[SunkenCiv]

I liked that one -- "religious people inspire trust" -- coming as it does from an atheist.

[SunkenCiv]

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[SunkenCiv]

Religion and Symbolism - James W. Dow

2009 Religion and Science: Two Peas in a Pod or Fruits of Different Vines? The Oakland Journal, Winter 2009, Issue Number 16.

2008 Is Religion and Evolutionary Adaptation? Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation 11(2) 2.

2006 A Scientific Definition of Religion. Anpere: Anthropological Perspectives on Religion. (www.anpere.net)

2006 The Evolution of Religion: Three Anthropological Approaches. Method and Theory in the Study of Religion 18(1):67-91.

1996 Curandiero. In Encyclopedia of Latin American History and Culture. Barbara A. Tenenbaum, ed. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons.

1992 External and Internal Approaches to Emotion. Psycoloquy 3(1):1.1

1989 Apprentice Shaman. In Apprenticeship: From Theory to Method and Back Again. Michael Coy, ed. Albany: State University of New York Press.

1986 Universal Aspects of Symbolic Healing: A Theoretical Synthesis. American Anthropologist 88(1):56-69.

1980 Ritual and Play. Newsletter of the Association for the Anthropological Study of Play 6(3):5-6.

1980 More on the Anthropology of Symbolic Healing. Current Anthropology 21(2):277-278.

[LiteKeeper]

If so, it would have to have arisen by natural selection.

Or, it could have arisen by revelation. Perhaps God revealed Himself to the first people He created, and told them about Himself.

[nmh]

Maybe another more accurate way of stating this would be the “evolution of humanism”.

[mnehring]

bfltr

[LiteKeeper]

stories that cannot be verified

This is patently false. There is a tremendous amount of archaeological evidence to verify many of the events recorded in Scripture. And there is a tremendous about of manuscript evidence to verify those Scriptures as well.

The author has created straw men which are as numerous as a paranoid farmer.

[null and void]

Nonsense. Religion was created in 4004 BC.

[Cvengr]

"belief confers some survival advantage."

The belief of our Lord Christ Jesus on the Cross did not save Him from physical death, but God the Father did bestow Him ressurrected life as man for the faith which was found to be righteous.

I wonder if the author's advice to the Adversary will benefit if he sincerely thinks a belief independent of God confers survival advantage.

[HowlinglyMind-BendingAbsurdity]

Shamanism

It's funny when liberals claim to be free from religion.

[hellbender]

Religious people talk about things that cannot be seen, stories that cannot be verified, and beings and forces beyond the ordinary.

Oh yeah? Jesus Christ was in his humanity a rather ordinary person, quite visible to thousands who gathered to hear his teachings and witness his miracles. Many were so convinced by their encounters with Him that they willingly submitted to torture and death rather than deny his gospel. (We all know, of course, that the willingness to suffer and die prematurely, leaving no physical offspring, is easily explained by evolution, right? /s) And some quirk of evolution, I suppose, caused Jewish prophets to predict the coming and even the mode of death of this God-man centuries before.

[NicknamedBob]

"The evogod simulation shows how a capacity to create religious ideas can evolve by social selection. It reveals a selection process that can increase genetically inherited capacities to communicate unreal, unverifiable information."

Perhaps it's just useful or entertaining to have people around who can "coalesce the vapors of human existence into a viable and meaningful comprehension."