Religion is without a doubt humanity's most successful idea ever.

It is very strange to describe mass insanity and organised fraud as “humanity's most successful idea ever”.

Well, remember the average IQ is only 100. Suppose it takes an IQ of 110 to see religion as mass insanity. More than half of humanity won't be able to make the connection and democracy will rule. That tells the sad state of affairs on this planet where republics are scorned and the direct vote is held as sacrosanct perfection.

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Religion is without a doubt humanity's most successful idea ever.

It is very strange to describe mass insanity and organised fraud as “humanity's most successful idea ever”.

That greatly depends on your exact definition of 'successful'.

If, by success, he means 'concentration of wealth and power', he is spot on!!

If, by success, he means 'the greatest good for the greatest number of people'... not so much.

Well, remember the average IQ is only 100. Suppose it takes an IQ of 110 to see religion as mass insanity.

[pedant] Actually, given the large variability in testing for intelligence, average is considered 100 +/- 10, leaving a range of 90 - 110 as "average" intelligence. Therefore it would take an IQ of 120 +/- 10 to see religion for what it is. There are always, however, exceptions to the rule.[/pedant]

[quote]Religion is without a doubt humanity's most successful idea ever.

It is very strange to describe mass insanity and organised fraud as “humanity's most successful idea ever”.

The problem with many "good' Religions. Are the Imperfect and/or Evil Humans running them.

I personally have no problem with the Tenets of Christianity.

But what exactly ARE the Tenets of Christianity?

What Jesus actually said?

What some of his close associates said he said?

What some of his close associates said themselves?

What one of his enemies said he said after said enemy claimed to be knocked off his ass by a lightning bolt and claimed conversion?

What unknown people have written claiming to be Jesus's words and that of his close associates (not to mention that one enemy)?

What a bunch of guys decided he said several centuries later, and codified it all into a book? (Council of Nicea)

All of this is either unknown or not exactly trustworthy.

I much perfer a different sort of religion.

An example, demonstrating much more critical thinking...

Religion is without a doubt humanity's most successful idea ever.

It is very strange to describe mass insanity and organised fraud as “humanity's most successful idea ever”.

Ref. my earlier http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/forum_thread.php?id=77690&postid=1701048#1701048:

Just tell all your favourite gods, ghosts and stinks to report to me immediately for critical inspection and public miracle making test.

Do that so as not to keep running around in circles.

I said that the idea has been successful, not that it was necessarily correct.

Look, evolution applies to ideas as much as it does to nature. Strong ideas adapt themselves to the times, spread themselves and remain in peoples heads while weak ideas don't adept well enough and get replaced by new ideas or simply die off because they aren't spread around anymore. And religion has been an idea that has been around for almost as long as humans have and religion has spread itself to every corner of the world. We have yet to find an ancient society that didn't have some type of religion. That means that religion has survived thousands of years of human progress, which undeniably makes it a successful idea.

If it wasn't so successful, we would all be atheists by now.

Well, remember the average IQ is only 100. Suppose it takes an IQ of 110 to see religion as mass insanity. More than half of humanity won't be able to make the connection and democracy will rule. That tells the sad state of affairs on this planet where republics are scorned and the direct vote is held as sacrosanct perfection.

Yeah thats not how IQ works. The average is 100 because we decided that the average is 100. If we go back 500 years, whatever the average back then would be would also be 100. While the average undeniably got 'more intelligent' over the past 500 years, it remains a 100 in IQ score.

IQ is used to measure standard deviations from the standard, not to make any specific statements about someones intellectual capacity, nor how they choose to direct their intellectual capacity.

However, I am thinking this more from the point of view of humanism and morality, and would therefore have strong reservations there. And also, doesn’t the word ‘successful’ carry a positive moral connotation with it, anyway, hard to connect meaningfully in exceptionable activities?

Well if we look at religion from a humanist/moralist point of view its still a major success story.

I mean, what has religion allowed us to do? Well, in essence it has massively increased our ability to connect and empathize with other human beings. Think about it. When humanity started out, we were little tribes, and our loyalties were overwhelmingly reserved for members of our tribes. Thats not to say that we clubbed other tribes to death whenever we encountered them, but for the most part we were competing with each other. Now as our population increased and we settled down to form the first 'states' we also formed social organizations with people we had never seen or heard off. So religion comes in as a unifying actor. We created a way in which we could empathize with people from other villages, because we believed in the same God as he did. Even now, someone in Europe can feel 'connected' with someone from South America, Africa or parts of Asia because they all share a religion.

