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Comment by Richard Goscicki on December 2, 2009 at 1:54pm

Somebody on A/N sent me this guy. I could scarcely believe it. He says Darwin didn't agree with his own theory. That we evolved from apes is a joke.

You gotta see this guy, Doctor Fakir Naik.

There were four hominides, along with gastropithecus. Unbelievable. It's impossible to make up material as funny as this—but it's real.

Comment by Secular Forces 2013 on November 30, 2009 at 9:38pm

Pro-rock.com representing:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pNh1oqEzPFs

Comment by Secular Forces 2013 on November 25, 2009 at 5:46pm

The car dealer said what!?
http://www.kdvr.com/news/kdvr-obama-billboard-112009,0,2612065.story

Comment by Richard Goscicki on November 22, 2009 at 7:36pm

We're making progress all right, but will it be quick enough. As described in my video on the endmeme, we have to reach a point where candidates for president will be ashamed to admit they harbor such stupid, pessimistic, even necrophilic beliefs as Doom's Day and the Second Coming of Christ.

Comment by Secular Forces 2013 on November 22, 2009 at 6:15pm

No vid but enough info to make ya go hrrmmm...
http://www.atheistnexus.org/forum/topics/ames-iowa-rise-in-godlessagno

Comment by Richard Goscicki on November 21, 2009 at 4:57pm

Okay, sorry H8uall, one question leads to another.

I opened a discussion in the memetics group for comments on this subject. We can continue there if any wishes to follow this interesting and immportant topic.

Comment by Richard Goscicki on November 21, 2009 at 4:40pm

Wonderist, you're talking my language. Meme-driven genes don't have to be god related. A good example is the ability-to-copy meme. For early evolving hominids, learning how to make a spear was certainly beneficial to survival. We can see in kids who believe in Santa Claus how strong it is. The kid who disregards mama’s warning that there are alligators in the stream didn’t last long. Kids are wired to copy and obey.

I agree with the out-of-Africa theory, and Homo erectus speciating into H. neanderthalensis and Homo sapiens. There’s evidence that Neanderthals buried their dead and placed trinkets and talismans in the grave. To me, that the first sign of an “outside agency” as you put it.

It’s not the god meme that’s carried from hominids (especially the immediate ancestor of H. erectus, H. habilus) but the copy-meme. This meme-driven gene made madkind easy prey for the god meme.

It was the agricultural revolution that really changed humanity. The tribal system broke down in favor of the family system. Private property, especially land ownership, brought on specialization of labor. Here’s where the god meme really took off. You can bet the first specialized profession was soldier/policeman, then came scribe/lawyer/cleric.

Sam Harris makes a great point that almost every early human culture had human sacrifice. Babylonians, Egyptians, Romans, Aztecs, etc. all liked to make sure the crops come up next year by sacrificing a few young ladies. It took to Christians to put a new twist on this by sacrificing the Son of God perpetually through the mass to keep the Sky God happy and appeased.

Comment by h8uall66 on November 21, 2009 at 4:09pm

Guys, if it's not too much to ask, would you mind taking your conversation to one of the forums or private messages? Every time you leave a comment on this wall EVERYONE in the group gets sent an email. Thanks.

Comment by Wonderist on November 21, 2009 at 3:56pm

Richard,
While meme-driven genes is one possibility, another strong possibility is simply that memes exploit weaknesses in our natural intuitions, and then amplify these weaknesses to spread themselves. For example, god belief may be a by-product of our natural intuitions of 'agency detection', 'theory of mind', and 'imagining a person who is not currently present'. Since these abilities on their own are easily explained genetically, it could be the case that the God meme has evolved over the years to combine these intuitions together. For example, first your father dies, but your mother uses his memory to keep you behaving. Then, this 'ancestor' concept spreads around and mixes with the idea that natural events are caused by an agency. Thus, you get a disembodied mind that controls things, i.e. a god.

It is possible that the god memes have not been around long enough to drive major genetic changes. The god memes would have to be as old as our exodus out of Africa for that to make sense, and that was something like 50-60,000 years ago. But that alone is not enough time to make major genetic changes. It would have to have been on the order of about a million years prior to that. Currently we lack the evidence to support that.

Comment by Richard Goscicki on November 21, 2009 at 2:47pm

Quite so. Our genes (meme-driven) are telling us to believe in God. Not because it's logical or correct, but because most of our ancestors believed in God and lived on the reproduce.

In The Selfish Gene, Dawkins says genes care only about their own replication, not the host or carrier.

As you say, secularism (rejecting religion) or rationalism is unnatural because we are countermanding our genes. Our genes direct us to become drunks, or kill trespassers on our property, or rape ladies on the bus; that doesn’t mean we have to do it.

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