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Re: [Phys-l] Richard Dawkins Answers Reddit Questions

On Nov 22, 2010, at 2:03 AM, Jack Uretsky wrote:

[snip]

My view, by the way, is that all religions that we know of, were founded for governmantal purposes - religion is a device for telling other people how I want them to behave.
Regards,
Jack



Interestingly enough I just recently finished reading _Sex and War: How Biology Explains Warfare and Terrorism and Offers a Path to a Safer World_ by Potts and Haydn; best read of it's kind I've had since _Guns, Germs and Steel_ by Diamond.

The authors of S&W make the same case as Jack: Religion is exactly the technology you need to unite unrelated tribes to form city states en route to civilization, driven by innate biological drives towards defining in-groups and justifying biologically innate out-group violence and warfare. Despite (or perhaps because of) this outlook, S&W is actually a very hopeful read for humanity, and makes a lot of suggestions towards making the world a safer place. S&W also uses religious, societal and birthrate conditions to predict a lot of future violence in particular corners of the world. An interesting read (see reviews on Amazon).

Gotta lay off the fun reading and write,

Dan M

Dan MacIsaac, Associate Professor of Physics, SUNY-Buffalo State College
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