Debugging Religion

Wow, I go away for a couple weeks and come back to find loads of quality thought provoking stuff with regards to the continuing friction between Islam's 1.2 Billion adherents and just about everybody else on the planet. That set me to thinking about religion in general and it occurred to me that it might be constructive to get everyone's views on the subject so that I can better frame some of the responses I read here as well as further inform my own current views with other people's perspectives. So I will start by laying out my own current thinking and ask you all to share your views as well:

Islam, like all organized religious philosophies, is a meme - a complex socio/cultural program or software. Not unlike viruses, memes are self-propagating and constantly changing organisms. The human mind is a platform capable of, and indeed bound to, executing memes. Ever heard a jingle on the radio you couldn't get out of your head for the rest of the day? That's a meme. Religion is a very elaborate and highly articulated jingle.

The human experience is one of constant interaction between countless memes. From the individual (the nursery rhymes you learned as a child, the habits you absorbed from marketers during adolescence, the religion you raise your children in) to the mass of society (the dominant religions in different countries, the holidays celebrated in various parts of the world, the art forms produced by particular societies, the diplomatic and economic traditions that guide the interactions between nations, etc), life consists in large part of the constant execution of programmed behavior, the interactions of these innumerable programs, and the mark that these interactions leave upon the memory - both an individual's memory and the mass cultural memory.

It can be reasonably argued that mother nature gave all animals this tendency to execute programmed behavior as a means of replicating beneficial learning. We couldn't evolve from single-celled creatures without it (if you believe that sort of thing). But this tendency can also be counter-productive. The human mind, starting out as a clean slate (we are all "booted up" at birth), is immediately assaulted by all sorts of code, both beneficial as well as nefarious. Learning a language or a musical instrument is clearly useful to a child, while picking up profanity from his parents while they are in an argument or taking up cigarettes in junior high because its "cool" might serve a less wholesome purpose.

Highly complex behavioral regimes, such as religion, can incorporate both beneficial as well as malignant code (bugs). On the plus side, religion has historically been the supreme mechanism by which society has enforced a common set of behaviors that allows humans to function and succeed as an organized group. Before there were statutes and laws our forebears knew to do the right thing lest a whole host of major and minor deities rain rage and ruin upon their mistaken heads. Even now religion is a strong and positive force in encouraging constructive behavior. The fact that the law may not catch you but your god is always watching has a tempering effect on billions of people's destructive tendencies. Religions in large part also encourage charitable behavior and are the only major pillar of society that do so.

Organized religions also have some tendencies that, while they are contrived to ensure the propagation of that particular religion, have an adverse effect on greater human society:

>Religion demands exclusion of alternate thought. The core tenets of major religions are fairly absolute and not open to review under the light of new or competing evidence. Alternate ideas are discouraged and adherents are threatened with exclusion or eternal damnation for embracing alternate thought. The Dark Ages were a time of extensive religious control over society and look at what that wrought. Everyone believed the world was flat and woe betide the man who dared claim otherwise. Untold millions were burned, drawn, quartered, and otherwise tortured and murdered as a result of mystical beliefs created and spread by the church. At the same time rational thought and empirical learning were strongly discouraged because they were viewed, correctly, as rivals to the sway that organized religion held over the groupthink of the time. Its no concidence that man did not learn how to fly during the Dark Ages.

>Religion is a dictatorship of philosophy. Most major religions have one individual or a small group of them that set down the core belief structure and the resulting organization exists for the propagation of those beliefs as well as its own replication. These core belief structure is often very resitant to change. Usually a small group of arbiters decides how that belief structure is to be interpreted and applied. This puts undue power and influence in the hands of those whose vested interests lie closer to the maintenance of core belief set, regardless of how much in error it may be, than to the advancement of greater society as a whole.

