific one---one capable of binding together the whole human race.
charles
http://atheistic-science.com