User:Deathbunny/Pissed Off

My Opinion on Religion

Religion is a behavioral control mechanism that allows human beings to function in groups larger than about 150 (Dunbar's number) by exerting pressure on members of a particular culture to behave in a manner that reduces internal conflict, increases altruism within the group, embraces practices found to increase the survivability of the culture (and often status quo, and form the basis of ethical practices to keep anti-social or "cheating" behavior in check. In oral religions, interpretation of religious beliefs and practices are subject to change over the course of time and therefore allow the religion to adapt to new knowledge, environmental changes, or sociocultural change.

Written religious texts limit this ability and often form the basis of internal and extracultural strife because of an inability to adapt to change over time and the divine source of moral guidance.

As a behavioral control mechanism, religion requires three primary things: a behavioral code, a belief in judgement at some later date, and a deity that knows or can find out everything a person does. This promotes adherence to the behavioral code even when there is reason to believe no human can be watching or when there is no reason to believe any other human can hold the person responsible for their actions.

There is a belief that there is a genetic component to religious belief which makes sense in a population of humans who live almost exclusively in populations larger than 150. It also helps explain the small percentage of humans that may be considered "cheaters", natural born killers, or practitioners of Machiavellianism in human populations and potential genetic or epigenetic proximate causes for them.

As individual religions, I consider them individually and look at the differences based on their costs, tendencies, and trends. In general, as a global concept, I view religion in a cynical way and primarily as a necessary evil in many cases. I also ponder the differences in religion, spiritualism, and animism...

My Opinion on Monogamy

Coming soon...

Points for consideration:

• Continued high levels of male testosterone over the lifespan combined with a decrease in testosterone levels for males performing parental care with infants.
• Concealed ovulation in females.
• Potential adaptations toward sexual competition including increased sperm motility when males are exposed to a potential sexual competitor.
• Cheating rates when dependence on opposite sex is relieved.
• Brain chemistry alterations while "in lust" that fade over time.
• Higher intensity reaction to "new sex" versus same partner.
• Bisexuality.

Are you in a relationship with a woman and both of you want to continue the relationship?

What are your expectations?

Does she consistently meet them?

What are her expectations?

Do you consistently meet them?

Are both of your expectations realistic?

Are both of your expectations healthy?

My Opinion on Nationalism and Racism

Groups of people like the Mexica Movement, white supremacists, fundamental Muslims, and many others just don't get four things:

1. There are no fixed measures to determine "us" and "them".

2. The world is not fair.

3. "Dibs on Mexico" (or America or God or "insert valuable commodity here") based on historical occupation doesn't mean anything without a consensus.

4. Change happens.

Lets look at the first one first. No fixed measures of "us" and "them".

We're the same species. We have sex and there are children. Guess what? The children have traits of both parents and now you have an average of sorts. That's biology.

Maybe it isn't biology but culture then. Problem is that we aren't fixed in culture, we learn and cultures blend depending on what we're exposed to. Even our ideals change. Religion, with it's belief in an unchanging and judgemental deity bends over time to environmental changes and interpretation. Schisms form. Outside and biological pressures mount and the culture flexes and there goes that measure.

Number two, well that's just obvious to anyone who has eyes and maybe a history book. Those who deserve good outcomes don't always get it and those who don't sometimes profit. This can be crippling to many belief systems when they behave as if there exists some inexorable source of balance in the universe. Sadly, the only force even close is extinction and that cuts both ways.

Number three is nonsence for the reasons above and the fact that no one alive today can claim to be the same as anyone who existed before. Blending between humans and continuous evolution from an environment with no fixed elements has taken everyone a long way biologically, even if not by locale, from their origins. Beyond declaring everyone related, you can logically say little about having a novel origin as modern studies of the y-chromosone and mitochondrial DNA have demonstrated. Everyone is tied together in a web of interrelation and descent with clines exctending from the southern tip of South America all the way back to Africa.

Even the Africans who never left the continent can't claim to be the original source as they are as modern a human as everyone else, adapted over the same long millenia as every other human.

Which brings us to number four.

Change.

While paying lip service to it, many, many people don't fully internalize the simple concept that yesterday's situation no longer exists and only by dealing with the world as it exists now are we able to insure that we survive and possibly succeed. Reverting to wishful thinking loses the initiative and renders one susceptible to someone who is dealing with the now.

To do this, one has to forsake the idea of a fixed or stable anything and deal with the trends and the questions that actually exist within their own construct of the world. That's not comfortable for many people and, for some, it also lacks practicality. Yet to lose the rigidity of fixed thought opens wide opportunities.

I see the need for ethical thought to allow our functionality in large groups, but nature judges behavior only on efficiency, success, and luck without caring about ethics. Those who fail to understand and cling to ethics based on definitional norms like nationalism, religious tenets, and happy ideas are setting themselves up to be used and abused.