>Religion is exclusionary by its very nature as an organized group despite all the preaching adherents of various religions may wish to do to the contrary. If you do not adhere to the core belief set of a religion you are simply not a member of that group and probably subject to whatever set of punishments those beliefs require for lack of adherence. This feeds perfectly into the natural human tendency to hold a lesser view of those that are unlike us, so a mechanism contrived for the replication of one particular philosphy is destructive to greater society. Witness the sectarian strife around the globe. This could be the most destructive tendency of religion at the moment.

The organized religious construct (The Iconoclast conversationally refers to this as the ORC) is by far the most aggressively self-propagating meme that the human species has yet devised. Of all the major organizational pillars in society religion is the longest lived and most culturally entrenched. It outlasts government: the United States, the oldest continuous constitutional democracy in the world, has survived for barely two and a quarter centuries, while the youngest of the world's major religions, Islam, is at fifteen centuries and going strong. And it trumps the bonds of kin and country: most fervent religious believers would choose their god over their country, or their own eternal salvation over the current economic or physical welfare of their friends and family.

In short, the ORC is here to stay for the foreseable future. So the question is whether it will move humanity forward or set us back? Religion can and will continue to serve a positive purpose in society through its discouragement of destructive behavior and its encouragement of charity. But it will also continue to serve a growingly destructive purpose due to its exclusionary tendencies and its concentration of power over thought.

Which of these two forces will reach their apex first? How long before some radical religionist, in the name of his god, starts the chain of events that sets our species back 500 years? Or will the peace/love aspects of religious philosophy overwhelm this urge and eventually move us forward into a state of global happiness and mutually beneficial progress ala Star Trek? If our species is to attain the next level of societal evolution we must work the bugs out of our cultural software.

Please share thoughts. And also please remember that nothing I have said here is intended as a judgment of any particular belief set as I respect everyone's right to subscribe to the answers to their own questions. I welcome other people's thoughts and observations on religion, whether believer or skeptic, as it will further inform my thinking on the subject.


-Ico

WFB on the cartoon

heres a link to check out but this sums up my questions on almost all the muslim issues:

"What are Muslim leaders doing to dissociate their faith from the ends to which it is being taken by the terrorists?"

there are plenty of christian zealots blowing up clinics etc. - but they are widely and publicly denounced by their own .... where is the blow back from Muslims about the hijacking of their faith by UBL, Hamas etc.

http://nationalreview.com/buckley/wfb200602031405.asp

My online presence

I know that many of you right wingers have been waiting with baited breath for my relatively leftist slant on our political happenings. So last night I revisited my blogger profile and clicked on some of the movies that I had listed as my favorites. I invite all of you to click on 'Spies Like Us' (but not at the client site or at work). Nice online community. Quality people doing quality things.

Cartoon Flap

We cannot let this issue go by without getting significant comment by this group... I just cannot get enough of the Muhammad cartoon story. It's fascinating to see this thing develop. On the one hand, you have the policitically correct leaders of Europe apologizing left and right for the cartoons. Newspapers are pissed, and they are reprinting the cartoons all over the place. I'd really like to know where the person on the street stands.

On the other side, the entire Muslim world does not see the complete hipocrisy of their outrage over these cartoons leading normal people on the street to say, "Death to Denmark", "Death to France"! Somehow, moderate Muslims have GOT to take back control of their religion.

And, for any PC people out there on the blog (I don't think there are any), I do not think we would have the same problem with a denigrating cartoon or work of art about Jesus. I know there is a new television series coming this season that depicts him chatting with a guy every week that many conservatives are upset about. However, unless I have missed something, they are not out saying "Death to such and such network".

For those of you who recently voted for the latest minimum wage hike...

...think past the intention and through to the consequences.

