Homo Religiosus? Are are most humans stupid?

[Otto]

Very interesting, thanks a lot.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304198004575172233981688208.html

"Natural selection builds child brains with a tendency to believe
whatever their parents and tribal elders tell them. Such trusting
obedience is valuable for survival: the analogue of steering by the
moon for a moth. But the flip side of trusting obedience is slavish
gullibility. The inevitable by-produce is vulnerability to infection
by mind viruses. For excellent reasons related to Darwinian survival,
child brains need to trust parents and elders whom parents tell them
to trust. An automatic consequence is that the truster has no way of
distinguishing good advice from bad. The child cannot know that "Don't
paddle in the crocodile-infested Limpopo" is good advice but "You must
sacrifice a goat at the time of the full moon, otherwise the rains
will fail" is at best a waste of time and goats. Both admonitions
sound equally trustworthy. Both come from a respected source and are
delivered with a solemn earnestness that commands respect and demands
obedience."

-- Charles Darwin

http://archaeologica.boardbot.com/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=1842


2010/4/11 alice wellintown <alicewellintown at gmail.com>:
> By MICHAEL SHERMER
> According to Oxford University Press's "World Christian Encyclopedia,"
> 84% of the world's population belongs to some form of organized
> religion. That equals 5.7 billion people who belong to about 10,000
> distinct religions, each of which may be further subdivided and
> classified. Christians, for example, may be apportioned among over
> 33,000 different denominations. Among the many binomial designations
> granted our species (Homo sapiens, Homo ludens, Homo economicus), a
> strong case could be made for Homo religiosus.
>
> [read the rest in THEIR newspaper: The Wall Street Jornal]
>