Besides the fact that religion actually made us nicer people to a lot more people, religion has also had a tremendous positive impact on our culture. What architectural marvels have been created because we wanted a temple or a special place to bury our death. And walk into a museum with medieval and early renaissance art and see how many pieces of art have been inspired by religion.

And on a more personal level, religion may bring comfort to those who are grieving, some sense of calm for those who are under a lot of stress, and a sense of peace for those who experience a lot of turmoil.

Yet, people like you would focus only on the downside of religion. How it has been twisted to justify immoral acts. Well, those definitely exist, religion has been used as an excuse to do horrible things. But you should ask yourself, would those things not happen if religion wasn't around? History is very clear on this, mankind has absolutely no problem murdering and hurting each other for reasons other than religion. Remove religion from the equation and you gain no more peace and love while you take away something that unifies billions of people with each other. All in all, I would call that a bad trade.

And the evidence is? Besides, caecum and coccyx have surely been around even longer, so why don't you spin something out of those, too?

Evidence for what? That religion has been around for thousands of years? Really, you doubt there is evidence for that?

You have started running in circles, babbling superstitious fairy tales, and dodging critical thinking.

Where exactly have I started babbling superstitious fairy tales in this thread? And whose dodging critical thinking here? Whenever I say religion has been a successful idea you insist on taking that to mean that I'm saying God is real. Your grasp on the English language is either slipping or you are purposefully misinterpreting my argument so you can knock it over.

It is very strange indeed to describe mass insanity and organised fraud as “from a humanist/moralist point of view still a major success story”.

Now, finally: just tell all your favourite gods, ghosts and stinks to report to me immediately for critical inspection and public miracle making test. Crawl subserviently in front of sculptures, dance around poles, sacrifice geese and goats or whatever it takes. You and they have 96 hours from the time stamp of this message. I have camera and digital recorder, plus phone to alarm the authorities and the world press.

Showing up squarely and timely should of course be no problem for allegedly “omniscient”, “omnipotent”, “existing” beasts. And are they not supposed to have always known, that this comes now, and that your reputation will depend on them? Make them to show mercy on yourself.

Riiight, because me proving God is real or not is relevant to this discussion how? My argument has been that religion has been a successful idea, meaning that the idea has been widespread and adopted by a lot of people. That is beyond a doubt true, billions of people are religious in one way or another. Whether the gods/spirits/religious doctrine is true is completely irrelevant.

Furthermore, I argued that religion overall has had a massive positive impact on the world, bringing people together who are otherwise completely unrelated to each other. And it has had a positive impact in the sense that it added value to our culture, great works of art, architecture or other impressive human undertakings have been inspired directly by religion. Again, its irrelevant to the argument whether God is real or not.

You want to argue God is a delusion? Be my guest, it won't affect my argument in the least.

Critical and insightful thinking?

...is being destroyed by the destruction of the traditional family. With out the traditional family, the most critical time in your life is being dominated by replacement baby sitters called "children's television programming" which are cartoon depictions of progressive utopias without money, winners or losers, and there are no consequences for one's actions. Individualism is bad, the collective — and especially the environment — are good.

In theory, it sounds plausible. Any of you in here *actually* read Karl Marx Manifesto of the Communist Party? In practice, it never works. It always leads to evil, oppression, misery, and suffering.

When kids graduate from the likes of Sesame Street, they move to the overflowing septic tanks of liberalism called by many names such as twitter, facebook, and most other channels and programming on the television. The *truth* continues to be hidden by elementary school yard tactics, such as name calling, ridicule, and peer-pressured group-thinks. I see these very tactics within these forums. The constant beeping, buzzing and ringtones of today's portable electronic devices continue to brain-wash their users and prevent them from critically thinking about what they see from a historical perspective. Thus, the old adage, "if we don't learn from history, we are doomed to repeat it."

Just what exactly *is* critical and insightful thinking? If it's nothing more than *you* (personally) basing your logic, reasoning, thoughts and instincts only on what *you've* personally heard, touched, felt, seen and experienced, then isn't the fact that we've all experienced different things justify the differences in what we are trying to convince everyone else of? And isn't (at least part of) the problem the existance of people with strong opinions who block out the experiences of others because they've personally not experienced what others have experienced?

For example, I recently had someone I love die in front of me, on a hospital bed. What she said to me before her last breath, and what I've experienced (twice) in an *almost* asleep state is undeniable proof to me that we not only have a physical part, but we also have a spiritual part which continues on after our physical part wears out.

Now, according to a collection of books which some people put faith in, there is logic, reason, tradition and order to what happened on that hospital bed. No further explaination is needed.

