Kick if you agree with this assessment about the influence of religion on people.

[AtheistCrusader]

229. But we see that struggle every day, right now.

And peaceful commerce is winning. Humans are less and less violent all the time, because we increasingly respect property rights, and increasingly oppose, collectively, forceful acquisition of other people's property.

Big bad dude might want my stuff, and I might defend myself as well, but others have a rational self-interest in opposing big bad dude WITH me, because after all, big bad dude has established a precedent that threatens them as well.

THAT is an evolutionary sociological response.


My 'opinion' is self-supporting. My stuff is mine, and mine alone. Your stuff is yours and yours alone.
If I posit that your stuff is my stuff, then I establish a precedent that my stuff is your stuff, to be internally consistent.


"Yet humanity, in strictly materialist terms, satisfies no special place in the cosmos. Nothing wanted us to be here, nothing governs us except our own subjective whims and nothing will judge or mourn us once we are gone from a universe in which we occupied an infinitesimal space for a fraction of a moment."

That's a big concept. That's something that requires philosophical introspection to determine what it means, since society has in the past assumed some 'meaning' or 'place'. This new idea is something I would like to see society start to tackle what it means, and what 'place' we want for ourselves.