Hi Terren Suydam Considering religion as a stabilizing social phenomenon is true, but that's not all it is.
----- Receiving the following content ----- From: Terren Suydam Receiver: everything-list Time: 2013-01-30, 10:22:37 Subject: Re: Hateful Personally, my take on religion is that it has been an extraordinarily successful means of organizing groups. I don't religion has ever been any one person's?achiavellian scheme, rather I think religion (and other cultural institutions) have been selected for in the evolution of culture.? also tend to see collectives of humans as organisms-in-themselves, in roughly the same way that a hive of bees can be seen as an organism in itself; and that human genetics has co-evolved with the cultural memetics. As such, I tend to run religious dogma through this filter: does it promote values in individuals, that, taken collectively, make the collective more likely to persist. When I run the above prayer through that filter I find that it is a pretty good fit for that idea.? Terren On Tue, Jan 29, 2013 at 11:13 PM, Kim Jones <[email protected]> wrote: This is a pretty well-worn, oft-used, school prayer. Given it is recited or sung by the entire student body and staff at a good many schools and other institutions you would have to assume that it's all fundamentally good stuff. Teach us, good Lord, to serve thee as thou deserves; to give and not to count the cost; to fight and not to heed the wounds; to till, and not to seek for rest; to labour, and not to ask for any reward, save that of knowing we do thy will. Amen. But it's all incredibly bad advice, really - don't you think? Why do people assume God wants Earthlings to be such a bunch of try-hards? I hate this prayer. It advertises values that no one can live up to and no one need live up to. Surely we can invent a better, less servile, less obsequious, less cringing, less Gollum-like take on what we think God wants for us. All this servility, this grovelling at the feet of somebody. Is God really into all that? I don't believe it. Kim Jones -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
