capsaicin67

I was just thinking. The beauty of the whole Belief Schemology is this:

If you tell people to expect good fortune as evidence of God, and it doesn't happen consistently, then they are on a partial reinforcement schedule [the hardest to extinguish].

It is only if they receive inexplicable, disproportionate bad luck that their fear of not continuing to press the Religion Lever for tokens/treats/negative reinforcement would become likely [Problem of Evil In Your Face]. People that receive disproportionate bad luck are also going to be at a reproductive, resource, and survival disadvantage anyhoo.

People that receive even odds or disproportionate good luck [win genetic lottery, attractive, wealthy, etc] are going to receive reinforcement in a manner that they are prone to *not* interpreting as random, but rather due to what swell people they and their families are, their piety blah blah blah. They are also more likely to achieve success and accumulate resources and advantages and reproductive success. Thus, they are not only likely to keep pressing the Religion Lever [tho the ones in the middle are probably more likely to do so with greater frequency because it is a partial reinforcement schedule vs a consistent one], they are also more likely to have discretionary or excess tokens/rewards to give back to the Religion!

Thus the whole enterprise is viral in its absolute parasitic compatibility with human behavioral tendencies.

What a Parasitic Meme!

Nothing totally new, but not a common thread topic or articulation of the problem perhaps.

Thoughts?

seebs

Wow. You have made me dislike the "I will be rewarded for X" meme even more than I used to, which I would not have believed possible.

capsaicin67

Mmm. And that isn't the half of it. Wait until I tie it in with why politics and religion are such awful, co-dependent, Wuthering Heights-esque bedfellows drawn gravitationally toward one another in a toxic dance of intimacy.....

Ideology aside. Seriously. The Repubs getting in bed with religon is truly a deal with the devil. It breaches the barrier to prevent such comingling, but those magnificent bastards are also setting themselves up to be the representatives of those with resources, and especially those most likely to donate resources back to the meme machine.

Greed and religion and politics are all fatally drawn to one another based on this dance...

[not trying to get into a whole political diversion, but speaking to the whole underpinning of my OP]