bsr said: "given every situation where survival may be necessary on average i'm quite sure that the violent option would improve the chances of survival.
do you not read stories of people fighting for food handouts? desperation, starvation, exhaustion are not situations in which people are likely to think logically and organise themselves for the greater good."

bsr said: "no - i just think the scales tip to the side of violence. again i feel your formulating your views from the incredible position of luxury that we're lucky enough to find ourselves in. if something dramatic changed on the planet the more primal emotions would emerge - my point is that they're a lot closer to the surface than you think they are. 'being human' like i said earlier for me means: 'dirty smelly lumps of fat and mucus who shit and cheat and kill'."

cbit said: "the mistake i think your making is crediting situations of danger/desperation/struggle somehow being more 'real/essential/at the heart of things' than situations of peace."

doron said: "Whether real or not, natural or not (its a cause for another thread surely) we live in a society that promotes fierce competition, if youare going to a job interview you are competing against an unknown rival for bread. its pretty simple, you probably wouldnt give up a good job oppertunity for the sake of somebody else, simply out of the goodness of your heart, and in most cases your not aware of his needs in the first place only your own. simplistic i know, but it seems relevant to me."

cbit said: "In a world of people who's dupeablilty had been dramatically reduced..."

flies said: "i would really love it if people were less dupe-able, and i'm sure everyone here would agree. but i don't think "religion" is the cause of dupeability, but a symptom. I think astroid's points above about the atheist atrocities (you forgot the holocaust!) attests to this point."

hitler in his speech in Munich on 12 April 1922 said: "My feelings as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded only by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to fight against them and who, God's truth! was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter. In boundless love as a Christian and as a man I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord at last rose in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and adders. How terrific was His fight for the world against the Jewish poison. To-day, after two thousand years, with deepest emotion I recognize more profoundly than ever before in the fact that it was for this that He had to shed His blood upon the Cross. As a Christian I have no duty to allow myself to be cheated, but I have the duty to be a fighter for truth and justice.... And if there is anything which could demonstrate that we are acting rightly it is the distress that daily grows. For as a Christian I have also a duty to my own people.... When I go out in the morning and see these men standing in their queues and look into their pinched faces, then I believe I would be no Christian, but a very devil if I felt no pity for them, if I did not, as did our Lord two thousand years ago, turn against those by whom to-day this poor people is plundered and exploited."

flies said: "i guess i have to agree that fundamentalist religions promote willful ignorance."