I was just watching Farscape and....

[longship]

5. Well, there is that argument.

The counter to it is that one hopes that intelligence would trump the tooth and claw thingie. Looking at the current state of modern humanity, I am skeptical and you may have a valid point.

On the other hand, it seems that certain ideologies, unrelated to actualities, are responsible for much of the sturm und drang in the world. If life can get over such things there may be hope. Some are attempting to study them under the rubric of evolutionary psychology. It is definitely a controversial subject -- how is it testable? But I give them an A for effort.

I like Daniel Dennett's arguments in Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon. It is a very interesting take on these things and I don't think we can afford to throw out credible hypotheses merely because they have experimental problems. We need to understand them by studying them if there is to be hope for the future. Dennett has convinced of that, too.

My regards.