pclayton, on Feb 10 2007, 12:21 AM, said:
Not sure if I'm being tarred with that same brush, however, a response does seem justified.
I would never claim to “hate” Christianity. However, I do have severe issue with top down hierarchical decision making models. Many forms of organized religion, especially fundamentalist groups, fall into this category.
I think that its reasonable to contrast two different decision making models: The first model is a top down hierarchical model. The leader makes a decision. Society implements accepts this and implements it. The second model is based on distributed decision making. Information is distributed to all members of society. Individuals make their own independent decisions. Some form of voting model is used to move towards a rough consensus.
There are advantages and disadvantages to each of these models. The first model is much more efficient with respect to resource consumption. (Implementing the distributed decision making system that is required for the second model to work is extremely costly). However, the second model will likely lead to much more accurate decision making. Moreover, I would argue the choice of decision making models is likely to be a function of time. Lets assume that I have a small, poor society that's working to solve relatively simple problems. Maybe I'm a small group of hunter gathers making my way across the plain of Africa. Alternatively, I'm a group of farmers working together to build an irrigation system in ancient Babylon. That top down hierarchy is probably a pretty good choice. I might even go so far as to argue that susceptibility to hierarchical organized religion would be an evolution advantage. However, over time societies get more wealthy and decisions that they grapple with grow more complex. At some point in time, you hit an inflection point. That willingness to blindly follow switches from an evolutionary advantage to a significant disadvantage. I think that a lot of the problems that we're encountering in the world right now are related to that inflection point.
I think that my pattern of posting exhibits a fairly consistent pattern. I am extremely critical of fundamentalist groups, be they Christian, Muslim, Jewish, or whatever. I think that their blind acceptance of authority and conviction that they know the “truth” is extremely dangerous. Moreover, I don't think that its coincidental that the most overtly religious members of this bulletin board also seem to have the most reactionary / conservative political bent.
I will readily admit that “religion” really isn't much of a factor in my life. I don't really understand it. I don't really feel a need for it. Very few of my friends are overtly religious. The few that are attend Unitarian Universalists services, Quakers worship services, or reform synagogues. From what I can tell, none of these groups seem to exhibit the same decision making models that I associate with the Evangelical “mega-churches”, the new more conservative Catholicism of John Paul II and Benedict XVI, or, for that matter, fundamentalist Islam.