I doubt genetic evolution itself could explain why we can have reliable beliefs, at least not in the detail necessary.

Um, did anyone here suggest otherwise?

I like to think of the intelligent discourse of a society as a kind of pseudo- quantum computation that will search the possibility space of certain belief systems. Eventually, obsolete belief systems that cannot be salvaged well enough with the combined rationalizations of its advocates will wane and be followed by a different one, that will then be taken up by society for new investigation. This is why mathematics will never change but will only grow, and why our scientific theories have gotten progressively better at explaining the world. (Although you can think of the "society" as the academic community in these cases.) For this collective computation to work, we only have to have a minimal amount of reasoning abilities. We function well enough without being perfect.

Religion slows down the societal computation. (As do other dogmatic ideologies.) It does not ask for our rational belief, and it indoctrinates the young. As Ebonmuse just said, "religious memes ensure their own propagation and transmission by hijacking the human belief machinery, turning it to their own purposes with little regard for whether it is beneficial to their host to do so." If the virus works correctly, then the computation won't. That's why some of us choose to fight it, and promote freethought.

This is a preposterous charge which I don't believe for one moment. If Karla wants to make such specific accusations, she had better be able to produce evidence supporting them. If she can't, then she should have the common sense to withdraw her claim and apologize for disseminating this defamatory slur against a good man.

Especially if she's also in the UK, whose libel laws practically decide the case in the plaintiff's favor by default.

I'll bet money thatat some point he stated that people who are grossly ignorant of natural history should be disqualified by the science standards, or something to that effect, and that this is what she or the Good Christian sources she got her information from spun into this ridiculous claim.

If evolution is generating minds that think more and more truly then why do billions of people ascribe to religion and spiritual worship that atheists claim are illogical practices?

That's a valid question, but what I take issue with is Karla's apparent assumption that it's one that applies only to me. My original post was addressing the claim, made by Alvin Plantinga and others, that sensory faculties created by evolution would be unreliable, while sensory faculties created by an omnipotent god would be reliable. Clearly, there is a vast amount of religious confusion and schism in the world - this is just a fact that is not open to dispute. Therefore, even if this claim were a defeater for evolutionary naturalists believing in the reliability of human sense perception, it would be just as much of a defeater for theists who believe the same.

But in fact, I think it's less of a problem for me than it is for the theist. As I said in my post, it's most likely that evolution, a process which inherently involves trade-offs, would produce generally but not perfectly reliable sense perception. It's to be expected that people would make some cognitive mistakes under this scenario. By contrast, I believe the theist has a far more difficult time explaining why a creator-god would supply people with brains which have such an apparent predisposition toward inventing false gods.

Postmodernism is actually the current ebb and flow of the today’s world which does not ascribe to the knowablity of truth nor the supremacy of science and reason. Why is one more popular than the other if atheists are the more evolved humans?

There is no such thing as "more evolved", and atheism is not a genetic trait in any case.

Apparently, Richard Dawkins thinks he is superior to Christians as he has advocated to Oxford University to change their policy to disallow Christians as students because they are not intelligent.

This is a preposterous charge which I don't believe for one moment. If Karla wants to make such specific accusations, she had better be able to produce evidence supporting them. If she can't, then she should have the common sense to withdraw her claim and apologize for disseminating this defamatory slur against a good man.

Moving forward and in general, it would seem that religiosity is positively correlated with societal pro-survivabiity (pro tanto,thus far in the continuum).

I'm sure that people in the dark ages would agree with you whole-heartedly.

We started with primitive pantheism, then to polytheism, then monotheism, with judeo-Christian monotheism thus far having won out in the 'sociallydarwinistic' evolutionary race.

And, we've seen the most advances after the Enlightenment (which pulled the monotheistics out of the dark ages) and the rise of ever more secular governments, organizations, and people.

Who knows, if China really does become the new Rome and economically and militarily defeats the west and if China remains atheistic then I suppose we can logically say atheism is a superior survival multiplier could we not?

No, that would not necessarily follow.

But this one child policy is very rational,and isnt China's atheism(eliminatinmg the opiate of the masses, and eliminating the superstitious and unscientific'ness! of religion) also rational?

No, it is not rational.

I think that if one seriously believes that, then one ought to consider inventing a religion for that purpose and not make excuses for existing religions. Yes, inventing, as Plato had done. Plato's Royal Lie was to be the official religion of his Republic, and his society's religion was to be banned as full of bad examples like heroes lamenting and gods laughing.

And the "triumph of the West" is due to getting ahead technologically, not due to our religion. If you looked back about 600 years ago, to the early 1400's, you would think that it was China which was the world's most powerful nation, with its Treasure Fleets and all that -- Europe seemed like a backwater back then.

And even in modern times, progress has been very uneven. First Italy (Renaissance), then Spain and Portugal (discovery of the New World) did some early spurts, but after that it was northern Europeans who got ahead. Britain built the biggest and most successful empire, the successful rebellion of thirteen of its early colonies aside. So should we convert to Anglicanism/Episcopalianism?

Much of our progress has been built on the rediscovery of our classical Greek and Roman legacy, starting in about 1200; it produced much more inspiring examples of science and political theory than can be found in the Bible. It was not for nothing that the writer of the Federalist Papers had used the pseudonym Publius, after an early politician in the Roman Republic. So should we convert to Hellenic and Roman paganism?