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Politics : Evolution -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Solon who wrote (42170)	9/26/2013 9:24:16 PM
From: GPS Info	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 69300

Do you think the church has improved on the method used in ancient religious tribes to keep the woman contained within a marriage!? No. Very broadly, I disagree with punishments within the Old or New Testaments or the Catholic Church. I think that there were some original ideas to create a more cohesive society, but that others decided they needed more and more extreme methods of coercion. The church, temple, or mosque are really male institutions, don't you think? I wonder if the desire to contain sex within a marriage still simply reflects the old male meme of trying to ensure that HIS genetic code is what gets passed on to his son? That is very possible, though I have another possibility to offer. Males are aggressive by evolutionary design and this aspect of human nature causes the vast majority of problems in the world. I believe that testosterone is an evolutionary design for aggressiveness and that it is required in sufficient quantities for hunting larger game and for self-defense. It's also used during the mating and rutting season of mammals. The US prison population of males in 2009 was 92.9%, and more males are convicted of violent crimes. Some of the contribution is from male drug dealers. During certain parts of their periods, women will select for stronger, more manly males (presumably with higher levels of testosterone), according to some studies. Men need the church, temple, mosque more than women to avoid the violence in our male natures. We need a strong social and ethical system to constrain our nature impulses. We needed some ethic to not sleep around so much. It is sad that women got the shitty end of stick. I'm leaving out the spiritual aspects for men and women. His inability to rise above slavery is only one of a whole bunch of qualities I dislike in him. Here is a lengthy analysis of his (often contradictory) character. It ends with a code of conduct that seems much superior to the vagaries of Jesus. I would be interested in what you think of the ten points of the code. I wish "Jesus" had said even one of these things. It would be a better world. Regarding slavery: Among the other things that religions provided (good and bad), I think they were also an aid in transitioning from tribal units into larger social organizations. Some wise people were tired of tribal warfare, and seeing the destruction of other civilizations as omens for themselves. The Ancient Egyptian empire lasted for thousands of years and had to be admired for their structures, farming technology and importantly, their value system. I think that the Ten Commandments was the working template to bring together the tribes of Israel. As you probably know the Ten Commandments appear to come from the Egyptian Book of the Dead, Chapter 125, Weighing of the Heart. Some people also criticize the Ten Commandments for not including a prohibition against slavery. I view the Ten Commandments as 'the ten strong suggestions to improve the probability of survival of the societies that follow them." Working in a Kantian sense, if a society chooses to do the opposite of the Ten Commandments, they will reduce the probability of survival of their society - very quickly. If everyone can follow the Ten Commandments, then the society will have a much better chance of surviving into the next generation. An unspoken idea was that even if everyone always obeys these commandments, they could all still die in a flood or a war or a famine, but be good anyway, OK? Here's the rub: allowing slavery does not diminish the probability of survival for the society that practices it. In fact, Egypt flourished with it, as did the Romans and the Greeks. Another sad omission from the Ten Commandments was pedophilia. Someone might have decided that this practice doesn't diminish the probability of survival, so it's not important enough to make it into the top ten. I guess I believe in the Code of Living because that is how I have lived my life for the most part.