The Stories That Bind Humanity

Was about to post a placeholder for a piece on the need for “Religion by any other name.” I last mentioned the concept – a merging of causes in a Humanistic value-model – in response to a Rabbi Sacks talk. (And did I see a article only yesterday “destroying” Alain de Botton over his taking on board the best bits of religion?)

It arose today with the potentially explosive consequences of recognising the disparity in secular and religious “fertility behaviour”. This tweet / paper and a thread of three comments below in particular. (General gist of truth whatever the detail analysis / discourse right now.)

The nudge to actually post came from an article / interview in New Humanist presenting Alex Rosenberg’s idea that:

“We would not have survived in the Darwinian struggle on the African savannah without the theory of mind. The trouble is it long ago outlived its usefulness.”

“The trouble is that this sort of history – without stories – uses theories, models, equations, data, in short science. And since we were selected for preferring stories to science, we’ll keep on demanding [story-based] history as our preferred mode of understanding, greatly to our cost, I fear.

Completely the opposite of any truth! Almost impossible to approach directly as a problem with a solution, but to recognise as a game-theoretic model of teleological evolution. And a bio-cultural evolutionary cycle at that too! Needs a lot of unpicking.

[And I see it was Rosenberg published that “defence of scientism” that was slammed by Wieseltier and counter-defended by Pinker(?) and other New Atheist types. Jeez!]

[And what was that about AI being inhuman yesterday – Doh!]

[Placeholder only.]

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