Lightknight said:
Cooperation and tribalism in general was instrumental to us becoming full fledged societies able to carry out complex tasks on a global scale. I'm not sure calls to play fair or not run up the score can be attributed to a religion. Maybe we've evolved to have an innate sense of decency and things like Christian values came out of those values instead of merely instilling them? Because it was evolutionarily more beneficial to work together and to consider the feelings of one another than it was to try and do everything on our own with no respect for other people.
What you are referring to is called empathy. xD And it has no intrinsic basis in religion. Most religions like to take credit for the good natured deeds that people do, because it makes them look better, but the simple fact is that empathy is a biological trait of our species, and many other species too actually. And yes, it is evolutionarily beneficial to the
species to be empathetic, as it increases the likelihood that the species will survive, thrive, and reproduce at an accelerated rate.
As to the posts about "Christianity teaches humility, love, etc." I have to say "That
really depends on which of the several thousand flavors of Christianity you are talking about." Plenty of them are all about shit talking the people who are not part of their denomination, and especially shit talking people who aren't Christian. I live in Alabama USA, and let me tell you, this fucking place is infested with ego-centric religious nutbags, who take
every opportunity to preach about the sinners (as they define them), in public, and threaten them with eternal damnation for their evil ways, all the time. And plenty of the random people passing by will agree with them. So yeah, I call a small bit of bullshit on the "Christianity teaches humility" bit, as I don't actually see any of that in actual practice in real life. I see a bunch of self-grandizing, confrontational, argumentative blowhards, who revel in their salvation superiority over the rest of the masses, and take every opportunity to remind those of us who don't buy into their bullshit, that we are the scum of the earth, and are hell bound for eternal damnation.
And yes, they do revel in mediocrity. My coworkers, who are all highly religious, frequently talk in ways that clearly display a worship of ignorance and mediocrity. Of directly disregarding the opinions of specialists in various fields of knowledge, because "hey, they just
practice medicine, they don't really
know anything. They're not God, and that's where my faith is. So I don't really pay any attention to what they tell me, and just trust the Lord that he will heal me as he sees fit." And yet they go to the doctor anyway, take the treatments suggested, and then attribute their recovery to "God making them better." I've actually heard them say that quote, I'm not paraphrasing there. And the other people around were all nodding along like "yep, yep that's the proper course of action. Ignore advice from knowledgable sources, embrace your ignorance, and just trust that it will work out. And be sure to throw in some arrogant digs as to the folly of those who do pay attention to the information source you decry as foolish." Though I will allow that this isn't necessarily a Christian specific thing, as most religions exhibit this trait to some degree or other. Whenever current data and knowledge contradicts with their believed doctrines, the point at which they bend is with the data, not their beliefs.
Anyway, *gets off his soapbox*. Back to work.