Homo Religiosus? Are are most humans stupid?

[alice wellintown]

Henry Drummond:       Yes there is something holy to me! The power of
the individual human mind. In a child's power to master the
multiplication table there is more sanctity than in all your shouted
"Amens!," "Holy, Holies!" and "Hosannahs!" An ideas is a greater
monument than a cathedral. And the advance of man's knowledge is more
of a miracle than any sticks turned to snakes, or the parting of
waters. But are we now to halt the march of progress because Mr. Brady
frightens us with a fable? (to the jury) Gentlemen, progress has never
been a bargain. You've got to pay fo rit. Sometimes I think there's a
man behind a counter who says, "All right, you can have a telephone;
but you'll have to give up rivacy, the charm of distance. Madam, you
may vote; but at a price; you lose the right to retreat behind a
powderpuff or a petticoat. Mister, you may conquer the air; but the
birds will lose their wonder, and the clouds will smell of gasoline!"
Darwin moved us forward to a hilltop, where we could look back and see
the way from which we came. But for this view, this insight, this
knowledge, we must abandon our faith in the pleasant poetry of
Genesis.

from the play "Inherit the Wind," written by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee

On Mon, Apr 12, 2010 at 8:03 AM, Otto <ottosell at googlemail.com> wrote:
> 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]
>>
>