And according to another collection of books which some others have put faith in, which haven't been compiled because this would be an admission to something contrary to many of the books put together, there is no logic, reason, tradition or order to what happened on that hospital bed. And because I can not repeat it, or have someone else repeat this, and you can't repeat it under laboratory conditions, you mock me.

Both collections of books have truths and not-so-much truths. Both collections of books can be misinterpreted.

Which group is more "open-minded, tolerant and forgiving" of the other?

As for a possible solution to "unthinking uncritical consumerism"...

Can't have total freedom, that would be anarchy. Can't have total control, that would be tyranny.

How about a system where the concentration of power is prevented, yet enough power is distributed among several groups to handle that which is best handled at that level.

For example, we could create a system where three groups of folks at the top have limited, defined, enumerated areas of control, as agreed to by all those they are elected and appointed over and split the power in a way which allows one group to prevent the other two groups from gaining further power which leads to tyranny. Things defined as most appropriately handled at the top could be handled at the top, and all else by default could be handled at progressively lower levels of group leaders. These lower levels of group leaders could be formed in similiar ways as to allow as much say from the governered as possible. These lower levels of group leaders can become progressively smaller until we hit the "traditional family unit." Traditional family units have been proven to be very effective and as small as group leaders need to get to be effective.

While allowing maximum personal freedom, these lowest group leaders could be responsible for raising children to think critically and insightfully and to ignore obvious scams such as the "nigerian prince emails" and the "your computer is producing error" robocalls.

This is a basic idea that most leaders are fully aware of. It's called span of control. There are only so many people someone can supervise before leadership becomes ineffective. One person can not effectively supervise 310 million people.

Guy, the language gave you away, why not change your forum name back to what it used to be rather than a precursor of homo sapien?

As for the "traditional family unit", which tradition do you believe is effective at developing critical thinking? If it one that suggests it's nothing more that the straw man you present, then it may not be as effective as you appear to feel. This may be a better place to look for examples of what characterizes critical thinking.

Oh and yes, read the manifesto (and Das Kapital) as part of my Poli Sci bachelors, along with Machiavelli (The Prince), Hobbes (The Leviathan), Locke (First and Second Treatise of Government), Rousseau (The Social Contract), Michels (Political Parties), Rawls (A Theory of Justice) and quite a few others.

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I think you'll find it's a bit more complicated than that ...

Well, remember the average IQ is only 100. Suppose it takes an IQ of 110 to see religion as mass insanity. More than half of humanity won't be able to make the connection and democracy will rule. That tells the sad state of affairs on this planet where republics are scorned and the direct vote is held as sacrosanct perfection.

Yeah thats not how IQ works. The average is 100 because we decided that the average is 100. If we go back 500 years, whatever the average back then would be would also be 100. While the average undeniably got 'more intelligent' over the past 500 years, it remains a 100 in IQ score.

Ah, but are they more intelligent? The IQ test is not supposed to be a measure of your pool of knowledge. It is supposed to be a test of your problem solving ability. So being able to solve problems about a transistor radio is easy today, solving problems about horse drawn plows should be easy yesterday. And which number comes next in a series or which shape comes next should be equally easy.

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Ah, but are they more intelligent? The IQ test is not supposed to be a measure of your pool of knowledge. It is supposed to be a test of your problem solving ability. So being able to solve problems about a transistor radio is easy today, solving problems about horse drawn plows should be easy yesterday. And which number comes next in a series or which shape comes next should be equally easy.

Not entirely true. A full IQ test consists of many parts, and while a few look at problem solving ability, that is measured in an incredibly abstract way.

But a good chunk of an IQ test focuses on general knowledge, and general knowledge you should have learned at school and overall memory retention.

Transistor problem solving or plow problem solving is not tested, exactly because its specific knowledge that tells you nothing about someones IQ. Not everyone works with plows or has any reason to know how plows work. Not everyone today works with transistor radios or knows/cares about how they work. Both are very specific skills that need to be learned.

Ah, but are they more intelligent? The IQ test is not supposed to be a measure of your pool of knowledge. It is supposed to be a test of your problem solving ability. So being able to solve problems about a transistor radio is easy today, solving problems about horse drawn plows should be easy yesterday. And which number comes next in a series or which shape comes next should be equally easy.

Not entirely true. A full IQ test consists of many parts, and while a few look at problem solving ability, that is measured in an incredibly abstract way.
But a good chunk of an IQ test focuses on general knowledge, and general knowledge you should have learned at school and overall memory retention.
Transistor problem solving or plow problem solving is not tested, exactly because its specific knowledge that tells you nothing about someones IQ. Not everyone works with plows or has any reason to know how plows work. Not everyone today works with transistor radios or knows/cares about how they work. Both are very specific skills that need to be learned.

