More seriously, I think it’s time for higher ambitions, lest we turn to each others’ throats. And that means, as the newt known as Gingrich would point out with its uncoordinated little leg, the conquest of the Solar System. That in turn, requires big science, and big science is key to the solution of the energy-ecology crisis.
So we have a crisis of the biosphere, of a proportion never seen since the Permian-Trias extinction, with only one solution: more thought, more science, more space. In other words, more of the essence of the genius genus Homo has to be harnessed. Fully, no thought barred. The Internet arrives just in time, but that remains to be fully harnessed by governance, as the forum of ideas that it is.
PA

I also believe that religion is a Darwinian survival mechanism – identify friend or foe.

Hug or kill.

And it got us here, which is a good thing. But with 7 Billion of us on this planet, we need to change.

However, the ancient civilizations Sumer, Phrygia, Egypt were very different religions from Abrahamism. The Great Mother (“Cybelle”) cult was, in many ways, on the antipodes of Islam. (Now they call the great mother “Mary”!)

So I think Abrahism came to prominence, precisely because of its fascism. It was a disaster for the Jews (fascism is Ok, when you are the strongest, but not, when, like Hitler, you are the weakest).

rabid fascism was perfect for the Late Roman emperors (they had cranked it up to save the empire, just prior: the switch to the Dominate happened even before Constantine’s father became Augustus!).

Rabid exploitative fascism was a total success for the Arabs, at least initially, in the first 100 years (then they broke their teeth on the Franks, and were domesticated by the vengeful Iranians).

Muhammad made explicitly the argument that Islam was good for raiding, and the time was now (as Rome had just crushed Iran in an exhausting war). The Roman emperors were much more careful to present Christianism as the best sword they had (since the more sophisticated, Neo-Platonist Greco-Roman population would not have accepted that sort of honnesty!)

Funny the Islamist plus Touareg invasion of Mali. I am against Sunni Islamists, but FOR the Touaregs (my fiorst memories in life are attached to that desert). Call me a house divided. Apparently the Touaregs are overwhelmed by the Islamists. The West should make the Touaregs an offer they cannot refuse: a nation (same for the Kurds, same basic reason).

But the Islamists should be stopped… If they dash on Bamako, leaving the real Touaregs behind… Maybe they could be trapped and destroyed. Funny, within 5 weeks of Sarko’s day of reckoning. He cannot really unleash the Armee de l’Air…

So some religions are superstitions, some are fascists, some are stupid. But some are clever, secular, and democracy. Actually so is a well thought about democratic.

Democracy itself makes for a clever, secular religion. A problem is that, to worship democracy with enough enthusiasm, we have to re-think it, fast. If nothing else, it has become impossible in large modern populations. Fast, before the likes of Sanctum Santorum, or the Muslim Brotherhood comes to power.

I have not lost faith in humans. Even when I get denounced as a Satanic idiot in some of the media. I have not even lost faith in my own witchcraft to inflect humanity towards more rosy sunrises. For humans, who live by choice, hope is nearly as necessary as breathing.
Patrice

This kind of religious thinking probably was a positive Darwinian survival trait, like racism or cannibalism. Explaining the universally nasty disposition of today’s surviving human groups.

Still, I was always astonished that so-called evolved people could rythmically bleat in praise of a “shepherd”. God as a loving father, as a powerful creator, as an indifferent originator, I could conceive of, live with, even like; but as somebody whose ultimate aim would be to fleece and slaughter his flock, even as a kid (calling young children the same way you call the very edible young of small cattle is not an innocent thing either), I could not accept.

(*) don’t get me wrong, I am fully sensitive to the many positive and beautiful traits unique to cattle rearing groups. But their translation into metaphysical commands for the rest of us is unacceptable.

Why are people so stupid? I have lost all faith in humans.