By Thomas Sowell
Give credit where credit is due. The political left is great with words. Conservatives have never been able to come up with such seductive phrases as the left mass produces.
While conservatives may talk about a need for "judicial restraint," liberals cry out for "social justice." If someone asks you why they should be in favor of judicial restraint, you have got to sit them down and go into a long explanation about constitutional government and its implications and prerequisites.
But "social justice"? No explanation needed. No definition. No facts. Everybody is for it. Do you want social injustice?
The latest verbal coup of the left is the phrase "a living wage." Who is so hard-hearted or mean-spirited that they do not want people to be able to make enough money to live on?
Unfortunately, the effort and talent that the left puts into coining great phrases is seldom put into facts or analysis. The living wage campaign shows that as well.
Just what is a living wage? It usually means enough income to support a family of four on one paycheck. This idea has swept through various communities, churches and academic institutions.
Facts have never yet caught up with this idea and analysis is lagging even farther behind.
First of all, do most low-wage workers actually have a family of four to support on one paycheck? According to a recent study by the Cato Institute, fewer than one out of five minimum wage workers has a family to support. These are usually young people just starting out.
So the premise is false from the beginning. But it is still a great phrase, and that is apparently what matters, considering all the politicians, academics and church groups who are stampeding all and sundry toward the living wage concept.
What the so-called living wage really amounts to is simply a local minimum wage policy requiring much higher pay rates than the federal minimum wage law. It's a new minimum wage.
Since there have been minimum wage laws for generations, not only in the United States, but in other countries around the world, you might think that we would want to look at what actually happens when such laws are enacted, as distinguished from what was hoped would happen.
Neither the advocates of this new minimum wage policy nor the media -- much less politicians -- show any interest whatsoever in facts about the consequences of minimum wage laws.
Most studies of minimum wage laws in countries around the world show that fewer people are employed at artificially higher wage rates. Moreover, unemployment falls disproportionately on lower skilled workers, younger and inexperienced workers, and workers from minority groups.
The new Cato Institute study cites data showing job losses in places where living wage laws have been imposed. This should not be the least bit surprising. Making anything more expensive almost invariably leads to fewer purchases. That includes labor.
While trying to solve a non-problem -- supporting families that don't exist, in most cases -- the living wage crusade creates a very real problem of low-skilled workers having trouble finding a job at all.
People in minimum wage jobs do not stay at the minimum wage permanently. Their pay increases as they accumulate experience and develop skills. It increases an average of 30 percent in just their first year of employment, according to the Cato Institute study. Other studies show that low-income people become average-income people in a few years and high-income people later in life.
All of this depends on their having a job in the first place, however. But the living wage kills jobs.
As imposed wage rates rise, so do job qualifications, so that less skilled or less experienced workers become "unemployable." Think about it. Every one of us would be "unemployable" if our pay rates were raised high enough.
I would love to believe that the Hoover Institution would continue to hire me if I demanded double my current salary. But you notice that I don't make any such demand. Third parties need to stop making such demands for other people. It is more important for people to have jobs than for busybodies to feel noble.

Keep Banging!

The Miami Herald reported that in Tulua, Columbia, a city councilman is trying to pass a law that requires all people, including visitors above the age of 14 carry a condom. According to the article, anyone who is caught not carrying a condom could be fined up to $180 or be required to go through a sex education course.

Nym wants to Know: Hamas or Hummus?

You make the call....

There are others on here who are more knowledgable than I on this region but Nym wants to know what happens next? Honestly, I do not know but there are some really, really interesting factors out here:

1) How do the Palenstians survive without aid? If other Arab nations come to their rescue (which they have not shown the willingness to do so in the past except by rhetoric) what strain does that put on US/Europe and Arab relations?

2) Does Hamas recognize Israel as a state? If they do not, they get no aid...if they do then they become the Fatah which is what they were against.

3) What happens the next time a suicide strike happens in Israel?

This is going to be an interesting time in the Middle East and things will likely come to a head. The rabble rousing terrorist organization has now been given the ball to run with instead of jeering from the stands. Personally, I do not see them with an overnight transformation to some Geneva Convention standard following 'nation'. I see strife and Israel hitting back hard. I think there was a swing to a softer stance but this certainly could open the door for Ben Netanyahoo and his hardline stance. I really, really don't want to see a high noon standoff between these factions but I think that is what is coming.....

58-42

What a joke.......Can you believe the partisanship shown once again? See Spackler's comments on a new era in politics. Never has this been more true then the vote today.

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