General knowledge? What have that with intelligence to do?
In that case Kaspar Hauser was an idiot.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaspar_Hauser
From wiki.
Intelligence has been defined in many different ways such as in terms of one's capacity for logic, abstract thought, understanding, self-awareness, communication, learning, emotional knowledge, memory, planning, creativity and problem solving.

How can you measure all these terms?

Scrap IQ tests!

General knowledge? What have that with intelligence to do?

You compare it against what people score on average for their age so you can measure whether they know more or less than average. On its own, it doesn't say much, but if you combine it with the other parts of the test it helps paint a picture of someones intelligence.

General knowledge? What have that with intelligence to do?

You compare it against what people score on average for their age so you can measure whether they know more or less than average. On its own, it doesn't say much, but if you combine it with the other parts of the test it helps paint a picture of someones intelligence.

Nonsense. IQ tests should measure brain capacity instead.
But that is impossible.

What is considered intelligent varies with culture.

Nonsense. IQ tests should measure brain capacity instead.
But that is impossible.

You don't think that someone who has more general knowledge of the world around him or her is on average maybe a bit smarter than someone who has less of that knowledge?

What is considered intelligent varies with culture.

Correct, which is why intelligence tests aren't universal. They have to be adapted for each country that wants them.

You don't think that someone who has more general knowledge of the world around him or her is on average maybe a bit smarter than someone who has less of that knowledge?

Nop.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence
Knowledge only helps you to be intelligent.
Like for instance persons that are on Jeopardy have lots of knowledge but call them intelligent. Naw.

Correct, which is why intelligence tests aren't universal. They have to be adapted for each country that wants them.

AFAIK we dont have IQ tests in this country:)

Nop.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence
Knowledge only helps you to be intelligent.
Like for instance persons that are on Jeopardy have lots of knowledge but call them intelligent. Naw.

You are missing the point again. Knowledge doesn't make you intelligent, nor does it make you score well on an IQ test. Again, what they measure is how much MORE knowledge you have than average. If you know more than other people from your category, it might be proof that you have an easier time retaining information than other people. Say the average person knows 5 things and you know 8 things, your ability to retain information might be better than with other people. Combined with a bunch of other factors that does make you more intelligent than other people.

And again, this is just one part of a test that consists of dozens of parts.

Nop.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence
Knowledge only helps you to be intelligent.
Like for instance persons that are on Jeopardy have lots of knowledge but call them intelligent. Naw.

You are missing the point again. Knowledge doesn't make you intelligent, nor does it make you score well on an IQ test. Again, what they measure is how much MORE knowledge you have than average. If you know more than other people from your category, it might be proof that you have an easier time retaining information than other people. Say the average person knows 5 things and you know 8 things, your ability to retain information might be better than with other people. Combined with a bunch of other factors that does make you more intelligent than other people.

And again, this is just one part of a test that consists of dozens of parts.

But you said this.

But a good chunk of an IQ test focuses on general knowledge, and general knowledge you should have learned at school and overall memory retention.

Feral childs are according to IQ tests totally idiots.
Thats not true. When coming back to our social community they learn very quickly to improve on IQ tests.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feral_child

Nop.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence
Knowledge only helps you to be intelligent.
Like for instance persons that are on Jeopardy have lots of knowledge but call them intelligent. Naw.

You are missing the point again. Knowledge doesn't make you intelligent, nor does it make you score well on an IQ test. Again, what they measure is how much MORE knowledge you have than average. If you know more than other people from your category, it might be proof that you have an easier time retaining information than other people. Say the average person knows 5 things and you know 8 things, your ability to retain information might be better than with other people. Combined with a bunch of other factors that does make you more intelligent than other people.

And again, this is just one part of a test that consists of dozens of parts.

But you said this.

But a good chunk of an IQ test focuses on general knowledge, and general knowledge you should have learned at school and overall memory retention.

Feral childs are according to IQ tests totally idiots.
Thats not true. When coming back to our social community they learn very quickly to improve on IQ tests.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feral_child

You raise a great point.
What about, Say folks who have barely any interaction with the out side world? Are they stupid becuase they dont evev know what a transisitor is? Are they stupid because they cand to Trig, Or alegebra? NO THEY ARE NOT.
They know how to survive in a place that would kill a westener real quick.
So then who is stupid?
IQ tests are useless to determine who passes along their genes. Just take a look at the Darwin awards. Or even better your typical politician.

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Old James