Religions

[his holiness nb]

That shows what Dennets book is looking at, says nothing about it never being looked at before!

Try James George Frazers "The Golden Bough" first published in 1922.
Still essential reading for many anthropology students today.

[theskull1]

That shows what Dennets book is looking at, says nothing about it never being looked at before!

Try James George Frazers "The Golden Bough" first published in 1922.
Still essential reading for many anthropology students today.

Part II proceeds to use the tools of evolutionary biology to suggest possible theories of the evolution of modern religions from ancient folk beliefs.

OK for clarity...let me be more specific..... when I say science, I am not referring to anthropology . I'm referring to evolutionary biology. Now could you tell me who has studied religion in this way?

Dennett opens his book by comparing religion to a parasite. The lancet fluke is a microorganism that, as part of its unlikely life cycle, lodges in the brain of an ant, turning it into a sort of ant zombie that every night crawls to the top of a blade of grass and waits to get eaten by a grazing cow or sheep, in whose liver the lancet fluke can propagate. Dennett is being provocative, but he is also making a point: Certain religious behaviors-abstinence, for example, or martyrdom, or ritually sacrificing livestock in the middle of a famine-can look decidedly, almost inexplicably, irrational both to nonbelievers and behavioral scientists, so much so that it might be worth asking who or what is actually benefiting from them.

[his holiness nb]

Who has studied religion in comparison with evolutionary biology?

Who hasnt!! 

Skull, I'm not going to debate over this anymore as we clearly wont agree on this one.

[theskull1]

Who has studied religion in comparison with evolutionary biology?

Who hasnt!! 

Skull, I'm not going to debate over this anymore as we clearly wont agree on this one.

Fair enough nb. Your faith is obviously too important to you. 

[ziggysego]

[his holiness nb]

Thats a class film Ziggy!

But surely its a sin to fancy god?

[ziggysego]

He only had a semi 

[blast05]

You mean you can't emotionally accept it, surely?

Both emtionally and logically, emotionally re when i look at my daughter, logically when i look at the wonderous beauty of say a giant sea stack stnading proud just off-shore

Why? You say that its unlikely that life could have arisen through natural processes and must have had a helping hand from some "greater power". If you're requiring a source in the form of a greater power, well then this greater power must have had an origin too, no? It seems to me that the universe unfolding and life arising according to natural processes is far more simple and intellectually satisfying than merely washing your hands of the problem and saying that some magical god-being, who had to come from somewhere, and of whom we have not a scinitilla of evidence, did it.

Becauase anyone that has a religous belief (including me) generally believes that God is the Creator, time has no meaning, etc