Comment Re:Religions codify survival info ... (Score 2) 755
... the doctrines of the bible or koran or any other superstitious nonsense is laughable
Don't laugh too hard, you are proving yourself quite ignorant as well.
Those books actually have some rules that are drawn from the environment. Some of those rules essentially define a regional survival manual for a society at a certain technological level. Even today some of those rules apply. Want to know what is safe to eat in the Red Sea, those old books have a few rules that will provide quite useful information.
Religions sometimes codify social and physical survival strategies, don't mess with the neighbor's wife, don't eat that type of sea creature, etc. To get wrapped up in the "stories" used to deliver the "lessons" and to dismiss a lesson because you didn't like the associated story is quite superficial and ignorant. Those old books are more useful than you believe despite the lack of literal truth to various stories.
See, "Cows, Pigs, Wars and Witches: The Riddles of Culture" by Marvin Harris." Read it for a social anthropology class back in the mid-1970s. In a nutshell, Harris claimed and did a reasonable job of showing that many of the quirks of various religions/cultures actually were ways of adopting the culture to the environment it existed in.
Note that he didn't show that each culture's $DEITY therefore existed since they had handed down these wonderful rules. Only that various societies encoded their rules as religious beliefs. Much easier to get the ignorant to go along by saying $DEITY will smite thee if you don't obey the rules than going through the years of cultural evolution that led to the rues.
Cheers,
Dave