Quote:
Originally Posted by photon
...Religions are comprised of people. Cultures are comprised of people. Races are comprised of people. Countries are comprised of people. And people are interchangeable, if you took 1000 people born in Calgary and magically exchanged them with 1000 people born in whatever you care to define as the "worst" religion/culture/whatever would the end results be any different? I can't see how, the same % of them will still end up as extremists.
People's beliefs (religious, cultural, moral, etc) are formed as they grow, so I think it's kind of a waste of time to blame people, or even to blame the religion or the culture since those are just ideas and beliefs that are passed down when one is at their most credulous, and blaming an idea is like blaming a knife for cutting you.
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Cultural and social evolution at work through population memetics. The fundamental sociological and behavioural "sameness" of all humankind is rather clearly revealed in the fact that so many different and isolated populations of humans developed very similar animistic religions—most of which were probably completely independent of one another, but a necessary result of predetermined biological tendencies.