Atheist Memes

This is pretty fluffy, and I guess that's nice, but religion is actually harmful. And as much as religion and science may both satisfy a similar desire to belong to something greater, I think it is dangerously misleading to suggest that the two are equivalent - even in this limited context.

People believing that they are the "true" believers is where the problem comes in

This is incredibly divisive, you're right, but ... you might be due to rewatch the film if you think there aren't foundational problems long before we get to sectarianism.

We all believe in the same shit, just in different ways.

Do we?

Yes. You can't base it on the single species that actually made up religion

I mean recorded history is like, what? 10,000 years? Meanwhile modern humans are about 160,000 years old.

A phase doesn't have to be a small thing, just something we eventually move past

Octothorpe amazing.

And most importantly, the tools we use today are nigh infinitely more powerful than before. Very little has done more for the collective intelligence on the planet than computers.

I wouldn't rule out that we've become smarter since then. Iirc the average IQ did increase over time. We may not have changed genetically, but many explanations think we can foster higher IQs in our modern environment compared to a 100 years ago.

I don't see how this could be true. It would be analogous to observing a species of bone-thin weaklings that becomes interested in body building over the course of a few hundred years, gaining more muscle mass on average with each passing year, and making the claim that the strength of this species has not changed. Maybe if one of the early weaklings decided to take up their own interest in body building, they may have reached a similar strength to that of their descendants (though even that is debatable since that specific individual wouldn't have access to all the training techniques and diets developed over the course of its species' future); however, it seems like an awkward interpretation to say therefore the strength of the species has not changed.

This is similar to the situation we find ourselves regarding intelligence in the human species. Humans gain intelligence by exercising their brains and engaging in mental activity, and humans today are far more occupied by these activities than our ancestors were. This, in my view, makes it accurate to claim that human intelligence has changed significantly since the advent of religion. Individual capacity for intelligence may not have changed much, but the intelligence of humans as a whole has changed.

Note that my argument does not conclude that human knowledge or understanding has changed over time. These attributes certainly have changed - I'm sure not many would doubt that. It also doesn't conclude that every modern human is more intelligent than every ancient human. Instead, it concludes that human intelligence as a whole has changed as a result of changes in our culture that influence us to spend more time training our intelligence than our ancestors.

Right.

What other guy said, there could be biological predisposition to religion. Many experts believe that it is a natural anti-depressant.

It wouldn't rule out biological predisposition to religion.

I always figured that religion arose from the natural inclination of the human brain to look for order in chaos (and it's then exploited by those with power as a means of controlling people). Since there will always be circumstances outside our control, I would expect people to at the very least have superstitions, if not full-blown religion, no matter how much scientific knowledge they have. Until the fundamental nature of the human brain changes, at least.