Well humans find a purpose in life. Whether it be serving a force relligious or institution, serveing their society, or even their family.

I disagree Max, people can have the same values but different ideas on how to achieve fulfilment of these values

That's where most division comes from these days

Which... is why you get psycopaths. Who have no ties to anyone, making them more "selfish" than the average person

Division comes from refusal to accept differences in values

A left-wing individual and a right-wing individual both want a good economy. Left-winger thinks this is done through redistribution of wealth, right-winger thinks this is done through de-regulation and promoting free trade. This causes a division

The smallest minority is the individual

I don't see difference in values as much of an issue as different ways to reach the end goal

If you cannot protect the individual you cannot claim you stand for the minorities.

But if you cannot protect groups that individuals belong to, that they want to belong to, you aren't really protecting the individual. This is why I find both hyper-individualism and hyper-collectivism both horrifying. It's why I'm not a libertarian anymore, OR a socialist, though I get accused of both. 😛

Thats just being against extremism in general.

Or someone being a moderate. Whats there to argue?

A good collective protects the individual

That's the idea of constitutionalism and generally law- the collective enforce and act by rules that allow them to coexist as individuals

And generally benefit from one another through that.

Trade? Exchange of services? And a force to ensure it runs fair and square.

But of course, relligion has a part as well. In a time when regulation was hard as hell to enforce.

Even now, you cant see everything

Right. Then you run immediately into the "Who Watches the Watchmen?" question, which hasn't changed in thousands of years. I think we have yet to show ARistotle or Plato wrong onthese things.

Wait what? WHo watches a god?

Religion generally came about when people needed a way to enforce rules beyond a single leader, is how a friend explained it to me

Yes, if you plot to assassinate a king, he could be none the wiser and you'd get away with it

But if God's watching? Fuck nah

Or also to uplift a population to act beyond what they were at the time

"Religion generally came about when people needed a way to enforce rules beyond a single leader, is how a friend explained it to me" -- yes this is a common belief. It's a faith-based, non-scientific belief, but it's a belief.

Concepts like hygine, decent behaviour, and more specifically, stuff like population controll and food prepping

What's your scientific explanation for religion Max?

Shit like monogamy

The evidence shows overwhelmingly that spiritual belief and religion are completely normal in humans, and perfectly rational if you engage the topic rationally (which not everyone does).

Well id argue its rational for someone to react to ideas they disagree with with hostility

Because we naturally want to explain the unexplained, nullify fear of death, and have objective morality and definite justice

@Vigil My scientific explanation? Well the science clearly shows we're wired for it. The history clearly shows non-religious and anti-religious societies quickly turn into complete chaos or into authoritarianism. This all points to me to human spirituality as a normal, evolved trait--which It hink is pretty clear from all the data we have.

Was the implication that humans who follow a relligion are irrational.

No

Well, it's like, a lot of the time religion is making an assumption

While evidence states that humans are predisposed to find a common belief to strive towards?

So the next question the Presuppositional Atheist has is how this would develop, since it's supposedly "irrational" and not "evidence based." But it's rational and evidence based, and normal in humans. Fighting it is anti-human and anti-human rights I think.

Which is rational

Afterall the best way to unite a populace is to create a movement for everyone to strive towards.

But now that I think about it. Remember that rat experiment?

Near the end of the experiment, rats started becoming loners?