Comments by ahouston

Comment #76773 by ahouston on October 7, 2007 at 7:34 am

There is no doubt in my mind that we atheists should call ourselves religious. I commonly do this in my conversations with believers. I describe myself as being very religious and that is why I have studied God and come to a realisation of the greatest of all religious truths. ( PAUSE FOR EFFECT ) There is no God. Works a treat. Completely disarms them.
I then introduce them to God, who contrary to popular opinion is not an old man with a beard, but a small boy, an imaginary friend, whom I call Travis. I ask Travis whether he would like a biscuit and find that since he cannot talk, someone else in the audience has to answer for him. One then has a clear demonstration of how religion works. Yes, he would like a biscuit, and while your at it, he is partial to a glass of red wine as well. The interpreter can see immediately that he has taken the role of the clergy.

2. A Response to Jonathan Haidt

Comment #69824 by ahouston on September 13, 2007 at 12:02 am

� Religion is man made. Man made god in his own image and no doubt women made goddesses in their own image. There is therefore no point in attempting to explain religion in terms of natural selection on the basis that it should confer some selective advantage on our species or within our species.

�Religion is culturally determined and it is competition between cultures, that explains the "survival of the fittest" element which Richard seeks. This missing concept was new to me, until I read Roy Baumeister's address titled " Is there anything good about men?" in which he states;

Let's turn now to culture. Culture is relatively new in evolution. It continues the line of evolution that made animals social. I understand culture as a kind of system that enables the human group to work together effectively, using information. Culture is a new, improved way of being social.
Feminism has taught us to see culture as men against women. Instead, I think the evidence indicates that culture emerged mainly with men and women working together, but working against other groups of men and women. Often the most intense and productive competitions were groups of men against other groups of men, though both groups depended on support from women.
Culture enables the group to be more than the sum of its parts (its members). Culture can be seen as a biological strategy. Twenty people who work together, in a cultural system, sharing information and dividing up tasks and so forth, will all live better � survive and reproduce better � than if those same twenty people lived in the same forest but did everything individually.

The full article is available on the www.

�Johan Huizinga in his book Homo Ludens demonstrated how culture consisted to a large extent, of the elements of play. Religion which is a part of every culture, also consists of a series of play phenomena � laughter, crying dolls, music, imaginary friends, tolerance of incongruity, misattribution etc. For a fuller description readers can go to my home page at ahouston.customer.netspace.net.au

� The words illusion and delusion derive from the Latin verb Ludere meaning "to play". When you see the word delusion you should understand it in that sense, of a false belief derived from play. Psychiatry will have to share this word with us all because that is its original meaning.

�Religion is a game which is culturally determined in which one player, the religionist, attempts to delude others, the rest of us, using all the phenomena of play at our disposal. It is a peculiar game however, for it is a game which actively denies itself as being a game. In other words one of the rules of this game is � this is not a game. Those players who believe it to be real, are deluded.
Perhaps the question from Richard's point of view could be restated as " What is the evolutionary basis of Play?"

� "The God Delusion" means "The God from Play"